¡Hola! i´m back in Quito for a day. this weekend we went to Baños for our free travel. we chilled at the hostel, went to internet cafes and went out to dinner. we found out that maya and corinne have stomach infections, which are contagious. they saw a doctor in Tena. it´s all good, though. so saturday night we went to dinner at a really good burger place. max and i got our food first, so we sat in the park and ate. we were eating and all of a sudden, max jumped up and screamed. a bird had landed in [View Full Entry]

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Alipuncha! (that´s Quechua for ¨good day¨) En la semana pasada vivimos en la Amazonia con Quechuas sin agua limpia, electricidad, y baños en uno dormitorio. this past week we lived in the amazon with Quechuas without clean water, electricity, and bathrooms in one room. it was a pretty cool experience. on sunday we piled into 2 pickup trucks and drove 45 minutes to the Puni River. i sat in the back of one of the trucks with yuri and chris and the backpacks in the pouring rain. In the Amazon. i´ve realized that everything sounds way more badass when i can [View Full Entry]

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Buenas tardes! So i´ve gotten way better at spanish now. i´m able to basically communicate. the rest of sunday was fun. swimming and such. then we went back to rio muchacho. monday night we made chocolate from scratch!!! so cool. edgar picked the cacao fruit to show us and inside you take a bean that´s coated in this white slimy stuff that´s actually really tasty sweet fruit. you suck on the fruit until the flavor´s gone, then you spit out the seed. you sun dry the seeds for 5 days or so and then cook them in a special pot made [View Full Entry]

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so i´m not really sure why i´m in here right now and not on the beach. i am in my bathing suit, which is a start. today is a GORGEOUS beach day. but more of that later. yesterday was great. basically i went back to the hostel and read one hundred years of solitude and took care of taylor. there´s some bug going around that 4 people in our group have already had that includes stomach pains, fever, and chills. i´ve helped take care of three of them, so i´ll probably be next to get it. but whatevs. i´m hoping karma [View Full Entry]

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¡Hola! i just spent the last week in Rio Muchacho near Canoa in Ecuador. Our large group of 22 has split up into 2 groups of 11...Quilla, which means moon, and Inti, which means sun. i´m in the Quilla group. my two leaders are Chris and Janiva, and they´re way cool. So on saturday we got up and took an 8 hour bus ride from Quito to Bahia. we drove through towns and tropical dry forests. one of the towns had just had a mudslide, which was really interesting to see. houses were hanging over cliffs or completely destroyed and it [View Full Entry]

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Hola! I´m back in Quito after a few days. our first full day in Quito we woke up and did morning movement on the roof of the hostel with a beautiful view of all of Quito and the Andes. After that we went to breakfast and then broke into groups. Quito is an extremely dangerous city, so we need to travel in groups of at least 3 with at least 1 guy and we have to take a cab everywhere after dark. so maya, sean and i were in a group and they let us go explore the city from 12 [View Full Entry]

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hey! so for the last ten days, i have been at a place called macama in napo valley in calistoga california. it's been a swell time. 20 of us spent a 10 day retreat getting to know each other and getting to know ourselves. the daily schedule looked something like this... 7 30 roll out of bed 8 00 morning movement, which was usually yoga, the taoist five, or dragon rolls over 9 15 breakfast and cleaning 10 ish was when we would go and sit for about 3 hours and talk about feelings and such. that was classroom time 1 [View Full Entry]

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its june 17 at 10:40 pm right now. i'm sitting at my house, preparing not for my year off, but for my summer. i will leave on thursday for 9 1/2 weeks of camp. that means i have 2 weeks in september to come home, unpack, do laundry, repack, and go to california to begin my year. the other day, when it was 103 degrees out, my mother and i went to REI. we spent $1200 on the things i needed. let me back up. i joined a program called leapyear leapnow. on september 14, i will go to california for [View Full Entry]

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