Justin´s dream day

It´s Wednesday morning-our last day here! hard to believe! This is Emily. Justin is doing a youth seminar until noon, and we just went to a closing ceremony with the kids at the orphanage. They are so sweet. They sang us songs, and we prayed for them, they prayed for us, it was good. Unfortunately Justin did not get to come with us.

Anyway, he hasn´t had time to write a whole lot about the coffee farm yesterday, but pretty much it was nuts. We were informed that we would be going on a tour of the place where they process coffee, which is called a beneficio. Well, we arrived, planning on being home in two hours. They started driving us up a mountain...for an hour and 15 minutes off roading through rivers and the craziest roads that had been washed out by the rain. We saw very clearly we were going to miss our appointment at the school. But, yet, they insisted that we were going to be there on time. They have the most ridiculous lack of time management that I´ve ever seen. We´ve titled it time and distance optimism.

When we got to the end of the road, the armed guards that were with us started going up a trail to make sure it was safe. They then started us on a hike that we were completely unprepared for. I was in a skirt for crying out loud!!! We hiked up and over a mountain in the rainforest in about 100% humidity. All of us were soaked and our hearts were pounding in a matter of minutes. The altitude was killer. Not enough oxygen! So, we must have hiked like this for an hour maybe? Fire ants attacked our feet, and my legs were covered in mud. It was an awesome adventure!!!

We finally drove back down the mountain the back of the truck, hanging on for dear life, and they took us to cup coffee. If you don´t know what this is, they make all this coffee by adding the ground and hot water together. It´s like a wine tasting. Line them up, smell them, spit them, slurp them. Well, I guess they thought we were a big company or something because they gave us the treatment!!! We had NO clue what we were doing. We faked it big time! Our translator was cracking me up. He kept saying...I have NO idea what you are doing!!! Why is everyone spitting this coffee out? I swallow it when I drink it!

We got to go watch the women pick out defects on an assembly line, and I tried my hand at it. So hard! I have to go finish packing, so I´ll let Justin tell more soon. We are about to have a 3 hour bus ride....