Back from the Village

Well I survived my time out in the village. It was actually a really good trip. The village leader that I am staying with is a guy in his mid-40's. Usually he is out chopping down trees, so I didn't get to spend a lot of time with him this week. His father is the former village head and he and I spent most of our time together. He is a great older guy. I can see why they are the leaders of this village because, as opposed to most people out here, they are busy most of the time. Them being busy was great for me because I had things to do almost every day. Most mornings we would wake up and eat breakfast at around 9:30 and then go out around 10am. It sounds kind of late, which it is, but the reason is because we were so high in the mountains that the sun wouldn't come up until then. And it was REALLY cold if the sun wasn't up. So during the morning we would basically hike a little over a mile to the other side of the mountain so we could find some trees to chop down. Uncle He, the former village leader, and I would chop down a few trees, strip off the branches from the top, tie them all together and then haul them home so we could feed the goats with them. And then most days we would go out and do the exact same thing in the afternoon. It is kind of a lot of work just to feed some goats. I didn't mind though. I got to chop down a few trees and it gave me something to do. Most of the time village life is pretty boring, but this week was good because it was different. I was also stretched with language quite a bit. I would read some in the afternoons and Uncle He would always ask what I was reading. It turns out he can't read so I had to tell him about it. There were a few times where I had to use some charades, but overall I think he understood what I was talking about. I've posted the video from week three from our village wedding trip here. This next week Jared and I are taking off for a little vacation down South. Nothing like going from about 9,000-feet in the cold mountains to sunny warm beaches.

Going to the Village

So the village thing has finally come together (I think). I've got somewhere to go this week anyway. I'm actually heading out tomorrow afternoon and I'll be back... I'm not really sure when. Hopefully I'll be back on Friday, but I might end up staying out there until Monday-ish. I'm going to be in a village about an hour outside of town on the side of a mountain. I've done some ag work out here before and so I'm staying with the village head. You would think that the village leader would have a nice place, but that isn't the case. I went out there yesterday and talked to everybody and I'm going to be roughing it a little bit for the next few days. It probably won't be too bad, but it is going to be cold. Last night, even before the sun went down, it was getting pretty chilly. I think it is about 1,000 feet above the valley, so the weather is a little bit harsher there. I hit it off with the grandpa that lives at the house though, so I'm sure we'll be doing a lot together this next week. They have a lot of goats in this village and Grandpa was telling me that I can help him watch the goats during the day. So at least I'll have a little something to do, and I might even come away knowing a little bit about goat ranching (if that is even a term. . .). The people there are really nice though, so I'm sure it'll be a good week. Hopefully this will open up a few doors for me to come back and start up some ag projects in the coming months. I think I'm going to start hitting the ag thing pretty hard once February gets here. I've got a friend coming out to live with me and he has an ag degree and worked on a coffee plantation for a few years. So I'm sure we'll find all kinds of things to get into out here. The game plan is that we're going to get some high elevation coffee test plots going and maybe some pigpens and whatever else we can come up with. It should be fun. Oh, and here is video 2 from the wedding.

Village Wedding

So I survived the village wedding. It was REALLY COLD though. I think it was somewhere around 20 degrees in my room every night. So it feels good to be living back in the valley again. It has actually been really nice here since I've been back. It gets pretty cold here at night, but for living at about 7,500 feet at the beginning of January, it really isn't too bad. Life out in the village was actually a lot more fun than it usually is. Normally in the village I catch up on a lot of reading and usually just sit around, which is all that is left to do if you don't smoke, drink, or gamble. There is actually a lot going on in villages during planting or harvest season, but otherwise, just a lot of sitting. The wedding was fun because there was a lot going on by village standards and we had a friend with us who could speak some English. The first day we were there they killed three pigs, so that provided a few hours of entertainment. Other than that we pretty much sat around by the fire, took pictures and shot video. I'm actually going to post a video a week. The link to this last weeks is here. Act fast though because I'm probably not going to leave them up too long. And heads up on this one, it is the pig killing. So if you're partial to bacon you might want to skip out until next weeks. For the rest of break things are a little up in the air. The game plan is that I'm going to live out in the villages some so I can work on language, go on a little vacation, and then start up some ag projects. I'll make sure and post more details when I have them, the problem is that a lot of things are still up in the air. Hopefully it'll come together soon so I can get the village thing knocked out before I head out of country and then I can focus on growing coffee once I get back.

Christmas

I'll be the first one to admit that Christmas is a little different out here. Actually, it's a lot different. Other than the things that my friends and I have done, there is no way to actually know that it is the Christmas season out here. There are no lights, trees, Santa Clauses, nothing. It isn't entirely bad though; there isn't any commercialism, going into debt over presents, or little old ladies getting run over at Wal-marts. I guess that it is all what you make of it. The past couple of nights some of us have been getting together to watch Christmas movies. It has actually been really busy out here the past couple of weeks. There have been a lot of events to go to and just stuff going on. We had a big Christmas party at the English Corner at the college this past Tuesday. It was a lot of fun and a good opportunity to share a lot with the people there. A huge group from Singapore came out and put on a lot of the music. On Christmas eve a small group of us got together and had our own little candle light Christmas eve (followed by watching Home Alone 2). I also found out on Tuesday night that I'm headed out to the village. Actually I'm leaving in a couple of hours. One of my local friends out here is from a village several hours away (I've heard anywhere from 5-9 hours by car), and her brother is getting married. It'll be a good cultural experience, however I hear it is COLD there. I think it is somewhere around 10,000-10,500 feet and definitely no heating. Actually there probably aren't even windows on the houses, just holes. So that'll be interesting. Okay, well I've got to go pack.

Thanksgiving

So I took a week off from writing last week in honor of Thanksgiving (which is different from other weeks where I just take a week off because I don't get around to writing). The past couple of week out here have been pretty busy though. Last week we only had a few days of class because of the holiday, but there were a lot of opportunities for me to go out with people.

Last Monday I got a call from a friend about a couple of us going and visiting a guy he met. The guy is a tour guide in town and he invited us over to his house for dinner. It ended up being him, two of his friends, one of his friend's girlfriend, his father, and the three of us. We spent about five hours at his house, which is about how long it takes to really have dinner out here. Being out there made me remember how much I enjoy being out in the village. Life is just a lot different being outside of town and in someone's home. So basically getting invited to dinner out here usually involves sitting around for a couple of hours while dinner is being cooked, eating for an hour, and then sitting around for a couple more hours talking and drinking tea. So that's what we did. It was really nice because one of the guys studied to be a cook and it was seriously the best food I've ever had in a village. After dinner we sat around a fire in the kitchen to keep warm and all talked. One of the guys was pretty educated so we talked to him for a while about philosophy (and another guy was a big fan of Nirvana, so we talked about that for a while too). It was good to get out and meet some new guys. I'm planning on going back out there here in the next couple of weeks.

Tuesday night I went with some local friends up to the gym and talked to the owner for a while. He has been asking a lot of questions and the local guys did a great job of answering them for him. It is pretty amazing to see how much he has been changing over the past few months.

Thursday was Thanksgiving and we had a huge get together. There were probably fifteen adults at our party and TONS of food. There are a few people out here who can really cook and the food was really good. The guys also went out and played a game of football. My team actually won, which is pretty amazing considering the other team had all the athletes. I did get to relive the intramural glory days by throwing four td passes and receiving one. It was definitely different from holidays back home, but still a lot of fun.

Tonight I just got home from working out at the gym. One of my good friends here is also an environmental manager in town and we've been spending a lot of time together. Another of my friends and I talked to him for over an hour tonight in the gym and it was a really good conversation. We are planning on grabbing dinner this weekend and talking a little more.

I'll try and be a little better about posting things over this next month. Christmas time is usually kind of busy, so there should be a lot to write about.

Trying to Stay Busy

So as I was saying last week, it is a pretty slow time of year out here. There just isn't really a lot going on. A lot of people are busy with the fall semester of school or just starting jobs (a lot of big jobs hire in waves at certain times of year). So a lot of people have been too busy to do things. I've been able to keep up with a few of my friends though.

On this past Friday night I went and ate dinner with the environmental engineer that I have met. We went to this place a couple of blocks from my house that is this coffee shop. I had seen it before, but over the past few months I had forgotten that it was there. So we went there and had some American food. It was really good and not too expensive. He insisted on paying though, which made me feel a little bad. It isn't uncommon for people to point blank ask about things that are usually a little off subject in America. So during dinner he started asking about things like how much my apartment costs and how much money I would make in America and things like that. He also told me how much he makes, which is about $150/month being an environmental engineer. So when the ticket for dinner came I tried to pay, but he wouldn't let me.

I also had a basketball game this past Saturday morning. We played at the number one middle school in our town. I'm still not 100% sure how the whole school system works because everyone there looked like they were at least in high school. I think some people call middle school high school and others call it high school. I really have no idea. Anyway, we had a big game out there and there were around two hundred students surrounding the court watching. It was a lot of fun except that the rims were about three inches too high. So it was an ugly shooting day, but it was a good chance to get to meet some new guys.

Finally, I've started meeting again with my tutor. He has been missing in action for the past couple of weeks, but we have met together twice this week. Usually we meet for about two hours. We end up talking for about the first forty-five minutes, then always get off subject on something, and then end up playing basketball or watching an episode of Man Vs. Wild. No joke, during one of the episodes he saw something Bear Grylls was eating and said "oohh, that looks pretty good." We've had a few opportunities to talk about other things while we've studied too. He is a guy who has gotten a little off track over the past year or so, but within the past month he is starting to have a renewed interest in things. So even though there are some frustrations, it has been a good time.

Pretty Much a Normal Week

So life out here can be kind of funny sometimes. There are some days where I am out traveling or out heading to some remote village, but for the most part, life out here seems pretty normal. Well, normal to me I guess. It is amazing how quickly we can adapt to different things and our day to day life, no matter how strange it seems to others, can end up being pretty normal. With that being said, the last couple of weeks out here have been . . . pretty normal.

This past week has been pretty slow, which has actually been a blessing. Because I haven't had a lot going on I've been able to get back to normal things like playing basketball, getting to see my friends, and going out to eat with them. I've had a lot of opportunities to catch up with some of the basketball guys this past week. We had a surprise game on Friday afternoon and we played some gov't team. The team was actually really good. They had a guy who was bigger than I am (and who actually knew how to play a little post) and another guy who was at least my size and knew how to get to the basket. I honestly have no idea how we beat them. Well, I kind of do. We basically stuck a big older guy on their big guy and he just fouled him every time he touched the ball. It is kind of cheap and really not the way you are supposed to play basketball, but at the same time they do it to me everyday, so I didn't complain. After the game I went out with five of the guys and we went to some random restaurant that they had heard about. I have no idea how they heard about this place because it was a shack and the food wasn't even all that great. I made the mistake again of letting them order, so we had some pretty random stuff. There were some potatoes cooked under pig fat, some kind of gelatinous intestine thing (which wasn't all that bad), and then, my personal favorite, stinky tofu. I didn't eat it this time though. I figured I ate it last time they ordered it and, since I've tried it once before, I could take a pass on it this time. It was a great time of getting to catch up with the guys and hopefully we are going to get together again this weekend.

I've also been able to run into my environmental engineer friend. I talked to him at the gym last night and we are planning on going out to eat sometime this week. He speaks really good English and he also has some of the best local language out of anyone under thirty that I know. We were talking last night and he was explaining to me about how most people under the age of thirty or forty can't really speak the local language all that well. He is actually the third or fourth person that I've heard that from. With that being said, his language is really good and he is willing to get together and he can give me some tutoring.

Other than that, not a lot is going on out here. I'm planning a few things for next month but other than that I'm just going to class and doing things in town. It is also getting a little colder here. It still gets up to about seventy degrees during the day, but it gets a little chilly at night. All things considered it is really nice for mid-November. I think it just seems colder because there is no carpet, heating, and I have to ride my bike everywhere. Hopefully it'll stay warm for another month until we get out out of class for winter break.