Go and Bear Fruit

Two years ago teams of people went into the lower Himalayas armed with apricot trees from Pakistan with the hope to provide a rural mountain community with some much needed vitamins,a potential new source of income, and a different perspective on the future. The teams planted more than 400 seedlings in about 10 different villages. A few weeks ago Aaron and I had the privilege to join the teams that would hike back to these villages, prune the trees, and start discussing with the villagers the idea of bearing much fruit.

James and Laura are friends that we recently made when we met in the U.S. and found out we were both going to be living on the same side of the world for a while. The two of them plus us made up our 4 person team, as we went and pruned around 100 of these trees. We spent a week in the mountains, walking from home to home, eating potatoes with the locals, and sleeping wherever anyone invited us to stay.

James put together a really great video of our trip that he put on his blog. I'm putting it up here, but encourage you to check out James and Laura's blog at http://jamesrosenberg.blogspot.com.

Enjoy!

....and we're BACK!

Confession: We've been back for a week.

We left January 13th and returned on February 16th. During that time we traveled to three different cities in Thailand and three different cities in China. It was fun to be gone for so long, because walking in the door on the 16th, this place actually felt like home.

Since we have been back, I have been avoiding email, blogging, and checking the news. I think I just got so used to not having constant internet connection over the last 4 1/2 weeks that coming back to it seemed a bit tiring.

BUT today, I'm back. I'm ready to tackle the internet. Our lives for the next couple of weeks may be fairly boring, as we start class, so the next few blogs may just be recaps of the last 5 weeks. Speaking of which, today we took our placement tests, so we'd know which class we'd be in. We sat there for an hour filling out TWO tests, and as soon as we turned them in, the teacher asked us to look at the books and decide which class looked like our level.....so I'm not exactly sure what the placement test was all about.

I leave you with this: In China, you can get your hair washed and blow dried, complete with a head and shoulder massage for just a couple of dollars. My hair wash cost $3, Aaron's hair style cost $4.55. I think this picture explains why:

He stepped with swag as if it was still the 70's and the theme song to Shaft was playing in the background, walked right up to the counter at KFC and came back to the table with a free refill on a hot fudge sundae.

He is the most interesting man in the world.

Or at least has the most debonaire hair style in the world.