This and that

Long days, long nights.

So as I mentioned yesterday, today was a field trip day. We did many things, in fact I would say that we did three small field trips in one day.

We started on a bus at 8:15 this morning which, trust me, came very early. We drove to Sutchilan, a small town outside of Colima (I think), to have breakfast. It was the most wonderful place to have breakfast. The cafe opened up to what appeared to be jungle like flora, they had simply pounded down the dirt so it made a floor and set the tables amongst the trees. Breakfasts are pretty basic here in Mexico and often include their regular dinner meals, simply served at breakfast time. We were served coffee, because we were sitting amongst coffee trees, but I have to say it didn't really taste like coffee.

After breakfast we moved more "inside" the restaurant to hear about some of their traditional painted masks, what they symbolize, where they come from, etc. It was unfortunate that the translation became so lost because the nice man speaking Spanish went on forever and I'm sure we missed out on a lot of the details.

Following the information we were all given small wooden masks to paint ourselves. It was a great activity and they all turned out really great.

From there we drove on another wild windy road into a small community that had chickens running around, roosters, and cows in pens made out of tree branches. Our first task of this mini-adventure was to find some coffee trees. The walk was dusty but short and we found some rows of trees with small green fruit-like bulbs! Coffee! We then went to this little ladies house where she showed us how she cleaned and processed the coffee. It was essentially a little room attached to her house with a small roaster and a grinder. It never expected it to be so small.

Across the street from the little coffee lady was a lady making cheese. You think this would be exciting, except that it was being fermented in a large green rubbermaid garbage can and was surrounded by flies and chickens and she kept putting her hands in it to show us the pieces that would be formed into a block of cheese. I am all for trying weird crazy food but it was too much for me.

We left the coffee location and headed to a little lake located near Colima, it was very low in a valley as far as I could tell from the popping of my ears. It was a cute picturesque kind of location. All the Mexican students who had been helping us by being our guides had barbequed for us. It was a really relaxed afternoon. It was great. Then our prof handed back assignments we had handed in a few days prior. These were the basis of much of our written reports at the end of our time here. We also had a presentation due the next morning that had a great deal to do with what we were getting back.

After all the papers were handed out it was clear (almost) all of the Calgary students wanted to get back to Colima to start working on their projects for the next morning.

The thing is our final reports are due on the morning of the 25th and the only thing between that is a public presentation of our research, it is small and nothing really to worry about. So all that stands between my personal freedom to go shopping, suntanning, swimming, and drinking in Mexico is an 18 page report. I'm almost done and I'm determined to have it done by Saturday night, so I can look over it once on Sunday and hand it in Monday. This way I will have all day Monday, Tuesday, and a good portion of Sunday to do as I wish. I can hardly wait.

Today's High: 36℃

Today I learned:

• I've been invited to go to Argentina at the end of August for about 2 weeks and I am fighting between my normally 'rational mature working' side and my 'I love to travel' side

I am grateful for:

• Cold showers

I think I have some pictures to post, so check back later if you like.