Uff...1, 2 y 3...Respirá, encontrá tu serenidad y escribí (Breath, find your serenity and write)

            "Entonces [Daniela Báez] salió del automóvil envuelta con el abrigo hasta las orejas, y le preguntó al guardia en un francés perfecto dónde había una farmacia" (Márquez, "El rastro de tu sangre en la nieve").

            Jorge Luis Borges said, "Muchas cosas he leído y pocas he vivido," [I've read many things and lived few], this is exactly what I am trying to avoid in my life. I have read MANY things and I will keep reading, but I want to live much more and write about all of these experiences. Yachana and the selva are giving me stories and experiences to share for years, that's a big part of why I don't want to leave. When I go to Tena, native guides ask me if I am interested in a jungle tour and I tell them, "My life is a jungle tour." Today I was talking with a woman who mentioned that there was an insect exhibition at the Botanical Park of Quito. Guess what I told her, that's right, "My life is and insect exhibition."

Well, I have a question for you. If I receive absolutely no response, then I'll have my answer. Are you still reading this or am I writing to myself? I heard one time about a writer who held the belief that his work was somehow too good for people and that they didn't deserve to read it, so he didn't publish anything. I'm most definitely not that egotistical and I certainly see the value of having an audience. Writing for and to yourself is very valuable, but I also do have ambitions, not all ambition is bad, and I love to share my work and get feedback. I guess what I'm saying is the following: I, just like many people, would like to say that I don't care what others think, but I have enough sense and sensibility to know that that is not the true way I feel. We live off of "give and receive" in this world and I would like to know if what I am sharing socially is worth the cost, the time it takes you to read it. Time is also a commodity and I certainly hope that you aren't spending yours unwisely when you read what I write. I would like to know if you care to read about Ecuador, about Quito, Yachana, the selva, my woes, my sadness and my alegría (happiness), all from my perspective. Please leave a comment and I'll know, I won't change anything because that's just how I am, but I'll at least know. If not, I'll just keep writing to myself.

I know that the term "Drama Queen" ("teatrera" o "meladramática," en español) exists, but is there also a "Drama King" ("teatrero") and, if so, am I one? Here I am in Quito once again, feeling sorry for myself, once again. Maybe my drama is a little more real this time around, we had one hell of an academic term this November; it has been a little rough. We have had everything from discipline issues, which is to be expected with teenagers, to water problem, after water problem, after water problem. On the upside, we survived and we did much more than just that. I must confess that I am finding it a little difficult to write this time around, which would explain why I haven´t done it for such a long period of time. Well, here goes nothing, or "her" goes nothing (that's what I typed before realizing the error and correcting it, double meaning or simple error?)...

I have come to the realization that traveling alone is just no fun, big surprise right? Here's the thing, I love to be in the jungle, I can´t get enough of the work I do there and I even wear myself out on a daily basis, but it's amazing! There's always a new challenge, something different to discover, and I love being with my Yachana family in my home, the selva. After a term like the one we just had, I always say to myself, "I can't wait for our break," but, after just a couple of days of being away, I always find that I can't wait to get back to the selva and get back to work. You all know that I love Quito, I love the fact that I have a place to stay and relax and that Mónica treats me as if I were her own son, but it does get lonely here. Even though I'm a grown man, it still gets to me when I have to do things all by myself. For example, who wants to go to the movies by themselves? If you do, please leave a comment, I´d like to know what your perspective is on this. I do have friends here in Quito, but they are all older and have jobs and other obligations. In other words, I have no one to hang out with :-( I´ll teach you a new word in Spanish, desamparado, it basically means "helpless" or "abandoned". That´s why I wonder if I´m a Drama King, because that´s how I feel in Quito by my lonesome. I wish my conecshión was here with me right now. The ironic thing is that I told a student, after she expressed worrying about thinking too much, that you can never think too much, I am now eating my words. When you're alone and you have a lot of free time, it's very easy to think too much. I think about the past, future and present, old and new relationships, people I haven't seen in years, long lost friends, friends that are far away, think about family (I have a lot of those), think about sad things and worry a lot, and I think about writing everything that's in my mind...here we go: 

Now that I have gotten my customary "self pitying" paragraph out of the way, let me update you on my latest adventures. As I briefly mentioned earlier, the students were a bit difficult this time around. This group of students had never been in the high school with us before and we just didn't share the same level of connection as we did with the others. I do think this changed by the end of the session. They’re all great kids, but this group was a little "big headed" going into the term and they thought that they knew everything (what teenager doesn't?) or that they were somehow above the subjects. The sad thing is that they didn’t know it all, of course, and I worried a lot that they were getting behind the other students because of their over confidence. Many of the kids' responses to my questions were not well-developed nor thought out, but, if there's anything I've learned from teaching, you can't expect a perfect group every time. Every class is different and you will always see a different dynamic among different groups of students. One student can change the environment of an entire class. Even though I was facing these difficulties going into the term, I wasn't going to go down without a fight, I pressed on and I urged the kids to do the same! 

Since this was the first time we had this group, I revisited Motorcycle Diaries with them and we watched the film together. I'm not sure that these kids were as impressed or interested in this, but I can't really tell. It's not that this group is indifferent, but they just don't express themselves like the other kids do. This means that it's really hard to tell what they got out of the lessons. On the other hand, these kids read at an astounding pace, they seemed to really get into the books they checked out from the library and they showed an amazing passion for English learning. 

One thing that I did differently with this group was follow the Motorcycle Diaries on a map that I hand drew. For everyday of reading, I marked on the map, with a different color ink, how far we got. The photos explain themselves:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

As you can see, we actually finished the book in just four short days, I was impressed.

Other points of interest:


1. If you get a chance, look up, “sangre de drago” (Dragon's Blood), it is considered a miraculous cure-all here in the Amazon. Check it out on wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons_Blood I don’t know if it is as "miraculous" as some of the potions in Márquez' stories, but it does seem to have many valuable uses.  Any time I have some kind of ailment, the answer is always, "Sangre de Drago."

2. If you were getting bored with my blog, maybe this will help grab your attention! I wanted to mention, in case you haven't noticed, that our nutria (the baby amazon otter, Yaku Warmi) is growing a lot! She's beautiful, don't you want one for your own home?!

Savage attack otter mode!

Playing dead...

And I'm spent!

Yaku is kind of like a bug and she kind of reminds me of my friends' dog, who is actually named Bug. She's so cute, but her situation is a bit of a sad one. She is part of an otter species that is endangered, her mommy was killed and eaten, and she is fully domesticated now. The fact that she's domesticated means that she doesn't fish on her own and can't be reintegrated into the wild because the other otters would probably kill her or she would die of starvation. She'll just have to stick around Yachana, which is fine because she's just so damn cute! When she's lonely or hungry she squeaks constantly and it's so heartbreaking. 

3. Speaking of bugs, let's talk a little about my relationship at this point with the Amazon buggies, arenillas and sleeping under a toldo (a mosquito net). I know I have written about bugs before, but I just wanted to tell you that I have become friend of most jungle bugs, with the exception of a couple. In the "civilized world," I know it's a common reaction to kill any and every bug you come across, but, in the selva, we have just as much respect for them as we do for Yaku. The only bugs that I kill are the following: arenillas (these horrible, microscopic, sand flies that bite you, it hurts, and then itches like crazy! If you scratch, it leaves a mark for days and days. I still have some and I've been in Quito for almost a week), the Brazilian Wandering Spider (I only kill these guys if they're in my room and/or being very aggressive. They're the one's I told you about that can give you intense pain for 10-12 hours, cause impotency or a heart attack), sancudos or mosquitoes (for obvious reasons), and cockroaches (if I find them in my room, again, for obvious reasons, especially the flying ones that are the size of your fist). The rest of the bugs I admire, respect and leave alone. We maintain a live and let live relationship.
I also wanted to say that I'm becoming more and more lax about the whole toldo situation, it's really quite a pain sleeping with a net, it can be very hot and suffocating and tucking and un-tucking it is ridiculously tedious.A toldo can also have the exact opposite function that you want it to, if bugs somehow manage to get inside of it, they usually can't get out and that means that they're sleeping with you ALL NIGHT! None of the kids nor the people that live in the community sleep with a net. As a result of all of the annoyances, I have kind of stopped worrying about sleeping with the net as well. The only cases of Malaria or Dengue that I have heard of have come from areas outside of Yachana, I'm good to go!

4. I learned to fish in the Napo River. It actually feels pretty cool, I can officially say that I have been fishing in one of the Amazon rivers! Makes me think instantly to River Monsters on Animal Planet. Fortunately, my experience was not anywhere near as dramatic as that guy's. I learned that the perfect time to go fishing is when the river is subido (up) and the current is fast. We rode out in canoe, upriver, to an isleta  (the small island formations in the middle of the river, "islet," in English I believe), tried to tie up the canoe the best we could with rocks and we set to work. The most important part about fishing with a net is making sure that there is no basura (trash) in the net line. The basura can be anything from seaweed, to leaves, to sticks that the net picked up the last time it was used. If you have this kind of stuff in the line, the net will not open fully in the water and you're likely to not catch a thing. After you clean the net, one person goes upriver, río arriba, to throw the net out, and another waits downriver, río abajo, to catch the net. With any luck, you will eat fish for dinner. The first time that I went out to do this we did manage to catch something, a bunch of leaves and large branches. On the other day, the pesca (fishing) was much more successful; we caught around eight Bocachicos (Small Mouths)!

See why they´re called Bocachicos?

5. Thanksgiving Dinner in the jungle was a very interesting experience! The other volunteers developed a very good idea to share a little bit of North American culture with the students and prepare a Thanksgiving dinner for everyone. Of course, considering that we live in the selva, we weren't going to obtain traditional Thanksgiving ingredients. Here is how the substitutions panned out:
-Stuffing = mashed and fried plantain mixed with onions
-Turkey = chicken
-Mashed potatoes = mashed yucca
-Cranberry sauce = raspberry sauce with babaco
-Rice was added to the Thanksgiving tradition. We learned that you better not dare try to deprive Ecuadorians of their rice!

6. I learned that we are NOT, by any means, roughing it at the high school. How did I learn this? We took a day trip to an ecological reserve that is ran, in cooperation with Yachana, by a British organization known as Globalvision International. These poor people are the ones who are roughing it! They do not have a generator at all, they are limited to one shower a day because they pump water from a stream and they are all entirely eaten up by bugs! The experience at GVI was very interesting. We learned how they throw themselves in the middle of the monte (forage) to hunt for frogs to classify in the middle of the night, how they trap and classify butterflies and birds as well, and took some very interesting jungle walks. It was incredible to learn about the selva from a scientific point of view and to learn the importance of all of the things it has to offer in terms of scientific research.

I'm sure I had other things that I wanted to write, but I find myself a bit tired. I'll just leave you with saying that I've gone fishing for new ideas...