La chiva, the trucks that drive around the city with a band on top

My babies! Pollitos, Taco and Chevere

The Crew that went to Quito, Neda, Justin, Floor and me

Francisco, Floor, Neda, Justin

Baños skyline

the crew

me and the boys, Alex and Marco

The Dizz and I in Montañita, mucièlagos

Baños, Tunguahua Volcano

Neda

Carlos and Martín the monkey

Floor and the Martín

Neda with her piraña

eye of the piraña

Well, after 4 days in the Amazon Jungle, I can honestly say that my threshold for steroid-induced insects has grown substantiously.  You know the insect is HUGE when the sound of its wings wakes you up from a dead sleep.  I swear I thought it was a bat at first in my room, but no just your average jungle moth, BIGGER THAN MY HEAD!

Oh, another fun little tidbit.  When you see a spider as big as your hand, you know just a poisonous wood spider, and you ask your landlord to please remove this creature from your vacinity and instead, by accident, he chases it THROUGH the window and INTO your room.  Thank you for your help.

After these, I barely look twice at the cockroaches climbing the walls of my safari princess lodge.  How can I complain?  I’m in the Amazon and paying 50 bucks a day to see such wildlife.

But tonight I head back to real life, jobs and worries and drama.  But also family, friends who love me and a bedroom with walls and doors and no holes in the roof.  As soon as my computer is fixed, I will post up tonnes and tonnes of pictures of gorgeous wildlife and fauna of the Amazon.  And of me, because I’m important.

according to the facebook caption, i am ” having problems with marco’s overtly gringo behavior.

and i have no idea what is going on this photo, it just made me laugh.

It´s almost time for me to leave Ecuador.  For the final week, some girls and I decided to travel to a town called Baños and from there the jungle.  I can’t leave Ecuador without seeing the jungle, it just seems wrong.  So we took the longest bus ride in the world to get here, slept and read the entire next day and are finally feeling settled in enough to think about what’s next.  We’re hoping to do a tour for 4 days in the jungle, paragliding if we can and some mountain biking as well.  It will be a full week, I´m sure.   

and after that, christmas and family and my mom.

from my friend Social………

what she wanted to say…..¿Cuanto cuesta?  (how much does it cost)

What she actually said……..¿Cuanto queso?  (how much cheese)

my friend Neda……….

what she wanted to say……….Fui ayer con mi amigo James y estuve muy borracho y yo estaba verguenza (I went out with James and I got really drunk and I was embarrassed)

what she actually said……Fui ayer con mi amigo James y estuve muy borracho y estaba embarazada (I went out with James and I got really drunk and I got pregnant)

me…..

what i wanted to say….vamos a sentar aquí (lets go sit over here)

what i actually said…..vamos a sentir aquí (lets go feel up over here)

and my favorite spanglish quote, from me…….

¡¿Donde the hell estamos?! 

 

i can´t believe my time in ecuador is almost over.  my vacation officially ends in 11 days!  it’s going to be so strange when everyone understands exactly what i say all the time, such a strange idea. 

Spanish classes, not all play

This week we took a short trip up to Quito for the festival there.  It was crazy. Every night, the whole town was in the streets for concerts, parades and general merrimaking. They have these trucks called chivas which drive around town with a band on the roof.  For a couple of bucks, you can drive along with them.  they pack an unsafe amount of people into these trucks and do laps around quito.  One night as we were getting ready to walk home, we spur the moment decided to jump on of these, you know, to experience the culture.  It was awesome.  Everyone´s hollaring and having a blast, you´re all jammed in on the roof that you can barely move.  Apparently there are about 10 deaths a year for people who fall off these things.  Sometimes, people just hang onto the side because there isn´t room (i think ecuadorians think they can defy the laws of space and matter). But about half way through the route, some starts hollaring  ¡puente! ¡puente! ¡baja!  which means bridge and get down.  I thought to myself that they must be kidding, because surely it can not be that unsafe.  They weren´t kidding.  The bridge was so close, i could have touched even from crouching.  When you reach the end of the route, everyone gets out and dances in the streets before heading back to the starting point.  There were plently of local boys who were more than willing to teach the gringas how to dance.

1. generous or friendly people (i’m with jenny on this one)
2. people without email
3. people who always seem happy and excited (it can’t possibly be real)
4. people who always seem to be just “about” and “around”
5. dogs

Jenny’s meme-ish