After we finished in the church, we walked over to a youth center that is part of the parish and where we were to eat lunch.
The members of the parish prepared a very nice meal for all of us and stayed to eat with us.
When most had finished eating, the parish members gathered the visitors into a circle around a wooden mortar filled with cooked rice and there were traditional songs sung with a simple dance step.I didn’t really know what was going on when they handed me the large pestle and indicated I was to pound the rice. Then a series of men took over and each had a turn of two or three minutes of beating the rice.After fifteen minutes or so, the object of our exertions was evident as the pounded rice turned into a large, heavy mound of sticky rice, a Chinese sweet and a traditional product of this village. The wad of rice was place on a plate of sugar and ground peanuts and then portioned off into small sweet chunks. Delicious!Then we had a chance to explore the village for about an hour. We crossed the valley first on this pedestrian suspension bridge.In the village was a statue celebrating the making of sticky rice that we had just done.The terrain in this area is really steep and rugged.Finally we drove to a restaurant near the Franciscan center and ate and then returned to the center where we spent a second and final night.
