Barefoot Building

        For the past two and a half weeks we have been living in our tent, wwoofing, in the hills of Chiang Mai, right outside a small village of a couple hundred locals with Ryan Libre, a professional photgrapher from Chico, California, who's lived here for over five years.  Our first ten days were spent learning how how to build a house from scratch in just a couple weeks (I finally lived up to the true meaning of my name). We built a new adobe office with a built in loft for Ryan. Adobe is where you make bricks from mud(dried in the sun) and then use them as well as mud mortar and some supports to construct whatever it is you are building. The office was about 9 feet tall, and 200sq feet with built in shelves, desks, and the loft. Our days during this workshop consisted of an early breakfast followed by building from 9-5pm on the work site, afterwhich we would run to the nearby lake for a 'shower', then dinner, then bed.
         After construction was all finished, we enjoyed the freedom of days off and half days to explore our surroundings. We took a couple of Thai boxing lessons from an ex-boxer, current pro-coach from the village, learned how to make wine, learned a lot about cooking, and even got to enjoy personal photography lessons from a pro. I am now sufficiently photographing our adventures in manual mode!
 Another new experience was living veagan (and barefoot..to add to the picture) the entire time minus one breakfast of eggs and a bite of catfish. Though this may sound tough to all of you who know my eating habits, it was not too hard given we had endless veggies, rice, and noodles. I will not be giving up meat anytime soon, but am glad for the experience.
       To top all of these new experiences and lessons learned off, we enjoyed a quick lesson in firefighting. We were sitting by our tent, soaking up our lunch break, when we heard some crackling, followed by shouts, followed by the need of our assistance fighting the massive grass fire(a couples acres in size) that had just popped up a couple hundred feet from our tent. With the help of many wwoofers and locals we dug a succesful fire line and stopped the flames in their tracks! Just another exciting surprise to add to the list. Hope everyone back home is great. Miss you all, love Mason

p.s. Happy Birthday Rhymes!