Saturday, November 17, 2007

Temblores y terremotos

So, things in Riobamba continue to be interesting. I´ve been working at the hospital every day and this past week they let me take vital signs of the new patients, which involves sticking thermometers under their armpits, taking their pulse and blood pressure, and weighing them and measuring their height. I don´t really know how my project is going to become a 25-page paper in the next two weeks, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see. I haven't really had much time for anything else so I'm staying really busy.

More exciting news, there was an earthquake on Thursday night. I was flossing my teeth and noticed that the blinds on my window were moving and felt that the ground was shaking a little. I assumed it was the wind, until I looked into my closet and saw that all of the hangers were shaking. I thought I was just really tired until my family knocked on my door and told me that it was an earthquake. They were all slightly worried and told me to stand under the door frame but it was pretty much over by then. Some people slept in the streets that night but I wasn't too worried about it, though I didn't sleep particularly well. The next morning we found out that it was a 6.7, which I guess is pretty high. There isn't too much damage here. I guess there are just a bunch of earthquakes going on throughout Latin America and other places.

And, I found out why I'm so congested all of the time. There's a volcano near here, Tungurahua, which is in a state of continuous eruption. When it's not cloudy, I can see the smoke coming out of the top of it. Every morning there is ash on my sister's car. It's good to know that I'm breathing in this lovely material.

I'm also continuing to eat interesting food. Today it was hornado, a pig roasted on a spit until it's crunchy and brown, and delicious. A few days ago it was some kind of animal intestine which really didn't taste very great but I managed to eat all of it anyway. We'll see what they serve me next week.

Hope everyone is doing well. Chao Chao!

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Limpiando

So, I'm still here in Riobamba. I'm living with a great family-I have four older sisters, three of whom live at home, a baby cousin, and a mom and a dad. I'm working (more like observing and helping wherever I can) at Hospital Andino Alternativo de Chimborazo, the first hospital in Ecuador that combines 'química' medicine with alternative and Andean medicines. Although the three sections are separate, I think they overlap, which is kind of cool. I'm only working in the Andean section and the yachaks are cool. I pretty much just watch limpias all day which is super awkward but interesting. It's nothing like the medicine we're all used to in the U.S. I hope to study how this medicine is regulated and how the government of Ecuador approaches it. Apparently my advisor for this project has been very active in fighting for the right to practice indigenous medicine here in Ecuador.

Well, that's pretty much all that has been going on. I don't have too much easy access to the internet so I probably won't be updating for a while. Hope everyone is doing well.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Catching up...

This entry is massive so maybe try to pace yourself.

Continuing from before, the next morning in Quito I needed clean clothes pretty badly because everything from the Oriente was damp and smelled somewhat gross so I took my laundry to a place where they wash it for you. Then I went and walked around the Mariscal a bit, ate at the Magic Bean, bought some flowers for my homestay family, and called my family from a 5-cent a minute place. Then I picked up my laundry and my new host family picked me up from the Hotel Alston and we headed to their place.
My new family included a mom, a dad, and two brothers, one older (27) and one younger (19). We lived in a somewhat run down house in a run down neighborhood, but I felt more comfortable in their house at first than in the fancier one of my other family. It was cluttered and had tons of knick-knacks lying around, so it felt a little more like home than Los Chillos did. I really liked my host dad-we talked a lot about politics, literature, movies, economics, the environment, and so many other things. He was definitely an intellectual and he works at one of the universities in Quito as a professor of something physics and engineering related. He’s also very sarcastic and funny which is a nice change. We also got the newspaper everyday, so that was a nice change-I wasn’t only hearing about entertainment news. The only unfortunate thing is that he often traveled, at least once a week, to Guayaquil so he wasn’t around all of the time. My younger brother was friendly and funny but a little immature. My older brother also traveled to Guayaquil a lot for work so I didn’t see him too much. The family has a dog named Bop that they don’t walk very much-only on the weekends. He’s a really beautiful golden retriever and I feel so sorry for him, locked up in his pen pretty much all of the time, only taking walks once a week.
We lived in the barrio de Las Casas which was pretty close to the school, compared with many of the other students. It only took me twenty minutes to walk to the school and thirty minutes to walk back, uphill the whole way. I found my way around really well, using the Trole mainly to get into the Mariscal where there were the cheapest phone calls and internet. I also went into Old Town quite a few times.
The first day with my homestay family we all had tickets for the soccer game so I headed up north to the stadium to watch Liga play Olmedo, which was a good experience though no one scored any goals and we were sitting in the sedate section. I hope I get to more games. We started classes on Monday. Our normal days involved a lecture from 9 to 10:30 and then a half-hour break, and then another lecture until 1:00. On Monday I headed down to the Dirección Nacional de Migración to get my censo card, which took about an hour and a half. The filing system they use is pretty interesting-they just throw the folders we give them into the back and keep them there in piles. I don’t know how they’re going to find me if they want to kick me out of the country. I also went down to Parque la Carolina and walked around a little with Anna and Rachel. We sat around in this café for a while and read some of our articles for class.
On Tuesday, Guillermo Robalino, who is somehow associated with the government, came and talked about development. Then we had three members of the Plazeros movement come and talk about what they’re doing in Quito. After class, I headed over to Old Town with some friends and we went to the Presidential Palace for a tour. It was pretty nice-we got to see all of the gifts that Correa has received from other heads of state (the gift from the US was pretty lame though). We also saw this pretty cool mosaic of the discovery of the Amazon by Guayasamin that we had read about. I wrote in Quichua in the guest book, but I doubt the president will read it. Anyway, it was only something really rudimentary telling him my name and where I was from. I forgot my camera though so I didn’t take any pictures.
Tuesday, Faba gave a few lectures. Wednesday, Kintto Lucas, a journalist and author, came to talk about Plan Colombia, which was pretty interesting. Then Catherine Chala talked about the Afroecuatoriano movement. Friday was Dia de la Raza (Columbus Day) and while most of the country had the day off, we still had class. Faba just debriefed us on the coastal excursion. I went home after class thinking that my family was taking me to Esmeraldas (coastal city where they have an apartment) for the weekend, but we didn’t really end up doing much. On Saturday we watched part of the movie version of Hamlet with Mel Gibson but the power went out partway through so we finished it, after watching the beginning again, the next day. I thought it was pretty bad but my dad seemed to really like it. Saturday night my family took me into Old Town to see the churches at night, which were pretty. They’re all lit up nicely. My favorite was the Basilica, which was quite lovely at night, as during the day. We were stopped in traffic for a while because there was a military graduation ceremony at one of the churches that had the road partially blocked off. We were stopped right by a church where there was a wedding though and while we were there the couple came out and their guests were throwing rice at them.
Monday we had more classes. We had María Cuvi talk to us about feminism and Pablo de la Vega talk about migration, which was a really interesting talk. That night I watched A Beautiful Mind with my family. I missed part of the middle from it but I liked what I saw. On Tuesday some embassy workers came and talked about economics, politics, migration, Plan Colombia, and US-Ecuador relations. It was a very interesting talk. It did sound somewhat rehearsed, which was interesting and they dodged some of our questions. That night I did some work and packed for the trip to the coast.

On Wednesday we headed off o the coast. Security in the airport wasn’t bad at all-they didn’t really check anything, not even to see if we all had id. We headed off to Manta. I had a window seat, which was nice, though the flight was only about half an hour long. We ate when we got to Manta and I had shrimp apanado, which was actually very good. It was shrimp that was breaded and then fried. Then we all got on a bus and headed off to our village homestay. We were split into groups of two or three in which we would live in separate villages for five days. I went to Agua Blanca with Anna where we were living with the Ventura family. Our time there was pretty interesting. First of although we took a motorized rickshaw to get to the village which was about five km away from the coast. We broke into the town because the driver of the “touk-touk” (I’m still not sure what exactly the name of it is) didn’t stop and pay the fee to enter the town. Our host father met us in the center of town and we walked about fifteen minutes to get to his compound. We had a cabin and a bathroom (with a running toilet and hose for a shower-luxurious for the coastal homestay) separate from the rest of the family. We also had mosquito nets, but they had holes all over them and since I was pretty paranoid about malaria, I used my duct tape to patch them up. It probably didn’t matter because there was no water and because I didn’t see any mosquitoes, but I still really didn’t want to get malaria. We sat down to have dinner and talk, mainly with Isidro but a little with his wife, Ángela. We also played with their granddaughter, Melinda, who was super cute. During the next few days we ate a lot of plantains, in many different forms (cooked, fried into patacones which are amazing, more ways I can’t remember) and had leche pura, unpasteurized milk which I was a little sketched out by, but I was fine.
On our first full day we worked on the farm, which involved tilling the ground, digging holes, and planting banana trees, yucca, and peanuts. We also picked up and unpeeled the skin from some seeds we later used to make jewelry. We also picked papayas and lemons. On the way back to the house for lunch we met a Spaniard and a gringa who were both anthropologists. The Spaniard didn’t really have a great relationship with the community, partially probably because he often comes and goes between Agua Blanca and Spain. The woman went to college in Oberlin and graduated last year and now she’s working with the school in Agua Blanca and an organic farm in another community. Isidro kept saying things about how he thought the Spaniard was crazy, but yet he was really friendly with him. I wonder if he’s just trying to butter him up in order to sound good in his research. After lunch we made tagua and jaboncillo seed jewelry, so I now have two necklaces to remind me of the wonderful time I spent on the coast. There were lots of animals wandering around-dogs, pigs, goats, chickens, turkeys. There was also this poor little goat tied up to a tree who was continuously bleeting and I felt really sorry for him, but we later found out that he was tied up for two months as punishment for eating something he shouldn’t have eaten, though I don’t know if this type of punishment will work. That night, something very interesting happened. Isidro told us that he would do a limpia with us, which I had seen and heard of before, but this way was a little different. It involved us passing a lemon covered in alcohol over ourselves and then having plants rubbed on us until our skin (on my face and arms particularly) was green.
The next day we went to the museum in town and then walked around the archaeological site that pretty much involved the whole town. There were lots of ruins of houses and temples, as well as ceramics, tools, and asientos de poder just sitting everywhere. They only have some of the areas roped off-the rest are left free for the animals, and humans, to wander around in. We crossed into one of the sites to go see a ceibo tree, this giant green thing that just seems to rise up on the horizon. They’re everywhere here. And while I’m talking landscape, everything here is so incredibly dry. There is one sulphuric lake where there is some water, but there is a very dry riverbed from which the farmers in the past had watered their crops, but now the government has declared a state of water emergency for the town. Some of the landscapes on the coast appeared to me like how I would picture Africa. That night after dinner we found a ceibo where we did the second limpia. This time though we used an egg covered in alcohol to “remove the bad energy.” Then at the end we buried the egg. At least this time I wasn’t green. That night we watched this very dawn out movie about the life of Ecuadorian singer Julio Jaramillo. We learned all about how he was quite a womanizer and didn’t die early into his life. We kept waiting for him to just drop, like when there was a car accident, but it didn’t happen so we left before the end.
The next day, Anna and I really wanted to go to the beach, more specifically Los Frailes beach, which was once one of National Geographic’s top beaches in the world. It was quite nice. However, we walked most of the way there, which involved a four to five mile hike out of the community to the main road and then a two mile walk through the national park just to reach the main beach. Our host father insisted on accompanying us, which we didn’t really want, but we left him soon after getting to the beach when we met some of our companeros there. The ocean was at the perfect temperature and it was really nice to go swimming. We took a “touk-touk” back to Agua Blanca and Anna and I both collapsed because we were exhausted by everything. That night, we watched this strange music video like thing with these two really weird singers and dancing girls in the background. I don’t really know what it was but we couldn’t stand watching too much of it.
The next morning was our last. I got up early to write in my work journal and then we had breakfast. After eating we headed out for a walk and just wandered around through the village. When we got back we offered to help the women with lunch which finally got us into the kitchen. My job was to cut up the shrimp and then marinate them in soy sauce and after that to make the orange juice by squeezing the oranges. It was a really good meal. It was also nice to finally talk to the women without Isisdro’s presence because he had gone off to a meeting that morning. However, right after lunch we had another appointment with the rickshaw contraption and we rode it into Puerto Lopez where we caught a bus to Alandaluz, this really nice ecologically-friendly hostal. Anna and I were the first ones there, which was cool because we got the best room with a real toilet, hot water, and a fireplace (and mosquito nets with no holes). I went and walked along the beach for a bit. We later had a debriefing session and ate dinner, where we had salad!! I’m always excited when we can eat raw vegetables without worrying about getting sick. It was quite nice.
The next day, we had most of the day off. In the morning I went to the only bamboo church in Ecuador with some friends. For lunch we ate ceviche, mine with octopus, fish, and shrimp, and this really great dish of vegetables in a peanut sauce served in a bamboo stalk. I still don’t understand if ceviche is made with raw fish or not, but it was pretty good. Later I sat by the ocean and did some work and then I went swimming again. There was a really strong current that pulled you out, but it was again really nice to swim. We just all hung out that night playing games like Scrabble, Monopoly, and Quarenta.
The next day we left on a bus for Guyaquil, the largest city, population-wise, in Ecuador. When we got to the city, I just explored for a bit, mainly on the Malecón 2000, this really nice boardwalk with restaurants, shops, a museum, and such. We ended up eating dinner there and then we walked up Las Penas, this hill-neighborhood just off the end of the boardwalk. We went up to the very top where there was this lighthouse you could climb into for a great view of Guayaquil, but I forgot my camera so I took mental pictures. I really liked Guayaquil-it was really clean, well taken care of (at least the section we were in) and I really wish we had more time to explore it. However, we just had the next day.
I got up early to eat breakfast with the first group, but the waitress didn’t serve us first and we didn’t end up having enough time to explore more. After breakfast we went to Parque Histórico Guayaquil, which was a mix between a zoo and a colonial village. I really think we could have spent our morning doing something a bit more interesting. However, after lunch we went to the Museo Antropológico y de Arte Contemporáneo, which was a surprisingly cool museum. I usually don’t enjoy contemporary art but this museum had some really cool art. Unfortunately I don’t remember the names of the art or the artists. The anthropological part was pretty cool too. They even had some artifacts from Agua Blanca. After passing some on the street by the Malecón, we got on the bus and headed to the airport to catch our flight back to Quito. I had the window seat again and it was also another short lfight-only about 45 minutes.

Overall, I enjoyed the coast. Living with the family was really interesting. I really learned what subsistence living was like. It is a very different way of life than I am used to. I also learned more about how I’m going to conduct my research and all over the next month in Riobamba, but I still don’t know what to expect from that. Anyway, moving along.

The next day as a free day. In the morning I had Quichua class. Derek and I headed off to the map place, some military institute where they let you print off whatever map of Ecuador you need. Then I went into the Mariscal to type a paper and print it as well as use the internet. However, I went with my fellow Quichua classmates to the Plaza Grande because our teacher said we could attend a class with the bureaucrats and policemen (but not the president-he was giving a prize to some Argentine singer), but we never met up. So I went back to the Mariscal until later that night.
On Friday, we talked about the coastal excursion in class and that night I went to Anna’s house where we watched French Kiss and made pancakes with chocolate and banana. Then on Saturday I worked on my paper at my house and watched some movies and on Sunday I worked on the paper most of the day in the Mariscal with a lot of my fellow classmates who also needed to finish it. I wrote about migration, development, and women and how development causes more women to have to migrate.
On Monday we talked about the ISP and I had my last Quichua class. On Tuesday Luis Macas, the president of CONAIE (the largest organized indigenous organization in Ecuador) talked about the indigenous movement. He was pretty cool. The next day we talked more about ISP and the final. Then on Thursday we had our last class and our final exam. We received the rest of our ISP stuff (the money, mainly) and prepared to say good-bye for the month. That night a bunch of us went into the Mariscal to hang out. Amanda and I went to Papayanet for quite a while and watched four episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, which was kind of a waste of time, I know, but it was so nice to see something familiar after taking a long exam. My brain was tired so it was a nice break.
On Friday, I went into the Mariscal again to plan my trip to Peru with Anna. Later I met up with Amanda and we went to the Basilica, which was really cool. We climbed all the way to the top of the towers and the belfry, up some pretty sketchy steps into some pretty sketchy places. There’s a liability waiting to happen there. It was really nice though with some great views of the city. Later I went with her family to another church, La Compania, which is my favorite on the inside. A lot of the inside is covered in gold and it’s really beautiful. We joined up with a tour halfway through and found that it was a group of Germans. Their leader didn’t know a lot of Spanish but they knew English so Amanda and I translated for them from Spanish into English, which was kind of cool. I’ve been getting so many compliments on my English lately that I’m beginning to think that I really am improving. It started raining quite heavily (which isn’t abnormal in Quito, it normally rains every day) so they took me home and I stayed there for the rest of the night, mainly packing. I also watched The Sound of Music, which here is known as something like the Rebel Novice (La Novicia Rebelde).
The next day, I woke up and made sure everything was where it needed to be packed. I left the house around 10 to go drop some of my stuff off at the Hotel Alston and then head to the bus terminal in Old Town. I had gone down there earlier in the week, which was quite an overwhelming experience because there are so many companies and so many times. I didn’t know what company I was looking for and I went to buy a ticket and they told me I could only buy one on the day of the ride, so I waited until Saturday. I got there around 10:30 and bought a ticket for 10:45. I was expecting a direct ride to Riobamba but the bus kept picking up people from random places along the street. Also, we made side stops in Saquisilí, Ambato, and some other places. Some woman who was standing by my row passed out about an hour and a half into the ride which was slightly freaky, but she was okay. I was sitting by the window, which was really nice because there were these really great views the whole way. I saw Cotopaxi and Chimborazo, the volcano that overlooks Riobamba as well as all of the mountains in between. A few other things I saw was a man running with two sheep in his arms, both large and small farms with one undergoing a broccoli harvest, some evergreen trees that reminded me of home, and some llamas. Also, the corn is made into stouks, much like in Amish country in Ohio, which was kind of cool. I finally got into Riobamba at 3:30, a little earlier than I had planned, but I got to my hotel, which is really cute. It’s in this family’s home and I have a cute little room with a stained-glass doorway and window. I sat around for a little and then went off in search of some food because I was pretty hungry. I walked around the Saturday market a little, walked down the main street, sat in a park for a little while, and then headed back to my hotel. For dinner I had some Sprite, a vanilla snack pack, some Pringles, and some pan. Not a lot of the shops were open later on a Saturday but I managed to find enough for a few days. That night I watched Deadliest Catch in Spanish (which was known as “Pesca Mortal 3”) as well as some movie about soccer.
On Sunday, I watched Persuasion in the morning, from which I finally learned what a fortnight was-the Spanish translation is two weeks. I always wondered what it meant. I also watched some show on HBO about the royal family, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Scrubs, and What Not to Wear. I haven’t seen a lot of tv in a while so it’s been kind of nice to just have it on as background noise. For lunch I had some yogurt, a croissant, some chocolate, and tampico, an orange juice type of drink. I walked around a bit in the afternoon to some parks, one with a great view and one for kids right by the soccer stadium. There was a soccer game going on, but I didn’t have a ticket or know how the process worked so I just walked around outside. I went on the internet for a while and headed back to my hotel because I could see some rain coming in.

Today was pretty interesting. I started working at the Hospital Andino Alternativo de Chimborazo in the Andean medicine center. It's pretty interesting and very different than the medicine I'm used to. I wasn't quite expecting them to include me in seeing patients right away but about five minutes after being introduced to Tayta Antonio, I went to watch a limpia, which was slightly different than the one I experienced first-hand in Agua Blanca. I also watched the partera take care of a woman whose placenta was too low and the huesera take care of a woman's knees. Tomorrow they said there will be more patients so things could get even more interesting. They people I'm working with are all really nice and they include me in a lot, although they speak Quichwa a lot and since I barely know any I don't really understand anything they're saying. Oh well. And tomorrow I'll be moving out of the hotel into a family which should be nice. I met my fourth host mom today at the hospital (she works there) and she was really nice and helpful. And now I'm in a place with internet after walking home from the hospital, which took about an hour. I didn't think it was that far and I kept thinking I wanted to take a taxi but I also wanted to explore, so now I've seen even more of Riobamba, and I still like it a lot here. Although it just started raining and I'm still a block or two from the hotel. Oh well.

So now I’m finally caught up.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Finally

Well, I have a moment to breathe, but just for today. Tomorrow I start my research project and I have no idea what I'm doing but hopefully I will figure it out quickly. First, let me update.

The party with all of the families was okay. We ate this really weird-tasting turkey. It will not make up for the fact that I'm missing Thanksgiving this year. Oh well. A mariachi band came and played for us which was pretty cool and we all got together and danced, but you could tell the Ecuadorians thought our dancing was quite strange. The next day we had a huge crab dinner for my departure on Sunday. It was slightly awkward because my host sister had her friends over and they were all coupled up, but my younger cousin was hanging out with me so it was ok. They bought about 72 crabs for $45, I think that's a good deal. I don't really want to eat crab again after eating so much that night, but it was pretty good. Another funny thing: it was a dry weekend becuase of the elections, but that day I saw my host mom drink for the first time. I guess she wasn't worried about being arrested.
The next day was my last day in Los Chillos. I went to vote with my host mom which was a pretty interesting experience. We went into Quito to vote and my mom was voting at a school. I was allowed to go in with her and it was complete chaos inside. There were so many people and so many stations. I think the stations were divided by regions and then by sex, which I thought was kind of interesting. The ballot was huge and it was in color, which I thought was pretty cool. The process was really strange thought-you could vote for up to 38 people, but if you voted for more than one person you only gave them a fraction of a vote. On the way out my mom got her voting card laminated, I'm assuming becuase by law you have to vote. We later visited my host sister who was working the polls back in the valley and it was quite a family affair there. There were games, food, music, and other stuff going on around the polling places and everyone showed up for the party. It was pretty interesting.
We stopped at Supermaxi for some supplies and I noticed for the first time how expensive the clothing is there. I was expecting Wal-Mart prices, but I was pretty off. The shirts are around $20 and the shoes $50. The weird thing is that most people in Ecuador don't just have this type of money lying around to buy expensive clothing. I guess Supermaxi is just for the elite. We ate lunch in San Luis and then were off for me to catch the bus.
I returned to Quito and a bunch of us went DVD shopping, which was quite difficult becuase we couldn't choose just one movie to watch. We ended up watching "The Holiday" which is okay. Then the next day we were off to the Oriente, or the real rainforest.

Overall, the trip to the Oriente was amazing. We left on Monday and got a flat tire pretty much right away, but after that everything went fine. We first stopped at some hot springs in Papallacta which were pretty nice. The air was quite chilly though becuase we were pretty high up there. I think the highest place along the road to the Oriente was close to 4100 feet above sea level. We continued on the main road used by Colombian drug runners (although I don't think we saw any). Later on we stopped in Tena for a final ice cream. The weather was so different already. Then we made it to Alinhaui where we were spending the night. We split into two groups again and I was in the group leaving the next morning. My group went to the San Pedro community to work at their school. First we taught some classes in math and then we participated in a minga, a communal work project, during which we pained the kids school. Then we went for a short hike around the farm surrounding the school, during which I ate pure cacao (it's white, pulpy, and sticky) and came back to play soccer. Then we headed down the river in canoes to Arajuno Jungle Lodge, which was very cool. It's on a cliff overlooking the Rio Arajuno, which is safe to swim in so swim we did. The current was really strong though so I got wiped out just crossing the river. However, we had the rest of the day off so that wasn't too bad. There were hammocks everywhere and a swing that went out over the river that was pretty cool. The girls were all staying in tents under a shelter and right behind us were capybaras. I have been waiting quite a few years to see these so I was pretty excited to be sleeping twenty feet away from one. There were so many insects there, but not too many mosquitoes, which I guess is good on the malaria front. I soaked myself in bug spray though so I didn't really have any bugbites. There were also lots of leaf-cutting ants making this one path. Apparently they work 24-7, so there was a very visible path from one place to the next. It's amazing that something so small can make something as visible as a path.
The next day we made some pottery, coil method (I prefer wheel-I'm pretty bad at coil) and we walked around Tom's property with Miguel, who has been by far the most energetic guide. Then we went down the river again in a canoe, although it was a short ride becuase the bus was meeting us at a bridge. We rode back to Alinahui where we had a free afternoon, so I walked around with Andrea and Anna. We walked the driveway to the main road, stopping to walk into the forest a bit to this huge tree. We had our boots on so it was pretty easy to get to the tree. We saw some boys playing with tires in the road and we stopped to try to talk to them a little. We also saw the sign for the new airport they are trying to build in Tena, which is slightly controversial becuase it has something to do with Plan Colombia. Then we went back and had dinner. After supper was a shamanic talk which was pretty interesting. Then later that night we walked around the grounds for a night-walk. We saw lots of spiders in their huge 3-D webs, these huge conga ants that will really hurt you if they bite, and moths. On the way back we walked in a human chain in complete darkness, although there were a few lightning bugs to light the way. It was pretty cool.
The next day was busy. My group went on a three-hour hike thorugh the rainforest. Our guide Lennon-aka Lenny-made a swing for us which was pretty cool. We also got to eat lemon ants which I had been waiting to do. They really did taste like lemon. I even went back for seconds. We found more gigantic trees. Then we had solo exercises in the forest. I was all by myself in one spot for half an hour to think about things. It was pretty cool to just observe my surroundings as completely as I could in the silence. I saw a conga ant walking along on a log so I decided to stand up the whole time. We then headed back for lunch and then began the long trip down the Rio Napo, the river that would eventually join the Amazon (hence the name Amazon Basin for the area we were staying in). It was a great, relaxing ride. We went to Amazoonico, an animal rehabilitation center (not a zoo). They had lots of different animals. The monkeys were just hanging out outside of cages and one decided to lay in the tree right above me. We saw birds, capybaras, ocelots, and turtles. One monkey came right up to us and tried to eat Megan's bracelet. Then we headed back down the river. We met up with the other group for the first time in a while back at Alinahui and we had a lecture by Alejandro Suarez from Jatun Sacha Biological Research Center (or something like that) about rainforest conservation. After dinner, during which Akiko found a tarantula and I predicted we would find one in our room, we went to the Laboratorio, the bar that all of the scientists at the center frequent. It was pretty fun. Some Ecuadorian asked me to dance a few times which was pretty awkward but slightly flattering. Back at our room, Anna noticed that there was a giant tarantula right above my bed. It was probably about as big as my hand. I freaked out a bit and we went to get Lenny to take it out somehow. I don't think he believed us that it was a tarantula until he saw it. Then he told us that it was a poisonous one and proceeded to try to get it out of the room. The spider had climbed up the wall by then so Lenny climbed up to the celing to scare it out, which he did. He would have killed it for us, but we were in a humane mood and told him to just let it go off into the jungle. However, it's nest was still in the room so I was slightly worried that it would come back. I am surprised that I slept pretty soundly that night.
The next day we said good-bye to the Oriente. We left pretty early to make our way back over the mountains. We got back to Quito that evening and I went out with Anna and Rachel for Anna's birthday. We went to Seseribo, a great salsa club. It was pretty fun. We were sitting with a good view of the dance floor and it was great just watching the experts dance. Some buys sitting near us asked me to dance which was fun. I can't dance salsa very well but the second guy was trying to teach me through a few songs. We were all wiped out so we headed back to the hotel pretty early.

Overall, the Oreinte was really cool. I would love to spend more time there. The weather wasn't all that bad either. It didn't rain too much and there weren't really too many mosquitoes. I only got about two bugbites because I used quite a lot of bugspray. The flora and fauna in the area is also incredible. It's green pretty much where ever you look. The rivers winding through here are cool as well, except many of them are polluted from the oil companies drilling in the area.

I'll continue with the update, continuing on in Quito and the coast. Right now I'm in Riobamba for a month, all by myself, to study traditional medicine and the Ecuadorian public health system. Then I'll write a 35-page paper, head back to Quito for a week, hopefully make it to Machu Picchu, then home. Hope everything is going well for everyone. Chao!