some random pics for ya

Tena, home, sweet home

Felipe swinging off a rope into the tena river

Panama Jade, Pirate, backpacker emily...the heat gets to you here sometimes

me with new hair and ruth

new hair again and rachel

semester over....

monografia is done. 22 page paper in spanish entitled "the affects of globalization and capitalism of fish farming, cacao, and governmental projects in the province of Napo, Ecuador"...not entirely sure if that makes sense in english, but there you have it. I managed to relate all my random work days and experience into one coherent paper. personally...i think i deserve a cookie and a gold star. hahaha
next semester i will be living with the same family and working in the tena hospital. i also get to write another monografia...i cant wait ;)

Procrastinating

yo,
so, two weeks left in the program. really should get started on that monografia and presentation thus i am writing on my blog. left my flash at home so killing time till i go interview a guy at the municipality at 3pm. gonna go pretend i know what i am writing about, which i dont cause i had no real internship. hahaha
in other news....
rafting last saturday was awesome. 38 km through the rainforest. gorgeous!!! probably one of the most beautiful places i have ever been. wish i had pics. gonna try and get some from the company.
went back to quito for our big thankgiving party. it was weird being back in quito. cold for one, and there was so many...people, stores…everything. felt like i was in the US again for a day. best thing about the visit was that i got to get really clean and shave my legs in a nice indoor shower.
spent about 24 hours in quito before heading to the coast with 5 other girls from cimas. went to tonsupa by atacames in esmeraldas province. chilled out on the beach for a whole day. swam in the ocean with some crazy fun waves. stayed in a very...interesting hostel. still had a balcony with and ocean view so cant complain. and we got running water during the day at least hahaha. saturday night my friend nichole and i started the long journey back to el oriente. took 7 hour bus ride from esmeraldas to quito at 10pm. we were aided in finding the bus station by moron missionaries from utah.
once in quito at 445 am we ate a lovely breakfast of grilled cheese and nescafe at a lovely bus station diner and caught a bus to tena at 530 and we back in tena by 1130. spent the rest of the day hanging out with my host family and jumping off a cliff into the tena river. crashed at 8pm and did not move until 6am when i went for a run. yup..there you have it. brief summary of the last week of my life. one of these days i will remember my flash drive and put up pics.

im still in summer weather suckers

hey,
havent written in a while. gets so hot here i mostly just read emails and never write back cause i dont want to move. but the ac is on in this place.
still no internship, so i have been working on my family's farm. learning how to use machete. going rafting tomorrow.
still amazed at the variety and size of bugs here. cockroaches the size of my hand. chickens love them.
not much else to tell.
machismo is through the roof here and it kinda pisses me off, but other than that things are going well.

pics of new life in archidona

canoe trip down the napo river!!

my little sis dana and little bro lan

pilsner add. hahaha one of two beers sold in ecuador

yep, i ate it

view out my bedroom window

mamallacta

http://kesselberg.info/kichua/es/vision.html

my fam has a hostel
there are pics of my dad nelson, mom flora, and sis dana

new town, new fam

hey everyone,
i am now living in archidona, 12 km outside of tena ecuador. i have a new host family. mom, dad, baby, and six year old host sister. they are an indigenous family. very kind and very knowledgeable. i have learned a lot about the kichwa (Quechua, spelled academically)
culture in the pat few days. i will hopefully be learning a little of the kichwa language. my host parents converse in it often. so far though i pretty much only know yacu means water and llacta means earth. which is cool cause my host fams last name is mamallacta, mother earth. bugs here aren't too bad. getting kinda bit up, and bug repelant doesn't really work. maybe cause it doesn't work on ants or various other random bugs in this part of the world. I guess taking vitamin b and eating yuca is supposed to help. i am doing plenty of both. yuca is a root that is similar to potato and they eat it with almost every meal here.
my internship is yet to begin, mostly i have been hanging out with the host fam and learning a lot from there stories. there are the festivals of tena that started yesterday and go till the 15th of november. got to see fire works last night and a parade. luckily 6 other cimas students are living around here too so we can meet up in tena pretty easily even though we are all in different communities. we all have electricity and our own rooms, which is awesome. most shower with buckets out in the open. i got lucky, we share our bathroom with another house (my aunt and uncle i think) and it has a door, and there is toilet paper. no running water in the house, but we get jugs of drinkable water. there is even an internet cafe in archidona that works relatively fast. even though little kids kinda surrounded me last time to see what i was doing, which was a little awkward.
hmmm, what else?
oh yes, how could i forgert...i ate ants
after three days of thunderstorms here these giant ants (bout 1.5 inches) come out, you collect them, fry them up, and eat them. high in protein i guess. we ate our mashed up in yuca. was rather tasty surprisingly.
people in tena seem to be more creative in their cat calls than in quito. less “hello” and more shit like “its a beautiful day for my eyes”..said in english.
that all for now, pretty slow life here. hope to start work soon, getting kinda bored.