Hey all!
Can´t say I´ve been as consistent as I should with the blog these last few weeks, but you get busy and . . .
Anyhow, things are good. Nothing earthshaking. Things are winding down at UniBoyacá. Tomorrow is my last day of class!! And then just a couple weeks of grading exams and tutorials, and I´m free!! My weekends are all booked up with day trips and plans. In June, with work all over, I´ll be doing a llanos tour with Milena, going to visit friends in Villavicencio and Villanueva, both lovely, hot, flat, humid places with lots of good rivers to swim in and tasty food to eat. A good break from Tunja, which has been rather cold in the last weeks. Last week the band gave our final concert at a high school at night with chilly breeze and zoop- yet another cold for me!! Number 4, i think? Oh well, one last round of coughing and nosebloing to wind down the year. That´ll make vacation and hot climates even more amazing. Plus, better to get sick now then on the farm in Manizales in june, right??
What have I been up to?? Well, lots of odds and ends. Finishing up gardening classes at Colegio Country. We planted spinach, lettuce, chard, and cilantro, which are starting to slowly pop out, and this last week we´ll do a cheese making workshop. MMM! Good thing I can get fresh milk close to my house.
A couple weeks ago a friend of Milena invited us to her farm in Moniquira for the sugar cane harvest. That was quite an experience: driving on a bumpy gravel round deep into a valley full of cane. Watching the working harvest with machetes, pile it onto mule trains and haul it back to the mill where they press it, pour the juice into giant cauldrons, and boil it until the bricks of brown sugar they call panela here.
I´ve been juggling the last Portuguese classes with French classes 4 hours on saturday afternoons. I enjoy it, but it´s a pretty long 4 hours. The teacher is cool. A young girl from Bordeaux. She was happy that Sarkozy went a la merde!! I like French and pronounce well, but I wont get to learn too much in five weeks. Just the basics like letters, numbers, greeting, and a few verb conjugations.
So I´m busy busy maing plans for travels, wrapping things up, preparing for my last big goodbye house party with live cumbia bands and all. I´ll send an update your way soon!! Stay tuned!!
