Catching up in Quito

December 7th, 2007 by Danielle Denis-Lalonde

Ok, so I have over 20 days of adventures, experiences and insights to share. I intend to sit here until I’ve purged my memory of everything worth remembering. I think they need to create a word for the unpleasant tingly/numb feeling that travelers get on their ass when they spend too much time sitting in internet cafe! I see it everywhere I go. Someone goes to stand up after internet-ing for god knows how long (perhaps they got stuck in the Facebook black hole?) and suddenly they are desperately trying to rub life back into their butt while attempting to teach their legs how to walk again.

Ok, first a quick update on where I am right at the moment……as soon as I find a speedier internet connection. This one is almost as slow as in Muisne! Be right back…

Ahh, this is much better. For anyone planning to stay in Quito´s Mariscal district, Monkey´s internet is MUCH faster than Papaya´s (both on Reina Victoria). But then again, Papaya´s has great sanduches… whatever, I should quit stalling and start this epic blog entry once and for all.

(deep breath)

I have been in Quito for a few days now, just acclimatizing to the altitude (little bit short of breath sometimes), and the COLD. Going from hot humid coastal rainforest & mangroves to the dry and chilly big city of Quito is an exercise in adaptation! Been hanging out with the girls from the Congal station, catching up on internet affairs, and doing some random errands (laundry! sweet sweet luxury)

Just ran into Roddy (the Scottish dude from the Galapagos station!) at Papaya.net and now I have my journal back! Wow, so strange to hold it in my hands again. ¡Muchas gracias!

I just ate a heavenly sanduche de atun at Payapa and was checking my bank account status (not broke yet, despite blowing my budget a long time ago) when in walks Sean, Bara and Jogvan (all from the Galapagos station). Wow! Didn´t think I´d see them again. I am amazed at how many people I randomly bump into again in Quito… from Galapagos, from Muisne, etc. I half expect to bump into some from back home too, but that has yet to happen.

Anyways, today has been mostly about internet-ing (yes, that is a verb and is used as such by every traveler I´ve met). I have finalized some plans to take the teleferiQo (gondola) and hike Pichincha (the volcano that overlooks Quito) with Roddy and Nico on Sunday. And Doe changed her plans and decided to leave the Amazon earlier so that she will be able to come too! I expect to see her roll in to Quito tomorrow night.

Made my first phone call in nearly 2 months. Talked to Ma and Pa for a bit, which was short but sweet, then called my insurance company to see if they will cover Doe´s stolen camera and Zen. And they will! As long as we get a police report filed out while we´re here. Hopefully that is an easy thing to do…

Ok, now I can´t avoid it anymore. I will start by taking up where I left off. I believe it was Saturday November 17th…

****************Traveling back in time*********************

I got a pretty decent night´s sleep after my first work day at the Congal station. Of course, it helps that the hard physical work under the hot sun had totally and completely drained me of all energy. Despite the good sleep, I woke up feeling stuffed up and a bit run down. meh.

Friday night, we had all decided that we would spend the weekend in Mompiche, a small beach-town not too far away. So on Satuday morning, we packed up and hopped on the back of Victor´s truck for a crazy ride into Neuvo Muisne.

Let me stop and describe this a bit more. There are two ways of getting to Muisne Town (which is the main town near the Congal biological station). Either by boat (which is how I first arrived at the station), or by hopping on a truck. The boat is the expensive ($3-5) option, but much faster and more scenic (mangroves!), while the truck only costs 25 cents but you risk your life every time! Given the fact that the people here are quite poor, most of them don´t own a vehicle so this dude named Victor has a rugged pick-up truck that he drives up and down the road from Bunche to Muisne a million times a day, 7 days a week. People randomly hop on and off, hanging on to whatever they can (standing on the bumper or clinging to the side is common) while Victor expertly navigates his way through the crazy mud.

Honestly, a road like this is in Canada is unheard of. The mud is so gooey and deep that the truck lurches from side to side violently, and always seems on the verge of toppling over or getting permanently stuck (like the rare other vehicles we see on that road). At times I love the crazy ride, other times (i.e. when I have to pee!), it truly sucks. Over time, I have learned to recognize the bends in the road and the various landmarks (like this one giant tree that must be at least 50 meters tall), which makes me feel like I really live here. The scenery as you drive along is highland rainforest (lush & green), occasionally passing locals on horseback, or making their way through the mud on foot.

Anyways, that is the ride to Nuevo Muisne. Then you hop on one of the little ferry boats (20 cents per person) to get across to the island of Muisne (a 2 minute trip). That whole process (truck and ferry boat) is repeated nearly every day as we typically do most of our social work in Muisne town.

OK, so once in Muisne, I hit up one of the 2 internet cafes for a quick blog entry. I quickly discover how slow the connection is, and that I won´t be able to blog and e-mail religiously or look at the pictures that Mel sends me of Mia. Kind of disappointing, but I guess they will have to wait until I get to Quito. In the meantime I resolve to start scribbling down the highlights of each day on a scrap of paper so that I have something to work from when I finally sit down to write that massive blog entry.

Let me describe Muisne a bit. The whole coastal area that I´m at is considered one of the poorest regions of Ecuador. People live in houses built directly on former mangrove land, which means they live in mud and knee-deep water in most places. The houses are raised on stilts and made of bamboo or scrap wood and corrugated metal, with a few of the nicer ones made with actual cement blocks. The roads in town aren´t quite so muddy because the state has covered them in truckloads of sand.

There is garbage everywhere…I have never seen so much garbage. Thailand doesn´t come close. According to Mareike, the only place she´s seen that is worse is India. Like I said in an earlier blog, they have a problem with waste here because they are quite remote and too far from a major city to have any kind of garbage pick up service. So it all goes into the ocean, on the streets, in the muddy swamps under the house, and everywhere else. They don´t understand what non-biodegradable means, and given that they can only afford the cheapest foodstuffs, it all comes in plastic wrapping. Frustrating!! Actually, it really shows how poorer people get screwed in so many ways. The food they can afford to bring into town is all very low in nutrition (white rice, cheap crackers and cookies, candy) and generates a ton of non-biodegradable garbage (alot of the crackers and candy are individually wrapped!) Makes me hate the mega corporations that are responsible for this even more. Even if those companies were to sell their crappy food in cardboard containers instead, it would make a world of difference! Argh.

As for the people of Muisne, as I mentioned earlier, they are mostly black or mixed with Ecuadorian blood. The Spanish spoken here is very fast and quite different. The other volunteers (even the native Spanish speakers) admit to sometimes having trouble understanding the locals. The only gringos in town are the 8 of us from Congal station and a few Germans from other volunteer/social organizations. You never see tourists here. Kinda nice because you really get to feel like you live here. We eat, work and live pretty much exactly same way they do, and often side by side. They are quite friendly, although you get the impression sometimes that they don´t quite understand why we are here or why we´d leave our ¨rich¨ countries to come live in these kind of conditions.

Ok, back to the story. After the internet cafe, we all hired a boat for the 20 minute ride to Mompiche. The ride takes you out into the open ocean so I was expecting another crazy boat ride like the Galapagos one. It was definitely bumpy and I had to cling to Alex and Samantha at some points to avoid being thrown off, but all in all I´d say the Galapagos ride still takes the cake.

Mompiche is basically a sleepy beach town that will likely become a tourist hot spot as the word gets out about the laid-back atmosphere and beautiful beach (which of course will cause both to eventually be ruined…it´s pessimistic but true). The girls and I found an amazing HUGE bamboo hut with 3 bedrooms, a kitchen and a deck just a few meters from the ocean, complete with hammocks, all for $8 per person. haha, crazy! We went out and bought a few veggies, some eggs and some noodles, then went back to our beach hut and whipped up a delicious dinner.

Given that I had just met them a few days ago, I still felt uncomfortable around the girls but a few hours of drinking rum and chatting on our deck improved things a bit.
That night, there happened to be a Marimba group performing by a bonfire on the beach so we had the privilege of witnessing it. It was amazing! Part of the magic is that it wasn´t one of those things put on for tourists, but something for the locals, by the locals. Just a few instruments and drums, a blazing fire and some beautiful dancers. Eventually, everyone watching gets pulled into the mood and starts dancing. Mario asked me to dance, which was really very nice (oh, Germans!) and I felt as though I were in a trance. Very surreal…almost to the point where I wondered if I hadn´t accidentally ingested some mysterious drug. Oh wait, I DID meet an Israeli right before that who shared his pipe with me…

After that, we moved on to what I guess is probably the only nightclub in Mompiche, complete with loud Spanish music and a bunch of hot sweaty people shaking their money-makers. As is my usual experience in clubs, some random guys decide to dance with me which is fun at first, then a bit awkward when I can´t seem to be rid of them! For the most part, I just decided not to think about anything too much and just let myself feel the music while dancing my heart out.

I was starting to feel the beginnings of a head cold coming on so I ditched the club rather early and went back to the hut for some solitude and sleep. But not before I got to see Roberto and Alex snogging with some local girls. Not that I blame them…the Germans are here for a full year and Alex has been away from home for a quite a while too. I understand boys have their needs…still, it was funny to see.

Mario and Samantha walked me home, and I chatted with Mario and bit before heading to bed. He was clearly stoned out of his mind, but even the brief proximity of a German boy felt quite nice. hahaha, oh Dani.

Woke up the next morning totally stuffed up and feeling sluggish. Ugh. The other girls had stayed out quite late so everyone was still in bed for most of the morning. I took advantage by cozying up in the hammock, reading Brave New World, watching the ocean breathe and listening to my Zen. I noticed that there wasn´t a single type of music that didn´t ¨fit¨ my surroundings. Of course, Marley and Jack Johnson were particularly fitting (but cliche) but even Sublime, Bluetech, Tool and Dallas Green all seemed to work just as well. That has never happened to me before. There is usually a type of music that you just cringe when you hear it because it really doesn´t fit the moment. But not here.

Once the girls were all up, we walked over to Playa Negra (¨Black Beach¨) for the afternoon. Let me tell you about this beach…I have never seen anything like it. The sand is black (surprise surprise!), but not just black, METALLIC. It shimmers like nothing else. I could lay on my stomach at stare at it forever. Which I did, for hours. I even put some in one of the vials Doe gave me so I can show people at home. So beautiful, so mesmerizing! Apparently it´s loaded with titanium, and people actually come and steal the sand in large quantities to extract the titanium and sell it. I felt bad taking some for myself, but it was only a little tiny bit!! Selfish, i know.

As soon as we got there, we got into our bikinis, then Mareike and Tanja immediately sat down and started covering themselves in the crazy sand. The thing is, it sticks to you really well, and leaves your skin looking all metallic and robotic. I covered half of my body, from head to toe, in it and we all took some great pictures. Then let the ocean wash it all away.

We stayed there for hours under the sun, reading and staring at sand. The combination of reading Brave New World, and my various experiences on this trip so far, led me to truly appreciate the need for human struggle, challenge, ups & downs and most of all, for PASSION. The book essentially shows how disastrous things could be if we were able to control everything (from birth, death, food, sex etc) so as to avoid all negative feelings and situations. Given the various struggles I have had to face personally during this trip (and all those before that), I am really starting to see the beauty in the human condition. I don´t want to live a life devoid of overwhelming joy and passion, so I must learn to accept, and even embrace the low times, the struggles, and everything else in between.

i feel that I am starting to grasp something truly meaningful.

i am blessed to be a witness.

On our walk back to the hut, i feel an amazing sense of peacefulness, of acceptance. Here i am, walking along a dry dusty road, barefoot and in my bikini, sun browning my shoulders, side by side with 3 girls from all over the world, and listening to the sound of birds i don´t recognize, the song of a breeze i´ve never heard before, and the scent of the ocean mingled with a heavy earthiness filling every breath. Despite our silence, i feel a kinship with these women, just based on our shared experience of walking this road. i guess we all walk the metaphorical road together, don´t we? i feel connected.

That night, we took the bus back to Muisne, and then back to the station in time for dinner. i feel a bit out of sorts, partially because my head is all stuffed up, but also because i feel i haven´t yet gotten a sense of how this group of people ¨gel¨ together. There doesn´t seem to be much cohesiveness and there is alot of silence at mealtimes, unlike the loud noisy dinners at the Galapagos station. Their interactions still confuse me, and i don´t feel that i understand how things ¨work¨ at this station yet. So i just sit back and observe.

I have come to see a pattern in myself…that i am not the type that immediately jumps into a new group of people, joining conversations and adding my two cents about everything. i am an observer. i watch, i wait, and when i´m ready, i join. And i am ok with that.

So that was my first weekend on the Ecuadorian coast.

Monday was…well, very Monday-ish. i woke up sick (stuffed up, sore throat, tired blah blah blah). To make matters worse, i´d had a disturbing dream about Pa being gravely ill which left me in a weird state of mind. Although i don´t believe it was a premonition or anything like that, i still think i will insist (demand!) that Pa gets his yearly medical exam, if he isn´t doing so already. i love you and want to keep you healthy Pa!!

After being in a comatose state for most of the day, i finally crawled out from under my mosquito net, carefully climbed/struggled down from my bunk bed, and took my first shower at the Congal station. Not too bad… actually really quite nice and refreshing (to body and mood). As odd as it sounds, i really like the chicas bathroom here…we´ve all got our shit everywhere, so it has a nice communal feel. And the mirror is so dirty and spotted that you can´t really see what you look like. Which is a blessing considering the steady diet of carbs, carbs, carbs and being routinely feasted on by mosquitos has probably wreaked havoc on my body.

Do I care? Not one bit.

It´s odd because throughout my trip i have come to really like and accept my ¨raw¨ physical self. No makeup, hair tied back with a bandana or let loose to go curly and FULL like never before, brown arms and shoulders, feet that are perpetually dirty…ahh i love it. My skin is still misbehaving like a teenager´s, i am covered in bites, bruises, cuts and scabs of all kinds and my stomach is looking a bit more like a belly dancer´s every day, yet still i feel more beautiful than ever.

Given my sickly state, the day was pretty uneventful. i worked on some tattoo sketches for a good while, and ate my first freshly picked maracuya (passionfruit). One of the Germans brought it back to the volunteer house at the end of the work day and tossed it over to me as i sat there sketching. i didn´t know what it was or even how to eat it. i started to try to peel it with my knife, was promptly made fun of, then shown the ¨way¨.

Passionfruit is now officially and unequivocally my favourite fruit of all time. Mangoes and lychees, although still delicious, have been demoted. To enjoy a maracuya, you cut open the hard green-yellow shell, and inside is a collection of dark seeds surrounded by juicy gooey deliciousness. Then you bring it to your lips and suck it all up. So sweet and sour and tangy all at once. Yup, passionfruit is definitely where it´s at. Forget romantic marriage proposals or expensive rings, present me with enough passionfruit and i´m all yours. Wow, just writing this has made my mouth water. And on top of all that, the passionfruit flower is one of the craziest, most trippy and intricate things i´ve ever seen.

Well, I´ve now been sitting here for 3 and half hours and my eyeballs might fall out if I stay any longer. Let´s see….dammit, I´ve only written about 3 days! I have at least 17 more to go… Waaaaaa, will I ever catch-up?

Looks like I´m going to Otavalo tomorrow (2 hours from Quito) to check out the famous artisan market there. Hopefully pick up some Xmas goodies for everyone back home, then get back into Quito in time to meet Doe at our hostal.

ok, I´m off to find my Congal crew and head out to dinner (assuming my legs still work…wait…help! I can´t feel left butt cheek!)

*****************A few hours later*************************

Just had a lovely dinner with Sam at the Coffee Tree (the one restaurant/cafe in Quito that EVERYONE seems to know about and is constantly packed with people from all over the world and locals alike. Oh, and the food is DAMN good, and cheap too.) Had a good chat with Sam… really sweet girl she is, very un-American in many respects. Turns out we both had the same first impressions of the Congal boys. ahhh, sometimes a little light-hearted girl-talk can be very refreshing. But not too much! ugh, too much girl-talk makes me want to run out and throw a football or use power tools or something…can´t handle too much estrogen!

So when I got back to the hostal after my last blog dump, the girls laughed at me for spending nearly a whole day at various internet cafes and only having written about 3 days in my blog! So here I am again, hoping to slip in a few more days. I will try to stick to the facts a bit more….hahahaha. I am so funny sometimes.

So I took it easy during my sick day, which by the way is quite common and accepted. No one thinks twice about it if you decide you´d rather not work on a particular day. Most people wind up staying ¨home¨ sick at least once every few weeks. I think our gringo bodies are just not used to such physical work and odd diet. So people are more inclined to listen to their bodies and take a rest day if needed.

I had another disturbing dream that night, this time about my little sister´s health (Doe!). Weird, I never have dreams like this. But now I will make sure she gets her regular medical check-ups too, despite her (and my) misgivings about western medicine. I might as well get my Mom and littlest sister in on it too…everyone, stay healthy ok!?!

So Tuesday turned out to be another hard day on the body, well, mostly on my arms and shoulders. Mario and I went into Bunche (a small village about 20 minutes walk from the station) to lend our manpower one of the locals (Miguel Mera). He is working on building a new fence for the local school there, and Jatun Sacha has agreed to provide 2 people each day to help him.

Helping him translated into cutting Rebar into pieces three feet long, using only an ancient hacksaw and a water well as a work bench. Rebar for those who don´t know, are long steel bars used in construction, for reinforcing concrete. You see them poking out of the top of houses and buildings in many third world countries.

Anyways, by the end of the day, we´d cut 150 pieces of rebar, and my shoulder and arms were barely able to support the beer bottle that I drank on the way home to the station. I can´t say I´ve ever really appreciated how nice a cold one can be after a long hard day´s work. Now I get it.

Had some good conversation with Mario while we worked…he is definitely charming in a very different kind of way. And he´s German so you know what that means!

While we hacked away, a few children would come by and help us by holding the rebar steady, or just watching and smiling. One thing I find fascinating about the children here is that they instinctively seem to want to help when they see gringos working at something. They just want to be near us. One captivating little girl had a pink satin dress on, something that might have been a Barbie halloween costume in another country but was now grimy and full of holes. It struck me because it was so at odds with the surroundings.

When we took a break for a bottle of water, I saw a boy run by with a stick, rolling a hoop along the ground. Seriously! Like the ones you see in movies set in the 20s…crazy. It actually looks like fun too. Turns out I would see that same boy again and again whenever I was working in Bunche. He has a very sad, underfed, and lost look in his eyes. Haunting, I´d say.

I also chatted a bit with some school boys and I´ve decided that I will ask to help (or at least watch) Mario and Roberto teach english at some point during my stay here. I just want to know what it´s like.

When I got back to the station, I was greeted by the station´s pig, Niño, whom I adore. He is so friendly and happy and makes the sweetest grunting noises when he sees a friend. He renewed my love for pigs. Can´t believe he will be Xmas dinner for the volunteers…Mareike (another vegetarian) and I joke that we will ¨free¨ him before that happens…but the sad truth is that if we free him, someone else in the area would catch him and eat him. At least here at the station he gets lots of love. He really seems like a happy pig. So I sat there, giving his soft snout a good rub with one hand, and petting Pirata, one of the station´s 3 dogs with the other. It was a happy little bonding moment with my fellow creatures. The other dogs are Gringo (always so hyper and happy to see us) and Cuco (the biggest dog I have ever seen, and stinky to boot! He does this thing where we lies sprawled out on his back on the floor, legs in all directions, motionless, for hours. Hillarious).

A couple of us went for a quick jungle ¨workout¨ before dinner (Tanja keeps joking that she will need to go to ¨Fat camp¨ when she gets back from this trip…a carb diet just isn´t good for the girlish figure). We ran up and down a series of earthen steps leading up into the jungle highlands. Exhausting, particularly after a day of cutting rebar in hot humid weather. Once we figured we´d done enough, we continued up into the forest to this amazing lookout point. You can see Muisne town, and mangroves and the ocean, stretching out to infinity. Beautiful view. We resolve to come out here early one morning to watch the sun rise and maybe do some yoga too.

After dinner (more rice and beans), Mareike and Tanja treated us to a papaya and pineapple crumble that they had whipped up after work. I love that they take it upon themselves to cook yummy desserts for us all. Then we had a good laugh as we took turns attempting to read Tanja´s cheesy Danielle Steel novel out loud…in Slovenian! What a crazy language with all kinds of funky letters and accents.

I finished reading Brave New World (wow, wow and wow!) and picked H.G. Well´s ¨Time Machine¨ and ¨War of the Worlds¨ from the stack of books in the volunteer house. I am really liking this Utopian literature stuff…

On wednesday (no weird dreams this time, woohoo!), we went into Muisne town to whitewash one of the walls of the local stadium (if you can call it that). We will be painting a mural there on the ¨Dia de la no violencia¨ later in the week. Its in celebration of the international day to end violence against women. Looking at the 3 meter high and 20+ meter long wall, covered in white, I can´t help but feel a sense of endless possibilities. A true ¨blank slate¨! I´m excited about this mural thing. That night, everyone agreed that I should design the mural, having seen me draw tattoo sketches and color a crazy psychedelic frog that now adorns the wall of the volunteer house. hahaha, i love that I have been singled out as the ¨Creative one¨. It feels right somehow.
I feel a bit nervous because I´ve never done anything like this before, and it has an important social message to it. At the same time, I know with absolute certainty that inspiration will come at the right time… I feel a wellspring of creativity bubbling inside me. Finally I get to be creative on a massive and meaningful scale!

We had lunch at Paolo´s mothers house in Muisne, very delicious, then off to the beach to collect wood to make a display for the No-violence day events. We want to present Jatun Sacha to the town people and explain what we are there to do. We are planning to create out display out of all natural materials – it will be sweet!

Given that the beach is very long, and the washed up logs are not the lightest things in the world, I was quite tired by the time we brought the wood back to the stadium and dug holes to stand them up in. We must have just missed Victor and his truck because we wound up hanging out at the Muisne dock for at least an hour, waiting for our ride home. Poor Tanja wanted to take a boat, but most of us just didn´t think it was worth spending the extra $$$, and so we just waited and waited and waited. I have this great picture of her saying ¨no one listens to me!!¨ after we´d been waiting for an hour. When we finally got back to the station, Andreas the coordinator for the Congal station had arrived so I got to meet him and hear the plans for the following week. You can tell he is very involved and knows exactly what is going on and what needs to be done. Kind of like how Cesar was at the Galapagos station. Lots of knowledge and lots of passion. He is half German too, so often he lapses into German with Mario, Roberto and Mareike. Dammit, I need to learn to speak German! But first, I guess I should focus on spanish…

I´m in bed by 8:15 that night, hahaha, I still can´t believe it. So nice to listen to my body for a change. What´s that you say? You´re tired? Cool, let´s sleep then. Such a change for me given my usual night-owl tendencies.

Dreamt of getting married, including all the details like buying a dress, planning the reception etc etc. haha, hard to believe eh?

Thursday I woke up early (6ish) to sketch some ideas for the mural before breakfast. We all went into Muisne and built our display for the No-Violencia day. It´s awesome! We used tree bark, on which we posted printed picture of us doing various types of work, and wove some HUGE palm tree leaves into a wall of sort, decorated with hibiscus flowers and such. Really natural, really pretty. Then the event started and people from town came to the stadium to see all the displays (other volunteer organization had displays too, some with very graphic pictures of the damage caused by physical and sexual abuse). A local singer sang some pop-ish spanish songs, and the local girls squealed at his Rico Suave vibe. The guys built a Basurero (garbage can) out of wood and got the kids to play a game where they learn to throw garbage in the garbage can (education games can be fun!). We gave out cake that Mareike and Tanja had made earlier that day, and Sam and I slipped away for a bit to enjoy a break and some ice cream.

wow, totally unrelated but the guy running this internet cafe has a Nickleback cell phone ringtone! Didn´t know the boys from Hanna, Alberta had reached popularity in Ecuador…hahaha, funny.

Once the day´s events were over, we watched our boys (Mario, Roberto and Alex) play football (soccer) with a bunch of local kids. All the Congal girls admit that we enjoy watching our boys, particularly when they are shirtless…we are lucky to have so much eye candy around. Apparently the all-carb diet and hard labour seems to work well for them. Enough said.

After a long hot day, a bunch of us head for a dip in the ocean. The German boys brought a surfboard so we had fun with that for a while. Luckily, I had learned my lesson from my last beach adventure and wore ¨normal¨ underwear that day so I wasn´t indecently exposed, which is always nice.

Walking back from the beach to go catch the truck home from Muisne, I realize I am starting to feel really comfortable with my new mates. I think I´m starting to grasp how we all gel, and I think we will gel quite well over time. I start to sense that the silence among the group at times is more of a quiet companionship than an awkwardness or lack of cohesiveness. I like it.

Mareike and I give Niño the pig a new name…¨Plow-Tse¨ a german word for a belly that stick out. He seems to like it and I start to believe that he recognizes us as his friends who won´t eat him. He gets so excited when he hears us coming.

That night, I do another sketch for the mural, one that we will take with us and use as a guide. Everyone seems to like it and I´m excited about being in charge of the painting tomorrow. Mareike gives me my first spanish lesson (conjugating verbs!) while the crew hangs out in the hammocks, with tunes from my Zen playing through the speakers. We play my music alot, which is totally unexpected, but flattering. Having everyone signing to Sublime, or chilling to Bluetech is pretty sweet indeed.

whew, that´s three more days of blogging caught-up! Enough for tonight. I´m going to go find Sam and Tanja, then head out to a Hookah bar and hopefully hear some sweet Reggae.

Buenas Noches