Quick Update

I unexpectedly didn´t have interwebs for the first few days here. Which is why there haven´t been any posts. There certainly hasn´t been a shortage of fun and exciting things, so there will be many posts to come. I still can´t connect my laptop to wifi, so I´m going to wait until I can to include pictures in my updates for you all. It´ll be better that way, I promise. If you are stuck in Maine in all of the snow, you may be slightly jealous of the beautiful ninety degree weather that I am enjoying.

On a slightly less frolic-y note, I am in the process of switching host families. I don´t know anything about my new one, but I am excited to share details once I have them. My first host mother was just too old to host a student well. I was sad for her, but had to do what was best for my experience. I´m currently enjoying a brief stay with Lindsey and her host mom!

More posts, soon!

The Amazon Continued: AmaZOOnico

One of our adventures was to an animal sanctuary. Here's some pics: 

 

There's no animals in this one, I just wanted to show you that it really was a part of the natural environment.

Oh, and: Bienvenidos a Argentina!!!!!! I'm in Mendoza and will write more about it later. So far, so good! 

El Río Napo

This river is a tributary of the Amazon River. Our lodging was on the river and we spent a lot of time doing things in/on/around the water.  

The "canoes" we used to travel around.

My lovely little cabin. It was so perfect.

We swam here. The current wasn't exactly weak. Many of us jumped in using the rope swing attached to this tree.

We also tubed down the river and went through some awesome rapids. I managed to stay on the whole time.

At one of the communities we visited we learned how to pan for gold using their traditional method. I was the only one who wanted to try it. I found some! Two tiny, tiny, tiny particles. 

The Amazon

There will be a series of posts about this grand adventure, because it's just too much to put in one. I went to the Amazon. Who gets to say that?!? Sometimes it literally feels like my life is a dream. But it wasn't a dream and I was there. We stayed in cute little cabins, jumped into the river, played in a waterfall, swung from a vine, saw all of the layers of green with brilliant pops of color in the form of butterflies and flowers, learned how to make chocolate, and visited a school, a couple of Kichwa communities, and an animal rescue preserve.

Green on green on green on green on green.

At the animal preserve, but not in a cage. It was so cool.
Sara, I tried to bring one back for you ;)

Such incredible plants.

There will be a post about this waterfall. I loved being there.

Niña was the pet bird of one of the communities we visited. She had a broken wing.

I'm really not sure what these are, but they lined the paths to our cabins. They look like torches.

My favorite picture thus far. The sun setting of the Río Napo. 

 

In other news: Today is my last day in Ecuador. We leave tomorrow at 3:00am. On Saturday, I'll meet my host mother in Mendoza. It's just going to be me and her. She is an older woman who lives alone in an apartment in the city. Her daughter is hosting someone else in our group. Also, my host mom is a vegetarian. 

New Adventures

My next adventure starts tomorrow. I am so excited. One of the things I was looking forward to the most at the start of this semester was these days in the jungle. I'll be sure to take (and post) lots and lots of pictures.

Today was my last day in Cuenca. There are still so many things I would have liked to have found time for, but am so happy with all that I got to experience. I'm not sure more would have been possible. We had a goodbye dinner at school, which was wonderful. I spent a ton of time playing with my professor's two year old daughter. It was nice to have a closing event, but we will all return to that building at 6:45am tomorrow.

Tomorrow I say goodbye to my host family. I have really enjoyed my time with them. I can only hope that my next family in Argentina will be just as welcoming. I did find out today that I'm going to live really close to the University, which is so great.

I'm also excited that the next phase of this grand adventure is with this group of Dickinson students. I can't wait to see what tomorrow (and the next day and the next: repeat forever) brings.

I came across this quote today:

 

I wanted to share it with you. I am so lucky to have so many friends to whom this applies. This is as sappy as this blog will get, I promise. 

Dolphins!

As promised, here's the video. It was so incredible to see. I do wish I knew more about how boats and tourism like this affects the dolphin population. Something tells me that having this number of boats around isn't the best for them.

Playas!

Carnival is a national holiday in Ecuador. People "play carnival." It's a fun, free-for-all game that includes: foam, paint, flour, eggs, water, laughter, music, and dancing. A group of twelve of us decided to go to Playas, a coastal town, for our three days off. We spent the days sightseeing and relaxing on the beach. Our nights were spent at concerts by the water where we played carnival.  We were the only gringos that I saw the entire time we were there, which made the experience a lot more interesting and gave it a deeper cultural meaning. As a group, this detail made us think a lot more about where we were and the ways in which people interact.

Another interesting, and challenging, part of our adventure  was the lack of vegetarian food. In Cuenca, this has not been a major problem. In Playas, it was. I didn't eat much on Sunday due to the amount of traveling, so I was very ready for dinner. We decided to eat in the hotel for convenience. There was not a single thing on the menu that didn't have some type of meat. We asked the waitress if there were any vegetarian options, and were told not at that time of day. So... shrimp. This meal was the first in over a year to include meat/fish. I managed to figure out vegetarian food for the rest of our meals. Thankfully, I'm here with a really wonderful group of people who are willing to search for places where all of us are comfortable eating.

And, pictures!

The view from our hotel room.

The beach where we spent the days relaxing and jumping in the waves.

On Monday, seven of us decided to go to an even smaller town nearby and take a boat out to an island.

One of the best parts, was the dolphins that we saw. I have a video, but am currently unable to upload it. I will post it tomorrow.

The island in the background is home to many different birds. We saw so many on our way past it.

There were literally hundreds of birds.

We saw so many birds.

On the island we went to, there were wild donkeys.

And crabs.

And trash. It was so disappointing to see this much garbage. It was also a reminder that when we liter it ends on islands like this.

After a night of playing Carnival. Because we stood out so much we were easy targets. We armed ourselves with foam and went to the concert. By the time we got there, we had been foamed, splashed, egged, floured, and painted. Overall, people were very good natured about it. We had a ton of fun. We worked our way up to right in front of the stage and were shown  dancing on the screens on either side of the stage. There were lots of families there, and we had fun dancing with the little kids around us. There's still a little blue in my hair, but not much and I don't think anyone else would notice it.

While I was swimming on Tuesday, I noticed that the group of people beside me were holding a starfish. I thought it was so awesome that they found one. A few minutes later I felt one beneath my feet, so I picked it up. It was so cool. At first I held it on its back, and it's legs all folded inwards so it was like a ball. When I laid it flat on my hands, I could feel all of the little leg-things (look under the left-most leg in the pictures) wiggling. After the photo-shoot, I put it back in the water, roughly where I found it. 

Cajas National Park

Today we went to Cajas National Park. There are two ecosystems that call this park home: cloud forests and the páramo. The forest is a forest and the páramo is a grass land. Here's some pictures! 

All of Cuenca's water comes from Cajas. There's a huge amount of water everywhere.

It was all SO beautiful.

The majority of the plant species found in these cloud forests are epiphytes, they grow on other plants.

Waterfalls!

We had fun playing in the water.

We explored an abandoned beer factory.

LLAMA!

LLAMA!

SO MANY LLAMAS!

View eating lunch.

This type of tree only grows here and is named for the layers of bark.

Around Town

There are so many parades all of the time. For all kinds of different things. When we first got here, we saw a Christmas parade, at the end of January. This one is a political parade. Elections are soon and campaigns are everywhere. I got sprayed with shaving cream while taking this picture. Shaving cream, squirt guns, and water balloons are super common, in part because Carnival is almost here.  

The New Cathedral, which isn't new but is new than the Old Cathedral a block away. There are three blue domes at the top, which are symbols of Cuenca.

Coffee Tree! A gringo coffee shop with WiFi. We all go to do homework frequently.

The only gross/new/super-massive insect I've seen. It was on the side of the road.

There's some really pretty architectural features, too. 

In other news: My host mother told me that my Spanish is getting much better!