coming home soon

i'll be home soon. I'll be back home on the 17th of august. hope to see a bunch of people. prepare yourselves.

for the corn aficionados out there

That's some tall corn

newest project

so today i started a series of trainings on chickens. what i'm trying to do with one of my counterpart agencies is develop the "prometoras" in a number of communities. i want them to learn how to be the go-to person in their communities when it comes to peoples chickens. so, what this means is that they need to learn to identify the different sicknesses that plag chickens, how to prevent and or cure them if possible, the kind of shape they need to have their chicken coups in, as well as how to feed their chickens well. today was the first training, i thought it went well. it's also really good spanish practice, and found that a good spanish benchmark was that i was more or less able to wing it. i also made some posters and stuff before hand (i told them that today was my premiere as an artist here, and told them they could make a purchase afterwords, there were no offers). so anyways, i'm pretty excited about the whole thing. it's something that could relatively easily continue after my service here, which is kind of the point, sustainability and whatnot.

and me without a grill

It's friday afternoon, the sun is shining, had a good day at work, and all i really want to do is grill some meat. there's meat, i could get a pound of chicken for myself just down the road. but, alas, there is no grill. i might have to dig a firepit and find a thing. in conclusion, i still win.

Pictures!

Some mountains and trees and whatnot


So this was my ride home one day. I'm on top of a truck that is hauling returnable coke bottles and empty propane gas tanks


Here is where i would have crossed the river pre-hurricane stan.


My delicious birthday cake made in this manner

within a block

within a block of my house, i can...

1. buy groceries (nothing fancy, but i'm generally buying eggs, beans, or a coke, and they have those things)
2. Get my boots fixed (already had to get a new heel put on those pretty things)
3. Check my e-mail (yeah sara, they have the imation sign outside the place)
4. get on a bus to go somewhere that i can get a cheeseburger or fulfill some other kind of want or need
5. go to a variety of "restaurants" serving pretty much the same food
6. get my car filled up with gas...oh wait, i haven't bought a drop of gas in 10 months, ¡ha!
7. arrive at work (30 seconds to the office)
8. get my tv fixed should it be necessary

ouch my leg

i turned my ankle last week. it made a really nice sound when it happened too. it was in our weekly soccer game. then i couldn't play this week, but they somehow won without the gringo. so now we're in the championships. so, next thursday night, i better be able to play or i will be mildly perturbed.

this silly five things...thing

5 things in my fridge...I don't have a fridge...so on my shelf then?
1. Milk powder, regretably i'm am pretty much used to it. have not had a "real" glass of cow milk in 9 months or so...i should drink some o' that goat milk being sold in the park
2. The best honey in the world, no sugar added, made locally, 110% pure honey, how they get that extra 10% percent? i'll never tell (said in the voice from that one movie by that one girl). it is fantastic
3. Tea: chai, chamomile, black, and mint
4. beans
5. rice

5 Things in my closet...I don't have a closet, so on my other shelf then?
1. Shirts
2. Pants
3. Underwear
4. Socks
5. No clean sheets
ps: either this is a really boring category, or i just made it really boring

5 Things in my purse...I don't have a purse, but i do have bag thing that is culturally acceptable to be carried by men
1. My Leatherman, this is not a tiny person made out of leather, it is a tool...are you crazy or something?
2. A little notebook for writing down how many chickens i vaccinated that day and stuff like that
3. An umbrella because it's probably gonna rain
4. My memory stick
5. A camera

5 Things in my car...I don't have a car...so lets say my back yard?
1. A machete...YES!
2. A giant hoe...which oars are sometimes confused for (that's for you josh)
3. My pila where i wash my dishes and clothes
4. A fig tree
5. A bunch of worms that are turning manure into gold (not really)...(but seriously)

5 Things I wish i was doing right now
1. Seeing X-Men, but they dubbed it, grrrr
2. Hanging out like i would on a saturday night in Bemidji, those were good times
3. Understanding every word that is said to me
4. Not paying to use internet
5. Curing cancer. why not? don't you want to cure cancer? well you should

5 Things I like most about my bedroom
1. The pictures i have hung up
2. my tv
3. the fact that i have a couch in there too
4. that i can look out the window and see a huge volcano
5. i have two pillows

hour of God, or the actual hour?

so we switched to daylight savings time, in the past it had not been used at all. but it creates a lot of confusion, which surprised me. We'll get to a community and no one will show up until an hour later. they get there, and we're like, "how come you're late?", and they say, "we don't use the president's hour (since the government made the change), we're on the hour of God (or some variation of this, sometimes they say the old hour)". so it's pretty interesting. but i understand, they don't really need to keep track of the time so much, they work when the sun shines, sleep when it's night, and eat when they're hungry. but they do clearly use clocks, because they know they showed up late, or not necessarily late, just at a different time.

so it has been a while

i have not blogged for a good long time. or bad long time, however you want to look at it. but the good news, is that my clothes dried this weekend. that was good. it had been a while, and i do not have entirely too many clothes.

so anyways, i am going to try and get a substantive entry up on here for you all. hope things are good.

bye

jbo

in with rain, out with dust

dry season is over. we went about 6 months w/o hardly any rain. now it will rain almost every day.

my worms

no, i do not have parasites in my belly, nor am i on a tapeworm diet. however, i have a cardboard box full of worms, that is ready to be brought back to my home. and you ask, "what are the worms in friend?" and i say, "well of course they are in manure". it's magic i tell you. it's a form of composting, and it makes the best organic compost there is in ALL THE WORLD. the worms eat the whatnot, the whatnot goes out of the worms,and it is gold, that's actually what i say, but in spanish, and i don't know what whatnot is in spanish. but i'm gonna start growing these worms in my backyard, it's going to be great.

baby showers and car washes

Know what they call a car wash here? It's called a "car wash". They have baby showers too. They call them "Baby Showers". Of course they're pronounced a little different, but goodness, what's going on here?

made a cake

I made a cake. I made it essentially the same way everyone else makes a cake; with a box, except for the baking part. i do not have an oven, only a stove. but, with a big pot, an old tuna can, the lid for the pot, and a little bit of water, you've got yourself an oven. you just fill the tuna can up with water, put it in the bottom of the pot, turn on you stove, put the pan of whatever you're cookin' on top to the tuna can, and put the lid on. it turned out quite good, i was surprised. i also like to make apple crisp in this same fashion. once i made chocolate chip cookies, and a carrot cake too with some other folks. who knew?

a shout out

I'd like to give a shout out to my brother. he just got in to medical school, was accepted to both U of M Twin Cities and to U of M Duluth. Accepted the Duluth offer. So, start being nice if you want free physicals, if that's the kind of thing you'd be interested in; you decide. in conclusion, turn your head, and say congratulations to my brother.

have you ever pointed with your lips?

I have. If you want to indicate something that may be in some direction, you could do it the hard way and raise your arm, extend your index finger, and say "over there, next to the flaming car". Or, you could do it like they do here. Turn your head in the direction of the flaming car, pretty much purse yer lips and kiss in the direction (without the *smack* noise, don't be silly), and say "por el carro en fuego". try it, it's kind of fun (flaming anything is unneccessary).

fresh goat milk

If you want some fresh goat milk, and i'm talking as fresh as a sane person would want to get goat milk, come to my town. there's goats tied up every morning at the central park (had no idea why at first), but if you find the owner, go up and order a glass, he'll take out a cup, go pick a goat, and milk it directly into your cup. i don't know how much it will run you, i have not bought a cup, nor inquired about the cost.

i don't know where this came from

so, the word cowboy. it could really have two meanings. the person with the hat boots and wranglers, or a half boy/half cow or any other ratio of cow to boy i guess. i wonder if, initially, when frecuent readers of supermarket tabloids hear the word "cowboy", they think of a boy with hooves? I kind of think so. that's all i got

these boots were made for...me

i got some boots custom made for my feet and my feet alone. they are a little bit cowboy. judge for yourself. oh, and they only cost like $35. seems a lot like a sure thing.

not a hippy

even though i will be working with people on starting and maintaining a alternative medicine garden grown organically, i wholeheartedly deny being a hippy.