Breaking Our Addictions

We have 10 days on the farm under our belt. We are still having fun and feel like we are learning a great deal. Early spring is a difficult time to jump into this, as we are learning. Having jumped in without the opportunity to have canned or frozen things from past seasons, greens are the only thing in our garden. Between some big leafy collard like plant and cabbage, we are eating a lot of greens. We have learned that a neighbor sells oranges from his yard and they are amazing. We are eating our weight in those. The cheese is also very good. The owner of the farm makes an amazing cheese from the sheep milk. Our goats milk makes good yogurt and our lemon tree gives us delicious lemonade. However, take all of this and add a single gas burner, some old pans, and a trip to the supermarket for some rice and pasta and some flour for bread and you still dont get the variety that we have become accostomed to in the US. The produce section of Harris Teeter doesnt really have too many seasons.

So this feels like it has been a time of breaking our addicitons. Our cravings for fast food or tomatoes go unanswered because there just arent any. Our time for relaxation is not consumed with television, internet, NCSU athletics (and the constant sorrow that comes with them), radios, or other forms of entertainment, but is spent sitting outside watching and listening to those things that surround us. Not because we choose to do this out of nobility, but because when you open our door (that doesnt really close anyways) that is what is there and there really isnt anything else.

I am not sure that we knew we would have to go quite so cold turkey, but here we are in `el campo`.

One thing that does bring great entertainment is realizing how mundane things sound way cooler when put into context of being where we are (at least in my head). For example¨"I am sitting in a chair on the porch" sounds pretty dull, but "I am sitting in a chair on the porch in Uruguay" sounds really cool. "I am listening to electronica music...in an internet cafe in Uruguay", see you are jealous aren´t you??



OK, so now it is letting me add some pictures, we will see how many actually happen.

This is me riding my bike on our beach excursion this past Sunday.

Sheep, Goats, Lemons and One-speed bicycles

Still having fun. We will try to put some more meaningful thoughts on here soon, but since using the internet (very slow internet) means riding a one speed bike 8 kilometers (mine has no brakes, but I havent really needed them yet), we just seem to run out of time. Photos are an impossibility today because this internet just will not cooperate. Oh well. We will try again soon.

Thursday we get to help in the cheese making process. This is what all of the sheeps milk is used for. We get about 30 Liters per day from the 60 sheep. This is supposedly one of the money making parts of the farm. The sheep and goat graze on grass all day and are not given corn or other things that industrial agriculture insists upon. They do eat a small amount of corn during milking. I dont think they love the milking process, but since they rush the milking room for the corn, it seems they feel it is a fair trade.

The goat is also milked daily and give us about a quart or so a day. It´s baby still also eats so that takes away from some of our milk, but we dont mind sharing. We made our first successful batch of yogurt from the goat milk. It is very tasty. We add either peach marmelade or fresh lemons for extra flavor. We hope to make butter soon once we skim enough fat from our milk to do so.

The lemon tree seems to be one of the only things in season right now in early spring. We are planting a lot and getting some greens from the garden. Lemonade is tasty. We are drinking the water now, but adding lemons helped us to get used to the idea after being told that the water was potable. I did not realize Lemons were a spring fruit, but I am happy with it. Oranges are also in season, but we have to buy those from a neighbor.

Yesterday we rode our one speeders to the beach, which is more like the bank of a large river. It was pretty and a nice ride (14km round trip). It is chilly here, so swimming was not an option. We also got to ty our first Mate. Not too bad and perhaps something we will try to aquire the taste for. This is a big part of the culture of Argentina and Uruguay. Google Mate if you are not familiar with it. It is kind of like tea, but you can only drink it with a special set with a gourd cup and a metal like straw. Apparently there is also lots of customs about sharing the mate and passing in certain ways and turning the gourd, but we havent figured all of that out yet.

Thanks for the comments, we enjoy reading them.

Cross your fingers for pictures next time.

Life on the Farm

We made it to the farm, after taking two busses, and being picked up by a guy named Hector in a 1950-something truck. Hector is who we work with on a regular basis milking sheep. That is our main task here on the farm. The house we´re staying at is about 4 kilometers away from ¨town¨ which is where there is a supermarket and internet cafe. We have two bikes to use to get there. We have also learned how to use an outdoor bread oven. We will post pictures, and more explanation next time as 4 kilometers is a long way to go back when you have forgotten your camera.

Full Day in Montevideo

Here are a few fotos from our day in Montevideo. Tomorrow it is off to the farm. We had a fun time trying to figure out how to get there. Our experience in Guatemala was that if you go to the bus station, you can just hop on a bus and might have to change busses, but it supposed to be pretty easy. After using some sort of telephone store that functioned as a really fancy phone booth, we have reservations for a bus tomorrow and believe we know how to get to the terminal, using another bus. I think this is one of my favorite parts of travelling, figuring out how to do things that people who live here think is every day life.

On to the photos:


Tracy in the room at our hostel.


Yes we have a Bidet (spelling¿?)



Tracy (and some random woman) in the Plaza de Independencia (we have had gloomy weather both days so far)


Uruguay has much Italian influence. We went to dinner last night and ended up eating pasta. It was excellent and was some of the best italian food we´ve had. We wandered around from about 5-7 wondering why many of the restaraunts were not open. We learned today that most Uruguayans do not eat dinner until 9pm and it is not unusual to start dinner well after that. Tonight, we shall explore at a much later hour.

Saludos de Montevideo

We have arrived. The flight was long (9 hours). We departed finally at 7pm or so and arrived in Buenos Aires around 445am. From there we flew to Montevideo around 9am and arrived here around 10. Aerolineas Argentinas was OK, but I am really not so sure that the ham and cheese sandwich was necessary at 2am. This has never been one of my normal times of the day for eating a ham and cheese sandwich.

The Lonely Planet gave us a list of bus numbers that woulod take us downtown. we waited about 45 minutes without seeing a single one. After getting no help from a priest and only vague help from an airport employee, we jumped on a bus that said Montevideo on the front. 80 cents and with the help of a nice guy on the back of the bus, we arrived. We crashed for a couple of hours and are now ready to start exploring this new place. Hopefully the weather will clear up a little because right now the city is in a big cloud. (My hip is feeling much better, so I am ready to see the sights).

People here look just like us, however, I dont think we blend in as well as we might think we do.

Hopefully more pictures will be forthcoming.

Bienvenidos a Miami

Arrived safely in Miami. Hanging out with Aaron and Lilly in Ft. Lauderdale until we leave on Sunday afternoon for Uruguay. Luckily, we got to visit a favorite Guatemalan restaurant here. The only fast food that I would call delicious.

Unemployed

I (Adam) no longer work for Wake County Human Services.

We leave for Miami Friday morning. We arrive in Montevideo, Uruguay on Monday morning. Looking forward to seeing Aaron and Lilly.

My hip hurts like a mug. Not a good way to start a long journey.

I hope we didnt forget to do anything.