Random

Horsyy!!

Everyone waiting to get there name called

Weighing out the Coffee

Into the Pools to be washed after its collected. Nice and red

Smallest palm tree in the world

Random Guy at the Market
Crazy huge snake

Local Performer

         Ok, so this week was kind of all over the place. Coffee picking started on Monday, which I will start doing either after lunch today or next Monday. Last Friday, I got a chance to go horseback riding. I haven't been in five years or so and it was a little scary getting back up on the horse, but it felt awesome once I got comfortable. I stayed over the weekend in Juyua to do some Christmas shopping; the street market here is amazing, lots of cool stuff to see. Saturday Annabella's brother, Chille and I went to her niece’s bar to see a local performer who he liked a lot. I actually don't remember his name at all, but there is a picture of him! Haha. Sunday, was more shopping and we went to a friends in the town right before Juyua called Ataco for breakfast. The couple there were different...the women made sculptures and the man, well I don't know what is profession was but he collected plants and they had thirty years of a collection in every crack and corner they could find. It was interesting though, lots of really cool plants and flowers.

         The pictures you see of all the crowded people with the coffee bags and truck is the end of the day for the pickers. They weigh each person's/ groups coffee for that day on the oldest looking scale of all time and record it. I’m not sure how they get paid but I think it’s every two weeks, everything accumulated. Anyway, it was really something different to see that and the people that are out there. Aside from seeing the coffee being weighed out, the cloths they wear to pick the coffee let me mouth gaping. The shoes most of all! It's sad but there wearing like "sandals" that are practically broken and shoes with a million holes and horrible looking cloths. I just can't imagine that makes it any easier. Then there was a women with a baby probably no more than 4 months old around her back while she has the basket around her waist. It was really astonishing to see how these people really live.

So next time you take a sip of your coffee (which I'm sure is going to be very soon), enjoy it! A lot of work is put towards it.

Have a good weekend everyone! I’ll see you in a month! Time is flyin'
-Bridge