Wow, I am not sure where to start........Hogs number six, i cant believe it, i leave and the hogs hae a cinderella season but be careful of LSU that is going to be a huge game. if we make it into a major bowl i am definately leaving my site to go watch it. I will watch it on the internet if i have to. I hope we can keep it up for two more games and the SEC championship.

As far as life goes down here it is great. i was required to leave my site to come into the city to meet ministry officials, otherwise i would have never left because there is really no reason to. I spent the last two weeks consecutive in site and loved it, the isolation has been a welcome thing since the last three months was heavily regulated and full od americans. I have been doing so much over the past two weeks and when i get home tommorrow i am going to be really busy as well. we started building my house about a week and a half ago, it is really interesting experience. i say building but that is not quite true, we actually had to go deep into the rainforest and find suitable trees and cut them up for lumber to build he house. That consist of three indians and my self disappearing into the jungle with machetes and a chainsaw to cut down and divide (with a chainsaw) the wood into two by fours and four by fours. it was some really intense work, much more difficult than any of the chainsaw work i did back home. so to start we had to walk two and a half miles into the jungle to find this type of wood called criollo, which is one of the densest woods in central america. we cut it into four by four by eight pieces, we cut nine pieces for the foundation. and then, believe it or not we carried them out on our shoulders one by one, it might have been the hardest hike i have ever done in my life. but after a days work we got them out and continued the next day to finish cutting the necessary wood. the community decided that we would have a "junta" to bring out the rest of the lumber, which is all the men in the village getting together and working. this entailed me buying twenty pounds of rice, ten lbs of spaghetti, six lbs of sugar, twenty packets of koolaid, ten lbs of fish, thirty pieces of bread and a rediculous ammount of coffee. all of this put together was twenty dollars and that included the cooking which was done by the women. we all got together early in the morning and drank coffee and ate bread until everyone was bouncing off the walls to prove thier manliness to me by carrying the most lumber (i had already proved mine by carrying the massive posts). so now it was thier turn, which i had no problem with. we carried out all the wood for the house in three hours, which i consider no small feat. we had a great time, they were so much fun to work with, on top of that i earned a huge amount of respect as a hard worker. everyone after that was going around saying "tuchi sribire krubode, bori koin tuch, bori koin tuch." that means that tuchi works "so much and that is very good." considering in some peoples sites the indians wont even talk to them i figure i am doing alright as far as community relations are concerned. so anyways when i get back we are going to start nailing the whole thing together.
I also built a rainwater catchment system for my family, now they are self sufficient when it comes to water. I used all local resources and built it with my host father, which is the epitomy of good development, use of local resources, training a local and making it sustainable. I was quite proud of the work as was my father, he is really happy now, his family has a renewable source of clean potable water and and it barely cost him anything.

On top of all the work i have been doing alot of fun stuff as well, like snorkeling, kyaking, hiking, swimming and most of all boating which might be the most fun. we go out on the open ocean all the time to fish and visit small islands about the size of two acres.
one night we wen out in the boat at about eight at night, there was something that they wanted to show me. i noticed something a little strange about the water, it had a different look to it. when i put my hand into the water before we started going, the water lit up bright green. it was fosfloresence in the water, algea that lights up before the full moon comes out. when we put our paddles in the water all the water around us lit up and sparkled like glitter. as we started to row i noticed small green flashes in the water, they were fish the glowed neon green to attract other fish to prey on. it might have been the most amazing display i have ever seen in my life, there were thousands of stars in the sky and the water was glowing around me and there were fish practically jumping into the boat. My friend Simion looked at me smiled as the other kyaks moved around us and said "mo nune kubiarete mo ta jute, biare Tuchi munkwe." Which means "you live in punta valiente your home, now you are one of us Tuchi."
signing off from a wholenother world
Panama Jack