The Great Pinecone Hunt of '10

We spent about 4 hours this morning gathering pinecones for the winter months just like squirrels gathering acorns. The reason for this is the fact that almost no homes here have central heating. Homes are heated by a bucari stove, which is similar to a potbelly stove, and pinecones are the best natural firestarters. So about 10 of us interns and staff set out this morning at 9 o'clock to rather as many "export-quality"(as our director described them) pinecones. Unfortunetly these couldn't be any old pinecones, they had to be cones from a white pine since apparently those burn significantly better than the other species of pine's cones in the area. So we had quite a hike to get to the white pine forest down the hillside. The morning was full of adventure climbing into little gulleys were the pinecones would get trapped, and doing our best not to fall off the hillside. After a couple of hours of strenuous pinecone gathering we hiked further down the trail to where the "great pinecone basin" was to be found. We filled our packs and began the hike back out. I don't think many of us realized how far we had come and it took us a solid hour to get back to the office, as we hiked up about 1,200 feet of elevation. When we got backed we counted our find and between all of us we had over 500 pinecones, and these aren't small pinecones either(see picture).








An export quality pinecone, with a 1L bottle for scale











Teaching English
For the past two weeks a group of us from eMi have been teaching some guys from the area english. Someone in the church had told us about a group of young Hindu guys(18-30) who were interested in learning english, and saw it as an outreach tool. So far only two people have really been showing up consistently. They both know very little english, but it's been cool to see them improve already. It's kind of funny to be teaching english since I haven't had an english class since my senior year of high school, but being a native speaker makes me an expert I guess. It is also a challenge to not speak hinglish to them, were you leave out key parts of speech (because that's how many Indians speak english) so that they will understand you; it's a very ironic thing to do when you are trying to teach them correct english grammar.

My Favorite Pictures

Here a some of my favorite pictures thus far. I know black and white pics are so 10 years ago and cliche, but I still like them, so you'll have to endure.



Prayer Requests
-Please pray that we would be challenged and enthused to engage in the local community
-Please continue to pray for our diligence at work especially since the weather has been so beautiful lately.


-Nate