From the Banks of the Napo

Wow, I'll tel you what, wow. This is officially one of the coolest things I've ever done. We stayed in Quito for Sunday and left on Monday morning. We were lucky to find a church in walking distance, so we went to the ward and were surprised to find that half the people were American. There was a nursing group, and ROTC group and some church auditing people along with two sets of full time missionaries, two sets of senior missionaries and a member of the mission presidency. One of the girls was alone, so she hung out with us for the rest of the day, and when we went out to eat (cause how else were we going to?) I found some new favorites. I had something called papa rellena (stuffed potato), which is like deep fried mashed potatoes with ground meat, onions, veggies and egg in the middle, it was ridiculously good! New favorite soda: Naranjillo flavored. Naranjillo is a little fruit thats related to the tomato but looks and tastes like a citrus fruit and the soda is like drinking candy. Also, my new all time favorite candy is Tango. Its a chocolate covered cookie sandwich that tastes like vanilla, almond, coconut, graham cracker and happiness, all at once. Anyway, I've spent too much time on food. The trip down to the field school was really long, but we broke it up by visiting some hot springs halfway between Quito and Tena. The water was perfect, and it was super relaxing after spending two and a half hours going through winding mountain roads on a bus. The remaining time was really interesting. The entire time my group and I were kind of geeking out. Our conversations ran the gambit of linguistics, music, geology, cooking, and everything in between. We passed out of the highlands and through the cloud forest and into the rain forest all the while pointing out waterfalls, glacial valleys, cool trees and odd rock formations. The field school itself is beautiful. It is right on the banks of the Napo River (a major tributary of the Amazon). The plants and animals here are amazing (I'll put pictures up later). The groups that is studying here are really cool. We are the only linguists and everyone else are anthropologists. There is a group from Appalachia State and a group of grad students from around the country, and they are all pretty cool and chill. Anyway, this blog is getting long, so... Samashun (Let us end).