Harvest Time

It is officially corn harvest time here. To be more accurate, it was last few weeks. Four out of our five corn plots have been harvested. There was a little bit lost in translation with our local partners so a few of them have mixed up the different varieties of corn. It is hard for us to get solid data from those plots, but they can all tell us which kind grew the best, which is the most important thing for them. As I'm about to head into November I can already tell it is going to be a crazy month. The next few weeks are going to be spent in class or out in the villages. Yesterday afternoon I spent the day with one of our farmers after he had harvested everything. We ended up looking at corn for about ten minutes and then spent an hour just sitting around the fire having a great conversation. I constantly have to keep reminding myself that really is what it is all about. It is amazing to me how something as simple as corn can open so many doors. We still have four more villages to visit over the next couple of weeks and hopefully there will be similar experiences. Things here are starting to cool off some so I'll also be out taking care of our coffee and getting it ready for winter. Because the coffee is still young and we're not sure how it will do with the cold here we're going to take some precautions to make sure it doesn't freeze. It shouldn't be a lot of extra work, but it will take some time. Between the agricultural things I also have a friend coming out to visit for a few days this next week. We were going to try and go skiing up in Tibet (yeah... we can do that here), but it is still too early in the season. Instead I think I'm going to put him to work and go out and winterize our coffee. I figure that since he's stuck in a city of a couple of million all year round he would enjoy some time working out in the mountains. I'm also going to do some traveling over Thanksgiving. I have a little bit of vacation saved up so my roommate and I are going to travel through South East Asia before he heads back to the Philippines. He used to work on a coffee plantation in Laos, so we'll be spending a few days there looking at their operation and enjoying some VERY fresh cups of coffee. There are also a few more stops on the trip, but I'll save the details for later.

Mountains

Over the past few days I've been out mountain climbing with some friends. There is a mountain a few hours away that is 17,707 feet. It isn't a very technical climb, but once you factor in the snow and elevation it definitely isn't a walk in the park. Actually I climbed it about this time last year with some friends, but this year we didn't make it to the top. The weather didn't exactly cooperate. The hike is broken up into two days. On day one we hiked from the village at the base of the mountain up to Base Camp (13,500 ft). Day two is the hike from Base Camp up to the peak and then back down. About an hour into the hike the first day it started raining on us. It was a VERY long trip though the mud up to Base Camp. The trip there last year took us about six hours. This year it took us over eight. We also didn't make it in before dark. I'm sure we were looking pretty ragged when we finally made it to Base Camp. And I'm also sure that freeze dried chicken breast never tasted so good as it did that night. Day two we decided to take a rest day and hiked over to a high alpine lake. The weather continued to worsen also. The lake wasn't so much fun considering that it was about four and a half hours in rain and mud. And when it wasn't raining it was hailing or snowing. After spending a few hours sitting by the fire drying out all of our gear we heard stories from some of the other climbers that there was a lot of snow all the way up to the peak. Last year the weather was about perfect for me and it still took around four hours to reach the top. This year there was waist deep snow the entire trek to the peak, and it would have taken at least six to seven hours to reach the top. After talking to our guide he encouraged us to not make a summit attempt. Considering that none of us wanted to spend ten hours hiking through waist deep snow (and considering that two people died up there last week) we decided to just blame it on the weather and come back down. On our final day before we headed down the weather cleared, but the damage had already been done with fresh snow everywhere. It made for some great views and pictures on the way down.

Back to School

Well I have officially started my last semester of language school. I'm pretty excited about it. More correctly, I'm excited about the LAST part in 'last semester of language school'. Language learning really isn't my favorite thing to study. I do enjoy the conversational aspect of it. I have been able to spend a lot more time with local friends this month and it has been great being able to have more indepth conversations, even if the topic is something simple like making plans. I have classes four days a week this semester, and they are all in the mornings. Actually, our college campus has moved to a new location that is several miles outside of town. They have allowed all of the foreign students to continue to study at the old campus, which is a definite blessing. The new campus would take me well over half an hour to ride my bike to. My classes are about the same every semester. One is a grammar/vocabulary class, one is a conversational class, but this semester we're also learning local proverbs. I've tried them out on several of my local friend and they know them all. Honestly they don't make a lot of sense to me, even after they are explained. I figure it is a good insight into culture though. Class is the big exciting thing going on at the moment. This next week I have some friends coming out and we'll be doing some traveling around and looking at coffee and corn. Harvest time is coming up soon for the corn also. Between school and everything else I'm sure it will be a busy time.

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.

Rainy Season

It is rainy season here. Usually it lasts from mid-May until the end of August. Last summer I was here too and it rained, but there was not nearly as much rain as there has been this year. I think that over the past month there have maybe been two clear days; that is until this week. The rain has finally started to clear out some, and that means that I'm getting to go outside more. The rain really does change life out here. Back in the U.S. if it rains you just get in your car and deal with it. It might slow you down some and may inconvenience you some, but the rain isn't all that big of a thing. Here everyone has bikes or walks and all social activity is done outside. So when it rains here it really changes my day to day life. This past month it has been hard to connect with people, play basketball and go out to villages.

The rain cleared out on Monday though and I've been able to go to several villages this past week. Monday I went out to the south end of town to fertilize some corn with a couple of friends. I think that field is cursed. We planted it about a month and a half ago and it poured down rain the entire time we were out there. So when we went back on Monday the skies were clear and we left all of our rain gear in the truck. About halfway through fertilizing the field the clouds came rolling down the ridge (which we were right under). My friend ran back to the car to grab the rain gear, but it was raining when he was only 2/3 of the way there. I got soaked and spent the next couple of hours soaking wet.

Monday was the last rainy day here though. Tuesday I spent the entire day with friends out in the village. We had a great time getting to catch up with some people out there. I also went out yesterday too. My next big project for this upcoming semester is to try and find a location and set up an ag training center for locals here. It will be a place where we can have a few classrooms, land to try out new farming techniques and some places to raise pigs and other animals. Ideally we'll be able to bring locals in, train them, and then send them back out to their villages. So my roommate and I have been going out once a week specifically to talk to people to see if we can find some land to rent. We were out doing that yesterday and my roommate got a phone call from a friend in his class. His friend's family owns a big orphanage out here and he wanted us to come out and do some things with the kids for a few hours. It was a lot of fun and there are about three hundred kids there. They are wanting me to come back and teach basketball once every few weeks, so I think I might be spending a little more time out there. I'm sure I'll get some good pictures over the next few months from being out there.

Way Out in the Village

So random story for the past couple of weeks:

I was out yesterday with a friend and we were scoping out a fairly remote village. The last time that I know anyone had even been out that direction was 2001, and that was basically just to plot it on the map so we know it exists. Actually as far as anyone had ever been was the larger village, and we went about two hours further than that. We did stop in the larger village for lunch on our trip out though. When we stopped for lunch we got out of the truck and immediately these two local guys came up and wanted to talk to us. We kind of figured that since we were so far out they were just amazed to see white people, but it turns out one of the guys was on his way home from college. He had been staying in the city I live in for a few days with his aunt and was just now heading back to see his family for a month. It also turns out that he spoke good English, which also never happens out in the village. So when we met this guy he started talking to us, mentioned that he was going to the same village we were going to and asked if we could give him a ride so he could practice his English. So we said sure and took him to lunch before hitting the road.

While we were at lunch we started talking and it turns out that his aunt lives in a house right behind my apartment complex. I told him that he should come over the next time that he is in town, and he said that he likes to go to my apartment complex to play basketball. He said, "I went there a couple of days ago and there was this foreigner playing basketball." Since I'm one of two foreigners in my apartment complex (and the other one wasn't playing basketball that day) I filled him in that was me. He was pretty amazed. I told him that maybe it was a divine appointment.

The rest of the day out was good. It was a couple more hours out to his village. We had some great conversations along the way. He also lives next to an ancient stone village built into the side of the mountain. It is supposedly a big tourist attraction, but after having been there I've realized that it is WAY too far out of the way for anyone to go to. We went to see it and it took a five hour drive (two of which were on dirt mountain roads) and then another half hour to hike down to the village because there was no road. It was kind of interesting but I think if I'd had been going out there just to see it I'd have been VERY disappointed after the long ride.

My friend wanted us to spend the night with him (which we almost had to do because it was getting so late), but since we had things to do today back in town we needed to leave. He has my number and knows where I live so hopefully we'll get together and play some basketball this next month when he is heading back to school.