Lets see, last time I wrote was a week ago. Well, one of my family's cows calved--a girl! Another went into heat and we had her artificially inseminated by good old American cows--the vet here has a Dewar with liquid nitrogen where he stores American cow semen. I got to watch the whole process.

The town and my family continue to be fascinating. Our project for the week was to make a map of the town, list resources, and make a seasonal calendar. It's rainy season now--it rains a lot in Oct and Nov, a little in Dec. and Jan., more in Feb, Mar, April, and then not much in June, July Aug, Sept. Grains and potatoes are planted in Oct or Nov usually, and garden veggies in Sept and now--we planted lettuce, chard, and cabbage this weekend.

I went grocery shopping today at the market. My host mom's mother has zucchini in her garden, so I'm making pasta with a zucchini sauce for dinner. Starting with just veggies--no tomato sauce in cans here. Shopping for veggies in the market is way more fun than in the grocery store. Cayambe has a daily market and a bigger Sunday one. I went to the sunday one with my mom after we took care of the cows and the insemination. Then in the afternoon we sat on the sod wall that marks the boundary between the edge of our land and the soccer fields and watched the local team beat the team who all drove here in their own cars, and I helped plant lettuce and cook dinner.

Sorry for the scattershot post, I've got to get back to cook. Also, I'm leaving on Saturday for a tech trip, back Tues, so I may not get to a computer till the next weekend. Just so you don't think I've fallen off the earth.