Reconnecting with Friends

So I know this is a little late. I usually try and post blogs on Tuesday evenings, but this week things were a little thrown off with a surprise birthday party. Everybody out here actually did a great job with the surprise except for one guy. About thirty-minutes before I was supposed to meet up with everyone a local guy called me and apologized for not being able to go to the party and wanting to wish me a happy birthday. So I kind of knew going into things. It was still a great night. We went to eat at this local pizza place that is run by an Italian guy. It is about the only place that you can get decent pizza in town. Afterwards we went back for cake and watched some downloaded football on tv.

Other than that this week has been busy with school and meeting a lot of new people. I've started meeting with one of my friends for tutoring. We met a couple of times this week and it has been a lot more fun than tutoring has been in the past. Up until now I have mainly focused on working out of books and learning sentence structure. Now I am finally to the point where our tutoring is mostly conversational. It is a LOT more fun than just learning vocabulary. We are actually talking about going out one of these weekends with my tutor's uncle and going hunting. The word out here for hunting literally translates as 'bird and dog' because you hunt with a falcon and dogs. So that'll be interesting.

I also met a guy this week who is a 24 year-old environmental engineer. He speaks great English and just moved back to town a few months ago after he finished up at university. We've gotten to talk a few times in the gym and we're going to plan on getting together sometime this next week. I've actually had a lot of opportunities this week to reconnect with some people that I haven't seen in a few months. I've made sure and gotten their phone numbers so that, hopefully, we can keep in better touch. I'm currently looking for a local guy to be a roommate. Hopefully one of these guys will work out.

A Crazy Week

So I’m finally getting around to updating this thing. Sorry it has taken a little longer than I was expecting. Things out here have been pretty crazy over the past few days. Classes have all started back and are in full swing. On top of that we had a health clinic this weekend. The clinic was in the village that I spend a lot of time in so I went and helped out. Friday we had some training, and I learned how to take blood pressure (which is a lot harder than you’d think when you have grannies with five layers of clothes on). We had a dental hygienist and a physical therapist come and help out with things. Mostly all I did was help out by filtering water, taking blood pressure, and talking to old grannies who were just sitting around. We made a lot of contacts though and had some really good talks when we went to visit people with follow up. One of my friends also moved back to the U.S. on Sunday after living here for three years. So there was a lot going on with getting her moved and goodbye parties and things like that. Things are definitely going to be different out here. I think I’ve eaten noodles about two meals a day since she’s been gone, and I don’t know when I’m going to get another home cooked meal. There have also been a lot of people sick out here. My roommate and a couple of other guys have caught some kind of bug that has knocked them out of commission for a few days. Today I was the only one in my class. I don’t know if I’ve said a lot about my Tues/Thurs class, but it is pretty hard to sit through. The teacher doesn’t speak English and (literally) for the past week and a half we have been working on learning local songs. So I was a little freaked out when I was the only one who showed up to class today. It actually turned out to be one of the best classes I’ve had since I’ve been here. We still worked on songs for about the first forty-five minutes, but then we spent the next hour having a conversation. We talked about all sorts of random things, but I was just proud I could hold down a conversation for that long. Granted, she can understand a little English, but about 90% of it was in the local language. So maybe all of the random songs I’m learning are paying off. Hopefully things will slow down a little bit this next week. I don’t see how they could be any busier.

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.