Ain't No Mountain High Enough

Yesterday had a whole lot of firsts in it.... okay I guess pretty much everything is a first for me these days, but let's just go with it.

1st song I heard in Thailand was at the market, any idea what it was?....baby baby baby ohhhh, of course it was the Biebs.

1st time experiencing fruit trees on a whole new level. Call me naive but I had NO idea there were so many types of fruit. We went shopping for trees for the Life Development Center to plant at their organic fruit farm. The LDC has at least 35 different kinds of trees at their farm alone. I've only been here a few days and i've had more fruits than I have had my whole life. Marion berries, papaya, guava, passion fruit, dragon fruit, rose apples, jet fruit, pineapple, bananas, plus a few more that I don't even know the name in English. Yumm I love the fruit!

1st time to one of the HILL TRIBES!! I didn't know I'd be able to go to one so early in the trip so it was a nice surprise. I was able to go to the Lisu tribe which is about 20km from the Burma boarder. It is made up of about 45 families, most of which are immigrants from Burma. This picture is of the corn stocks we passed on our drive to the fruit farm.


This picture is of the trek we had to make to get to our cottages where we slept. We had to walk about 10 minutes with all of our stuff. Then we had to make the trek 7 or so more times carrying all the trees we bought. There is not a road to the garden so it was quite the adventure. Through streams, over walls and logs, through mud, let's just say I was so sweaty and dirty after. Isn't that beautiful though?!


Meet Anna everyone. I live with her and work with her and she is awesome. She speaks okay English. Everyone knows I start to ramble when I get nervous and I think I did that at the beginning here, I have now realized that she understood nothing of what I said...oops. Now I end up talking like normal and watch her face as she expresses her confusion. We are working on our communication problems.

If you close your eyes and picture a fairytale jungle bungalow held up with stilts and cushioned into the mountain, well if you look closely you would see me sitting on the porch. I seriously was in paradise (minus the bugs, dirt, and sweat...). That is where I slept last night. I was in the far left one.


There I am, the problem with going on a trip without another person is that there is no one to take the pictures of you...not like I really care but i'm sure my mom would like to see me sometimes or something. So there ya have it, me in all my sweaty and frizzy glory. I'm standing on my porch mentally preparing for my first bucket shower...

1st shower with a bucket. Anna was so confused when I stood there looking at the bucket full of rain water and not knowing what to do. She motioned for me to go, but I just didn't know where to begin. So lets just say it was a success? Sure, why not. The freezing water was warmly welcomed as an escape from the heat. And it was just preparation for many to come.



That is the view from the porch. I got to look at that as I wrote in my journal in my little wicker chair. It really was a scene from the movies. If I would have been sitting by some new found foreign love who would give me the smolder or something, I would have been on my way to being the next Disney Princess.


That would be my bed. They pitied me and all my sweet blooded whiteness and gave me the mosquito net.

Hello dinner.


Ohh, there I am again. Picking out all the prickly things in my foot actually. In case you were wondering...


1st bug fest. And that my friends is just one section of my legs, in the morning time. I stopped counting my bug bites at 100...on one leg. Yes mom, I was wearing bug spray. And no, it did not do any good. I have a feeling the status quo these days will be itching, non-stop, always, everywhere. Apparently these mysterious bug bites are prone to infection...lovely. I'll keep you all posted on that one, I mean, if you're curious about my infection status...



So there ya have it, that was my first hill tribe experience.

Ohh, I failed to mention that this morning, after I woke up from my jungle paradise we got to crazy hard work. The day before we carried about 50+ trees the 10 minute walk. And this morning is when we planted them. This involved digging holes, fertilizing, hiking trees up these super steep hills, planting, and voila. A lot of sweat later we had succeeded in our first Hill Tribe mission.