jungle boogie

Misahualli, bustling commerce

Wow. Just got home from the jungle. What a wild week. I'm alive, which is also helpful. (fun language fact. The word for jungle in spanish is selva which also means wild. what a fitting word.) We did some construction and hosted a VBS in Pununo all week with an organization (http://www.itsaboutkids.org/home.html) based just outside Misahualli (i still don't know how to pronounce it) and on Thursday traveled down the Napo to Pasuno for a one day VBS. And it was beautiful. Beautiful like you wouldn't believe (well, maybe you would if you have been somewhere tropical) but probably the most exotic, enthralling place I've ever been.

a little monkeyin' around in misahualli

Misahualli looked a lot like other towns we had been to, a few streets with a central park. One fun aspect though- this central park was packed full of monkeys. I'm not kidding. Every morning at about 6:30 or 7 the monkeys come into town from the pier and hung out at the park. They steal food and anything they can get thier hands on. It was awesome. We even witnessed a dog vs. monkey fight over a piece of bread. During said fight, a monkey ran right up the side up of Alyse. again- awesome.

Napo from the air!

Of course, I didn't take enough pictures. Well, I didn't take any pictures- my camera broke the day we made ceviche (a little google image search actually does some justice.) Anyway. Misahualli is on the Napo river- a winding, brown mass of super seguro bridges, long canoes and little villages that I have no hope of pronouncing the name of. In short, it was beautiful. Like most of my favorite parts of Ecuador, I have no hope of describing it here. It was a mix of summers at poskin lake with some possible anacondas thrown in, and every adventurous, Indiana Jones type movie you've ever seen. Incredible.

Now onto the clima in the salva. Picture with me, a scorching hot afternoon in mid august in the second or third floor of a house in Chicago- A/C is out and Sears is out of fans. That sweaty, nasty uncomfortable is pretty much what the jungle feels like. Believe it or not. Well all that plus killer bugs. I wish their was photo documention of Alyse's legs. They swelled to the size of a woman at 9 months and were covered with bites from pinky toe to knee cap. Que linda!

And this is getting long... some high lights

• VBS. Had a great time meeting some great new kids, being in charge of crafts with Alyse and learning new spanish kids songs (like Caminamos en la Luz de Dios, Alabare, and Yo Tengo Gozo) 
• seeing the widest tree in the jungle. vines, crazy kids, it was like the Jungle Book. This tree was about as wide as half a foot ball field. I'm not kidding. You could see it popping out of the jungle from town. 
• getting to work with It's About Kids (http://www.itsaboutkids.org/home.html) Cool ministry, cool kids- generally cool. 
• watching my friends (namely Caleb) jump off bridges in town. I just couldn't muster up the courage for that one. 
• we made our own chocolate. It actually wasn't very good. But i also ate cacoa fruit during day while doing our construction stuff. wierd, right?

...some low lights

• It was hot. see above. swass.
• mixing concrete by hand, like its 1899. (Okay. that was actually kind of fun. for like a minute.) Good thing we brough Stacy, who's calling is to be a human concrete mixer. 
• bug bites
• leaving. 

**we're leaving for the beach here in t-minus one hour for our overnight bus ride to la costa. i am hitting the Estados in 7 days. That feels wierd. I refuse to say that out loud.**