Update!

Hello all!

It´s been a while since I last checked in, and boy have there been a lot of changes in my life. I finished up my ten week stint studying Spanish in Quito and after some tearful goodbyes to friends and family, set off on a Spring Break adventure to see the rest of the country. A handful of us boarded a night bus to Cuenca, a beautiful city about a 10 hr bus ride to the south of Quito. We stayed there for a couple nights, walking around the beautiful cathederals, picnicking by the river and exploring the University scene. It´s a really neat city and very different than other cities that I have visited in Quito, reminding me much of Berkeley or Eugene, as there are a ton of trees and it definitely has the college-town feel to it. Very nice. From there, we took another night bus to Guayaquil where we caught yet another bus and arrived in a city on the coast called Bahias de Caracas at 5 am. We caught a rickity little ferry in the pitch black to San Vincente where we took a 30 minute cab ride and finally ended up at our final destination of Conoa. We spent a few full days laying on the beach, swimming in the ocean and drinking Pina Colados and then took another day long voyage back to Baños where we met up with some couch surfers and went rafting and did some more relaxing. It was a delightful little break from my incredibly stressful and full life (joking) but already it seems like a lifetime ago!

And now, here I sit, not 3 weeks later, in a little internet cafe in Mindo, a little town of 3400 people situated an hour and a half nw of Quito in the Ecuadorian cloud forest! Now my days consist of waking up, eating the delicious breakfast that has been prepared for me, working on cultivating a little plot of land, eating more delicious, healthy, vegetarian food and finding my place in this community. The next 2 months or so of my life here in Ecuador will be just this. For my internship, I spend half the time learning about this project of organic gardening and community living, and the rest of the time I have to come up with a project within the greater community of Mindo that will serve the needs that I am learning about by talking to various town officials, shop owners and people I meet on the street. Every minute of every day is a learning experience. After a 2 hr or so chat yesterday with a town official, Laura and I were feeling worn down, hopeless and small as ever. After hearing about the multitude of problems facing this one tiny town and the staggering lack of social services and other resources available, it seemed as though all of our project ideas were silly, if not flat out stupid. The problem that we face as "interns" with only 2 months to try and integrate ourselves in this community, build relationships and trust with the people who live here and try in whatever way possible to lend, at the very least, our time and energy to whatever we can, is just that... what could we possibly do and who are we to think that we can bring about some sort of change? What do we know about what it is like to grow up here and face the problems that stem from the most basic of every day experiences? We returned to the farm exhausted and discouraged. Fortunately, our support system at "home" is already one of the best that I´ve had. Cristina sat us down and explained to us that of course there are problems bigger than any one of us there, but what is important is to carry on like we are doing, building relationships and doing research and then implementing our various projects and to realize that even if only 1 or 2 people experience some sort of change or realization, then our time and effort has been totally worth it (not to mention, of course, all that we have and inevitably will learn ourselves, which is undoubtedly more than anything we could ever ´teach´). While this doesn´t make our jobs any easier, it certainly helps to put it in perspective and make it a little more manageable. So we continue to develop our ideas and soon I´ll have a better, clearer idea to share with ya´ll.

But for now, I just have my body, happy and sore from hours of working the land (what a great expression) and itchy from the endless stream of mosquitos and countless other biting bichos, and my mind, racing constantly, soaking in all the Spanish that it can possibly hold and the stories and conversations from my new neighbors. Boy oh boy!

I can´t wait to share more as this experiences unfolds and somehow find a way to upload pictures, although it might be a little tricky.

Love to all on the home front a beyond!

MT