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Published: March 23rd 2011
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so in the last couple of days Jana and I have really learned what hard work is! I'd say the nice days in school are over. The kids have an attention span of a fly and do not participate at all, leave the room, play ball, bash each others heads, it seems everything is more interesting than the lesson-i mean, ok I understand, but still, they only have 4 hours of school a day (if that), so I feel that we can expect someundivided attention here. ANyway, after 2 students completely ignoring the existence of Jana, who repetedly asked themsomething and they just did not react, I got up and told them in a harsh tone to either go home, if they dont want to be here, or else focus! That seemed to have worked wonders and we had 6 students writing down what we wrote on the board after. I thaught maybe its possible to have fun with them and teach them something, but i dont care anymore. Now its 1 1/2 hours of English teaching if they like it or not and we can play after. Jana even wrote a test withthem today, astheir school system does not know tests of any kind. Ahhh!
5 community members had previously agreed to help us cut down trees in the Jungle for our community restaurant. When we turned upoin the morning though, we amazingly found 15 people there to help us. THey had all gone up way earlier than us (and I thought meeting at 8 in the morning was pushing a bit too hard, but no!). I was amazed and I think it just shows their commitment to the project, which is great. Even Vicente, the personwho founded the village and is the most respected person here, showed up, which meant a lot. So, has anyone ever cut whole trees only with a Machete, or a bushknife? No? Me neither. What took the locals 3-4 strikes, took us about 15. My hand is full of blisters and hurts like hell. I had only brought a small bottle of water and no food, as I didnt expect this to be such a long day. 6 hours later, I felt close to fainting as we worked really hard in the sunshine, no shade, maybe 38 humid degrees, no water and I was hungry and those of you that knbow me know what that means. :-)
Anyway, we managed to get the whole area of about 30metres x 40 metres cut and cleaned it, peeled trees and left them to dry (as they will be the poles on which the restaurant is standing), and cut a way to the street. The place is really amazing. You will sit in a restaurant which is about 2 metres high, overlooking literally nothing but Jungle. A second day of cutting trees has been scheduled for this saturday.
However, 'unfortunately' I won't be able to help, as I'm in Quito to pickup Max :-)))
He will get here tomorrow and then we will have 1 day in Quito, and travel to a few places in ecuador such as Banos and Puyo. Wewill do a cycle/mountain bike trip through the Andes, which should be spectacular.
We will return to the lodge on monday or tuesday I think.
Anyway, all is good here, I'm very happy the project is finally kicking off and Max is coming here..after 8 long weeks.
Hope all of you are well. Much love,
Claudi
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