Hola Amazon!

At the end of the trip we have the opportunity of going to the Amazon jungle! We flew into Quito stayed the night at the OSSO house there and then flew to Coca the next morning. Linnea and I were the only ones leaving the Cuenca house at this time but there were 9 other girls from Quito that we went with. It was a blast! When did I ever think I would be staying in a bungalow in the Jungle? Never! Here are some pictures of my stay in the jungle! The pictures are all mixmatched but these are the things that I did while my stay in the Amazon! We had to take a 3 hour canoe ride to our lodge. Luckily it was powered! Wow! could you imagine!? We get out walk up this little path to this chef that is greeting us with hot towels and drinks and fried plantins. The towels were to wipe your sweat off, coming from dry ol Utah I have never experienced humitity like that before! Holy cow it was disgusting! Then we were assigned our little huts where we stayed and our tour guide. His name was Avel and he liked to hit on us all the time. Our rooms were actually very nice! There was electricity at night and we didnt have windows. Just mesh to keep the bugs out. It was the coolest thing to lay in bed at night and be able to hear all the noises outside. The food was also delicious. We ate 3 big meals a day. The trip to the Amazon was a great way to end my experience.

They taught us how to throw spears and use blow darts. This is still how they hunt today.

This would be our tour guide eating termites. They are supposed to keep the mosquitos away. I also ate one! It wasnt bad at all actually! Im not sure if it kept the mosquitos away or not but hey! Im in the Amazon!


The medicine man did a cleansing ceremony on us. He used tobacco smoke and some kind  of plant. He was cleansing us of any evil spirits we might have





A huge tree we climbed

I was so glad I brought my rain jacket! It rained so hard there and everything was muddy! They also gave us these rainboots to hike around in.

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Our room!!

Us playing with some of the native children. It amazed me that they all ran around without shoes!

We also played soccer with the Native men. They were super good and very competitive!

I got to hold a Monkey! Cool right!? This is a spider monkey which is the smallest species of monkey. On the right is a picture of a spider hole. This spider is very poisinous and creates a hole in the dirt for protection. We saw this on our night hike.

There were many cool birds that we were able to find throug a telescope. On the pic on the right is looking down into the jungle. You can see a volcano in the distance.

This would be a honking huge earth worm!!

Grub.... They actuall eat this here. Two of the girls in the group actually ate it raw. You had to bite off the heads first or else they would bite  you. I didnt quite have the guts to do that but I did eat it once it was cooked! Tasted like bacon.

The View from where we ate dinner every night.

Our little friend that decided to hang out on our front step. I will never complain of the bugs we have here after all being in the jungle.

Our dinner

It was really cool to see how people still live. They showed us how they still pan for gold. It is a long proccess and they maybe get a gram of gold a day.

We floated down the amazon river in our life jackets on like diapers! We didnt get attacked or bit by anything but we couldnt pee or else this little fish would go up our urinary track system!

The day before we went home we flew back to Quito. We went to the equator museum. It was really pretty neat. If you stand on one side of the equator the water if you were to flush a toilet goes to the left and on the other side to the right. Also its very hard to balance if you walk on the line which I thought was interesting.

Goodbyes

I cant believe how fast this whole experience has gone. I feel like I was just meeting these sweet kids and girls I serve with and now its time to go home. It was hard saying bye to all the kids, but it was even harder when they knew that you were leaving and wont ever see you again. I was at Casa's one day and putting cute little Carlitos to bed. Carlitos had only been there 3 days prior to this. I hugged him and told him in my broken spanish that I had to go home to the States. He started crying so hard and woulndt let go of me. This was so sad! I cant imagine how hard it is for these kids to lose volunteers, goodbye has a whole different meaning to them because they had to say goodbye to their parents. Im sure he has a fear of being alone and thats what makes it that much harder to leave.
          My last time at Remar I was playing with a girl named Jiovana she is about 9 years old. She was getting my all ready and doing my hair and pretending to put make up on me. They love to do this. She was plucking my eyebrows with her fingers and putting the eyebrow hair on her thumb then she would touch it to my thumb. Not having a clue what she was saying she said some little chant and blew on it. When she let go if it was on my thumb she would be sad but if it was on hers she got all excited as if the wish would come true. She would say things to me and I would just answer "Si" because thats pretty much all I could say. I always got frustrated with the language barrier. Later we went inside to look at some new bunk beds that OSSO had made for them. I was with another volunteer and Jiovana said "is that where you are going to be sleeping?" Linnea answered no those are for you. We have to go back to our home in the states. Jiovana got this sad look on her face and turns to me and says "you promised". Right then it all clicked what she had been wishing for. She wished that I would be her mom. Me not knowing any spanish or what she was really doing answered "Si".. she hugged me and cried. Talk about heart breaking right!?  I have never felt so horrible in my life. All these poor children want are families and someone to love and take care of them. I wish I could give them all the life that I have been given.
           It was almost easier for me to say goodbye to the babies then the older kids that understand you wont be coming back. It is comforting knowing that OSSO will always be there. That there will always be volunteers coming in and loving these kids. We are not just leaving them with nothing.
           Coming into this I had no idea that I would make as good of friends as I have with the girls that I served with. I learned so much and had so much fun with these girls. It was soo hard leaving them. Some of my good friends still had another month there. I am so greatful for this experience and the people I met and the kids that touched my heart. I deffinately have a different outlook on life and what really matters in life.