Wow, I’ll tell you what, wow! This has been a crazy week and I haven’t had much time to write it all down. But right now its morning and most everyone is still asleep, so here it goes. I’m pretty sure the last thing that I wrote was something along the lines of me going camping the next day in the jungle. Well, it was awesome! We hiked for about 3-4 hours along the Kanoa Yaku, a small tributary to the Napo. The entire hike was up, then down, in the water, out of the water; sometimes the water even came up to our waists. The cool part about the hike was all of the plants that bordered the stream. It was like hiking through a green canyon, because on both sides there was just a wall of green. At the end of the first leg, we were all tired and wet and happy to be at the platform where we would sleep and to swim in the water hole nearby. That night we mostly just played an assortment of gamaes since it was impractical to bring any schoolwork out there. Sleeping was rough; we all had one blanket, no pillow, a sheet, if you brought one (which I did) and the hard wood of the platform. The next day we went on a nature hike to learn about different plants in the forest. Our guide, Juaquín, explained to us some of the medicinal plants that are traditionally used by the Kichwa people. Two of them were trees that acted as pain killers, one of which we got to sample and guess what? It tasted just like Tylenol that has been in your mouth for too long. Next he showed us a huge vine from which they make monkey poison for their blow darts. The vine was brown, but when he shaved off the bark with his machete it was streaked with black. It tasted really really bitter (Yes, I tried some. He said it doesn’t hurt humans, but it will kill a monkey in about 5 minutes). There were a few other thing he showed us, like snake anti venom and lemon flavored ants but its time to move on to another event. The hike back was short, since we had taken a really convoluted path along the tributary; 3 hours out, 30 minutes back. Now I’m going to talk about some surprises that we’ve had as a group. The first is the discovery that we have a one week break between the two sessions of the field school. Another is the discovery that we had a Kichwa mid term and final that we didn’t know about. A third is the fact that we would be going to a Quichua dance festival right before the break and the last is the realization that out professor, Janis Nuckolls would not be joining us during the second session. So, the day after we came back from the hike, Dr. Nuckolls left and we started studying. We took the test, and that’s all that really needs to be said about that. Next day, we took a 6 hour bus ride up to a small community called Picalqui, which is north of Quito for the dance festival. We stayed at an abandoned mission that is presumed haunted and I got a horrible night’s sleep. It felt as if there were a black hole off the side of my bed that sucked me down and wedged me between the wall and the mattress. The next day we got up and got dressed in some more traditional clothes and went to San Pedro (the larger town in the area) for the dance festival/competition). Now, I know what you might be thinking, sweet traditional dancing, learning some cool moves, well… you’d be mistaken. The only thing we were required to do was to do a double time shuffle step up the street for about 5 hours. It was fun for a while, but it actually got a bit annoying when we passed the deadline we hade given ourselves. It was cool that it was a competition and that we had sort of been adopted into the community, but it was just too much. And the songs they sing resound in your head for days afterward. Now, we are finally getting caught up. We took a bus to Quito, and our break officially began. Six of us from BYU all decided that we would go down to Guayaquil for a good portion of the break. That is where I am right now. Sitting in my bed at the Nuca Pacha Hostel where we are staying for 13 bucks a night and where we have full access to the kitchen! We’ve done a good amount of exploring, but the purpose of coming here was mostly twofold: one, go to the beach and two, go to the temple. Yesterday was our temple day. We went around noon, but apparently they only do sessions in the morning and in the evening, so we went exploring in a mall until it was time to go back. I listened to the session in Spanish for the first time, which was really cool, and the celestial room was amazing! I highly recommend it if you are ever in Ecuador! It’s been cool being able to make dinner (and cheaper). Last night I made rigatoni, but it was almost a disaster. We had forgotten to buy tomato sauce at the store, and when Cate and Ruski went back, it was closed and the only thing they could find was a bag of salsa de tomate at a Hot Dog joint. Salsa de tomate is ketchup… Miraculously, however, I was able to completely cover up the fact that it was ketchup and ended up creating something that tasted quite a bit like rigatoni! I consider this quite an achievement since no one besides myself and Cate even knew there was ketchup in it, until we told them. Today is our beach day! We are going to go out to Salinas and play for the day! By the way, these are the names of the BYU students on this trip, so that when I refer to them, it’s not too confusing. There’s me, Joey (my roommate), Tyler (also known as Face), Kevin, Ruski (whose real name is Matt), Cate, Rose and Liz. All of us, besides Rose and Liz are here in Guayaquil. There, now you have a frame of reference for this picture I’m painting…Anyway, I’m done now.
