10/17

Work has been exhausting me so much lately that I haven´t had the energy to blog afterwards. It seems I´ve inserted a much larger lapse between entries than I had intended; sorry. Yesterday the kids had a field trip to the presidential palace. The one day I go to school in my pajamas, we go somewhere important. Figures. Since I had no idea about the trip, I didn´t bring my ID, and because of that, couldn´t get into the tour of the place. Another volunteer, Andre from Austria, was in the same boat as me, so we sat in the Plaza de Indepencia until the kids came out. All the other children from all the other schools were quiet and lined up politely, but our kids came out of the place screaming and running. Andre and I went over to the gate the kids were behind, and they started chanting ¨Tio, tio, tio¨ which is what they call the boy volunteer. Literally it means uncle. Then they started chanting ¨Tia Krystina, tia Krystina¨. That was really cool, and when the guard opened the gate, the kids came flying out and into our arms. There were a lot of tourists around, looking really touristy (with cameras around their necks, and sunglasses and Hawaiian shirts) and the kids pointed at them and shouted ¨Gringo¨ which means ¨whitey¨ essentially. That also made me feel cool because the kids have never called me a gringo, even though I am.

Last weekend was my favorite so far. Sean and I went camping in the rainforest of Mindo. We actually did some really arduous work on a research project (http://www.lifenetnature.org/). We did a lot of hiking through mountainous rainforest in a reserve called Las Tanagaras in the town/forest of Mindo. What a beautiful town! The scenery was breathtaking. The research was pretty cool. We went along with Sean´s frind, Carlos, from school. Carlos is annoyingly rich and also annoyingly in love with birds. He set the whole thing up. We worked with this wonderful guide named Pasqual Torres. The four of us set up fifteen big mist nets in the forest. Birds would, from time to time, fly into these nets and get tangled up. We would untangle them, put them in a bag (I got to hold real, live, wild birds!) and bring them to our main station to record data about them. I now know waaaaay too much about birds. We would put a little metal ring-tag on their leg and let them go. I can now tell if a bird is an adult or juvenile, if it´s pregnant, or has had an ectoparasite. Waaaay too much... Anyway, we caught a few really cool birds. Ecuador is famous for its hummingbirds, and I saw a ton of them around the guide´s cabin. Oh man, every day we had to wake up at 5:00 am, while it was still dark out, and begin our work. Tough stuff. The guide told me that I can put this on my resume as research work, though, which I´m pretty thrilled about. We also hiked about a half hour up a mountain to see this really beautiful bird, called the Cock of the Rock, do it´s mating ritual. There weren´t as many birds there as the guide was hoping, but I still got to see a few of them and I also got an amazing view of the rainforest. On the last day, Sean swam in this amazingly beautiful waterfall. It was a little paradise away from all the other troubles of the world.

About two weeks ago, Sean was robbed of his backpack by old men in suits. While he was on the bus, or right after, someone squirted mustard onto his backpack and pants. Some old guy was trying to help him clean it off, and some other guy offered to get water. Sean took his backpack off and put it in front of him to clean it. Somehow his attention was drawn away from his pack for a second and when he turned around it was gone. The people around him gave him conflicting info about where the thieves ran to. It seems everyone was involved in the thing. Nothing too important was taken, and Sean has his sweaty groin cup from Tae Kwon Do class in his bag, so he was happy that the thieves would be confronted with it. Sean was actually really cool about the whole thing and he said that it made him wiser.