One week to go

 we went to Chiang Mai this last weekend to pick two of these puppies up. They are Bio-sand water filters. Its really interesting, all it really is is big rocks at the bottom, smaller rocks on that, and sand on top of the smaller rocks...the really tricky part is you pour water through them once a day for 21 days and bacteria builds up and eats any bad bacteria in the water. the sand catches all the other stuff and the rocks and cement shape keep it cool. No maintenance required.

The beard is back. Each one of these guys weighed over 100lbs. Our little pick-up performed very well in spite of the extra weight. 

Stephen (the guy who works there) helped us get them into the truck. He was really nice and even came to work on a Saturday to teach us how to use it. They were 2,800 Baht so divide that by 30.5 and you have a inexpensive, roughly mobile way to provide clean water for 3 families. 

This was at one of the YMCA English camps that we did. We got sweet shirts, and a free weekend vacation to a little sleepy Chinese town called Mae Solong. 

If that cat isn't out of the bag already, I am driving lol. Chang Mai has a lot more people and more scooters than the country-side where I am from. I think its the difference between St. Anthony, ID and Seattle, WA. I got pretty good at switching between first and second gear that weekend. Because of my known lack of directions, what should have taken us 30 minutes to find the water filter place ended up taking three hours. sorry team :(  But all was well because gas was stipend ;) 

Sydney is usually my co-pilot. We take turns driving she is much better at remembering that there are people in the truck bed than I am. So I did all the city and straight-away driving and she gave the others a relatively smooth ride through the winding mountains. 

I love the view, I am going to miss it the most. vast seas of green rice patties that stop at jungle hills that stop at shear rock-faced mountains. 

So Friday I drove 3 hours, Saturday I drove close to 10 and Sunday I drove 3 and a half more. If this isn't a crash course (no pun intended) in driving stick, I don't know what is. All photos were graciously provided by Sydney and her iPhone. 

One week to go and we are busy wrapping things up. The sustainable farming is going great. They just finished building the stalls so this Wednesday we will buy the animals and get that going.