April 12th - 14th

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Those of us who stayed home for the weekend went and collected wood from a tea plantation owned by Americo's (Americo and his wife caretake this place and cook for us) father. We spent the morning locating piles of coffee wood that had been piled and then buried under growing vine. We amassed a wall of wood, three foot wide, 6 foot tall and 12 foot long, massive. We will use the wood in the clay pizza oven and in a big bon fire, just for fun. The afternoon was easy and slow.

Sunday is market day in Huyro, so we walked into town after breakfast. The market is full of baby chicks, meat stalls, piles of vegetables, beans and grains. Upstairs there were juice stalls and lunch stands. I bought a wonderful deep fried ball of potato hash wrapped around vegetables and hard boiled egg, and then filled up with a pineapple, papaya, apple, and syrup juice. I love markets. The afternoon was made for reading under bug nets and sleepily recovering from a full week. I often find myself reading the walls here when I'm sleepy. The walls were white washed and then painted with each year's volunteers sayings, mottos, memories and some logos and a couple of amazing murals. Every inch is covered and mostly very amusing. The evening brought a series of rainbows arching over our mountains and home, again driving me awestruck with the beauty here.

Monday, it rained most of the day, so we couldn't do as much. We worked on sorting pottery in the morning and learning how to make sketches of important pieces. In the afternoon, we had a tutorial on the basics of archaeology. One of the volunteers, Abbie, had her birthday. We celebrated with a clay cake for breakfast, a makeshift banana pie for supper and a bon fire at night. The sky agreed to quit raining in the evening, so we used some of the wood we had gathered to make a huge fire, the only way to dry the wood as it burned. There is almost never any wind here, so the smoke is never in your eyes, leaving you to dream undisturbed as you watch the flames. The moon was almost full and gave us almost as much light as the fire, once the clouds moved off. Kenny, from Belgium, has a beautiful voice and IPads came out to give us music. It was a beautiful evening.

Good Night and Sweet Dreams.

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