Sitting at the Rutherford's this cool, cloudy Monday. Have just made plans to take responsibility for teaching a group of high school seniors from Chiang Mai International School how to calculate the biodiversity/species richness of an area, using Jeff's little fruit forest. Remembering the process of doing it at UHDP gives me a little bit of a cold sweat, actually -- but this area is smaller, friendlier, and less rattan-y. Must spend this coming week (they're coming on Saturday) learning how to be a teacher.
Other project: to count productive food species growing at Fair Earth Farm and do a rough map of how many of each Jeff has, which ones are harvestable, where they are-ish. Today, zone-managed (cleared out grass, lay down dry manure and straw, chopped down some cassava and wild taro) and destroyed a few banana trees to use as compost. John from the Salsa Kitchen came over again and worked with us, and then we sat and drank coffee and talked about The Omnivore's Dilemma. Started missing my cat, suddenly, since the Rutherfords have two very Sugartoes-like cats roaming around.
On Saturday morning I biked back to Chiang Mai to spend the weekend with my lovely friends and apartment. Spend copious amounts of money, spontaneously purchasing things like I've never spontaneously purchased anything before - bedsheets, shoes, ETC ETC. Instead of doing anything cityish on Saturday, had a beer with Jordan, Matt, and Lauren and watched the visualizer on Lauren's iTunes whilst listening to a whole host of songs for a really really long time. It was great! Pampered self, since I felt a cold coming on. Said cold has now vacated the premises but I still have a touch of cotton-head.
This morning I biked back up to Mae Rim, but apparently don't have any idea how to work a phone because the alarm didn't go off and I woke up an hour and a half late. Rode up Canal Road, panic-stricken, and made it to the river in 20 minutes (which is about half the time as it took me on Saturday to get to Chiang Mai). Then got supremely confused about where my host family's house was, and ended up cutting through someone's yard to get to the Rutherford's, at which point I just took the forest road home. Yikes. Brought my host mom a soggy bag of strawberries, which looked pretty weird at that point but were a present to make up for the fact that I stayed in Chiang Mai on Sunday night to get my bike brakes fixed instead of coming home, which had been my initial plan.
I really want to write about my travels in Hanoi, which I just realized I neglected to do - whoops! Hopefully that will come. John, the owner of Salsa Kitchen, brought a leg of pig (obviously those are very technical terms) over last Thursday that he got from UHDP, which really brought me back to those days of slaughter and pranking. Agro seems like such a long time ago!
Have been feasting on all my favorites and buying souveniers and gifts with abandon. Mom, Dad, if you were wondering when I was going to start spending money, that time is now.
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