The following pictures were taken from Crystal's first hike, were were gone for 6 days. We slept in a home one night, in a tent two nights and in a small hostel another night. It was an awesome time. This is on our first day of hiking on our way up the mountains to stay in with a family.
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Crystal crossing a bridge that she was not thrilled about crossing. The boards were not nailed down and a few were missing. The bridge was also about 10-12 feet from the water. There was not other way to get to the trail that we needed to get to. We made it across without any problems. It was also very windy.
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My friends filtering water with filters donated to them by the WMU, thanks so much!!!! We would not have had clean water had it not been for these filters.

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This was taken from inside the home we stayed in on our first night of hiking; they have a fire in the middle of the house with a little space in the roof for ventilation. We all gathered around the fire, they killed two chickens for us and we ate potatoes that they cook right in the fire, you just peel the skin and go to town. It was a wonderful time; they sang songs and asked us to sing songs. They were very hospitable and incredibly loving and friendly.

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The home we stayed in on our first night of hiking.
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C
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They had a great time seeing their selves in our digital cameras.

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Putting on their best for picture day.
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We drew quite a crowd.
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A little one in the same village, the people there were so loving and warm.
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A group of married women, they put their best clothes on to take pictures.
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One of the younger girls in one of the villages we went through.
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Crystal on the trail, we walked for 5 days up and down mountians.
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The following pictures are of Justin's first trekk. This is the dump truck that I rode in the back of down the side of the mountain for 4 hours.
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This man was just relaxing and having a smoke. Pipes like this one are really common. Sometimes for women too.
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Some scattered houses in the mountains.
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Crossing this bridge was exciting.
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We made some friends on the way down the mountain. Most of the people we met just sit around all day watching sheep. In this case, he was watching a herd of yak.
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The water looked really clean, but we went ahead and used iodine anyway.
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A friend dared me to get my picture taken next to this yak. I tried to get close, but he ran away.

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We had been trekking uphill for two and a half days by the time we reached this peak at 13,000 feet.
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We had to camp at 12,500 feet. We thanked Dad for this flat spot because it was the only one for several miles.
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This guy we met was really nice! He spends all day watching sheep, so he was anxious to talk to us.
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I look really, really tired.
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Wow, check this out!
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The road ahead was really long but the views were always worth it.
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A typical village.
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More great views.
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The secenry was incredible.
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The first night camping was really cold.
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The previous post was talking about this picture
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More engrish

I don't have a good photo, but the sign next to the one pictured above actually reads "The fire fight connects your my his happiness the peaceful depending everybody". You'd think that someone at the station would know where to find a native english speaker to consult before publishing this nice sign.

Justin in the old town
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A traditional building in the old town
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One view of our kitchen, there is a small table and a few stools to the left of the picture and a window.
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One side of our bedroom.
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The other side of the bedroom.
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One view of our living room.
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Here is Justin in our living room.
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Here we are bowling inside the hotel, on our Anniversary; we were the only people in the bowling alley. Justin won the first game and Crystal won the second. It cost us about $11 US dollars for us both to play 2 games. We had a good time!!!

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UMMM Pop Tarts!!!!
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Opening presents!!!!
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This is the Christmas tree in our friends dorm, we did not have time to get a tree this year (but we had another friend give us one after Christmas) so we had Christmas in her dorm.

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This is how we spent Christmas day, we rode horses up the big mountain here, and we went up about 11,000 feet. It was an awesome day, probably the most unusual thing we have done on Christmas day but it was fun.

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We saw snow on Christmas day!!! From what we heard you guys may have seen more snow back in TX ;-) We had hoped to find enough to build a snow man but we didn’t, maybe the next time we go up the mountain.

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One night before Christmas we had a tap at our door. We opened the door and found about 30 students from our university singing us Christmas Carols. It was of course broken English, but very heart warming. They do not celebrate Christmas here but they know that most westerners do and they wanted to do this for us, it really made us feel at home and helped us get into the Christmas Spirit.

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This is our Christmas turkey, we went to one of the markets just to look around and find the place where you can pick a chicken and haven it killed and de-feathered for you. While we were looking around we saw that they had a turkey. We were so excited!!!! We had been planning on having a Western Christmas dinner but we were just going to cook a chicken. Well, after we saw the turkey and told the people that we wanted it, the fun began. They took it out of the cage weighed it (about 12 pounds) and we began bargaining. We could not understand much of what they were saying but we did understand that they kept saying, “there’s only one”. We did not want to pay what they were asking, by this time a crowd had gathered. The guy holding the turkey insisted that we hold it to feel how heavy it was, so Justin took it by the feet and then they made Crystal take it by the feet and it began flapping around. We finally agreed on a price and they began the process of preparing it for us. After they killed it they dipped it in hot water and then they put it in a machine that kind of looked like a washing machine but it had rubber knobs sticking out and it went round and round and got the feathers off. The lady finished cleaning it, removed the insides and tied a string around it’s feet and neck and handed it to us. I think they realized how awkward we looked and they found a bag to put it in. We rode home with his little turkey feet sticking out of the top of the bag.

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De-feathering
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Cleaning the turkey.
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