Visit to Volunteer Site

Hey Everyone!
What an amazing day! We got up early and piled into 3 Peace Corps Land Cruisers to drive 2 hours to a PCV who is working with a group of farmers who implement alot of sustainable Ag. projects. The drive was pretty much everything I have ever expected, from close calls with large buses with people hanging on the outside to bumpy curvy dirt paths. It is amazing to imagine that at one point all of the pasture lands, that resemble the foothills in SLC, were once covered in forest. The "Slash and Burn" technique has really devistated the landscape. It is a practice that many conservationists are trying to stop.

We spent most of the time walking around the farm looking at honey bees, worm composting, veggie gardens and chicken coop. We stopped frequently to taste fresh goat milk (right from the teat... ok, from a glass, but it was FRESH) and some strange fruit. I have never experienced textures like that before. Some were cottony and turned smooth in our mouths, and others came from inside a small hard shell and we like a fruit snack with a seed in the center. I tried it all, and suprisingly, my stomach feels fine!

One of the volunteer's projects is a rice patty. We took off our shoes, rolled up our pants and talked through the mudd and water, pushing last crop's stalks deep with our toes so that they don't grow and compete with the new seeds. We also helped her plant a couple rows , which she could have done faster without us... not the point.

Her host family made all 26 of us lunch. Cooked on a mud stove in an enormous pot, were four chickens, broth, potaoes and something purple. The stew was served with rice and Orange/pineapple juice. It was amazing.

When we got home we went to the pool to cool off. An interesting interaction with the lifeguard insued. He came over and told us that the girls who were wearing shorts and the boys who were wearing shorts with belt loops needed to remove themselves from the pool. A married couple were preparing to get in the pool, the woman wearing a suit and some femnine shorts and her husband wearing some quickdry REI zip off pants. He istructed the girl to remove her shorts and give them to her husband or they would not be allowed to enter the pool. The entire group lost it. It was hard not to with the mental image of Brandon wearing his wife's short turqoise running shorts.

We leave for our training site tomorrow morning. It should be interesting to see how we pass most of the day with our new host families. This may be the last time I can use the comp for a while!

Oh yeah. They took us all to my machetes today. Mine is 22 inches. I will leave you with the idea of me, wielding a 22 inch knife.