Last day in Zuosuo

Hi guys,

I'm going out to some villages next to the swampy bit of the lake today (the long pointy bit if you've looked at the map on the website I suggested earlier. Tomorrow I'm planning to move to the Eastern side of the lake for a day and doing the last few Sichuan interviews, after which I will continue around back to the Southern side to Luoshui to begin the Yunnan interviews. I'm expecting that it will be quicker to do the Yunnan ones because I already have so many contacts there. I can walk into a village and walk straight up to a friend's front door. A guy over here near Zuosuo who has helped me quite a bit and seems really interested has agreed to help me with translations. So I will probably come back to Sichuan in early April. There a some dialect differences between the two provinces so I would prefer that a local person helps me translate these interviews.

I also went to see his father, the daba, yesterday, who had agreed to tell me a story. He talked into the microphone for 20 minutes plus. Not sure about what. Something about being a daba I suppose. Did four interviews after that. It is a little harder to do them now as I have done the bulk of the Sichuan interviews and I am trying to fill in categories ie. looking for three more men over 40, etc.

Dan: Yes, me coming home early is what Scott's hoping for. It just depends how long it takes to translate all the interviews- most are in the Mosuo language so I'm not sure what's being said a lot of the time. Except for the yes's and no's, of course!