Hola!
I am back from the jungle. I have now had a shower and a real bed and feel much rested and relaxed after another week in the Amazon. While still in the Kichwa (not Quichua, bad Katie) community I continued to teach the Kindergardeners. I made up some songs about animals in english in spanish and that was far more effective at teaching them than anything else, and it was fun. I also translated the hokey pokey, more or less, and that was absolutely hilarious to watch. I also helped teach the high school kids and tutored math. Yes, I know, I tutored a girl in algebraic equations in spanish and she finally got all the steps. The education system in the schools needs a lot of help. She was trying to do problems like (x -4)squared without knowing how to multiply positive and negative numbers. It was a long afternoon, but we worked through it with the aid of my spanish dictionary.
While I was doing that, Andrea and everyone else went fishing. We ate the small fish for dinner that night. It was sweet. Andrea was one of the few that actually caught fish. I think she had an extra edge from her tutoring from Boppa. Andrea and I have some of the fewest bugbites in the group, I will also attribute this to Boppa and his insistence ever since I can remember about long pants and long sleeves. Funny that I didn{t appreciate the importance of that until now. Some of the girls that were wearing shorts and sitting in the mud got some fungus on their skin. Eww! It got cleared up quickly by medicinal plants from our garden though. It was really cool to see the actual application and use of all the work that we had put in.
On our last night there the community threw us a going away party. In the big meeting area they thanked us and I had to make a speech thanking them for all their support and openness and help in spanish, which was a little nerve-wracking. Then we got to watch grown-ups do the native dances, and a native band perform music and we all danced. One of our 14 year old neighbors was the singer, we made him nervous but he was really good. I danced with a lot of the kindergardeners. It was really cute. Then at the end we got a demonstration of the shaman techniques. Andrea was "cleaned" by Roberto. We got some cool pictures.
It was a really interesting and eye-opening experience talking to them about medical care, money, and family, because their situation is so different. Roberto's 4 year old was really sick, and he had to beg and borrow money to pay the hospital to care for him to save his life, for $300. It's amazing how far money can go here, and how little is needed to really help. When we gave out donation items like school supplies, clothing and food, people were so grateful. Even leaving our used sheets and rubber work boots they were grateful for. It's amazing how happy they are with so little living off the land with their loving families and community. It was a truly amazing experience.
The next morning we left in a small sketchy van and headed back to Quito to start the adventure part of the trip. The road here were mostly dirt and the driver was texting while driving. He also refused to stop for bathroom breaks, so by the time we were in Quito there were a few of the girls who had to make an escape and jump out of the van door at a red light and then walked to the hotel. It was a close call there. I am glad that he is not the driver for the rest of the trip. There are now 27 of us as opposed to the 10 of us on project. We have a bigger bus to go around on.
After finally arriving in Quito we had yet another orientation meeting and then got on a bus to go to the Equator monument. There is the old Kitoo, a sun-worshipping people that had ancient ruin on the equator line, which they verified with GPS 12 years ago. We got to see some shrunken heads, some buildings from the 1800's and some sweet burial sites. Then we got to do experiments on the equator line with balancing an egg, water running out of a sink, it moves in opposite directions in different hemispheres (clockwise in the southern, and counter-clockwise in northern) even moving the basin 10 feet away from the equator line. You also could not hold your fingers together when someone was trying to pull them apart. Trippy. We then went to see the monument that was built in the 1750's when French explorers made the equator line only 200 meters off just by judging by the stars. We had a party later that night to welcome everyone and today we get to go to Otavalo, the biggest local market in South America, aka souvenier heaven.
More updates to come. Tomorrow we get to go climbing and bike riding, then on Monday we get to climb Cotopaxi, the glacier on the volcano! This group looks like it is going to be fun even though it is much bigger. I am really excited about the rest of the trip, it's nonstop action.
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