my life these days

hey guys

sorry i haven't written in awhile. I am back living in Archidona and working in Tena. It takes about 40 minutes and 2 buses to get from home to work, but I enjoy the trip. My view along the way is the jungle and Andean foothills so can’t complain.

I am working in the hospital in Tena with a program called pedi-habilidad. They work with kids 0 to 12 with disabilities and illness like cerebral palsy. I help out the physical therapist when they need me and translate once in awhile. In addition to this I am going to start doing some work in the medical records area comparing charts and in general tidying things up a bit if I can. The more boring office type stuff will only be two afternoons out of the week.

I think I have formulated an idea for the final 40 page paper I have to write. Its all very up in the air right now but I would like to write a proposal for expanding the program to other rural areas in the country. We will see how this develops.

In other news I am going on a two day rafting trip this weekend. It the second to last one of the season before the rains get too unpredictable. Really excited about it, mostly for the part where we go rafting through a cave. I will be sure to write about the trip as soon as i can.

Last weekend i worked as a volunteer at a festival celebrating the Napo river. It was a great weekend. We spent Saturday at a little down about 30 min east of tena called Misahaullí. This town is FILLED with monkeys. Seriously, they were everywhere climbing trees, climbing light posts, stealing food, and going into people’s boats. I loved just hanging out and watching their crazy antics.
But i did not have too much time for this. As a volunteer we carried around rafts and set up about a dozen tents for the days activities. Two of the other volunteers and I sat a the info booth for a little awhile before deciding to join one of the teams for the rafting race. The race was held on level two rapids and at the end you had to flip over your boat and get back in before paddling to shore. It was exhausting. We won second the first round and couldn’t flip our boat back over for the second round. hahaha
I spent the night in Misahaullí hanging out and meeting some new people from all over the place. Cause I was a volunteer i got free meals and a free night at a pretty nice hostel. Good deal.
I am definitely going back to Misahaullí if only to hang out on the beach and watch the monkeys wrestle in the trees, which i guess is really all there is to do there when there is no festival going on.

so yes, my life in a nutshell right now consists of a week of routine with weekends of adventure.

oh and I must add….no snow or sub zero temps....sorry guys