What Was I Thinking When I Said Hello.

I cannot believe that this week we are giving final presentations and next week we are taking final exams and having a send off dinner. Luckily, I get another month in this city.

Once again, I have a lot to tell you. I don't remember if you know that I received a grant to conduct my senior thesis research on pseudoscorpions in Ecuador? ¡WooHoo! I am pumped. After our program ends (next week) I will start going into the forests around Cuenca and collecting my favorite little arachnids who I will then bring back to Portland (if all goes according to plan) and sequence their DNA and stuff. It's gonna be great.

Before all of that though...

Last Friday the environmental police found a green sea turtle being sold in the market place for meat. They called Ernesto, and his wife went to pick the turtle up. She brought it to the bioparque, dehydrated and bleeding. We poured water over the turtle and cleaned her wounds. We then rode with her in the back of Ernesto's pick-up truck and put her in Frances's (the crocodile) old swimming pool. Fortunately, Frances now lives at the bioparque. Anyhow, we put the turtle in the pool and she started swimming! And yesterday, she was put back in the ocean! Yay! Phoowey on the illegal exotic animal trade. But hooray for good people who put turtles back into the ocean.

Last Saturday I went on a field trip with my Modern Andean Issues profesora, Tamara. She told us that the exercise for the day was to take off our thinking caps and listen to our feelings. In her class we analyze all of the differences between U.S. culture and Cuenca culture. One thing we talk about a lot is that people in the United States tend to only analyze information about the world through thoughts. Through well constructed, word thoughts. In Ecuador people listen to their feelings just as much as they listen to their thoughts. So that day we were to listen to our emotions. Just let ourselves feel. We visited Cañari ruins, sacred spots. We also sat by a river for a while and reconnected our energy to the earth and the universe. Hippy stuff, I know. I love it. I've been thinking about energy a lot here. And being in balance. Which leads me to my next point......

On Thursday I'm getting a new tattoo! An image that I saw in an Andean healer, Mama Michi's clinic. She cleansed us all energetically. Wish smoke and Quichua. It was incredible. Here is the image...

The faces will be a bit different in my tattoo. I'll show you when it comes along.

I miss you all and things are still sailing smoothly here. I am excited and a little scared about my month in Cuenca without my school friends, but it will be great for my spanish and my really getting into the family, the community, and the forest.

Besitos.