Newcomers?

At ARI, we are very welcoming to newcomers. Before each meal and before morning gathering, we always look for newcomers and ask them to introduce themselves. Then we all clap and everyone is one big happy family. Last Thursday night, my friend Melissa, who is from Liberia, braided my hair in these incredibly cool braids that go diagonally across my head. She started to do normal cornrows, but we realized that we'd be there all night since my hair is so long so we settled for 5 cornrow-type braids going slanted across my head. It looked SOOOO cool! The next day at breakfast, they tried to get me to introduce myself as a newcomer! hahaha! The trend has caught on though, and as Rev. George from Ghana said tonight at dinner, the number of "Africans" at ARI has doubled in the last few days! I love my braids because they keep my hair out of my face and are so easy! The only bad thing about them so far is that fall weather is officially upon ARI and my little naked head gets cold easier ;)

Last week was a week full of life and death. We welcomed into the ARI family, 12 little piglets. They are apparently very cute, but I have yet to see them since they are kept in a special box to keep them warm and only allowed to be around the mother for a few hours a day because she rolled over one baby and killed it :( We also "harvested" most of our fish and our big male cow last week. The fish were very fun to harvest. We drained the pond down to about one foot deep and then everyone ran around with nets to catch the fish. Sometimes we even caught them with our hands! It was so fun! We caught over 50 Kgs (110 lbs) of fish! Then we killed them, de-gilled them, scaled them, gutted them, and chopped them up to freeze. We only harvest fish once per year so this fish will have to last us. We even had fresh fried fish that night. It was by far some of the best fried fish I've ever had! One of the women from Myanmar even cooked the fish intestines! I tried a little bit and it actually wasn't too bad!
The cow was a little bit more sad because I had fed it and cleaned out its pen a few times, but such is the way of life. We sent it away to be slaughtered because there's a Japanese law that says we can't do it ourselves. Then they brought the meat back and there was TONS of it! Many people helped to carry it all down to the butchering room and chop it up to freeze (we only kill one cow a year also). We utilize almost every piece of meat, including the liver, heart, tongue, etc., most of which I can now say that I've tried. My friend Bikki from Nepal always says when someone asks what something is, "Eat today. Ask tomorrow."
I'm not a very big meat eater, which is a very good thing at ARI because we don't have much meat and we don't have it very often. However, living here and seeing our animals go over to "the other side" has definitely made me appreciate meat more. However, I still don't think that I would mind being a vegetarian one day, especially since we had someone come and give a lecture on permaculture and macrobiotics, which promotes the eating of more grains and vegetables. One of the things that I love about Japanese culture is how polite and respectful they are. One of my favorite cultural things is before each meal everyone says, "Itadakimasu," which means something like "I graciously receive this food." And after each meal everyone says, "Gochisosamadesuta," which means, "Thank you for this meal." Food is a very important part of Japanese culture and life, and I'm enjoying learning the joy of food.