Many Firsts

Life is good. The first week is over. I´ve only gotten lost once, only been served a peanut dish once (in a restaurant, and I realized very quickly), and only had my personal space bubble burst about 829374 times. A success.

Tuesday-Friday is work, work, work, sometimes followed by salsa class-- those are the best days. I probably won´t remember any of the kids´ names next week since each day is different. After a day in the markets, it feels like I have never been dirtier. But I really love it-- we´ve been singing silly Spanish songs and having so much fun, and the kids never want to leave. I´ve also learned to love our staff-volunteer lunches between work times-- many volunteers only work in the morning and go home before lunch, so it´s been this really awesome little group and even then I´m learning (...sometimes unimportant stuff). Silly fact: just as many of us add an O to every word to make it Español, they add the suffix "-ation" (sanitation, abomination, recreation) to make it English. A few of us volunteers and Danny and Susana, the Ecuadorian UBECI staff, spent an entire lunchtime speaking Spanglish like this ("¿Donde esta la comid-ation?", "ya estoy llen-ation", "que buen-ation", etc.). It was awesome when their Spanglish phrases actually made English words, like when one of the Ecuadorians changed "Tengo sed" (I am thirsty) to "Tengo sedation." This was the day that I also shared my deep dark secret about being afraid of clogging a toilet, and now everyone on the UBECI staff thinks I´m a freak. It´s great.

On Friday night, Lucy and Aude (two other volunteers) and I took a five-hour busride to Tena, a town that lies just at the tip of the Amazon (many people call it the jungle for pansies because it´s not very far in). It was a horrible bus ride that involved smelly people virtually sitting on me, super hotness, sporadic flashing lights, a disturbing Jodie Foster movie called "The Brave One," me almost getting carsick, etc. We spent the night (my very first hostel experience), and had a pretty great tour of the jungle nearby, Selena, the next day. It was super cool to learn about all of the natural resources the jungle can provide. I had my face painted with natural dye from two different jungle plants and also ate ants. They were alive and tasted like lemon. Our tour guide also claimed that termites make a great bug repellent and smeared them all over himself to prove it (they were quite small, but still). I also ate the fruit from a cacao plant and we made chocolate from the beans! All in all, an exciting taste (literally and figuratively) of what the jungle has to offer. Although I was dreading it, the bus ride back was much more pleasant than the first. We arrived back in Quito at about midnight last night, and I slept in this morning which was heavenly. Although I still wake up like 3 times a night to dog fights, speeding motos, honking busses, etc.

This is the beginning of a very awesome four months. Sometimes I´m like, "holy shit, I´m in South America and I don´t REALLY know anyone," and I miss knowing where things are and I just miss familiarity in general. But then I get a huge hug from a little girl I met five minutes ago or dance salsa or eat ants or even hear another volunteer say "trousers" instead of "pants," and it makes me feel like the luckiest person in the world, being exposed to all of this. And I have sooooo long to soak it all in!!