The End of Summer

So summer has come and gone out here. To be honest, I'm kind of thankful that it is over. I'm getting tired of monsoon season. For the last few weeks the rain has come and gone, but it always seems to arrive at the most inconvenient times. Here lately it seems to rain only on the days where I try to go out to the village and from about 5-7pm (the hours I try to go and play basketball). So I'm looking forward to a little more sunshine. As strange as it is I'm also looking forward to going back to school. I have a lot more conversations these days, but at the same time I feel like my language has kind of plateaued over the past month or so.

Even through the rain there have been some good things happen this week. I went out with my friend that is studying language with me and we spent some time in Old Town. We went way past all the tourist shops to where locals actually live and spent some time talking to some old ladies. There was a group of people washing vegetables in a stream so we stopped to talk for a while. One older lady was very talkative so I talked to her for about twenty minutes. Most of the conversation revolved around how she thought Jared was my wife when we walked up. It is amazing how a 6'1'' 175lb. white guy can be mistaken for a girl because he has long hair. It didn't stop me from making fun of him though. Quickly after she found out that he in fact was not my wife the conversation took the same turn that all conversations out here with old women; she told me that she had a daughter my age.

I've also had some time to reconnect with some friends over the past few weeks. Many of them have just graduated from college and have been very involved with their jobs. I guess the newness of work is starting to wear off and they are finding time to go out and do things once again. Hopefully this fall we'll all have more time to go out. School also hasn't started yet. My school is moving to a new campus and the mayor decided to make an announcement that classes would be at the new campus this fall. Well, construction was delayed with rainy season so the campus isn't finished and there is mud everywhere. Because of this they pushed the start of the semester back a few weeks and then announced that only half of the school (fortunately not the foreign students) will be attending the new campus. So it is a win-win situation. I won't have a forty-minute bike ride to class every day and I have an extra two weeks of summer.

Party!

So we've just finished having a party out here. I had this random thought on Tuesday morning that I should invite all of my friends that I play basketball with to come over and cook up some American food. I wasn't sure if anyone would actually come, but I figured it was worth a shot. So most of this week I've been going out to the basketball court to play ball and talk up this party. Like with anything involving a bunch of twenty year old guys, if you mention free food there will be a decent turn out. We had fourteen guys show up, so it was pretty good.

The actual night of the party was a little hectic though. I had been getting things together for most of the day. It poured down rain all day, so that made for several fun bike rides across town. Everyone was supposed to come over at 7pm, so I fired up the grill in the house at around 5:30. Surprise, no gas. It turns out they have been working on the main gas pipeline in our apartment complex and shut it off for a few days (starting at 5pm today). So I managed to go and buy a large propane bottle and rig it up to my stove in the kitchen. By the time I got home from that there were ten guys waiting at my door; go figure they all show up an hour early. So most of my night was spent cooking, and they all took off early and at exactly the same time, but I think it was a great 'door opening' opportunity. I actually think we're going to try and have a cookout once a month or so. I'll make sure and write about how the next one goes.