this week...

hey all! this is going to be a bit quick...
three pigs had babies this week! and several have gotten squashed by the giant mama pigs. the word in spanish for squashed is aplastar. haha. several chanchitos aplastados. tragic.
i´m pretty tired. and dirty. we work 7 days a week. and it´s all kind of the bitch work of farming. like if i had my own farm, i would take a minute to make lunch, clean the house, relax a bit. but being the help, we pull a lot of weeds and dig a lot of tiny canals to water plants. i think we might take a couple weeks in mendoza to relax. and cook our own food. i eat a lot lot lot of white bread here. foo seems to be doing a little better. she´s learning tons of spanish but i don´t think she feels like it yet. a couple kids from the US came to the farm for 4 days this week. it was good to have some more communication in english. also, the internet is unbelievably slow. tomorrow we´re making chinese pancakes for the family for dinner. it´s nice to be able to cook even if it´s only once every two weeks. also, luis, the owner of the farm, likes to talk about foo (in spanish, of course) and the other day he said she was like a ´tanque de agua´. they seem to think that being asian gives her special harmony and balance. for real. she´s as tranquila as the water in a water tank.

farming and such.

we´re still at la stala. not sure how long we´ll stay. i´m not sure this place is awesome for nancy´s soul. so we´re talking maybe language school for a month or so, maybe a farm where they speak english. i can imagine being around 6 people who speak a different language that you don´t know would be a bit difficult.
anyway, more about la stala: everyday we wake up at about 9. it´s really hot in the day time and really sunny. and at night it gets super cold. so at 9 we get dressed, go inside and eat breakfast and have tea. then we go out back and feed the pigs and the chickens and sometimes the rabbits. there are 4 pigs that are separated from the rest because they´re pregnant. and 2 of them are going to have baby pigs any day now. i can´t wait! the family sells the baby pigs for christmas. i think that baby pig is a traditional christmas food here. so they´re going to have like 50 pigs to sell. oh my. so after pig feeding we get the eggs from the chickens. and we start the work day. we pull weeds, cut oregano to dry it, put compost on the garden. last week we dug sort of trenches to water the grape vines. we did a pretty good job i think. it doesn´t rain too much here so the watering system involves one giant canal which is 300 meters away. you have to go there, block it off a little so the water is redirected through several people´s property down a little man-made canal and then directed to different parts of the farm, depending on where you want to water. then it goes down between each row of plants. and everything is muddy for three days.

we eat well. a lot of food. and at this point, i feel like i´m physically active enough that my food is just fuel. there is no recreational eating. i´m still not used to the dinner at 11 pm. i still would prefer a 7pm dinner and bed at 10 or 11.

i´m loving this place. tired, but loving it. i think the family is a little more comfortable with us now, because they bicker in front of us. kind of often. and they all have this like sing-songy whiney voice. except the mom. that can get annoying.

so today when we get back to the farm we´re going to have lunch then cut oregano and tie the grape vines to the fence-support thing above the vines. and then maybe weed some more and cut off chamomile flowers to dry for tea.

oh my goodness! this happened today: we use the dry bathroom, which is a composting toilet, which is outside. it´s like a little room with a toilet seat and a bucket underneath to catch all the business. so one scoop of sawdust gets put on pee and two scoops on poo. and you can pull the bucket out when it´s full and put it on the compost. so i did my business and i was scooping sawdust into the bucket and then appeared a dog head in the toilet! dulce is the dog´s name. she stuck her head in from outside the bathroom. oh my.

not sure when we´re heading out from here. or to where. i could stay a while but i think foo´s soul could use a change. so we´ll see.

i guess that´s it. i could use a bit more salad and fresh veggies and fruits in my diet. we eat tons and tons of bread. delicious, but a huge change from how í´ve eaten for the past year.

i´m looking extra forward to having my own farm and making it run how i want. seeing what works, growing my own foods.

but i think i´m learning more spanish, which is good. i´m thinking that to not overwhelm ourselves with learning yet another language, we´ll have a stop over in an english-speaking country for a bit after this. but who knows. at this point there are no definite plans at all......

much love,
katie

La Stala

We made it (again)! we had a 6 or 7 hour bus ride from santiago, chile to mendoza, argentina. we had to go up through the mountains and it was snowing. so when we passed through customs, which was like a sort of a giant garage/tunnel there was a giant hole in the roof and it was snowing inside onto all of us. we got to mendoza and searched through the bus station and found a place that had a bus leaving exactly at that moment. so we bought tickets and ran to the bus, which took an hour or maybe more. but this bus had random stops on the side of the highway so we didn´t know when to get out because it´s not like there were big friendly signs. there was a huge family next to us slash behind us that was playing this song on their cell phone over and over the whole time. the words i understood were ¨eres mi chica sexy¨, which means you are my sexy girl. so an hour of that and we finally made it to tunuyan. where we were let off. on the side of the road. with no idea at all where to go. we knew we were supposed to take a taxi to the house. so we found what looked like it might be sort of the main road and walked up it. everyone- no joke- every single person that we passed stared. and stared hard. because turns out the asians don´t come here too often. so two foreigners with huge backpacks, one of them asian, walking around looking lost. finally we found a taxi man. and he drove us there. on the way i told him what we were here for and he asked me about mormons from utah. i think a lot of missionaries come here.
anyway, so we made it to the farm. there were some french kids there wwoofing too. but the family agostini has 4 kids, who are by far the best kids in the world. they are all super nice and behave and help. antonella is 14 and helps nance and i learn spanish. maurizio is 13. he is really funny and reminds me of craigy a little. nicolas is 16, doesn´t talk as much but i get the vibe that he´s a really good kid. and sofia is 18. she´s nice but i don´t know too much about her. laura is the mom and she is a teacher and luis is the dad. he works on the farm all day.
so far nance and i have cleared ground and built sort of a trench for grape vines, weeded a whole lot, fed pigs a lot of times, milked a cow, fed chickens, cleaned up rabbit poo, and i got stung on my booty crack by a wasp. no joke. not quite sure how it got there, because i was wearing pants. anyway... and we eat with the family. the food is delicious. laura is a supermom. she works, comes home, cooks lunch, works on the farm, cooks the afternoon meal, washes clothes, cooks dinner. she does everything. also, we eat four times a day: breakfast at 9, then lunch at 2 or 3, which lasts about 2 hours. then mediatarde, which is at 7 or so. then dinner at 11. then bed. and everything over again.
there´s so much more but i don´t have time. so anyway, i´m having lots of fun. learning lots. more later, dearest dear loves....

we made it!

we left yesterday at noon and got to santiago this morning at 11 or so. managed to get to the bus station to buy tickets for tomorrow and then took the metro to where our hostel is. i had to ask two different people for directions. i´m a bit nervous and unsure of anything i´m doing here, and it occurred to me that being totally unsure of what to do made me act like a kid. like the people i asked directions from were cops. both times. like when you´re 6 years old and you´re told that if you´re lost or need help, ask the police. as an adult, i would never do that. but when i´m totally lost, a cop is who seems safe. strange...
anyway, we got a room for $33 for the night. which isn´t awesome i guess, but i´m feeling really tired and i don´t think either nance or i wanted to keep walking around trying to find another place that probably wouldn´t be that much cheaper.
so tonight we´re going to find a chinese restaurant (we studied the phonebook for at least a half hour to find a restaurant within walking distance since it turns out asking people on the street for directions is hard. i think partly because i don´t understand and partly because they don´t really know...). i think we´ll take out food and sit in our cozy little room and eat and go to bed early.
this is a totally new dynamic for nancy foo and i. she´s totally dependent on my ability to navigate us. and we operate in really different ways. usually she´s the organized one who has a plan before we get started with anything. now she has to deal with my "walk around til you find it and if you get lost ask a cop" approach. so i think she´s frustrated. not with me, but with not being able to help herself really. anyway, she´ll learn fast. she does that.

also, a PG-rated blog is coming soon for grandparents and other folks who would just do better with that sort of thing.

now to help nance with the keyboard. all the punctuation is hidden in new mysterious places on this keyboard...
much love
kz