Random cover-all updates :)

As already mentioned, the Galapagos were really really ridiculously beautiful. To entirely understate it. I am forced to use the past tense in that highly eloquent statement because, unfortunately, we flew back to Quito this morning. I am writing now from the relative comfort of our lovely Hostal Posada del Maples (which, as it turns out, does refer to the multitude of maple trees outside). My Spanish has improved, if marginally, but it was virtually nonexistent before this trip, so I´m pretty happy with my progress. It helps that one of our guides is Ecuadorian (perhaps the only native in the area with blonde hair and blue eyes - as he says, "the mystery of genetics") and one of my fellow students is Puerto Rican, so we have much encouragement to practice our speaking skills. To give you some gauge of my ability, the owner of the Hotel Castro, where we stayed in Puerto Ayura, Santa Cruz, had a young baby daughter, max two or three years old. I had exactly zero clue what she was talking about. She was pretty good at gesturing to or petting the relevant topic of conversation (often me), but the language was beyond me.

Anyway, I´m (thankfully) less of a basket case than I´d expected - I miss home terribly, and the day we spent shoveling and sorting garbage made me want to cry, but overall I think I´m holding up pretty well. My roommate Megan is "counting the days until she gets to go home," Michi talks constantly about how inadequate the beaches at home will be, without sea lions decorating them, and you can tell everyone else is a little homesick, but the stuff we´re doing is really quite incredible. I spent five days living on a BOAT, for crying out loud! It took me the full first day in Puerto Ayura to lose the sensation of constant wobbling and swaying. Tomorrow morning we leave for the Amazon Rainforest - that in and of itself sort of makes by brain short out. Apparently our activities will include dining on guinea pig and fishing for piranhas (did I spell that right?), as well as the requisite community service working at a school. I´m actually quite excited for everything, except the vague possibility of falling out of a boat, and the obvious abundance of bugs we´ll be living with.

I bought a ridiculous amount of gifts, though only for the ´rents and my g-parentals, and I´m having serious trouble keeping my clothing clean. We finally got to do laundry...the day we worked at the recycling center. So our delightfully ripe-smelling work clothes didn´t get washed. The clothes from cleaning tortoise pens did, though, which is certainly a good thing - my pants were drenched in poo by the time I was done. It was definitely up there with the coolest things I´ve ever done - EVERYTHING we did revolved around skirting miniature piles of adorably shy tortoises. We even got to work with the tiny, less-than-a-year-old palm-fillers! Wonderful. Daddy - I tried to steal you a baby...I´ll show you what I got when I get home. Customs was much less investigative on the way out, but the penkeeper did notice my efforts. I think the constant cooing might have had something to do with how obvious I seemed.

In any case, I´m having a grand 0ld adventure, and I definitely know I want to educate myself properly so I never have to work at a recycling center (didn´t even have to wait for the Japanese farms, Dad!), so the trip is valuable in more ways than one. We had an interesting discussion the day after the trash sorting about "what community service is," which partially culminated in the group realization (facilitated by meeeeeeeeee) that the community service we would be partaking in while on this trip would have overall small significance, and would thus be more about self-growth and education. We all know the guys at the recycling center would have done our work in much less time, honestly!

Love and kisses, for all I miss,

Signing off,

Egg