Rubber Farm

We had a very eventful weekend. It was really fun and we learned a lot. On Saturday we woke up early (out of town by 6:00am) and took a trip to our director's rubber farm. We rode a bus to their house about 1 hour out of town and then rode in the back of their pickups for another two hours before we reached farm. (My father will thoroughly enjoy the next part, so for those of you who don't know or care about rubber, I appologize!) The farm is over 500 acres, so it took us all day to get a good tour of it. Each of the trees is tapped every other day. Danielle took a video of one of the workers tapping a tree. (It is sideways, and we don't know how to change it, sorry)

There were two men that were tapping and they each had to tap 450 trees in 4 hours. They have to be finished tapping by 10:00 AM. The next step in the process is to collect the rubber, and the final step is to clean the latex to make sure that they get the dirt out of it. If the rubber is dirty, the bacteria grows and you end up with rubber gloves that smell really bad. We also got to see their nursery and their logging operation which was really cool. The healthy trees on the farm are supposed to last for 36 years. It was really good to see and our director was excited to have us over. We finished up the day with a big grill out on the farm. We were home at about 10:00 that night. It was a long day, but well worth it. (Danielle just uploded all our pictures to a new album, so you can check those out)
On Sunday we got together with a bunch of other teachers for a superbowl party. One of our friends hosted the party and we were all treated to a wonderful game. It was a lot of fun and the weekend went really well!