Long and Long Overdue

So, in Word, this is ten pages long. But it makes up for two and a half months of neglecting my blog. I know it is long, but it really does have some good stuff in it. My suggestion: If you get bored part-way through, quit reading and read a little later. Here it is, read it all!!

Yup, I’m hiding my head. I haven’t written in over two months. I’ll admit, I was a mixture of both busy and lazy. All you college students and all your former college students know that the last of the semester is always the busiest, but that doesn’t really excuse two and a half months of writing. Honestly, I have been trying to spend as much time with the Idaho group as possible because they are so stinking cool. Now that the majority of them have left, I find myself with a bit more time, even as I am approaching the precipice of nearly a month of traveling.

So, the last time I wrote was October 20. I’m not really sure what all I said about my dad’s first visit here, so I will just say now that it was AMAZING. It was so great to see at least one member for my family, even if only for six days. He came during the break that we had here at PUCE and we completely wore each other out walking, I am sure, the entire city.

I rearranged my room just after dad left- probably a sign that I was trying to get my mind off of the goodbye. I don't really deal well with the anxiety at times. Bah, it was so nice to have something different. And yes, I will admit that I get more like my mother every day. My dad always used to joke about coming home to find the entire house rearranged furniture-wise because mom just got bored of the old arrangement. I agree. It keeps things new and fresh to rearrange. Plus, it forces a person to sweep and vacuum under things that otherwise would have remained the cap of a dust-bunny society for far too long. I feel like I reinvent myself in some new and creative way when I rearrange my furniture. Then cleaning is not just cleaning, it is a side job that comes with all this delightful creativity and reinvention.

I had a period back in October where I learned the news that one of the friends I loved most in the world was to be getting married in Guatemala. What was I to do? Stuck closer to her than I would have been had I been in the states, I don’t think I could have afforded the ticket. But I was prepared to. My awesome dad offered to loan me the money for the ticket, to be paid back once I was out of college and could manage the repayment. In fact, I had made my mind up to go to Guatemala and the day that I was getting ready to buy that ticket, I received an email that the wedding was postponed. I tell you, that was great timing, if nothing else.

Over the days before our second cycle of classes would start, I did some relaxing and completed things on my list in the city that had been on that list for far too long. I watched HIMYM with my favorite pair of not-brother Davids, went to Casa Sucre (a museum about the local liberator of Ecuador) and visited the city wax museum. Not that I am a wax artist in any way, shape or form- for that matter I am not an artist in general, except for the occasional furniture rearranging sessions… yes, art- but these wax sculptures kinda sucked. Oops, don’t mean to be mean, but yeah, when most people say that wax museums are supposed to freak you out because of how real the sculptures look, poorly-colored and poorly-airbrushed hunks of wax in the mildly-realistic shapes of humans is not really that impressive. But it was fun anyway. I learned all about the Jesuits and the really crappy treatment they were given here in the “un-prejudiced state of Ecuador.” By the way, they set up a good portion of the all-too numerous universities here in the city.

When classes began again, I had a 7AM class! Yep, that is right, 7AM. Honestly, back at UI I won’t take any course before at least 9:30 in the morning, but unlike Moscow, here I am a grandmother. Yes, that is right. In just a few short months I have birthed a child, who then also managed to birth her own child, making me a grandmother. I tell you, peeps, it is a medical miracle. But honestly, I would not have been able to survive this last cycle if I hadn’t gone to bed every night at 9:30-10:00. Boring? Maybe. But we get so exhausted here. Having to think in a foreign language all day, trying to make our way through the maze and madness that is public transport and attending up to eleven hours of classes in one day does tend to make one sleepy sooner than normal.

My teacher this second cycle was Rosa, a wonderful grandmother of a person who would over-enunciate her double-r’s and stick out her tongue funny when teaching us the costeñan’s manner of pronouncing the double-l’s, was ours for the full three hours of class every morning. I was completely surprised at first that we would be getting 18 credits transferred total for the two Spanish classes in one semester, but three hours a day and five days a week in the same classroom with the same teacher and the same classmates warrants at least that many well-earned credits. Not that I didn’t like the classroom, teacher, or classmates, I just am not one for routine after routine after routine.

My classmates were amazing, minus a couple who could get on one’s nerves fairly easy. Cait, from Keene State, came in nearly every day hung-over. I was continually impressed at her abilities to do so and keep up with her work. She never cut corners, but she received an A on everything. Chelsea and Ashley, from my team of Idaho, were in with me again and always were available to make faces at and cause trouble with. Breanna, from Oregon, was an amazing partner to contemplate anything with. 

I was able to put up a makeshift clothesline at La Opción de Vida, which improved our efficiency quite a bit. Since we only have one dryer and an interminable amount of clothes to wash, the clothesline was a necessity. And it certainly doesn’t help that the slightly stupid volunteers from Monday don’t really do their job with the laundry they get. Sorry to be harsh, but it is amazing how much clothing is left over from Mondays. I don’t even know these volunteers!

I put together a presentation for my class with the Resident Director only to find out that my presentation wouldn’t be for another five weeks. Not that I don’t like getting things done early, but I’m the person that waits until five minutes before class to print the final copy of an essay I finished a short coffee break before. So that was weird to have it done so early. Kinda nice too!

Friday night the 25th of October, was a party at our ‘little German friend’s’ house. When I say little, I mean six foot six inches in height. Marius had an apartment with some other foreign students and Idaho made our appearance in that delightful foreign crowd. Heck, we even enjoyed ourselves! We headed home at 3:30 in the morning to find out later that the U.S. Embassy had issued a warning to US citizens in Ecuador, as conditions had gotten worse. A man had been murdered in a dangerous part of town. Peligroso!

Before long, I started to realize how much I hated my Portuguese class. I will rant non-stop about the teacher if I get started, so just know that she was not my favorite teacher of all time. Quite the opposite.

Note: One of the best things in the whole world, I now know, is hot lemonade with honey in it. Oh good gravy, it was amazing.

The weekend of Halloween, the International Office here took us on a trip to the beach. The school here owns a place out on the beach of Atacames and usually it is used for faculty retreats and such, but the International Office reserved some rooms for us. Weirdly enough, a lot of people bailed on joining us. I don’t know what they were thinking because it was a trip that was totally paid for. Crazy.

So it was 7 Idaho people, 3 Keene Staters and 3 chaperons. We ate SO much good food and got to see the mangroves and swim in the waves and walk on the beach and play marimbas and on and on. We even went out every night to party in the bars a ways down the beach. The chaperons joined us! That was a fun weekend.

I think honestly that I have been sick at least four times while being here, and those were pretty sick sicknesses. I’d have to leave class and return home to my mummy sleeping bag so that I could warm my frozen body up. I have gone through so many rolls of toilet paper as Kleenexes that I feel I should pay my family for them. I slept in my sleeping bag for at least a month straight just to stash it in the closet in the morning because without the sub-zero mummy bag, I couldn’t sleep the full night due to cold. Yeah, the fifteen degree weather back in Idaho right now is rough, but going outside there one wears a full snowsuit and doesn’t stay out for long. Here, no houses have indoor heating and at 9200 feet, it gets pretty damn cold. The latest sickness was the worst, but I can tell about that later.

November 10 was two of Idaho people’s birthdays, so we celebrated by going to eat burgers at La Cueva (literally “the cave”), a tiny little restaurant/bar. There I had the VERY BEST burger of my life! Oh dear, I don’t know what they put in that thing, but I certainly enjoyed it. David and I HIMYMed it up more as the semester went on, but for weeks I was just focusing on getting as much homework done as possible as early as possible because I knew that I would have mounds of stuff to do as the semester drew closer to ending, so I was trying to delete the stress before it appeared. I didn’t always do so well, but I made it through. The boys and I would stay in the cafeteria at the school until they kicked us out at closing time. I was also going to Aerobics class three days a week, which felt great, but it also left me busier and totally dragged out.

I finished the book “Three Junes,” a recommendation I picked up while attending the book club meeting with my cousin Kristin, who lived in Portland at that time. Yeah, I had done nothing with the recommendation for a really long time, but at least I finally did it. And the book was great! Maybe a little dramatic for me, but I definitely enjoyed it anyway. I generally like to change up my reading every so often just to keep it interesting and lately it has been a really lucky thing! I have read a good amount of great books. Three Junes, Life of Pi, Native Tongue, etc.

Ah man, then during the class with our Resident Director one day, we had a visiting speaker of sorts and I really don’t want to get into it, because I will just get angry, but he was not much fun for me. He spoke certain words but acted completely different. All of us were so frustrated. I wanted so much to argue with him about some of the things that he said, but he wouldn’t hear it! And when he did, he would listen politely and then tell us we were wrong. He was talking about race and the way he spoke, white people didn’t know what pain was because only black people had ever really felt what real pain is. He said (and I quote nearly exactly), “White people are not spiritual. White people do not and cannot understand spiritual things.” When we tried to tell him that there simply were not many black people in Idaho, he told us of course there were, we were just ignoring them because we are white and that is what we do. We told him there were no black Baptist churches in our area and he said, “Yes, there are. Where there is one black man, there is a black Baptist church. You just aren’t looking.” Alright, any of you who have EVER been to Moscow, tell me, are there very many black people? As a university town, there is a higher percentage of people with black skin than in most of the rest of Idaho, but NO. Percentage- and number-wise, there are simply not very many black-skinned men and women. That is NOT a racist statement like he was supposing, that is a demographic FACT.

So yeah, that was our frustrating guest speaker. I seemed to be the one fighting his outrageous statements the hardest (huh, no surprise, I’m just about as stubborn as they come), but it was exciting to see Landon's and David's faces as they attempted to counter the more religious-based arguments. We thought he was really cool, but he just kept getting worse and worse and worse as the class went on. The man had been living in Ecuador for over thirty years and hadn’t been back to the states since he left, meaning that his era was the mid to late seventies, when the United States was still in a little turmoil over the Civil Rights movement. I am in no way saying that Americans are prejudice free. We are nowhere near perfect, but when this man who does not know the modern United States like we do attacks racism there but chooses to defend Ecuador, a country where black women are sexually harassed openly on the streets and black men are persistently passed by on the streets by the bus drivers, a country that has a significant population of Afro-Ecuadorians yet even the government refuses to put them in history books and the idea of MESTIZO- the mixing of indigenous people with the whiter Spaniards- does not ever include anyone of dark skin.

Sorry, I must continue to rant now that I have started. When this man said that Ecuadorians were prejudiced against in the states (which we all agreed with), he went on to say that foreigners here were never harmed. We tried to tell him that the US Embassy had just issued a warning due to an American having been killed in the Mariscal. We all had received calls and emails from the Embassy to tell us this. Not only that, but two Americans had been attacked not a month before on the beaches of Esmeraldas. The man was stabbed something like 23 times and was barely alive in the hospital, while the woman was sexually molested and then robbed. Did this man care? No, he told us we must have our facts wrong. He basically called us liars to our faces. We all had received specific warning from the US Embassy and had read the papers lately. So unless the Ecuadorian papers lie, our facts were straight. But he would hear none of it. He moved forward, saying that in his thirty years of living here, he hadn’t heard of anything of the sort. He thought we weren’t getting the news because we hadn’t heard of all the discrimination against and suffering of the black man. We, on the other hand, were well up to date on current events and could do nothing but raise our eyebrows until they were to our hairlines and drop our jaws down into our laps. The ignorance, arrogance, and closed-mindedness of this man was so astonishing. After about two hours of trying to defend ourselves from his cruel generalizations, we stopped trying. We were so exhausted that we were silent for the rest of the three-hour class. It simply was not worth it.

Dangit, I said I was not going to get into that because I would rant. And look, I have!

Next to report is the start of the famous Ladies’ Night. On Wednesdays at a bar here in the city, only women are allowed in for 2-3 hours and drinks are free. Oregon, Idaho, Keene State, and even some of Duke gets together to party in our high heels and we dance the night away with amazing Sex on the Beach’s, Gin and Tonics, and Daiquiris. I continually woke up sore the following morning from all the dancing. It is the one time of the week where the girls can really ‘let their hair down,’ and it is a BLAST.

At the end of November, the three boys and I went camping up at Papallacta. None of us could leave until later at night, meaning that we did not arrive at Papallacta until well after dark. We were left on the side of the highway by the bus, stocking caps on our heads and our backpacks strapped on. We hiked a ways up to the beginning of the Reserve area we wanted to camp at, only to find that the gates closed at 7:00 and we were too late. So we walked back down a little ways, along the road with the blinding lights of passing cars, until we got to a hostel where Lars had stayed before. He asked if we could pitch a tent behind their place for a couple of dollars. They set us up next to a beautiful little pond and a tiny shed. We set up, stored our gear in the shed and went about dinner.

There was, of course, not enough food, but we survived. We fit three swarly dudes and myself (also not little) into a three-person tent. I was in the middle, which was lucky, as the outside people had the wet tent walls stuck to their bags all through the night, since it rained. In the middle of the night, we all heard barking, but none of us chose to pursue what was really going on. Come morning, we knew this was a bad choice, since the dog had eaten all of our panela, which is a substitute for sugar made from a plant and far more natural than sugar. Try eating oatmeal sometime without any sweetener. Then try to eat it really thick with only a few raisins and some walnuts in it without any sweetener. But it was a great place to wake up and we were just glad that we had something to eat.

We packed up and headed up to the Reserve, where we had a nice hike up to a lake. There we ate lunch and collected soonfoo (zunfu?), which one can use to make tea. We hiked to a waterfall and tried to find enough fishing line to create a makeshift fishing contraption, but had no luck. On the way back down to find a bus, we ate dinner at the same hostel and sat in their hot pool, a great way to chill out from the day.

Bah, then one day as I was sitting in the grass writing in my journal, I spotted a bright blue something. A parakeet was pecking at things in the grass! There was a bright blue parakeet trying to find food on the PUCE campus! I was so taken aback! But when I went to tell Landon, our resident birdman and bird expert, he did not get excited. Apparently, there are random flocks of introduced parakeets in lots of places, simply because too many owners lose the birds. Boring, huh? I still enjoyed the bright blue spot in the middle of the grey day. I just was bummed out that #1 I couldn’t catch him and take care of him and #2 he couldn’t tell me his fantastic story. Birds can’t talk, folks.

In preparation for my mom to come visit me, I was in the computer lab every night until it closed. I even, painfully, gave up a chill “Wine Night” with my friends to continue on my essays. :(

My mum came on the night of the 29th. I was at the airport for like two hours or something like that because her plane was delayed. Luckily, I took a book to read. My dad was great and wrote me an email to tell me that her plane was delayed. But, of course, since I have no access to internet except at school during certain hours and when I have time in my schedule, I didn’t get the email. But no worries, she made it and I had a rose and was SO glad to see her. I missed my mum.

Because I have no computer access (unless I pay) on the weekends, I spent the day before she came writing and writing and writing in PRINT! I swear, I have not written that much by hand in many, many years. So then my mum brought my computer and I was able to type up everything I had and finish off the rest of the paper. This was all while my mum was trying to create a project for me. She was such a help and I felt so bad that I was having her help me with my schoolwork while she was on vacation! But we got it done!

The next day when I presented my paper, everyone else did this stupidly-long explanation of the entirety of their papers, while I just gave a brief summary because we had never been given directions on how to present. We were in class for an extra HOUR because everyone took SO LONG on their own papers. And my project didn’t go so well either because the tape was falling apart and the continents were falling off the globe! It was so frustrating. I got poor grades for the presentations of the two items, but the good part was that I was finished! I didn’t have that over my head anymore!

So mum and I watched Gilmore Girls for the rest of the day to celebrate/commiserate. My host-mom got home, which was bittersweet for me. She’s fairly headstrong and thinks she is right all the time, telling me to do things that she really has no idea about. She sent my mum and I on a stupid wild goose-chase after technical services for a cell phone, but gave us wrong directions, even though she was sure that they were right. Then the cell phone couldn’t even be used anyway because it was too old, so the stupid four miles we must have walked around the city was completely pointless. So, needless to say, she frustrates me. Plus, I am sad to see the little boy who has been living here at the house go. Even though he is really, really spoiled to the point where it hurts me to see sometimes, at least he makes me laugh sometimes and gives me something warm and youthful to have around. So he’s gone now with my host-brother’s wife.

We had a wretched pop-quiz in Portuguese class. It would not have been so bad except that she included things that she had taught us THAT DAY! Maybe in our own tongue a teacher could spring that on us, but I feel like in a class that is for learning a foreign language, we ought to have AT LEAST one day to go home and study material before being tested on it! Frustrating teacher. But I couldn’t be hurt that day because my dad was coming that night and then we would leave for Galapagos in the morning!

The Galapagos were simply amazing. We really, really lucked out. Because we went during a low season, we had a small group and a great guide. There was a young and fun Dutch woman and a young American guy in our group, along with the three of us. The hotels that we stayed in were GREAT. They were so beautiful and our guide was so much fun. We say pretty much EVERY ANIMAL there except for a whale. We say all kinds of rays, penguins, land iguanas, sea iguanas, dolphins, sharks, sea lions, blue-footed boobies, every finch imaginable, beautiful assortments of fishes, sea turtles and the giant tortoises. The snorkeling was unbelievable. The food was delicious. We were exhausted every night because we did things ALL DAY.

Judith, the Dutch girl, lives here in Quito and we became fairly good friends. Andrew was from California and though somewhat odd, he was a great guy to have along too. They were so enthusiastic along with the guide, while the woman who accompanied us was so polite and got funnier and friendlier as the days went on.

We were treated like kings and queens, but personally, which was great. None of us were the wealthy types, so getting there and having everything paid for was GREAT.

I felt pretty bad on the two- and three-hour boat rides to different islands when Judith and mum were both seasick, despite having taken preventative pills. I did not take the pills but was just fine the whole time. In fact, I got bored after a while and began to read my book. Some of my friends would be throwing up the moment they tried to read in a moving vehicle of any kind, but for me it was great. I felt nothing. Neither did my dad, even though we kinda had hoped we’d get sick, just once. :)

We took so many pictures. I’m impressed. I’ll post some.

Back in Quito, I felt pretty awful for not being able to hang out with my parents very much. I had school and there was really nothing I could do about it, though we did go to Otavalo on Wednesday. Otavalo is the big market town here in Ecuador and it usually takes about two and a half hours to get there from Quito. Instead we somehow got stuck on a bus with a driver who made it in one and half hours. Even my dad, who grew up on the crazy roads of West Virginia, was gasping as we were passing other buses on the road with oncoming traffic making our moves three vehicles wide. We were frightened for our lives. But we made it in one piece and found some great deals. My mum decided to get things for her new house for decoration. I think that is really fun to decorate the house with things from different cultures.

Speaking of, I have been slowly piling up ideas for what I want my first apartment to be like! I’m so pumped to take that next step in growing up. :) Unfortunately, Chelsea and I are in the same situation in that we don’t have a place to stay. Living abroad makes it hard to secure that kind of stuff. Meh, hopefully during the summer that will work out.

I was very sad when dad left and sadder when mom left. It was like, “See you in six months.” Ugh. But I didn’t really have time to feel sorry for myself because I had a final on Monday in Portuguese (after which I asked a classmate out for a coffee date; he has a girlfriend), a final in Spanish on Tuesday, and an oral exam in Portuguese on Wednesday. Plus everyone was leaving from my team, meaning that I had more goodbyes, some of which were of the forever kind.

That is when the terrible sickness happened. I woke up Thursday morning (thankfully it was AFTER all my tests) so sick that it threw me into a breakdown, which I had to be rescued from by David Alex. Everyone was getting together to trade photos, so I stuck around his place under a couple of blankets, frozen as I could be. I had a major fever, but I didn’t want to miss out on my last day with my buddy big David or anyone else. I went out to lunch with them, which was a bad idea because I was just in pain and miserable the whole time, which I didn’t want to ruin their last day(s). I finally came home early and went right to bed.

I was feeling better for a day and went with Chelsea to Otavalo, where Landon was working and living at a raptor facility. Man, it was amazing! This was on the night of the 22nd and morning of the 23rd. We stayed in a hostel and in the middle of the night, I woke up with a pain in my neck and my lymph gland on the right side of my neck fully swollen. I looked like a freak! I was so embarrassed and it hurt so much! But we had planned on going to Parque Condor, where Landon worked, to see everything. Landon suggested we go home because I looked so rotten, but I didn’t want to hear it and, man, am I glad I was persistent.

The park was amazing! They had everything from Condors to American Kestrels to Bald Eagles. This was a rescue facility and since Landon grew up as a raptor trainer (fully certified, too!) he volunteered there all through the school year as his volunteer hours and was living there up until the end of December. He was in charge of three new birds. While he was training one, he had us hold the other two so they could become more accustomed to humans! It was so cool! We had the leather gloves on, but I could feel my beautiful bird digging her powerful claws into mine so she could get more stable. They were so beautiful and it was an amazing thing to do. After, we got to sit in the amphitheater and watch as the trainers flew the birds. It was so beautiful and majestic and heart-swelling and any other great word.

For at least six days, I was mostly in but some out of this sickness. All the way through Christmas. Luckily I was far too tired to realize exactly what was going on or I would have broken down on Christmas because I was not only missing my family, but also deathly ill. The fever lasted at least three days and it was so hard to break in a house without indoor heating. I slept and watched movies all day under many covers trying to sweat out what had taken over my body.

After we got back to Quito, I got sicker again and the swelling spread to my collarbone. Luckily, I had some antibiotics that were supposed to be used for malaria prevention, so I began taking those, along with pain pills and double Vitamin C pills. Not until somewhere around the 26th did I get much better, but I was still really careful with dressing warmly, taking my activities easy, and keeping up on medicine. I’ll be honest, this last wave of sickness really scared me. The swellings, which have since completely disappeared, were not something I had ever seen in my life and my fever felt dangerously high at times, though my host-mom doesn’t own a thermometer, so I never really knew. My poor parents back in Idaho were so worried about me. I had had to call my mom to get advice from her (since she is a full-fledged amazing hospital-working nurse now) and let them in on what was going on. And it was so great to hear from them on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Here the traditions for Christmas are fairly simple. A turkey is normal for Christmas Eve, but it is eaten near midnight and when midnight comes, everyone in the house wishes one another a Merry Christmas and a Happy Coming of Christ, though that sounds a little weird when translated. Then people open presents! I felt awful because my host-mom had made me this beautiful necklace (she’s a jewelry maker, by the way), but since I had been sick, I hadn’t had time to buy anything for her. But it was a great Christmas anyway. Honestly, getting one hand-made item was kind of nice. No clutter. Not that I don’t love the things my family gives me, I just don’t think it should be obligatory.

Since then, Chelsea and I have been meeting to plan our up-coming trip! We are headed out tonight at 10:30 on a bus to the coast of Ecuador. We’re to travel down the coast slowly, learning to surf, chilling in the sand, seeing Guayaquil, and then we head into Peru, where we will travel down part of the coast, board an airplane to Lima, explore Lima and Cusco, hit Machu Picchu, make our way back up through Peru, hit the colonial city of Cuenca in Southern Ecuador, take a ride on the roof of a train that frequently derails down “The Devil’s Nose,” and then make our way back up to Quito, within a day of leaving for the Amazon with the new group of Idaho. It is going to be so busy and we are traveling in every way imaginable. You know that movie, “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles”? Yeah, it should be something like that. We will be traveling by bus, taxi, plane, train, horse, foot, and surfboard. Here’s hoping we can get it all done!

And the final thing I wanted to talk about before signing off of this long and long-overdue post(s), is New Years. Here they have some bizarre traditions. First of all, my family eats at midnight again, like on Christmas. Everyone here creates muñecos, or dolls, some the size of teddy bears and some life-sized, which represent the Año Viejo, or the old year that is passing. These dolls are burned in the streets as a way to represent getting rid of the old year. Also, there is something about wearing either red or yellow undergarments for good luck and eating a certain number of grapes under a table at midnight. Yeah, talk about bizarre.

Last night I went with Chelsea and her host-sister to the street of Amazonas, where there were thousands and thousands of people gathered, many dressed in outrageous costumes, to see some of the dolls made by the business. At one point on the street, it was so crowded that we couldn’t move our feet more than inches at a time or we would trip and fall on the people all around us.

Later my family and I went out to the street, laid this stuffed body in the street, poured diesel on it, and lit it on fire. My host-mom had filled it with fireworks, so things kept popping loudly and flashing. I would have been embarrassed by what my family was doing, but all up and down the streets, people were burning stuffed bodies in the middle of the street. So weird. And in an attempt to make sure everything burnt, my host-mom kept lighting her broom on fire. She did not seem to mind.

And the meal afterward was amazing!

Oh, one more tradition. Men and boys dress up as women and beg for money to bring in the New Year. In fact, out here on the corner by my house, there were three young boys in heels and tiny dresses dancing for cars and then asking for money! Talk about bizarre.

So, on this crazy journey that Chelsea and I are about to embark on, I intend to not try and write here on my blog. Then, since I will have so little time before the Amazon, I don’t think I will update at least until we get back. That is the night of the 27th, so sometime after that, I would LOVE to continue with the stories that just seem to pile up. On the night of the 27th, my big bro David flies into Quito, so that makes me busy as well, so I can’t even promise an update then, but I will do my best as soon as I get the chance, yeah?

Merry Christmas everyone, and I hope 2009 is a delightful and adventuresome year full of the people and things that you love the most. I say, make those resolutions and stick to them! I look forward to seeing everyone in 2009. Let’s chill, let’s hang, let’s rock it like it’s 1992. Love you all!

Emily