I Hate Cows...

Alright, I have been busy... And the good news is that I have a mountain of work right around the corner. Right now I have a couple of "mini-projects" underway, which include coaching a women's softball team, coaching a youth soccer team (I have never played organized soccer, ever.), and a school garden project which brings me to the title of this entry, "I HATE COWS". Now most of you reading this, don't have the privelege of interacting with cows on a daily basis. I see no less then 20 steers a day, walking be me, "moo"ing at me, and crapping all over the place. Now the constant presence, mooing and crapping, aren't so bad once you get used to them. But when you put time and energy into something and they senselessly destroy it, we have problems. Let me set the tone... The school garden rests in the corner of a large grass field owned by Don Lasaro, the garden is closed off by barbed wire strung together with stakes and dead trees (to keep the cows out). There are about ten rows of plants, each row approx. 20 feet long. We have cucumber, lettuce, tomato, chile, radish and a few other things that I dont know how to say in English. The garden, after being a bit neglected during the construction of the school basketball court, was on the rebound. I was going out there every day, watering it twice a day and talking to the plants and so on and so forth. Until that sad day, a little over a week ago the recovery efforts were cut short... After walking down to the garden for a morning "regar", I opened the gate to find a giant pile of cow dung greeting me. My heart sunk and I feared what was waiting for me ahead. The closer to the garden I got, the more cow pies I found, and they continued to grow in size. Slowly, I approached the once lush rows of vegetables and all I found was carnage. There were no survivors, the cows ate, trampled or uprooted every single living plant in that garden. In a panic, I ran around the rows to the far corner where my tomato plants once stood proudly and there I found them. Uprooted and lying on the ground, mear shadows of their former selves. I solemnly took a deep breath and scouted the rest of the garden to assess the chaos that was once the school garden. As I looked up, I saw where the fence had failed and the cows had entered... In a long feud filled with rock throwing, charging and crapping, the cows had finally struck an effective blow right to my heart. And for that moment, I felt defeated. But not for long, and standing there over my fallen comrades that lay below me in utter ruin I swore that the garden would rise again, and once again I pledge to all of you, that it will!!!.... Alright that got a little out of hand, but I'm replanting the garden, and that's why I hate cows....

New projects.. School starts Monday and I will be designing and implementing the new Physical Education program at the school. I will basically be teaching the entire canton how to play basketball, volleyball and possibly dodgeball. It should be good times. I have also agreed to begin teaching a community English class for those not attending school, it should be interesting considering the school has no lights and the classes are in the late afternoon. I guess we'll have to go medievel, with torches or something. We'll figure it out. I am also jumping on to help out with a community water project for "agua potable" (drinkable water). The project has actually been goin on for close to 15 years, and they do a great job of record keeping, but it is all hand written. I mean every single document they have is handwritten, so I am going to help them transfer everything to electronic record keeping. Long and tedious, but I have two years so I'm not worried. As usual I have a million other things to talk about, but I don't like to make these things too long and I'd end up writing forever. So I will use one of my patented summary lists to sum things up for you, here it goes: scorpions in my room, super ants bite, still unable to score goal, bad news bears softball team, birthday celebration, waterfall, 3 fights at soccer game, inauguration of basketball court, HOT all the time, and I mean ALL the time, talking in my sleep still except in spanish, AND hot girls...

Buena onda...