birds.

i was walking through the woods the other day trying to sum up my past few months in a couple paragraphs. the walking alone was really nice - i was accompanied by six men, their machetes and the squeaks of our rubber botas. we walked up to a coffee finca and saw women in their brightly colored dresses paired with their children picking equally brilliantly-colored coffee beans. sometimes the surroundings here force all senses to be present, halting the importance of time and place; we all stopped and admired the surrounding beauty. my dreamy haze was stopped fairly abruptly by the men directly ahead instructing me to run. well yelling, really. we had stopped in in the middle of a wasps nest. three stings and ten shakes later we had resumed a steady pace. and the update you were going to receive got lost in the tears and laughter.

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the highlight of november for any group of gringos in a foreign land is thanksgiving. this year taryn held the event at her house. in the middle of lempira, in a town called guarita, two hours up a dirt road and my favorite part of honduras, fifteen volunteers shared a meal with ten hondurans. sarah was our journalist and photographer - check out her blog for the full story. (also check out the soccer game we went to in tegus.) all that really needs to be said is that "campo thanksgiving" was kicked off with the killing of turkeys. i killed one and will provide photographic evidence below in, quite possibly, one of the scariest faces ever recorded.

sheer panic. apparently it's three strikes and then out. 

the resulting blood of three birds.

lovely taryn checking out the turkey head.

 our element of cooking perfection.

em mashing potatoes with sugar cane.

the table ready for dinner.

ending the night with s'mores, laughs and a bonfire. 

more later. maybe even about work.