August 3rd, 2011

FIRST FEW JUNGLE DAYS

Olivia’s Travel Tips: DO wear plenty of bugspray, especially if one is not actually fully vaccinated against Yellow Fever. DON’T put toilet paper into South American toilets…this may or may not clog the sewage system of the whole house that you are living in.

So, my first few days of living in the jungle are behind me!  It’s been surprising, hilarious, and a bit terrifying all at once.  First off, a bit about the house.  It is located 5 hours from Quito and about 2 hours from the nearest city (although really, city is a generous term for the place) of Puyo.  The area we are in is centered around this long road called Arajuno that was created originally by people living there, but that in recent years had been paved (again, generous terminology here) by the oil company that drills here.  Our house is right off of this road, and is really right in the jungle.   At night, you can hear owls, monkeys, frogs, and all types of insects.  I was recently told that there were even some jaguars roaming about.  More on that later…

The house itself is pretty simple, but definitely has everything that we need.  It is made totally of wood so it blends in as much as a house can into dense trees and is arranged as a bunch of rooms that all open out onto a central courtyard.  There is a small porch that runs along the inside perimeter of the house, above with are hanging many, many hammocks that meet my napping needs with ease.  Five bunk rooms are furnished with a mixture of bunk beds and mattresses balanced on wood planks that are balanced on cinder blocks.  I got one of the double mattresses and have ingeniously rigged a mosquito net system that, while heinous and incredibly inconvenient, does get the job done.  There is also a kitchen, lounge, and office that all are used as their names would imply…

As for the people, there is quite the interesting mix!  Everyone is super nice, and have all been here for at least a month, and so were clearly extremely excited to have someone new to entertain them for a bit.  Jessie is 25 years old and is the house coordinator.  She is from Florida, and is actually dating a man that she met when she first came to this very house.  He now lives in Puyo and brings water filtration systems to indigenous tribes.  I actually cannot think of a more romantic story than this way of meeting each other!

Agnes and Phoebe are my roommates.  Agnes is 21 years old and is the sassiest of Latvians.  After spending a year studying abroad in the States, she sometimes slips into this mixture of Latvian, British and Kentucky accent that is both wonderful and extremely difficult to understand.  She is definitely not afraid to say what she’s thinking, and although her English is perfectly fluent, she does not seem to understand sarcasm, which can lead to some unfortunate misunderstandings. Phoebe is a 28 year old Special Education Teacher from Oxford, England.  She is one of the more peculiar people I’ve ever met.  With fingernails that extend about 2 centimeters past the nail bed, and a habit of eating roughly 4 bars of chocolate and 3 bags of chips, or “crisps”, per day , Phoebe can answer any and all film trivia questions and has a special spot in her heart for Star Wars.

Lastly, Jeff is the other American in the house.  He’s going to be a senior at California Polytechnic Institute and is majoring in International Business.  He came here because it was a cheap way to see new and interesting parts of the world.  Unfortunately, he is sometimes not SO into the whole volunteering part of the volunteer project thing.  His most redeeming quality is that he is an excellent chef-so his nights to cook are always wonderful.

Kelsey is the “teaching coordinator” which means that she does a lot of the lesson plans and makes sure that we’re adhering to the curriculum.  She is from Scotland, and has spent a ton of time travelling the world.  She spent a year teaching in Spain and always says that it was the best year of her life…perhaps some inspiration for me in the future??

I do really like everyone in the house.  We obviously spend a lot of time together, and they are all really interesting people who have a lot to say.  They all are also really experienced independent travelers, which I really admire.  Seeing as though I frequently get lost travelling the streets of Wayland, MA when I have several friends in the car, I don’t think I’ll be attempting too much of that, but I suppose I can always dream big!

TEACHER! TEACHER!

Teaching school has been tons of fun!  Getting there has been a bit of a challenge, as there is no working car at the house anymore, so every morning we take a little 30 minute hike up a hill to wait for a bus.  Once we get to school though the kids will run right up to us and extend their hands for the ritual “Good morning, hello teachers” that they have been taught to do.   It is very sweet and a nice way to start the day.

School each day consists of an arts and crafts project that we use to introduce some new vocabulary words, then some sort of physical game that uses them again, followed by a serious English worksheet, and finally we get to just play a fun game like soccer or tag.  This is still the summer session, so things are pretty relaxed.

This week, the theme was “day and night,” so we taught words like “sun”, “moon”, “day”, “night”, and for the older kids we talked about different verbs that you would do in the day and others that you would do at night.  The schools are all in extremely poor condition.  They are often just simple buildings composed of several rooms that contain little to no furniture.  It seems like they have occasionally tried to liven things up a bit, but the efforts have been few and far between so they generally seem a bit sad.  Everything is pretty dirty, and most of the kids seem like they probably only own a couple of pieces of clothing and don’t get to bathe that often.  It feels really good to be able to bring the arts and crafts supplies that they would otherwise never get, and also to just be able to give them the sort of individual attention and affection that I suspect they do not get much of at home. 

OLIVIA HITCHHIKES (BELIEVE IT OR NOT)

After school on Tuesday the other volunteers decided to take me to the waterfall.  I didn’t really know what I was in for, but I packed my bathing suit and went along for the ride.  Turns out the ride included hitchhiking in the backs of random people’s trucks.  I, naturally, was petrified at the prospect of this initially, but when it dawned on me that the alternative was being left on the side of the jungle road, I said a couple of prayers and climbed in.  After a couple of minutes, I was so enjoying the view and feeling of the wind on my hair and sun on my face so much that I nearly forgot I was engaging in what was ultimately a stupid and reckless activity.  Well, whatever.

Once we got to the little, little town called Triunfo we got out and walked about 5 minutes off the road and came to a little trail into the jungle.  After following it down into a sort of canyon for about 8 minutes we came to the most beautiful waterfall that I have ever seen.  We were at the bottom of this jungle valley area just surrounded in all directions by lush jungle and soaring trees.  This humongous waterfall came out of the side of the valley and fell down into a pool that led into a river that curled off into the trees.  We lounged in the sun for a bit and then took a dip in the pool.  It was so beautiful, and it was experiences like that definitely were a huge motivation for me to come to Ecuador.  I was so happy to have found it, and so happy to be getting along so well with these people who I had just met.  A really wonderful way to start my time in the jungle.