March 21, 2008

I missed St Patrick’s Day. Totally unintentional and loving the fact that I was so wrapped up in tech week that I forgot what day it was, but still a little embarrassed. So we semi celebrated our last night of tech week in Semaipata. Pepe, the project director for Ag bought us some sheep for dinner had them slow roasted over coals and we had a little wrap partay. I even danced, or tried to dance the Chacarera. The dance native of the Chaco. Kilo, one of the volunteers in Santa Cruz is an amazing dancer and I some how got talked into attempting to follow unsuccessfully but fun. We went on to a karaoke called....with some of the PCV's and io redeemed my dancing, i think....

Semipata was our last stop during tech week. Beautiful town, semi touristic because of the oldest Incan ruins around and some lovely waterfalls, or so we hear. We were wrapped up with bee product transformation. We made lip balm, stamped wax used in bee hives and for those natural rolled candles, and a mixture of honey, pollen and royal jelly that like any bee product cures most illness and helps with anything and everything else you could thunk of. I am a bee junkie now, no turning back.

Most of tech week we worked with bees. In Villa Esperanza, with Armando, we made Nucleos which are smaller hives to produce queens and royal Jelly. So we learned how to make the beginings of queen cells, how to harvest royal jelly, and honey and how to collect propolis. the glue like substance that the bees use to repair the hive and control the temperature. Which we can use as a preservative. learned also that when eating larva, royal jelly and propolio a honey chaser is really the only way to make them semi tasty. The propolio miracle liquid is drops of 98% alcohol and propolio. It doesnt go down well nor does it taste good but it cures everything.

From Villa Esperanza we headed to Chilon, one of our sites, to meet the womens group that is very excited to have a volunteer to help them with their surplus peaches. We made jam and did a small talk on begining bees and cost of production for the jam.The group was so enthusiastic and like all mothers fed us extremely well many times over. And then we drove to a bigger town for sleeping and a few of us were lucky enough to hear from Just Ben (JB) of his animated film idea featuring a small bat, Andrew of course is along for the ride as long as he can use his moon system. Would you rather have a moon system or an imune system...think about it. I reccomend eating peanut butter s'mores while you think.

Villa Esperanza was set amidst the winding mountain roads and in less than a day we found ourselves driving through semi jungle and into chilons dry desert climate complete with towering cactus and dust. Chilon to Quirusillas, our next stop, was again quite the change in landscape. One night in Quirusillas after a playful figth with Tito over the last coco flavoured ice cream I found myself looking at the square surrounded by cyprus tress illluminated by the almost full moon drifting in and out of wispy clouds. Couldn't help but pretend I was in Van Gough's Starry Night!More bees here, still didn't really see any knees though. To wrapped up in capturing a ferral colony! We had to chop open the base of a tree, which I wasn't really on board with since it didn't seem right to destroy one living thin in order to reign in a bee colony, but we did it and then cut the combs out, attached them to frames and put them in the box only to wait two or so more hours to make sure the queen had been transfered. In the meantime we captured bees in bags and threw them into the box.

Quirusillas was lovely for many reasons the most important one for the warm cheesey salty sugary empanadas every morning. 1b each! (7 something b's to the doller) The valleys of Santa Cruz are really quite stunning and since i havn't seen much else of the country could easily bee happy there, but I am still holding out for the boarding school. Pepe interviewed us again and once I told him Pinantorella was my first choice we talked about it for the next 5 minutes...so things are looking pretty good and the site is sounding better and better! Dont want to count any chickens so until Monday that is all I will say. Quirusillas to Semaipata where we dined at a veggie restaraunt and had a sublime experience. French Bakery too the morning we left with pan au chocolate to boot we hit the road for th 14 hour drive back to Coch. No dance parties this time due to the duration, but we partied it up just fine throughout the week. Raquel has embarrasing footage for the training montage no doubt.

Really tech week was bomb. More confident with bees and products and my amigos here. We got lucky with the group, I am super grateful for that.

and for these

going halfses with Tito on steak and eggs
moon systems
having to climb down a ladder to get to the bathroom
mystery box, in spanish
cuba libre
brownies
bitter royal jelly
getting Don Roque dancing as he is driving the bus...so much happiness
gatos, dude, che