More on the jungle

So here is a bit more information about the jungle trip: The first day we took the bus for about six hours and then pulled up to a river and stopped. We put all of our stuff in long, moter powered canoe type boats. The boats took us down the river until we got to Casa Suizo (http://www.casadelsuizo.com/site/eng/hotel.asp). Check out the website, it has amazing photos of the hotel and the activities. We checked into our rooms which had little decks with hammocks. It was really humid and our first step was to slather our skin with sun block and mosquito repellant. I can´t tell you how much I appreciate the feeling of clean, dry skin after the jungle. We met up for lunch by the pool, then had a chance to jump in the water and swim a little bit before we went on our first little excursion. We visited a butterfly farm, where they have tons of butterflies, some of which are endangered while others are exported. The brown butterfly with the eye-like wings was about as big as my hand. Others were bright breen and blue, gorgeous! That night we went into town, which is a tiny little place with a little karaoke bar and a little dance club. As a point of reference, a liter of coke costs the same as almost a liter of beer, one dollar. There was a lot of karaoke that night. I got up around 6:30 and read by the pool until breakfast at 7:30 on Friday. At 9, we put on our swimming suits, and our long pants and mud boots and trekked into the jungle. We took the moterized boats up river and entered the jungle from there. We went on about a three hour or so hike where we got to see all sorts of plants. The dripping tree secretes dragon blood, which is used to treat gastritis and ulcers. When you rub it for a minute or less, it becoems a cream which can be used to treat acne, among other things. There was also a tree that ants use to live in and to lay eggs. When you break open the bark, you see all the ants. They were about the size of sugar ants and when you bite them, they taste like lemon! We didn´t get to swing on jungle vines, because you never know when they will break, but we did get to swing through the jungle on a rope to simulate the experience. It was amazing!!! In the group photo you can see my quen of the jungle hat, which had already begun to unravel. I will try to get my hands on one of the pictures with the lips I had, too. Eventually, we walked back to the river and tied together pieces of balsa wood with a rope to form a raft. We threw our jungle clothes into the moter boats and went down the river on our rafts. Along the way, I did a cannonball off the raft and into the river, which was a new experience. Once we got back we had lunch and in the afternoon we went into town to see how the indiginous families create the crafts that they do. We drank Chicha, which is an alcohol they make from yucca. We also tried shooting the darts out of the super long wooden blow guns. The people there use a little bit of venom on the tips of the darts to immobilize animals they hunt. We also watched a woman create a bowl out of clay. There are only four women left in the village with that skill. They take about 6 days to craft one bowl and pain them using natural rocks as dye and use paintbrushes made from the hair of the littlest children. All of the designs are made up by the women and take a long time working with great precision to finish. Saturday was our last full day in the jungle and we started it off with breakfast at 7:30 and left for Amazoonico at 9. That is a wildlife refuge. They take in animals and rehabilitate them so that they can return to the wild. Some animals can never go back, like a monkey who rips off other monkey´s arms, and birds with clipped wings from people who owned them. After touring the facility, we hopped onto inner tubes and floated down the river to an area that had a rope swing. I couldn´t possibly say no to the opportunity to swing off a rock ledge into a river in the amazon rainforest, could I? You can´t let being afraid of heights stand in your way when you know you may never be able to go back! If was a great rush and the water was amazing. After lunch, our incredibly worn out group went on another hike to see the plantations. We saw where they grow yucca and other things. Then we saw where families pan for gold. They spend all day in the water and find tiny bits of gold in each bowl they pan through. It is hard work, in the water, bent over all day. The families, adults as well as children, become sick a lot because of the work. That night was the 4th of July, so naturally, we sang Karaoke again. I say we in the generic way, because I didn´t sing, I just provided moral support. In the morning, we ate breakfast and headed back home on the boats, then on the bus. It was an amazing experience, but I noticed things like the hotel in comparison to the town that it was in. I wish I could put up all the pictures of the town and the people there, but there is no way I could with the internet connections here. It would take forever.

Anyway, I have my last weekend coming up, then I had back the following weekend. It is going ot be hard to leave the wonderful people here. My family is truly wonderful, I couldn´t have asked for a better family. I will really miss them a lot when I go. I will miss a lot of things, but my experience here has realy given me a new appreciation for the simple things at home. Here I get up around 6:30 or 7, eat breakfast at 7:30, then walk to the bus station. It is about 15 minutes, and is downhill so it isn´t bad in the morning. Then I take the bus for 10 or 15 minutes to my school. I wear my backpack on my front and keep nothing in my pockets on the bus. The bus is the most likely place to get pickpocketed because it is always such a crush of people. We have already had 7 or 8 people robbed or pickpocketed. One guy was pickpocketed on the bus and within one hour, they had charged $3,700 to his accounts (rule #1 do not carry anything of value on the bus!). Another guy was held up at knifepoint at night (rule #2 don´t take the bus at night, or walk alone!). A few other people have had purses or cell phones taken right out of their hands, and one girl was hugged by a woman (she thought it was someone in her family or someone she had been introduced to but didn´t remember)and her cell phone was stolen. I have been pretty careful and don´t plan on being pickpocketed. If it is after about 6pm, I take a taxi back to my house because I am not willing to do the 15 minute walk to the house from the bus station. anyway, back to taking the bus to school. I have class from 8:30 until 12, then either go home for lunch at 2 then do homework and sometimes go out in the evenings, or I go to my service learning for 3 hours. I work at ABEI, which is a foundation/hospital that takes care of adults/the elderly who have incurable conditions or diseases. They have everything from muscular distrophy and diabetes (unable to talk, or use arms/legs, and is missing one leg) to terminal cancer, strokes, and hallucinations. We arrive just before the patients are served lunch, and we help feed the people who cannot feed themselves. It is really hard to see people especially when they have no family to come and visit them. I wish I could do more, but after lunch, most of the patients go to their rooms and go to bed. The majority cannot talk, and those who can are so quiet that it is hard to understand them. But there are a few really interesting people there. It is really a challenge, emotionally, becuse I hate to see anyone having to live a life in a place when they sit, eat, sit, and sleep. We tried to play cards with them, to talk, to draw, to do anything, but the conditions they have make it almost impossible to do much. We make gauze bandages for a large chunk of the time, and find ourselves idle far more that we would like to be. Eventually, I finish and head back to the bus. After I get to the end station, it is back to my house with a 15 minute walk up the hill in the sun. I don´t ever go a day without geting some kind of comment/interaction from the opposite sex. Sometimes it is a whistle, or an ´´hola bonita´´ and other times is is a full up and down look or a kiss in the air. We were told to just ignore it if it happens, so that is what I do. Acutally, on our trip to the beach, another girl and I were walking back to the hotel and over the course of 10 minutes of walking back, we broke 40 whistles, comments, etc. It is definitely a different world as far as that is concerned.... I am certainly not used to that. And one of the women in ABEI told me that I was the most beautiful girl in the whole world. That was nice, at least, but the rest of the comments and sounds I could definitely do without. In the afternoons and evenings I usually do my homework and sometimes go out with the group for dinner and dancing. I am a fan of dancing merengue, but I definitely stick to partners within the group. The Ecuadorian boys are a little too forward and so I stick to the ones who I know and I know I don´t have to worry about dancing with. So that is a bit of my daily life here. More than enough writing for one day, so I am calling it a night.