A Busy Holiday

So I'm going to apologize up front for this being a little bit late this week. Things out here have been a little bit crazy. Most of last week was spent working on a project, which took up about forty hours. It is going to be a long thing and we've spent about nine hours/day working on it for most of this week too. Being out of school has really helped with getting things done around here too.

One of my good friends is leaving this next week and heading back to The States. Things are definitely going to change around here. For starters, I bet I drop about five pounds in the next month because she won't be around to cook every time we show up at her apartment. It will also just be different because she has been here for the entire time that I've been here (including summer visits). So I guess what I'm saying is, please send food to my roommate and me so that we won't starve.

To celebrate her leave we took off and hiked the Gorge on Monday and Tuesday. There were four of us Westerners and then we had three local friends go with us. Even though the weather wasn't the best, it was still a good time. It was mostly cloudy and you couldn't see the mountains nearly as well as last time, but everyone enjoyed just getting out of town for a while. It was also a good chance to get to talk to our local friends and encourage them.

This next week is going to be pretty crazy. I'm trying not to schedule anything of my own because I know that I'm not going to have a lot of free time. Classes start back on Monday, we have a new family that just moved out here that everyone is trying to get settled, my friend is leaving to head back to the states, and we are also hosting a health clinic in a village. The village is the one that I spend a lot of time in, so I'm helping out with things too. The plan is, as of now, that I'm going to be in charge of the dental hygiene training. I think there is a video and I'm supposed to show how to brush your teeth. I don't know how much more complicated it could be than that though (since they don't sell floss or mouthwash out here). So next week is going to be a little crazy. I'll try and make sure and update this when I have a chance.

Pig Farming

So I don't know if the technical name is pig farming or pig ranching, but either way, I'm going into the business of it. This past week I was out of town and spent about eight days down on a farm. It was a great environment and I learned a lot. There was a hog expert from the states that came out and did a seminar for four days. It was really interesting and I learned things like pig nutrition, how to build sanitary pens, pig development stages, genetics, pig breeding, and how to perform artificial insemination (which definitely falls under the 'more than I ever wanted to know about pigs' category). It was a lot of great information. Also during the week we talked about soil testing and applications in rural settings. It was a great week of training and I'm going to be applying a lot of what I learned soon. The hope is to take what I'm learning out to villages and use that to create some access and build some relationships. Things are really picking up with it and soon we are hoping to create a testing facility in town to use as an example to bring local villagers out to see the technologies. We have actually found a potential site and, hopefully, I'll be working with some locals to get that up and running here in the next month. So things are moving pretty quickly on the whole thing.

In other news, we have a two week holiday from school. It is kind of sad that I'm excited about having a holiday when I've been gone so much lately. I enjoy school and I'm learning a lot, but can you blame me for enjoying a ten day holiday? I have a lot going on in town at the moment, so I don't know if I'll get to do some traveling. Some of us have been tossing around the idea of going out and hiking the Gorge again. We can travel out there, hike it, and travel back in under two days and it'd only cost about $30. So that might be an option. I'll try and keep this updated a little better over the next few weeks now that I'm going to be in town more.

Himalayas

So this week has been a little bit different than most out here. I still had class last week (and went to most of it), but I also had two friends fly down and we took some vacation and backpacked for a while. We traveled out to the deepest gorge in the world and spent two days getting through all of that. It was pretty amazing. On one side you have an 18,000 foot mountain rising straight up from the river, and then on the other side there is a 17,700 foot mountain. It honestly has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. It was hard to actually hike the trail because we spent so much time looking around at the scenery. Also along the path there were tons of waterfalls and different surroundings at every turn. Because the elevation changed so much we would go from a forest, to a mountain forest, to rocky cliffs in just a few hours. It was a great time of getting to go out with some friends and just enjoy being in the wilderness.

After the two days of hiking the gorge we went and stayed at the bottom of the 17,700 foot mountain. Just to put the mountain in perspective, it would be the second tallest mountain in the United States, behind Mt. McKinley, and it is well over 3,000 feet taller than the tallest mountain in the lower forty-eight states. So it was pretty big and an amazing sight. We set out to climb the mountain on Friday and hiked about six hours up to Base Camp. While eating dinner at Base Camp one of the guys who came to visit started throwing up and had a serious case of altitude sickness. I guess going from 1,000 feet to 13,000 feet in just a few days is not a good idea. Because he was sick the other two guys decided to go down the next day and not attempt to summit with us. My roommate and I took off with our guides at about 4:45am on Saturday and reached the peak at about 9am. I wish that I was cool and could say that the climb to the top was easy, but it was one of the physically most demanding things that I've ever done. We started off taking breaks about once every twenty minutes and by the time we reached the top of the glacier we were taking breaks about once every twenty steps. It is crazy how much altitude can slow you down. We made it to the summit though, took some pictures and then headed back down to Base Camp. The trip down was much easier, however it still took about two and a half hours. At Base Camp we took a short break, ate some lunch, and then made the three hour hike back down to the village. Overall, it was a great trip; however it was incredibly exhausting.

So pretty much the rest of this week I have been trying to catch up on sleep (getting up at 3:50am to climb a mountain will really mess with your sleep cycle) and I've been working on school work. Class is continuing to go well and I'm finally starting to pick up more of the language. I can't really put together complex sentences yet, but I'm getting a lot closer. Hopefully that will fall into place soon. As far as other things going on, I'll be heading out of town on Thursday to spend some time down on a farm. I'll spend about a week there working on some agricultural projects and learning fun things like how to immunize pigs and plant soybeans and all sorts of useful life skills. So if I don't get this updated next week it is because I'm out of pocket and I'll make sure and add more once I get back.

School and Mountains

School and mountains, that pretty much sums up my week. This past week was our first week of class out here. I have two different classes, both of which are teaching me the local language. One meets on Monday and Wednesday mornings, and the other meets on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Both classes have been very good for my language and I'm starting to be able to put together a little more complex sentences. It is pretty strange to finally start to understand this language. The sentence structure is completely different than English (and most any other language on the planet). All of the practice that I've been doing over the summer with learning vocabulary is finally starting to pay off because I can focus on sentence structure instead of trying to understand the actual word meaning. Well, most of the time anyway. It is a little harder in my Tuesday/Thursday class because my teacher doesn't speak English. So basically I'm trying to translate from a language that I haven't formally studied, into English and then back into the local language. Needless to say I'm a little slower with my answers than a lot of the others in the class. But I'm doing really well in my Monday/Wednesday class where the teacher speaks some English.

In more exciting news, I'm heading out of town tomorrow and will be gone for about five days. I have two friends flying in today and then we are heading out, along with my roommate, to go and climb a mountain. There is one big benefit to living out here and it is the mountains. I can get on my bike and ride for about forty-five minutes and be at the base of mountains that are taller than any in the continental U.S. So some friends and I are going to take advantage of this and go and climb one that is a few hours away. This is one of the tallest mountains in the world that is still 'easy' to climb. By easy I mean that it isn't technically hard, but at the same time it is over 17,700 feet and there is a large glacier that we have to climb. So hopefully we'll make it to the top. Two of the guys that are going live at much lower elevation so we are going to take a few extra days to do some lower hiking before we get up too high. I'm a little concerned about someone getting altitude sick or having bad weather, but we're going to take a run at the mountain anyway and see what happens.

In other, and even more exciting, news my local friend who's parents are staying with her (whom I told you about last week) had her mother believe this weekend. Today she will go out 'swimming'. So over all it has been an exciting week out here. Okay, I've got to run and finish packing. I'll post more next week, assuming we make it back from the mountain.

Vacay

So I know that this post is a little overdue. Sorry, things out here have been a little crazy. So over the past week and a half I have been out traveling a lot. I spent about four days down south on an island. Our hotel was right on the beach and had an amazing pool. It wasn't a total vacation (there were still some things I needed to do while I was there) but for the most part it was a great four days of relaxing on the beach. It was hot though. Really hot. I've gotten used to living in the mountains and summers being in the mid-70's and the jump to 95+ degrees is a little bit of a shock. After we left the beach we went to Hong Kong for about five days. I think I suffered from a little bit of culture shock. Everything there is ultra-modern and it would be like taking L.A., filling it with Chinese people and then making it really humid. It was a good break though. While we were there we took in a lot of the sights of Hong Kong (the bay and the peak), went to a few museums, Disneyland, saw a couple of movies, and ate A LOT of Western food. It is strange how when you live in a culture so different that doing things like going to the movies is a nice break and seems so normal. After Hong Kong we traveled up north and spent a couple of days with some friends from college that just arrived. It was good to get to see them again. We got a little carried away with walking, talking and eating lunch and ended up missing our flight out (three traffic accidents on the road there didn't help either). Because we missed our flight, we had to fly back to our city the next day and, instead of spending the $10 on a hotel room, we spent the night hanging out in a 24-hour McDonald's. So needless to say when we got back to town we were exhausted. It was great to be back. When we got home it was about 60-degrees, the sun was shinning and there were mountains and clean air. Vacation is not only good for getting to go somewhere but also to help with appreciating being home.

Before we left my friend's local roommate had her parents come to visit. They live about nine hours away up in the mountains and they are in town to see the doctor about some back-pain. For the three days before we left town my roommate, my friend and I spent the evening teaching them how to play a domino game and then sharing with them. The father, who had never seen a white guy before us, has gone back home but her mother is still in town for at least another week. We are planning on trying to spend some more times playing games and talking to her.

In other news school has started back this week. I have class four days a week. I'm glad that I've been here studying with a tutor for the past five months because, even with having a head start, the learning curve is pretty steep. Class has already been good for my language and I'm starting to finally put some things together.

Finally, I'll be traveling next week. Two friends, my roommate and I are going to be traveling out a couple of hours to climb a 17,300 ft. mountain. It'll be an adventure to say the least.

Randomness

So I don’t really know where to start with the craziness of this past week. Actually random is probably a better description than crazy. It was all pretty normal, well language study and doing my usually weekly things, until Thursday evening. For the past couple of weeks my tutor has been bringing his cousin, who is eight, to our language lessons and I’ve been helping him some with his English. For an eight year old his English is really good. Well, during my Thursday language study I got to meet my tutor’s uncle. He is a very nice guy. He is kind of loud and speaks English really well. It turns out he is something like the regional gov’t guy, which apparently is kind of a big deal. I got to meet him and then he said maybe we could meet up next week. Well, I got a phone call from him at about 6pm and next week turned into meeting him and some friends at 7pm. So he picked me up and went to this random restaurant with all of these middle-aged gov’t officials. Several of them were in from the capital and I think they were kind of big shots. The whole thing turned out to be this college reunion that happens for them, so I really have no idea how I got invited to this. I felt way out of place though. The guy who brought me was a good host and he said it was great that he could work on his English again while I was there. I ended up sitting at the table next to this guy who was already a little tipsy when I got there. He was pouring some kind of local moonshine out of a clear gasoline container and he kept insisting that I drink some. I kept trying to explain to him that I didn’t really want to drink any of it but he didn’t really understand that because EVERYONE here smokes and drinks. So after about an hour we left the restaurant and headed over to another part of town. We ended up at this really cool restaurant/bar that is owned by a Frenchman and we sat outside and tea. There was also a concert that started with a girl singing, a guy on the keyboard, and another old guy that played the flute and saxophone. They weren’t bad except they kept butchering songs from American that haven’t been popular for at least ten years (if ever). I about died laughing when one of the guys sang ‘Don’t Break my Heart’ with this very thick accent. I also heard some John Denver, The Temptations, and Ricky Martin. The best moment had to be during the Ricky Martin song when two of the women and one of the men in our party got out of their chairs, climbed on stage and started dancing. There just aren’t words to describe seeing a drunk, middle-aged, high-ranking Asian official doing the cabbage-patch to a Ricky Martin song. Eventually I managed to talk my friend into taking me home, since it was his son’s bedtime.

Friday morning three of us took off on a bus at 7am to head out to another city to meet up with some friends. The trip up there was supposed to be a five-hour bus ride (which in actuality was 10 ½) and then a three-hour train ride. I think it was about the most miserable bus ride ever. We even took a different way back, which turned out to be a 15 hour bus ride, and that actually seemed a lot better than the one on the way up there. Once we got there the weekend was great. We got to spend some time with some great people and also got some great food. Sometimes I forget that there are actual restaurants that serve good normal food. There are definitely some advantages to living out in the middle of nowhere but as far as good restaurants and travel go, we are definitely lacking.

So things are going to be a little crazy over the next few days. I’ll be taking off this weekend for a little vacation at the beach. I’m looking forward to getting away for a few days before school and everything gets back into full swing. I’ll be gone for a while so I’m pretty sure this thing won’t get updated for at least a week.

Being Caught Up

Things have been good out here over the past week. Everything seems to be slowing down some and getting a little more back to normal after a crazy month in July. To be honest, things have been a little bit on the dull side. It has been great for language study though. I’m back in my routine of trying to get in five hours a day, including time with my tutor. And it feels really good to be fully caught up on emails and paperwork. I’m going to enjoy it because it will probably only last for another week or two.

This upcoming weekend I am planning on traveling with two others to meet up with a guy who lives in the province to our north. While we are there he is going to show us how to set a few things up that we might be able to use down here. It should be an interesting trip. None of us really know where we are going but we have a rough idea of where to get off the bus and hopefully catch another one. It should be a solid day of travel, then we will be there for about two days, and then spend a day traveling back. We will get back to town and be here for about four or five days and then we are taking off for a little bit of training/vacation. I’m definitely excited about that. I love it here and it is beautiful, but a few days on the beach are always a good thing. It will also be nice to have a few days to hang out in Hong Kong. Other than going to Disneyland I’m planning on eating a lot of good American food and maybe doing some shopping. I’m not really a big shopper, but considering that you can’t really buy much of anything here it will be nice to have a few options. You can’t even buy cheese here, much less anything really nice. And once we get back to town I’ll be starting school classes, so I’m pretty sure that I need to enjoy being caught up on things while it lasts.