Photos and videos of the Jungle

Videos:

Arriving at our camp, in the middle of the jungle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTS-EF-4nIw

There's a frog in our toilet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd20-iEbqhg

I ate a bug, then Kristen ate a bug. Here's Kristen... eating that bug:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIvTx4iWK6M

A monkey!  In the house!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0agwQiD-ZY

A parakeet and a pocket monkey are the best of friends, (they were cleaning each other just before this)... this should be a children's TV program teaching them the value of friendship, or something:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d82TrPmmuAQ

This parakeet HATES McDonalds. This should be the style of all political attack ads:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyyn4Jr26V4

Photos:

Fishing for piranahs. I caught a catfish.

A really weird caterpillar.

Our canoe with our group.

Where our camp was. To the west is Quito and the pacific ocean, to the north is Colombia, to the east is Peru, to the south is more jungle. 

After the trip in the jungle, we headed down south to the town of Cuenca. An update on Cuenca later!


Thanks for reading... er, watching!

La Selva... The Jungle

Five days in the Jungle... It's too much to tell without it turning into a thesis (hows that coming, Pete?)

But the highlights are:

- The jungle is incredibly loud. The animals, especially at night, are going crazy. It's noisier than Times Square, hands down. It's noisier than in 2007 when DeRosa stepped up to the plate with two men on, one out, in Game 3 of the Cubs' short playoff run. (He hit into a double play. Sigh.)

- The jungle is incredibly dense. It sounds obvious, and I guess it is, but up close and personal it's unbelievable. When walking through the jungle, I couldn't see more than 15 feet side to side because of all the trees, plants, roots, vines, bushes, leaves... it's endless, and at the same time, overwhelmingly close.

- Animals are cool! We saw a bunch of different types of monkeys, including the Howler Monkeys, who make a terrifying sound. They sound like a pack of lions, but like, zombie lions. Crazy. We saw a tarantula. Friggin' gigantic. Heavens to Betsy. The thing was the size of my stretched hand (normal hand, not carnie small chubby hands). I could see it's eyes gleaming in the flashlight (we saw it on a night-hike, which made it all the more awesome/terrifying). I felt like it's pinsers were beckoning me. (Side note - there are certain scars that I think are sweet because of the story behind them - two good ones would be from a taratula, or a piranah. I don't have either, don't fret.) We saw four different types of ants - Lemon ants (who's bums taste like lemon, teehee), Leaf-cutter ants (who can be seen carrying pieces of leaves twenty times their size), Fire ants (who hurt like hell if they bite you. They protect the tree in which they live... it's like they have a deal with the tree), and the Bull ant (which is half the size of my thumb. oh em gee). We saw a wasp nest which was more interesting than usual as these wasps have an interesting self-defense mechanism (outside their stinger) - when they are in fear, say after our guide yelling really loudly at them, they all vibrate their torsos. The resulting phenomenon is that, all together, they sound like a marching army. It's the most bizarre thing.

- I and Kristen ate a beetle larvae! Delicious. The full grown beetle lays an egg or two eggs in a seed of a tree. The seed is about the size of an oval tennis ball. Then, using a machete (oh yeah) you hack it open, and inside is this little white larvae. When I bit it, it exploded in my mouth, quite a funny sensation. But it tasted really good! I found it tasted quite like coconut, whereas Kristen's only had a faint trace of coconut (damn larvae, jipped her). And then you swallow it. Very Survivor.

- We went fishing for piranahs! But I caught a catfish! Fail and success!

- We saw river dolphins!

- We were in the Cuyabena reserve, in the middle of nowhere. Well, the 'middle of nowhere' is NYC compared to this. This place is 17 hours by bus, bus and boat from Quito. It felt like we were the only humans there.

That's a quick run down - I'll post more with pictures and videos when I get around to uploading them!

Thanks for reading!

Check back in a week!

Hi!

I won't be updating the blog until the 27th March because I'm about to take a night bus to the Jungle.
The amazon Jungle.
We'll be in the Cuyabena Reserve until Friday night, back in Quito Saturday. I'll update about the Otavalo market, which we went to yesterday, and the Jungle. I'm very excited.

Thanks for reading!

End of our time in Quito...

Today is the last day that Kristen and I will be working and taking classes in Quito.
It's been really exciting, hard, very informative and definitely fulfilling. We were a lot of help to the two schools we worked for, and only wish that we could have worked longer.
On my last day, I painted the kids' faces. I have 7 colors with me, and a 4 paint brushes, but I gave half of the stuff to another worker so that we could do more kids. Kids are so pushy!! And don't get the concept of a line!  Oh my goodness! They would climb all over me, while I was painting another kid, saying 'Pintame, pintame' (paint me paint me). No pleases, no thank yous... oh man, I would hate Kid-Damien I think. A different kind of hate than the one for Kid-Rock, but still hate.
I only worked with yellow and blue, which is evident from the photos.
The school is a bit alternative compared to other schools in Quito, and Ecuador, apparently. They place a huge emphasis on washing hands and on meals. They have 3 meals in the morning - breakfast, fruit, lunch. And every two months they're weighed, so if there's an underweight kid, he/she gets an additional meal. The teachers meet every week to talk about the kids; who's doing well, who seems to not be happy, who might be being abused at home. There's a lot of community involvement with the school; to help prevent abuse, to help increase health and nutrition etc. They consider it one of the most vital parts of children's education, and they do a pretty good job.
So that's the work side of living in Quito.
Spanish wise, we're fluent.
JOKES! Estoy chistoso!
But we are getting a lot better. I slept-talked in Spanish for three nights in a row. First two nights, no big deal, just said 'Gracias' etc.
Third night.  Haha.
I, asleep, woke Kristen up by tapping her repeatedly on the head. Like a woodpecker. But a spanish woodpecker, because when she awoke I demanded 'Que pasa?' 'Que tal?' and 'Esta bien?'
Literally demanded.
I think I must have thought she was one of the kids at the school. But I don't tap the kids on the forehead.... so I don't know what exactly is going on there.

As promised, here are photos. Lots of photos.

These are both photos of the Carnaval parade in Guaranda.

The view of Quito from our hostel's roof

Guyasamin paintings - 'Age of Rage'

Guyasamin - 'Tenderness'

'Little Moo' - Street food

The concert at night in Guaranda

Their potent blue alcohol... in a tub. Just dip your cup in.

Us with the strong alcohol!

Part of the parade.

All the kids at my school in the lunch/meal room. All the adults had mini-chairs too.

On the left, Christina - she LOVED me (and she might have been my favorite... shhh!)

She liked playing with mud. That was one of the activities on offer. Play with mud.

Francesco. I think, sadly, he's had a really hard time at home.

A bunch of the kids!

She was SO CUTE. And quite pudgy. Haha.

Eating melon. No cutlery... it got everywhere. Everywhere.

The whole suburb didn't have running water starting today for some reason. So a truck goes around and fills up all the buckets you have. But they're not very specific with the guage, so water goes everwhere.

Christina with facepaint.

As you can tell, I only had blue and yellow to work with.

This is how Christina would get my trousers filthy during meals.

And here are links to videos!!

Walking up the street (for 6 minutes) in Guaranda during Carnaval. The whole town was like this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHOJ18jX3Vs

Kristen hoping from ONE HEMISPHERE TO THE OTHER. Boom, what's up. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qc_IqOywNM

The fruit and flower mural in Ambato - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUj1Qji2AGw

Riding back to Banos from the Devil's Waterfall in the back of a truck... with our bikes - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=913-u9LY5Q0

The worst job in the world - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMBrD2aosR0


What's next? Three weeks of traveling! Starting with Otavalo this weekend. Otavalo is home to one of the biggest markets in South America, full of crafts and clothes, and even an animal market. Will post when we're back.

Thanks for reading!

A few thoughts...

A bigger update (with pictures! and maybe... video...) will follow, but for now:

1) Why do children put bowls of soup on their heads and then look to you as if to say (or maybe actually say in spanish) 'this hurts, why would you let this happen?'

2) I have made some spanish speaking mistakes, and I have received a few blank looks. A couple of examples:

- Being shown a child's drawing, or seeing a child's new earing and saying 'Es muy cara!' thinking that means 'that's very pretty!' when in fact it mean's 'that's very face!' (I was thinking of 'es muy bonita' or 'guapa' or any number of other words).
- Telling the children that 'I juice this' = 'Jugo esto', when I want to say 'I play this' ('Juego esto').

A related story:

At the school they have these cards with pictures on them, like of a cow, or a horse etc. So I take advantage of those children's minds by making a game of it - whoever names the picture (correctly) and first, wins! (in spanish, 'you win' is 'ganas!').  It's going real well, I'm learning stuff left and right, but the kids just think they're playing a game! But I do know some words, like 'cow' - 'vaca', and 'fish' - 'pescado', and I think I know more words but I'm frequently wrong. The child held up a photo of a hammer and nails. Nails is(pronounced) 'clabo', but I thought this was keys (which is actually pronounced 'clabes' in ecuador). so the child sees the nails, yells 'clabo!' and I say 'No. Tu no ganas', to the greater than normal disappointment to the child.

Is it possible to un-teach things? I think I'm doing that.

3) The Bulls are the bomb and Derrick Rose is a hero.

4) If I'm any representative of Cubs' fans, we're already thinking about the 2012 season. The chance of the Cubs' winning the next three World Series' AND Soriano topping Barry Bond's walk record of 212 is HIGHER than Pena's batting average. I wish I had been a fly on the wall when Hendry said, out loud, 'This signing is a great idea'.

5) Thanks for reading! Hope you're well!

Waterfights, fruit, flowers and foam... Carnaval

The few days before Lent on this Catholic Continent are quite something to behold.  When I thought of Carneval (CarnAval in spanish) I thought about Rio, and colorful costumes, and Venetian masks... but I did not think of all out water war; 3-year-old ninos spraying foam in my face, two hundred year old women armed with water pistols; waterballoons being launched from the roof. No, I didn't think of that. Shame on me.

All countries celebrate Carnaval differently. In Ecuador, we'd read that the best places to experience the celebration was in the cities of Ambato and Guaranda, though those two cities have very different celebrations.

After spending 6 hours on the bus from Quito (a journey that should have taken 2.5 hours, but EVERYONE is leaving Quito for the holiday) we arrived in Ambato and went in search of a room. We finally found one (overpriced, very grotty) and headed out to explore the town.
Luckily(?) in Ambato there are laws against throwing water and flour at people. Instead, the town's celebration is called the 'Fruit and Flower' festival. They definitely live up to the name. In the main plaza there is a huge mural of Jesus, the Bible, the Holy Spirit... made out of flowers and fruit. The whole thing - oranges, mangos, mora, blue flowers, white flowers, (bread for some reason), dried beans. It was the bomb dot com. In that plaza there was also a stage on which a 20-person band came out and played music for the gathered crowd of two hundred odd.
The following day there was a huge parade with floats and dancers.  All the floats were flower or fruit themed and had beauty pageant contestants on them (a big thing during carnaval...). Before seeing the parade go past, Kristen and I decided to paint each other's faces to get in the spirit of things.  Kristen painted an Aztec-ish design, while I painted colorful changing leaves and cubist trees... Kristen's turned out much better. By the time we were finished painting, there was a crowd of eight to ten people, mostly kids, hoping to get their faces painted! We painted a couple, and the crowd grew when we told them that it was 'gratis', free. This went on for a few minutes until a lady came over and yelled at us - she was painting faces, but charging people! So she was telling us to go elsewhere. We had noticed them, but since we hadn't planned on painting other people we didn't think about it. Oops. But we packed up, watched the parade and then headed to Guaranda.

Guaranda is a town that is famous for only one thing - their celebration during Carnaval. Our bus pulls in and we see why - everyone, I mean EVERYONE, is soaking, covered in flour, covered in foam, painted, kind of drunk and having the best time in the world. Unfortunately we couldn't join the festivities immediately as we had our bags and needed to find a hotel. Not surprisingly, everywhere was full. We ended up having to spend $45 on a okay-ish room. Better than what some people had to do - the following morning we noticed that a lot of buses and coaches had housed people for the night.
We walked around the town and got squirted and had waterballoons thrown at us, but all in good fun. Kristen had more action beccause she's a very pretty girl - a popular target during the water-throwing celebration (I'll let you guess why).
In the evening, in the main plaza (the waterthrowing had stopped with nightfall) there was a huge concert. Over a thousand people were in the plaza. On the fringe of the crowd were dozens of stalls selling all kinds of food - meat skewers, beer, fried pigs skin and intestines (umm..), fried plantains... the works. It was the most awesome atmosphere.
The following morning we wandered around the town and found the traditional drink of that town for this festival - a blue licorice-flavored liquor that is more potent than it looks (but about as potent as it tastes!). We bought a 500ml bottle for $1.75. I drank about half over the course of the parade (about two hours) and ended up with quite the buzz. The store that sold us the liquor also let us taste other traditional drinks, including this spice-flavored milk, which was delicious.
The parade here was less formal than in Ambato, but the atmosphere was more pleasant. There were many dancers, floats and masked performers who filled the streets.
Since we couldn't afford another night at $45, we had to leave around 3pm for Quito on the bus. Relatively painlessly, we arrived back at our hostal around 10pm, having had a full weekend and an extra free day to rejuvinate before heading back to work.

Photos and videos to be posted soon about the festival - unfortunately I can't post many photos because there's a maximum GB allotment.

Thanks for reading!

Working, lentils and Espanol... Quito

I wake up at 5am every morning to write for an hour and a half before waking Kristen up (Buenas Dias! Tienes que levantarte!) and get ready for volunteering. We leave the hostel at 7.20am on the dot, we both get to our separate buses around 7.40am. My buses, luckily, takes about 20 minutes to get to the school where I work. Kristen's, unfortunately, takes about an hour. I'm working on a project called 'Vida y ninos' (life and kids), and Kristen's is 'Camp Hope'.  I play with young kids (2-5 years old) all day, make them wash their hands before eating (a BIG deal here) and basically tend to them whenever they cry (often). Kristen works at a school where they integrate disabled children and non-disabled children. She's hoping to be able to use some art therapy at some point during her time working there.
Then we get back to the hostel around 2pm, eat, go to our 2 hour spanish lesson, get back, chill, exercise for an hour, eat, read, go to bed.
It's great. We're having a great time here and I feel so lucky to be able to do this.

However, a couple of downsides.

Most importantly and devastatingly is that Kristen was hit by a motorcycle.  We were walking across a road, a bus stopped to let us past, the motorcycle behind it tried to zip through the gap between the bus and the side of the road, and it hit Kristen. Luckily, she was pretty much okay - cuts, and bruises, but nothing seems broken. She was very brave, especially in the face of an idiot motorcyclist who kept saying 'Esta bien?' She's feeling much much better now.

Downside number two - lentils suck. We bought lentils so that we could have protein without buying suspect meat. Lentils have a very strong flavor. That flavor is... nothing. Nada. Zip. We have tried all sorts of varieties of lentils and rice, including putting in have a bulb of garlic, four peppers and two pinches of oregano... it tasted like nothing with a bit of a kick. Fuck lentils. Seriously. Don't do it. It's so disappointing.

Downside number three - Cubs spring training starts, the Bulls lose to Toronto (what?) and blow a game in Atlanta (aww), and I realize that the word 'Jugo' means 'juice', not 'I play' as I had thought I was telling the kids this whole week.

More on the Cubs in a separate post.

Also, more on life in Quito in a serparate post. (Which do you think'll be posted first).

Become a follower! Hope you're all well!