So the past 2 days have been spent with SOMEDCO, building a house for a local family. Thanh arranged for a bunch of students from his church to come work with us, so the work actually went really well and really quickly. The first day was spent filling in the foundation level with dirt to form the base of the floor. Loooots of shoveling and wheelbarrowing and shoveling dirt onto empty mortar mix bags and carrying those around ensued. Very hot, but good times. As the day went on, everything seemed to get more and more hilarious, till we were all cracking up about anything that was said while we were shoveling and sweating more than anyone ever should outside of a sauna. Good times, but I think the SOMEDCO group was a little confused by us. Probably a good thing.
The second day was dedicated mostly to laying stone over the dirt floor. This again involved lots of carrying and such, but was again good times. People here also seem to delight in getting us to try foods we've never met before and watching us fail at eating them. Yesterday they brought us durian, this weird type of fruit that about half the people in the world find very smelly and disgusting. Really though, it's not all that bad if you ignore the slight nastiness and look for the sweet flavor that's there too. The consistency is the really wierd thing. Sort of like a stringy pudding. If someone had just handed me some durian and not told me it was a fruit, I never would have guessed.
Anyway though, because we had so much help with the house and everything, we were really running out of things to do. So Thanh and the SOMEDCO bunch ended up telling us we could take a day off if we wanted today, so we are. Sounds like we'd be more of a hassle than a help at the construction site today, since they wouldn't have anything for us to do (the only thing really left is finishing bricklaying, but that's being done by paid workers, so we don't want to steal their job) but we would still need to be fed, etc. So instead, Tiffany's aunt is taking us to some place called Monkey Island. Excited to see what that exactly entails. Monkeys, hooray!
Overall, things continue very well. The group is fantastic, Tiffany's family's hospitality is seriously over the top and incredible, the food is good (some kind of delicious fish and noodles last night, mmm), and we're excited to move on to the next part of our time with SOMEDCO tomorrow! Unfortunately, it is the last part of our trip. The time has really flown, and while we're all looking forward to some things in America, like tap water and breakfast cereal, we'll also be sad to leave Asia. It's been a great experience so far. We've learned so much, seen so much, done so much, experienced so much, and met so many great people. Looking forward to making these last few days count!
-Alyssa
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