Roxy mixed with coffee, butter and sugar...

hello everyone,

i'm officially at my placement! The Trisuli Center. it's in the area that i went white water rafting and is located on a cliff overlooking the river. there's mountains and hills on directly up from both sides of the river with a small beach on the opposite side from the Trisuli Center. It's really beautiful. the entire area is in mist and clouds in the morning and around 10am it all clears off and is really REALLY hot for the rest of the day. there's a really nice tented camp for people who are staying over the night for rafting but room is up at the Center in a small room just by the path down to the swinging bridge. at night everything cools down nicely and we're really close to a full moon right now so it's really bright out as well. all the bugs are really big! snails the size of your palm, huge spiders, slugs, grasshoppers, everything! rafting was a lot of fun, on the first day the rescue raft flipped which was pretty funny! I'll probably get to go again because sometimes they need a hand the volunteers get to help out. I've already assisted with some of their work. we have a group called young leaders club that we head up every day where we work with the kids on basic skills that will help them with finding jobs and also making the community a better place. we also teach english at the local school in the mornings. it's a bit difficult at times but very rewarding. I went on a 5 hour hike yesterday which was 4 hours up and 1 down in the blazing sun which was tiring but I got to eat lunch at a local farm on the top of the mountain. they didn't speak any english but were extremely generous and a lot of fun. today we're going to hopefully fix a raft for the kids to play on in the water and maybe do an english exercise which involves building sand castles. oh and I got to ride in a the back of truck through the moutains here and in the back of a trailer being pulled by tractor with a bunch of locals, but hey it's a lot better then the local buses that get so packed full that people end up on the roof. It's a really cool area and the kids are so much fun. My birthday was good but i had a sore stomach which was actually fixed by a glass of roxy and mixed with coffee, butter and sugar. Roxy is a local wine made from millet which is milled corn and wheat, and is very, very strong. straight it tastes a lot like rice wine. anyways i'll drop another email in a week to let you all know how i'm doing.
love.
raymond