Shits and Swearing in the Jungle

Two weeks ago i left my security town of Cayambe, and my mom Anita, and everything i knew to go on a technical trip with 8 other natural resource volunteers around the interworkings of humidity and mosquitos! Before i left i gave my family an easter basket since i left them on easter and they absolutely loved it! I went out and bought a basket and put in it a bunch of stuff my mom sent me from the US including a blanket, a bunny, cadbury eggs, hot chocolate, and isntant coffee. I added some movies and popcorn and i think i entered their family immediately. Oh i also made them my moms famous baked ziti before i left as well. I think they enjoyed it but i added way too much cheese (and for me too much cheese i thought was impossible, i regularly eat a mound of mozzarella as a mid afternoon snack but that was until i tried some of my baked ziti) Nonetheless they ate it and had seconds. I was also able to watch the holy week parade which i was there for about an hour and saw the original design for the KKK outfit which was stolen from this parade by some white americans a bunch of years ago. Quite difficult to look at with feelings of easter in mind but made for some awesome pictures. A man had an eplieptic seizure at my feet, we hurdled my 9 year old sister dresssed in a very cute pink outfit over our fence about 10 feet high. But my sister is about 4 feet tall and her mom is like 5 feet so you do the math and pictured how that worked out... i sat back and watched in fits of laughter, this was all because we forgot out keys opps! I then followed the first dramitacally hot ecuadorian that i have seen around a church and down a couple blocks and then took a ride on a large motorized worm through the streets of the town with my mom and sister. All in all a very eventful good friday!

Another feat that i accomplished was hiking ( it will be my first and last time) It took about 3 hours to summit what i thought was going to be ahill but ended up being a mountain. Pretty much did it on my own becasue i was soooo slow and dieing slowly, stopped half way up bymyself and had a nutter butter snack break (best idea ever, also biggest fat kid move i have done in a while) made it to the top not wanting to move any more and ate two sandwhiches only to descend by sliding on my but a good 1000 feet cause it was just soo much easier that way and at the bottom deciding that hiking really is just not for me but nutter butters are.

I then left for my technical trip. and on the second day when we learned about watershed management i witnessed three 8 year old boys crucify (without the nails and blood) one of their friends on a cross they constructed out of two 3by4s held together by wire in the middle of a park. Possibly one of the most hilarious events i have ever witnessed. He was too heavy to actually lift him in the upright standing position on the cross so they kept dropping him and using very innovative ways to make the structure more secure. Little boys all over the world do the craziest things. Oh and about this time i got my first bought of diarrhea. Started slow and manageable until i entered the jungle...

Yeah we went to a "dry jungle" where it rains every day half of the year, rains so much it is requitred to wear big rubber boots to wade through the 6 inches of mud laying everywhere. The humidity was about 100% and i quickly realized that living in a dessert has huge perks and also impressed myself with the amount of sweat one person can produce when not moving. At various moments i would stop and just shake my head for about a minute (like a dog would his body) to splash the sweat off of my face. I officially got my entire fabric of shorts soaked without going into any body of water, meaning the previous "look like i peed my pants" actually connected on the sides all the way to the seems at the bottom. I know i know impressive. BUT i got to see gigantic turantulas, wild howler and onther type of monkey in the trees, a cute white fuzzy caterpillar that if you touch it that entire body part goes numb for about an hour and tones of gigantic trees you could probably sleep in if it was not for the aforementioned dangers. Oh and i saw a huge gigantic one of those famous turtles and fed it bananas! In this jungle we stayed at a volunteer house with no electricty and a dry toilet. which is an outhouse without the water or the nice smell.. and in about a year after some good use the human shit turns into really good compost. who would have thought.  Sounds like a great idea, you get rid of water pollution and put nutirents in your soil for free. yeah very cool until you consider a statement i made before... Diarrhea, all of a sudden not soo cool audibly shitting into a trench on an uncleaned toilet by candlelight. Hence the title shitting and swearing in the jungle. But hey i just made the decomposition that much faster for some awesome organic compost.

After the jungle we spent 5 days at a beach resort in the esmeraldas which i am now certain has the most beautiful people in ecudor, like abercrombi modle ready. I swam in the ocean everyday, but bit and sweated some more. got to use water running toilets for my digestion problems and ate shirmp for about 3 meals a day. really good fresh shirmp. We returned to meet up with everyone for our final week this past friday and take our final tests before coming a volunteer. I think i passed but my number twos have now become fully number 1s just coming out of the other hole... if you can believe it, kinda of amusing cause at all times it just sounds like i am peeing to outsiders but little do they know, i am not! They want me to give a stool sample which will also be quite humerous cause i have not seen anything solid come back out of me in a while but i am going to give it a go. Luckly i feel fine so no worries there but i will let you all know if i got some sort of cool worm.
This thursday is the official swearing in day, when i get to be an official Peace Corps volunteer and my 2 years commence! Pretty pumped to take my oath and see what other crazy adventures lay ahead for me :)