I have established my niche in Machala

I´ve had a couple requests for more information about my life here in Machala, so I´m going to write a general report on my life here in the Banana Capital of the world.

That was my introduction...this is my first body paragraph:

My family here is the Lazo Serrano family, and they are fairly well known in the community. Federico (my host father) is the head of the agricultural section of the University...basically he´s in charge of the growing of the many different types of bananas and other fruit that they grow here for the University. I´m not entirely sure why they do this, and why this is so important, but apparently it is. He is a short man (everyone in this family is short...I´m a giant here) with a gruff exterior, and is very opinionated, but not in an obnoxious way. In this, he kind of reminds me of you, dad...he has his opinions, and its very difficult to change them, even if they´re a bit ridiculous. And when they are a bit ridiculous, people tell him they are ridiculous, and he doesn´t get angry or embarrassed, he just continues believing what he believes and accepts that he´s in the minority. He´s also got a pretty good sense of humor, and I think he enjoys the fact that there´s now another man in the house to help stem the estrogen tide, as we´ve had many conversations about the incomprehensible parts of the female mind...

Carmen (my host mother) is a professor of horticulture, and is also a bit of an artist who has had a few paintings and sculptures put on display at various art shows. She talks incredibly fast and softly, and is a pretty good representation of the stereotypical sweet latino wife, cares for her husband and is mostly deferential to him, but it´s also fairly obvious that she has the final say in the house. She also laughs at the sometimes crude and off-color jokes that Federico makes, which is awesome, because it´s allowed me to feel a lot more comfortable with joking myself...and as I have come to figure out, the quickest way for me to feel completely comfortable in my situations is by being able to say whatever ridiculous joke or thoughts come to my head. Carmen is a very big reason I feel very much at home here in this family. One other thing about Carmen...every night after dinner around 10 or 11 or so, we have a tradition. She and I, and most often one or both of my host sisters, will be working around the dining room table on our lesson plans, preparing for class the next day, and it never fails that around 1030 Carmen begins to fall asleep in the middle of her work. She starts sitting up straight and typing something on her computer. Then you notice that you don´t hear her typing anymore and you look over and her mouth is slightly open, her eyes are completely shut, and she´s starting to nod her head. She continuously lowers her head, every once in a while waking up and typing for about 20 seconds until this process starts again. A couple days ago, she went from an upright position to literally having her forehead resting on her keyboard in about three minutes, all without waking up once...it was awesome. In the 30 minutes to an hour that she´s like this she gets max 5 minutes of actual work done, very similar to my real mother...however for mom it´s not because she´s unconscious but because she has no idea how to actually USE the computer. It is interesting how I´m able to see a good amount of similarities between my host parents here and my real parents back home, once again something that has made it very very easy to feel at home here. I´m continuously struck at how lucky I have been in terms of host families...

Now we move onto my host sisters. Back when I was a child (go ahead dad, make the joke: "mentally, you´re still a child", ha ha ha, you slay me), I for some reason always wanted an older sister. No idea why. Then that wish was half fulfilled by our adoption of Bev...I now had a sister, and with her I neither needed (nor desired) another one (at all...just kidding Bev...). Here in Machala, I have two older host sisters, one who is 29 and one who is 35. (There´s a third who´s 26, but she´s married and lives in Cuenca, so I don´t see her nearly as much as Lizette and Arlene) When I first read their ages I thought that these two would be real adults, and that it would be like living in a house with four people who were very much separated from me by their age, stage in life, and/or maturity. I could not have been more wrong. Maybe it´s because the stages of life are not as clearly defined once you graduate from college. Maybe it´s because we all have the same type of job (Lizette teaches business communication something-or-other and Arlene teaches tour guide and travel agency information, both at the same university as me). Maybe it´s because they could be considered midgets back home (I´m not lying when I say that my healthy 180 pounds is more weight than both of them combined, we checked it out yesterday, and they are both barely five feet). Whatever the reason, I interact with them the exact same way I interact with people from back home, same jokes, same way of saying whatever is on my mind. I´ve even reached a level of physical comfort with them that has led to many a time where, on the couch while doing lesson plans at night, both of them have fallen asleep, one with their back leaning against my arm and the other´s head resting on my shoulder or lap. It´s an interesting position, because it´s a mixture of me already feeling brotherly protectiveness of them and them also acting very protectively of me as I would imagine most older sisters do. They have made sure that I know my way around the bus system and that I am doing well in my classes, they´ve stopped me on my way to work in a slightly wrinkled shirt and ironed it for me (I will not be learning how to iron down here in Ecuador), hell, they even accompanied me to get my first haircut here (and sat and joked around with the hair dresser about how she was making me into the most handsome gringo Machala had ever seen...jokes here are also expected). Having had to protect my younger brother my entire life from the cruel cruel world, it sort of feels nice to be looked after as thoroughly as I am in the Lazo family.

Lizette is the eldest, and she´s an interesting mix of a professional and a socialite on one hand, and an older sister who´s still a kid on the other. In other words, Lizette takes her job very seriously, is a very good teacher, and also is very aware of the right way of hosting parties and interacting with other people of the community (it was her birthday party that we had here a couple weekends ago, and she planned everything to a T, it was really one of the best organized parties I´ve been to...more on that later). However, she also watches telenovelas in her pajamas while eating dessert, talks with the dogs like one would talk to a baby, and has had many interesting conversations with me and Arlene about various topics including dating someone much older or younger and masturbation. She also studied in France when she was younger, and knows some English, so she´s a help on those occasions when I don´t understand a key word in the conversation.

If I had to choose a favorite person in this family it would probably be Arlene. She´s the middle child of the family, and she has some definite classic second child characteristics. She´s a lot less reserved, a little more wild, a little more emotional, a little less bound by social restrictions, likes to drink (as much as an Ecuadorian woman can without seeming inappropriate, remember, this is still very much a machista society), has a great sense of humor, likes to poke fun at other people, and is the easiest person to talk to that I´ve met here in Ecuador, gringo or native. However, she´s also very professional when it comes to her teaching, and has an entirely different kind of maturity as well. Arlene was married a few years ago to a man I have since met and deemed a class A douchebag. Needless to say, they are now divorced, but during their marriage they did have a kid. And Arlene is one hell of a mother, completely devoted to Alexandre without spoiling him, never hesitant in showing him how much she loves him, and she also manuevers the sticky situation of a messy divorce very well, making it her priority that he is left free from dealing with the unfortunate situation as much as possible. Due to her motherhood, she´s home a lot more than anyone else as well, so I spend the most time with her out of anyone in the family.

Which brings us to Alexandre. This kid is awesome. And adorable. And he loves me. I´m talking his face lights up every morning (afternoon) when I first come downstairs, which is one damn good way of waking up everyday. I´ve taken to calling him "hombre" and everytime I say "gracias hombre" he responds with "de nada buen hombre". He also calls me compadre, and yesterday he decided that I was his uncle, and called me Tio Bryce for the rest of the day. Whenever we go out, I let him ride on my shoulders, and on buses and boats he always asks to sit in my lap. I wrestle with him a lot, and the family joke is that I didn´t need to join a gym (oh yeah I joined a gym) because I can just use him as my weights. I´ve also rediscovered my passion for playing hide-and-go-seek and tag. Oh, and if you need more proof of how adorable this kid is: the first week I got here he realized I had my room to myself (he and Arlene share a room, and Lizette often sleeps their too, so he´s used to sleeping with people in the room) and so he gave me his stuffed Buzz Lightyear, one of his favorite toys, so that I wouldn´t have to sleep alone. This kid is off the chain.

I believe I haven´t told many people this yet for some reason, but as of two weeks ago we have a German volunteer living here as well. Jessica is 19 and is here after living in Quito for a month to do work with a childrens organization as well as one for women...I don´t really know, anytime I hear something about women celebrating their womenness I zone out... However, I haven´t really written anything about her because she and I don´t have that much interaction. She´s not very social with this family, she´s either on the computer or upstairs with her door shut. We´ve tried to get her to hang out with us and stuff, but she´s more comfortable I guess with staying alone upstairs...i dunno...germans are weird...

We also have a maid who is here every weekday until the afternoons. This is a part of Ecuadorian culture that I´m not entirely sure how to deal with. Her name is Marilu and she is definitely expected to do whatever the family asks. This includes making the beds, even though I make it myself every morning, doing the laundry, cooking lunch every day (amazing cook, amazing food), even cleaning the rooms. However, the family interacts with her very similarly to the way they interact with each other, with maybe a little more formality from the parents, but it´s not a condescending relationship. Marilu has a family of her own, and sometimes after school her two daughters come to the house to play with Alexandre. Overall, Marilu is very nice, but somewhat subservient. And did I mention she can cook hella good?

Another extended family member is a guy who lives a couple blocks down and who went to school with the youngest daughter of the family, Evelyn, but who has been a close family friend for most of their lives, in fact, Carmen calls him the son she´s never had. I think his name is Jorge Luis or something like that, but everyone calls him "Flaco". With K209 and my boys back home, and then the dudemen in Quito, I was feeling a little surrounded by estrogen in comparison. However, Flaco is definitely very cool, and has become my closest guy friend here at this moment. Also very funny and very laid back, he´s a graphic designer and also draws comic books, and he´s decided that I´m going to start playing soccer with him and his friends every Sunday that I´m not travelling.

Finally, we have the final members of the family, the dogs. There are two outside dogs: "la negra" and "madonna", some sort of hounds who serve as guard dogs and bark like crazy whenever anyone comes near the front gate. They took a couple days to warm up, but now freak out with excitement when I get dropped off after work, which is nice in proving that I am now a part of this family. There´s also a cocker spaniel who lives inside named sam, who is not nearly as crazy as mugzy, but does occasionally play tug of war with a stuffed animal, and I´ve been able to lift him off the ground while he holds it in his jaws...just like mugzy. He also has warmed up to me very quickly, to the point where Arlene and I now have competitions to see who he comes over to when we both call him...

This is my Machala family, easily the best thing about Machala that I´ve experienced, and that in no way is a negative reflection about the city. I am very lucky to be placed here, and am expecting to keep in touch with this family well after I leave. In the next entry I´ll talk a little more about the teaching, my classes, and some of the things I´ve done here already in Machala.

(That was my closing paragraph)

More Photos!

www.photobucket.com/brycechadwick

Rainforest, and the last day in Quito

Guayaquil day 2

Sorry for the delay...

Katherine and I woke up late that next morning and hung out in the room until we got word from Dan and Melea that they had arrived in the city. Dan and Melea both teach in Guaranda, and their´s is a university that caters very intentively to them, providing them with their every need...for example...each of them was bought a cell phone, a laptop (that´s right, a laptop), and a private car was driven to Quito to take them to Guaranda so they didn´t have to take the bus. So I was only slightly surprised when they told us that they had a university-paid private driver for the next two days that had driven them over to Guaya. We promptly took advantage of this luxury by...telling him he could go and not seeing him again until the next day...

We began the day by walking over to the Malecon, stopping at a pretty sweet cathedral on the way, seeing all the catholic stuff...blah blah blah...and then going to get LUNCH! We ate at this seafood place where I had crab and shrimp ceviche which was pretty good. Ceviche is a typical dish here where they use fish and lemon juice in this soupy mixture and somehow, don´t ask me I ´m not a cook I´m an english professor, the lemon juice "cooks" the fish...weird...but good.

Our tour of the city then continued with us walking back to the Malecon and seeing the Southern half, which we had not yet seen, walking through the non touristy center of the town, where the legit markets and stuff were, and then heading back to the Iguana infested park...On our way, however, we had an experience that was for many reasons memorable, not the least of which is because it shows that, no matter how diverse the world is, there are certain things that are the same everywhere you go.

While walking past sellers shouting at us to buy their pluma gear (that´s right, not puma, pluma) and fruit, which is apparently not at all an odd combination to have at an ecuadorian store, we noticed that we were behind a pair of women, one of whom had been very richly blessed by our Lord in the hindquarters region. Suffice it to say...the sellers promptly forgot about us, and it was fascinating to see the wave of reactions that were caused by this one woman walking down the street. And, before you get all anti-chauvanistic on me...this was a woman who was making it painfully (gloriously?...HA, joke...kind of) obvious that she had been blessed, and knew about this blessing, and didn´t want to slap God in the face by hiding said blessing. Anyways, her passing created a moment of community among every man that had witnessed this event, regardless of status, nationality, occupation, or age. We got, and my friends (not me, as stated in the previous entry, I am a gentleman through and through, and the entire time I was just wishing that I could get to know her beautiful...personality) exchanged, looks of shared amazement and "did you see THAT???" from teenagers to grandfathers alike...and for a beautiful moment, we were not gringos and ecuadorian citizens....but all together men...glorying in God´s creation...

Haha, I can only picture Mom squirming while reading this...thinking of the many relatives that may also be following this event and judging her parental skills...(of course if you´ve met my father you´ll realize that in terms of instilling any sense of propriety and/or appropriate humor my mother has been up against some serious odds...) So for her sake I´ll point out that clearly I am not a chauvanistic pig who is solely focused on the physical aspects of women...if I were I would never have noticed the reactions from the rest of the crowd... But mom, even YOU would have stared had you been there with us...that I promise.

So back to decent conversation...

We headed to the iguana park, where the reptiles had all climbed their trees to begin sleeping, and then we headed off to Las Peñas, a historic neighborhood where all the houses were painted with pretty pastel colors (see, more evidence against the bryce-is-a-pig argument...I appreciate art). At the top of a 500 step climb (each step was numbered), there was a tower from which you could see the whole city and the river, as well as the lights from the cities across the river. The view was absolutley amazing, and we stayed up there for at least 20 minutes, enjoying the strong breeze and soaking in the fact that we were experiencing something we´d remember for the rest of our lives. We finished the night by eating dinner at one of the local restaurants, and heading to a bar that had live traditional music. There we saw a 60 year old man sweettalk what had to be a prostitute, I enjoyed a short conversation with Morgan who called me from back home (it´s amazing how much my value of phone calls from back home has increased), and Dan attempted to prove his masculinity by ordering a pisco sour, only to be brought what looked like a mint smoothie...

The next morning was relatively uneventful, we ate breakfast, saw the iguana park again (because lets face it, it´s a park full of IGUANAS), went through another not touristy marketplace, and caught the minivan home. All in all, a great trip, good people, good experiences, and shared masculinity with a great view....JOKE

And before I forget, since I haven´t talked to you, Congrats to Hieu on getting into so many med schools, Ash I hope your interview went well, Joe and David I´m sorry about the Sox, Drew...screw you, you´re not reading this..., and Krissy i´m completely jealous that you were in Salamanca this past weekend...

And as a combined note-to-self and preview for the next entry, be prepared to read about: my students, my host sisters, my host sister´s birthday party, my host sister´s field trip, the new addition to our family here, and.......buzz lightyear

I did not, in fact, see Reik in concert...

But I was right next to the tent where they were going to play a few hours later!

But before we get to that...hello to any of the extended Dunn clan who may be reading this after Mom spread the word at Quinn´s wedding! And congratulations to the bride and groom, best wishes from Ecuador!

I have now successfully completed over a week of teaching English at the University of Machala, and no one has said I can´t come back, so clearly I´m fooling someone into thinking I know what I´m doing. Actually, classes have gone pretty well, and apart from one half of my conversation class I like the majority of my students...and some of them even laugh at my jokes!

The first week was only a four day week, because October 9th is the anniversary of Guayaquil´s declaring its independence from Spain, which thereby started the war for Independence. And, in amazingly Ecuadorian fashion, and even though the 9th was a Thursday, the government switched the holiday this year to Friday, so everyone could get a three day weekend. I love this country.

The original plan was to go up to Guayaquil with my host sister Arlene and Katherine, and then go up to Salinas on Saturday. However, what I´ve learned so far in this country that plans are only reliable 10 minutes before they are supposed to take place. The day before we were scheduled to leave, Arlene told me that she would not be able to go. However, since Katherine is a trooper, we decided that we would only slightly modify our plans, and go to Guayaquil for two days, which was probably a better idea anyways. And, since we laugh in the face of danger and are not scarred by the bus incident whatsoever...we took a private minivan. This mode of transportation is what we will be taking from now on...because I am able to put my iPod (I bought a new one, don´t ever buy electronics if you´re in Ecuador...it´s one hell of a hassle) in my ears and fall asleep without fear of street vendors trying to sell me tantalizing street meat in my sleep or worse...

We reached Guayaquil and, with a little help from our guidebook, we found a decent hostel not too far from the downtown area. Decent meaning no fear of theft...the mattress was like sleeping on a slab of rock. At each hostel that we checked out it took a little explaining that we didn´t actually want a matrimonial room, but that we were two single gringos who wanted separate beds. As you all know, I am a gentleman who has the utmost respect for women and their personal space, and I made sure to get us a room where Katherine could feel comfortable and safe. (By the way Mr. and Mrs. Hamby, Katherine told me that you might be reading this blog every once in a while, nice to meet you and I hope that reading this blog won´t cause you as much terror as Jon´s might have...)

We then met up with Craig in El Parque Centenario, where he had just had a conversation with a man who told him very openly after introducing himself that he came to the park in order to search for men to have sex with...Craig said he also used hand motions or gestures...I´m not really sure. (I believe Craig politely declined...) Craig was my housemate in Quito and one of the volunteers stationed in Guayaquil; he also happens to be one of the people I get along with the best here. We would later be joined on Saturday by Melea and Dan from Guaranda, with whom I also get along really well (no hanging prepositions...look who´s learning their own language...) so needless to say, along with Katherine, this was a very good group.

Katherine, Craig, and I started our tour of Guayaquil with the Malecon, one of the things that the city is most known for. I say our tour because Craig had not yet been to the majority of the places we visited, his experience was mainly around his area of Guaya, which was far from the touristy section that we were exploring. The Malecon is basically a long boardwalk right on the edge of the river, and it´s pretty amazing. Beautiful arquitecture, playground equipment, a section of painters and artists doing their work right on the water, and hundreds of people strolling from one end to the other. We then went to the Simon Bolivar park. There is a statue and/or park dedicated to Simon Bolivar in every city in Ecuador, due to his leadership during the independence movements of half of the South American countries. What made this park unique was the presence of hundreds of iguanas within the park´s fences. Apparently when they were expanding the city, there were so many iguanas in this one area that the city developers decided to leave it as a park and build out from there. Having never seen an iguana in the wild before (although I guess you can´t really consider the downtown of Guayaquil "the wild") it was quite the sight. And these Iguanas were basically tame, you were able to touch them, they ran from grassy section to grassy section, and basically were unphased by the masses of people taking pictures and poking them.

After walking around other areas of the city, we decided to go see the fair in Duran, a city 15 minutes away. I have never been to a county fair before, but Katherine said they´re all pretty much the same...what this one lacked was animals and rides, but it did have booths, shows, liters of beer for a dollar and fifty cents (haHA suckers still paying 9 bucks for a bottle at sports games back home), a soccer juggling performance that was pretty impressive, and a concert featuring old men dancing to reggaeton which was equally impressive if not moreso. However, the concert tickets for Reik were 40 dollars a pop, and since I´m a volunteer, I couldn´t justify paying that much money...plus the other two didn´t really want to go as much as I did. So instead we went back to Guaya and had a couple drinks at a great bar on the Malecon, again, right on the river, which was a beautiful view. Then Katherine and I said goodbye to Craig and went back to our room and watched Bad Boys 2 in Spanish until we fell asleep.

This is one long entry...and I´m tired....I´ll finish day 2 later....

Photos!

I´ve created a Photobucket site that I´ve uploaded 77 pictures to, with many more to come...Check it out!

http://photobucket.com/brycechadwick

I know, I´m loving my creativity when it comes to my websites...

HELL YEAH WAKE

SEEEEEEEEEE YA clemson

NOT the type of post you were looking for...

I apologize for my immaturity...

skins310: or we could do it this way
skins310: THAT´S WHAT SHE SAID
MrDukie31: On aim?
MrDukie31: You´re having im sex?
MrDukie31: is that above or below phone sex?
MrDukie31: because you can send pictures, but you have to type

Ladies and gentlemen, david marin...

This entry was written by an offical english professor....

But before we get into that...I´m going to finally finish this damn rainforest entry.

Where were we....oh right...heaven...

So we wake up the next morning, eat a nice breakfast (all the food that we had at this place was straight up legit...big portions, great ahi, amazing flavor. The only possible negative is that it may or may not have caused the majority of our group some serious stomach issues and or had a parasite in it...but I feel fine so I loved every minute of it), and we then head out on another hike. This was a little less exhausting and shorter than our hike with enrique, and it still had some pretty cool things to offer. Cordaro at this point was hacking up lungs and therefore having difficulty breathing, so he decided, wisely, to go into town to get some more asthma stuff instead of coming with us on a hike. This meant that the hike consisted of myself and seven girls, not a bad thing, but my manly solitude was made obvious when our tour guide made crowns out of palm leaves, but refused to make one for me...I was unaware that they grew such gender-specific plants in the jungle and am only slightly bitter still... Throughout the entire hike, there were occasional areas where we needed to walk sideways through really thin stretches, or at some points even walk on cave walls, and near the very end we needed to climb up this cave by pressing our backs against one wall, our feet against the other, and manuevering ourselves up about 20 feet that way. I realize that was an absolutely horrible way to describe it and i´ve probably confused more than explained, but whatever, it was cool. To finish our trek in the jungle we squeezed through a fissure in this one slab of cave rock that was probably no wider than a foot, and to top this all off the roof of the cave, only a few feet above us, was covered in bats...bats that would occasionally drop off and fly frantically past us, barely over our heads. It´s a damn good thing I´m not as claustrophobic as I thought I was.

So after another greal meal back at the resort, we then went down to the river to swim. The whole experience was incredibly relaxing...well, once you finished the 10 minute walk down a cliff to get to the river and then swam past the current that felt like it was dragging you to the Pacific Ocean it was...To make it even cooler, after we had been swimming a while it began to rain, doing so seemingly from a cloudless sky, and the mix of the rain and the bright sunshine that persisted served to emphasise the uniqueness of the experience we were all having; it´s something that will be locked in my memory for years to come.

STOP and print that hauntingly poetic sentence out RIGHT NOW, that shit was BALLA....

Oh yeah, Alex (our tour guide) also began to balance spherical rocks on other spherical rocks on the beach....I´m talking rocks the size and shape of your head balanced on other rocks the same size and shape. The jungle has some crazy magic.

Dinner followed, then more cards, including that crazy awesome Russian game that Natasha taught me back home and Irene, who also happens to be Russian, and doesn´t know Natasha at all, taught us all again. Apparently there is only one card game in Russia, and all Russians are told to spread it to all their American friends...at least its a good game. I forget what it´s called, but it´s a Russian word, and I feel like I´m never going to remember it, so I´m now trying to give it an English name. I´m thinking that since we played only it and Capitalism on this trip, it would be really cool if I could think of some english word that was somehow related...Hmmm...a word for a Russian game that was somehow related to Capitalism...I´m sure I´ll come up with something.

Too soon...?

The next day started as all others did: breathtaking view outside our cabin, great breakfast, and a little time of relaxation. Then, we rode standing up in the backs of two trucks to a village of indigenous people. We learned about their native teas and chicha, a type of paste made from yucca and possibly banana, I don´t really remember, but we also got to try both. We then played soccer for a little bit in the middle of the village, and then headed back...again, standing up in the backs of the trucks. I think I´m going to buy a truck when I get home just so I can ride in the back of it standing up. After the village we went down to the river, tied some inner tubes together, and went tubing for about an hour. The water at one point turned freezing cold and our wonderful tour guide Alex found it oh so very funny to drench us in some of the coldest water I´ve ever experienced. Then we ate dinner, played cards, and went to bed.

And that was it. The next day we got up, went back to Tena and got on a bus back to Quito.
The only eventful things on the trip home were that some kid threw up on the floor next to me and (unrelated) I lost my cell phone...again...If I buy three cell phones a month for the rest of my time here I´m going to need to get a second job...

So then I hung around Quito for a little bit, hung out with Alex the tour guide who came to Quito for a few days, had a fun time figuring how to get back to Machala without getting assaulted, flew to Guayaquil and then took a bus to Machala, only to have my family yell at me for taking yet another really dangerous bus company...I never learn.

Currently, I´m in Machala, having finished three days of teaching, living with my host family, and settling into and defining parts of what will be my life for the next 10 months or so...but don´t worry, it only seems long if you think about it.

I sense a "typical day in Machala" post coming soon....

GO WAKE BEAT CLEMSON

Ecuador: no rules...just rice...

And God said...let the Redskins travel into the hellhole that is Veteren´s stadium, and let them fall behind early, and then let them begin their comeback to victory, and let clinton portis run almost 150 yards over the best ranked rush defense, and let chris cooley gain over a hundred receiving yards, and let Randel El throw a touchdown, and let the Redskins go 4-1 for the first five games and send Philly to what may become another 8-8 season...

And it was done....and it was good.

I´m beginning to seriously question whether my proximity to my favorite football teams is actually a bad thing...as whenever I go out of the country, my teams do exceptionally well...

Anyways, back to the rainforest.

So on day 3 of our trip, we wake up for breakfast, and then put on our galoshes and start what our guide says will be a 3-4 hour hike into the jungle. During this hike, we hear more stories about different types of plants, wade through streams and rivers, and, oh yeah, we climb over a couple waterfalls...that´s right, climbing giant waterfalls using only a rope, and getting hella soaked in the process. The ridiculous part is that we ran into another hiking group, whose guide climbed up the hardest waterfall in shorts and flipflops. This hike was one of the longest I´ve ever been on, and I´m pretty sure we ended up completing it in more like 5 hours. Halfway through it, after CLIMBING THE WATERFALLS, we came upon another one that fell into a pool, and there we were able to shower, relax for a little bit, and take what is the single-most badass picture of me in existence (I SWEAR pictures are coming soon....for now you´re just going to have to trust me...this picture will make you gasp in awe), before climbing straight up the side of a mountain. At some point in our trek, Enrique, our guide, decides to take his own path instead of the path that most tours take. And by "path", I mean "where the hell is he taking us I think we´re going to die in the jungle"...seriously, apparently in the Amazon there is no level ground...we were either going straight up or straight down for well over an hour and a half. And Enrique, like the good guide/shaman that he is, was constantly farther away than the majority of our group could see. However, at one point he waited for us to catch up and grabbed a vine that was hanging down from a tree and swung out a good twenty feet over a hill that dropped another good 100 feet...and then allowed all of us to do it as well...pretty sweet. Finally, nearing the end of our hike, he got very serious, showed us some pawprints, said that there had been a panther that had passed by the night before, and then told us that we all needed to hurry up because it was very likely that it would be coming back in a couple hours to hunt. Ha....fun times in the amazon....

After our hike was over, we ate a meal consisting of an entire fried fish, head and all, and then relaxed in the swinging-cloth-like-beds-that-rhyme-with-shamrocks for an hour before saying goodbye to Enrique and heading back to our taxis. At this point I was a little bummed because I felt that nothing could compare to the absolutely relaxing atmosphere that the first camp had had.

BOY was I wrong...

We made the drive to Shangrila, and on our way there our taxi driver said that it had one of the most beautiful views he´d ever seen. So I began to get a little more excited about this place. When we arrived, we had another small walk down this hill to get to our place for the next 3 nights, and upon turning a corner, we were greeted with the sight of a massive resort-style lodge. This place was beautiful. It was on the side of a mountain, so it had a massive drop down to the Napo River below, and looking out from our cabins were miles and miles of rainforest, trees as far as the eyes could see, and mountains in the distance. I am not exaggerating by saying it was probably the most beautiful landscape I´ve ever seen. AND, more importantly, the resort had a BAR!!!! Since we had gotten there right before dinner, we ate, went to the bar to play capitalism and kings, and then went to bed.

Next part of the story coming soon...I need to prepare for my first day of class, wish me luck...my vacation is over...

The rainforest has made me its wench

Weird title, I know. No real explanation for it...other than the fact that I can now draw the most complicated and complex connect-the-dots picture on my body using half the mosquito bites that I got while there...I´ve put a strong effort into winning the "malaria lottery"...

But, before we get into that.....
HAIL TO THE REDSKINS
HAIL VICTORY
BRAVES ON THE WARPATH
FIGHT FOR OLD DC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If there is anything that can make me happier than a 5-day trip to the rainforest, it´s definitely hearing that the redskins beat the cowboys...not even joking, when I read the ESPN recap online after getting back I almost cried tears of sweet sweet joy. DAMN I love that team.

Ok, so to things people actually care about....

YES, I went to the rainforest last thursday, and YES it was the best trip I´ve ever taken in my life. Wednesday night we all had our last dinner and celebration of the end of orientation/Amy´s birthday, which was a hell of a lot of fun. Smoking stogies with the dudemen for some good old fashioned male bonding, cuban food for dinner with the whole group, and then turning the restaurant into a salsa club when the live band started playing, it was a great way to end our time together in Quito, marred only by the fact that it was our last time ever together...like that...

So then I went to bed. And I woke up. And instead of travelling like so many others to my host city because they had class on monday, I went to the bus terminal and bought a ticket to Tena Ecuador. And the ridiculousness started almost immediately. We ate some lunch before getting on the bus, and I chose a quarter of a chicken and french fries. When I got it, I didn´t know how to begin, mainly because I was not served with any silverware. Upon further research, however, I found what appeared to be transparent plastic Mickey Mouse gloves. And, after eating with my Disney gloves on, I´ve discovered another tradition that must be brought back to the states. It is the most masculine way I´ve ever eaten anything...outside the CCC apple crisp face-shoving. Ripping into the meat, breaking the bones with your bare hands, tearing the skin and shoving giant chunks of poultry into your gullet...amazing...and any vegetarians reading this, I apologize for making you vomit, but it´s really the only way to eat the flesh of animals. And if I have to begin this tradition by wearing winter gloves to the dinner table, so be it...

That was a gigantic paragraph to describe one meal we had at a fast-food place even before leaving Quito...wow...continuing on.

The bus ride was relatively uneventful, consisting of reading, listening to other people´s ipods (remember, mine was stolen in my badass adventure...), and listening to the thousands of vendors that came onto the bus selling everything from chocolate to empanadas. When we finally arrived, we, seven girls and two guys (thank you cordaro!), checked into our hotel in Tena and spent the night playing capitalism and kings. I think half of our group knows how to play capitalism now, and it´s annoying now that people have gotten the hang of it and actually try to threaten my iron-fisted rule...

The next day we woke up for breakfast, and then tried on boots. Then we all got into two cars and headed out to our first place. An hour after travelling through the jungle, with some amazing views, we reached our destination...or so I thought. Actually, our destination was a 10 minute walk on a tight path through the jungle from the houses we stopped at, but once we arrived to our ACTUAL destination, I stopped thinking about how exhausted I was (note to self...I REALLY need to join a gym, FAST). Our first site was a grouping of over 10 cabins, a couple houses, and a larger open-aired building with a kitchen and an upstairs filled with hammocks. And better than all that, there was a hammok on each of the cabin´s porches. Based purely on this trip, I have decided to buy a hammuck for the rest of my time in Machala, as well as one for whatever place I decide to call my home when I come back to the states. I´ve also decided to learn how to spell hamok.

We were at this place for two days, and it was absolutely beautiful. There were a couple dogs running around, a goose, and it was right on the river. As soon as we got there, we had a little time to relax, and then we went on an hour long walk to this natural pool. It was right at the base of some rapids, and then it dropped down to the river below, so there was a decently strong current in half of the pool. There were two cool things about this pool, apart from the fact that it was beautiful and nature-like and all that. First, there was a rock about 10-12 feet up that you could jump off into the pool. This was freaking awesome, made even so by the fact that the girls in our group are pretty much hardcore, and a good number of them jumped off, even Brittney, who is absolutely terrified of heights, which was impossible to tell as it only took her thirty minutes of debating on the rock before she jumped in and subsequently landed on her face. Like I said, hardcore. The second sweet thing about this pool is that one of our tour guides showed us how to ride the rapids like a water slide. Awesome.

You´d think that this would be a pretty full day right? Well, you´re an idiot, and completely wrong. We walked back a little ways and got tubes that we had carried earlier and took them down to the river. Once there, we formed two makeshift rafts and then rafted down the rest of the river. Somehow I was the only one forced to help row...apparently my Viking heritage shows through especially well here in Ecuador, and I will take full credit that my raft made it successfully the whole way down the smooth, tranquil, peaceful, calm, relaxing, lazy river without anyone falling off. And no, I did not use a thesaurus for that last sentence.

To further your feelings of self-doubt and worthlessness for thinking the day was over after the pool, I will tell you that we finished all this before lunch. BAM...I usually don´t wake UP for lunch, but, when in the jungle, if you don´t stay active before lunch, you BECOME lunch...for the jaguars. It´s a cruel world, deal with it.

So after lunch, we took a nature walk. The most badass nature walk ever. During this nature walk, we learned that our guide, Enrique, was a shoe-in candidate for shaman of the year, as he told us about the plant that had a nine-foot spirit that caused people to go crazy if they doubted it´s power, crushed a plant on our arms that looked like a flower but was actually a hedgehog in disguise (not really, it just had hidden spikes), and fed us the cacao bean, which tastes nothing like chocolate when it´s growing in the wild. We then ended the night by playing capitalism, spoons, listening to Enrique sing his quichua songs about giant women stealing spiders, and doing magic tricks. Then we went to bed.

Which I am about NOT to do. I´m successfully in Machala, and my host sisters are ecua-napping me and taking me to a party that is apparently supposed to last until seven in the morning...so I will be finishing this story hopefully tomorrow...

Good night, and HELL YEAH REDSKINS, BEAT THE EAGLES TOMORROW!!!!!!!