SummerTIME

So I have been spending a bunch of time looking at how to use html and css to improve my blog and such. It is hard. I have had semi- success, but it still isn't exactly how I would like it. The point is I have time. You know why? Because I am on vacation, the U.S. equivalent to summer vacation, so I have a ridiculous amount of it.
A week from today I got back from the Amazon trip, which was a totally new to experience. Unlike Manabi, we were not going with all the exchange students of Ecuador. We were split up into groups. This trip was the Guayaquileños and the Machala kids from el Oro. We were really happy, because  we are pretty close with this group.
I woke up at 4:50 a.m. on Friday the 27th to make my flight out of Guayaquil to Quito at 6:35 a.m.. I am not going to lie, it wasn't too hard for me. It is true, I do not like waking up early, but if a flight is involved, I normally get really excited; flying baffles and amazes me. We were lucky we were flying, because the students from Machala had to drive fourteen hours to Quito in order to meet us to do more traveling.
 Everything was going very smoothly. I met my fellow Guayaquileños in the airport all with bags under their eyes and we checked in our bags (not the ones under our eyes, well technically they were). We continued through security rapidly, and I was puzzled for a second when we were not forced to take off our shoes. I didn't complain though. Before getting on the plane we got a coffee and then boarded. To my surprise we walked downstairs, and followed these painted lines on the pavement to a plane which had stairs to the ground, so that the passengers could board. I talked with my exchange friends, and I wasn't the only one who felt like I was the President when going up the stairs.

I may have done a slight wave...

Kendel and Johannes ended up missing their flight out of Guayaquil and thus, missed their other flight from Quto to Lago Agrio. When they got to Quito, they had to take a flight to a different place and then drive three hours in a taxi to where we were. Thanks to Rotary, they payed for the damages. Amazingly, this was the fault of one of the host parents, and not the students.  They spent six hours traveling that day. 

On the other hand, the people who made it to Quito, such as myself, met up with the exchange students from Machala, and happily took their plane to Lago Agrio, followed by a two hour bus ride.

Getting a ride to our plane.

Note: Man in background

The Conveyor Belt Plank: performed by Signe.  I did it as well, but horizontally. 

On our bus ride, we stopped to freshen up and we bought food like this:

 A Caimon made of bread.

 And then Jesus said, "take this bread for it is...." 

It became more of thing to take pictures with it.

We eventually got out of the van to a place that was still not where we would be staying. We ate lunch, and Kendel and Johannes arrived with a standing ovation, which was followed by hugs.

We were going to stay in Siona Lodge, but before we got there, we had to take a two hour boat ride, but it was more like three, because we stopped to look at animals.

This was our tour guide Annakin Skywalk- I mean Miguel.

Siona Lodge was the newest lodge on the Cuyabeno River. No, we were not directly on the Amazon, but on one of the tributaries. Siona Lodge was an eco-friendly lodge with its very own solar panels, which only provided power from 6-11 p.m. This was a very short time to charge up on electronic devices. The best feature about Siona Lodge was that it had hot water! It may have seemed unnecessary, due to the fact that it was so humid, and it was garunteed that you were sweating at all times, but it was still refreshing. Each bed doned a mosquito net, and each back patio had its own hammock.

The hallways

I wasn't lying.

 My bed was the one on the left. That fact was just to write something below this picture. Actually, I do have something to say. On the first night, I closed the curtains, and stupidly drowned myself in Detan (Ecuadorian mosquito repellant that is really strong). I opened the net coughing, unable to breathe. With all of that Detan, I definitely killed some brain cells. 

Where we ate.

Eating with Kendel, Johannes and Felicitas

On the first night, we went on a night hike, basically to see bugs. Here are a few of the animals we saw:

Scorpian

Look familiar?

Harry Potter possessed, tortured, and murdered, spider. 

Tarantula

Chocolate Frog! You can relate anything to Harry Potter. 

Moritz (Germany) wearing his explorer hat and inpersonating Bear Grylls the entire time by saying "intresting fact!", "that's amazing", or "it doesn't taste very good, but it's good protein" 

The next day we went on a three hour hike. I now truly understand the pharse, "it's a jungle out there", becuase everything in the jungle was pretty much made to kill you. Every other plant or animal seemed fataly posionous. Anyhow,  here are some of the jungly things we saw. 

 Monkey spottings were very cool. The monkeys would carry their babies on their backs and between larger gaps they had to jump, would stretch their body to provide as a bridge for the baby to get from one tree to the next. 

Unfortunately, I did not take any of these monkey photos, but my friend did.

 This was the only thing we were allowed to smoke according to a rotarian. It came off a tree in the forest and provided as a mosquito repellant.
That is Pikachu on the left. 

Note: War paint, Signe and I decided to go all wild. I felt like I might be in Lord of the Flies. 

She has no idea this picture is on my blog.

 Lilja, Rachel and I.

 MONKEY

 I call this the ultimate birth control. This flower came off a tree and if you make a tea out of it, you are infertile for seven years.

 My friend had this on Facebook and it said "We angered a native". I decided to sacrifice myself, so you all can enjoy a laugh.

 In the jungle below a gorgeous tree. 

Description of the tree below at 59 seconds. 

I have no idea why this video popped in my head.

Our tour guide was pretty amazing. After killing a rabbit with his bare hands- no, I am just kidding. He was great though. He spoke, Spanish, English, German, and we later learned, one of the indigenous languages. It is actually dye that is on his hands. By rubbing a particular leaf together, red juice began to appear, because it was exposed to the air. After being exposed for a bit of time, it fades to black.You can dye your hair with it and we were planning to, but we didn't collect enough of it to be able to dye our hair.

A plant that can cut through your fingers. Many of the indigenous use it, because it is so sharp. It is near impossible to tear apart with your hands.

You can use some plants to write. 

On one of the trees we came upon, there were ants crawling all over it. So the guide took the hand of one of the girls, and put it on the tree in the middle of the ants. They crawled up onto her hand, and she removed it to have him kill all the ants by rubbing them on her hand. He told us to smell, and it smelled like a perfume. The jungle had an incredible amount of useful treasures, bugs that taste like lemon, posion, dye, etc.
Afterwards, we went piranha fishing. I jokingly asked if we were going to throw some meat in the water, and that's what we did. We used raw beef as bait, and it worked well, sometime it worked too well, because they kept biting off the meat to quickly.

I caught 1.5 piranha. I successfully caught one, and the other escaped when I already had it out of the water. 

Piranha

 We were not allowed to hold them, because they could easily bite off our fingers. When a piranha is out of the water it is prone to biting. 

 We then swam in the piranha infested waters. This was actually a good thing, because it ate the more terrifying penis fish. The piranhas are like cake compared to these tiny fish, and piranhas don't bite unless you are bleeding profusely. 

Everyone was doing backflips, this is a really good picture of Dylan Kuhlwien (Germany). 

At night, we went searching for Caimons. It was really hard to see, especially if you didn't have a flashlight. Before this trip, I had never heard of a Caimon. I only thought there were alligators and crocodiles, but I guess not. 

On the last day, we travelled several hours by boat to an indigenous village. 

 Here, a woman cut up some yuca, because we were making a yuca bread.

Here is where we cooked the yuca bread. 

This is where we waited, and pretended to help make the yuca bread.

This is the Yuca bread covered in marmalade. Yum!

Drinking Chicha, semi-fermented corn or something. I learned that it was fermented by people spitting into it. Thanks, dad. 

This is the town Shaman. He knows remedies from the forest, and his knowledge is incredible, when it comes to healing someone. Here he is performing a ceremony to examine if someone has a good spirit or not, to see if they need cured. Marlee, luckly did not have any harmful spirits after being evaluated ;). He has around eight apprentices right now, and  they go through a series of tests. They have to go into the jungle and take this alcohol from a plant that provides as a hallucinogen. If the apprentice does something bad while take the alcohol, like burning down a house, it means they were not meant to be a Shaman.

 We played soccer with the natives. It was so hard, because of the incredible heat and humidity. I constantly felt like I was going to pass out. 

Kendel and I climbed a tree, which was perfect for climbing. You could climb really high, and the branches were strong. The indigenous children were climbing in it too, and were very similar to monkeys in the way they climbed out on limbs, jumped from branch to branch, or merely when walking on the branches. 

A little kid getting some water.

 This is a boat we hijacked at some point in time.

Just my jungle tattoo. Haha, no. Actually, we did these tattoos from a fruit from the jungle. It should last a month or so. My friend Sophia designed this one. Another girl, Maria, was getting so many tattoos, and anytime someone asked her if she wanted one, she accepted. She became known as "white trash" from then on.

Rachel made this by experimenting with her Nikon camera. She set it on light exposure or something for 30 seconds at a time, and Dylan wrote this.I also think this is a great picture to end talking about the amazon.

Nevermind, this was on the plane leaving the Amazon. It is too cool to pass up.
What am I doing?

Well, I have been doing a bunch of nothing. I stayed up really late writing this blog. I am always on Facebook, because I can't leave without asking my brother for a ride or paying for a taxi. I have yet to receive this months money. I have been hanging out in Samborondon lately with Kendel, and she has even convinced me to take up oil painting, yes, oil painting. We will see how that goes. All the people in Samborondon have more opportunities close to them, because it is relatively safe to walk around town. They are trying to start of dancing lessons or something, which I might find a way to join them.

Also, as opposed to returning to high school for the next school year that starts in April, I am hoping that I can  attend Unidad Educativa Espirtu Santo (UEES). It is a university in Samborondon, which would be awesome if I could go there instead. I think it would give me more opportunities and ability to socialize with people my own age. Yes, I am excited about that. I should be changing families in about a week, which I am a bit nervous for, so we shall see. I will be moving to Urdesa, which will be a new scenery. Okay, I must go. Finally I am done :D

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