been trying to blog for awhile now but every time i sit down to write i have absolutely no idea where to begin. this afternoon i arrived back in quito for a few days to check in with the my school about my project and my internship and its late and i should be working on my paper but here i am. strange coming back to the big city after spending nearly 2 months without leaving the tiny cloud forest town of mindo. all the concrete is almost an assault on my soul. i found myself wondering where the earth was underneath all that weight and whether or not people thought about her or missed her. at the same time im trying to see the beauty in this chaos, the traffic and pollution, the frenzy of people rushing somewhere here and there.
i had to run a bunch of errands around quito, flight bs, renewing my insurance, and i must admit it felt really good to know my way around this massive city.

let me tell you one of the most endearing things about the folks who live in mindo...when engaging in casual conversation any one of the following topics might arise and nearly everyone (my ignorant self excluded) will participate: the different ant species that live in mindo, bird calls, medicinal plants, any rare bird species that someone recently spotted, and a host of other topics of la madre tierra. it comes up so naturally in conversation. often i find myself thinking "wow did we really just spend the last 30 minutes talking about how to differentiate various species of hummingbirds?" i love that all of this is common knowledge in town, and i am learning so much for it.

as for progress on the farm, because its almost full moon (or was? still not clear) we must sew the seeds soon! we've been busting our butts preparing the beds, going into the forest to collect nutrient rich decaying leaves, removing the sand from the beds, and my new favorite activity hacking sticks with machetes! its basically always just 4 of us working, cooking, eating, cleaning, and laughing a lot together. the mornings are spent on the farm and in the forest. the almost certain afternoon rain means we are forced to relax in the house, read, converse, or make the damp trek into town. of course its not always paradise in paradise, and there has been a lot of awkward drama that MT and i somehow fell in the middle of. but all in all things are going really well. im learning more and more about mindo, particularly about the alarmingly high rates of domestic violence. i have become good friends with the political tenant, clever, because he is an amazing wealth of knowledge and he has the weightless smile of a child. women of the community go to him to make denunciations if they experience any kind of abuse. he records their story and explains their legal rights. it just so happens that the government of ecuador is now requiring every parrochia to collect information regarding intrafamiliar violencia contra la mujer. this is just the beginning of a new effort to assess domestic violence and then to seek solutions. this says a few things about the government: one, that they realize the problem. two, that they care enough to seek solutions. three, that they believe the government has a role in this whole equation. this is great news for me because this will provide me with information that i could never have obtained, and was never going to try to get on my own.
MT started a project with kids at the local school to educate them about environmental conservation through various artistic expression. yesterday we made puppets and it was great fun, but i must admit i might still be recovering. i have so much respect for teachers that can do that all day every day, i was exhausted just from 2 hours.

so thats whats going on in my world these days :) :) now your turn!
lala

and where is your mind today? honesty and love are all i got

the great irony, the pain, the privilege, the beauty of being able to travel the globe is that intense feeling in the pit of your stomach. the tiny pebbles from tierra across the world, swallowed willingly, lovingly, they begin to weigh heavily. late in the night, deep in the jungle, they whisper things like 'why are you not with your family? (but the whole earth is your family).' and, 'you love everyone so much that its almost as if you love no one at all.' being here in this space means not being there and how could it not be painful at times. such is life i suppose, making choices of our space and time and accepting their implications. so i am not physically with you, but feel the love i have for you breaking the distance into meaninglessness.

something i have really been enjoying are all the awkward situations gets in while learning a new language. take the other day for example, i had just met some bird guides in town and as i was saying goodbye i said, 'necesitamos hablar luego sobre avas'. what i was trying to say was, 'we need to chat more later about birds (aves)' but instead of saying birds i said grapes. good one laura, real suave. hey lets talk sometime about grapes! he responded by laughing and asking me if i was still hungry. jajajajaaa.

this past weekend i went to the coast to a town called esmeraldas to visit my friend juan carlos. his cousin was having a baby shower and i was cordially invited to ALL of the festivities :) we spent all morning/afternoon saturday making little finger foods, using waaaay too many toothpicks, running errands around the city, etc. his family was soooo nice, housing me, feeding me, making sure i participated in all the festivites. the party was good fun, a lil awkward at first until....jc's mom busted out the baby bottles filled with beer. so the game is 2 people chugging sweet cerveza as fast as posible, which is actually pretty hard as you might imagine. can we take a moment to laugh out loud together? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. ok, so this game pretty much shattered the ice and the rest of the night was spent dancing and eating and dancing some more.

as for the farm/internship update. been working 3 hours on the farm in the morning and spending the afternoons working on my research. i have been really grateful for the people i am living with here. lately its been just us mujeres, that being MT, sandra, y cristina.
my favorite part of the day is our leisurely morning breakfasts, eating and talking about everything and anything. its especially nice to have their supportive energy as i begin my research/project regarding women in mindo. its looking like i will focus on domestic violence, as this seems to be one of the most pressing concerns as well as the most invisible. the marriage of alcoholism and sexism (both prevalent here) is the absolute worst combination, and women suffer immensely for it. been really struggling lately with all the limitations of my situation here. i have barely any time to scratch the surface, to build relationships, to learn something about the community, and i am supposed to do this giant research project. there is also the fact that i am a foreigner which will necessarily affect all of my interactions and the way i am perceived and perceive this reality. i know though that if i factor all of this into the equation that is my project i cant go too wrong.

ramble ramble ramble. my hands hurt from typing. loooove you.
l

p.s. ok seriously, pics soon

can i be this lucky?

seems last time i we talked i left you on a bit of a low note. spring break ended with a bang and a splash...literally. what i mean is that we ended up in baños (yes that does mean bathroom, but also baths). we had heard about this white water rafting trip that was only 10 dollars to benefit a guide who got in a motorcycle accident. turns out every extranjero in baños was going, and we ended up with a total of about 30 rafts, a pilsener truck, and music truck with giant speakers. i didnt expect much, a lil white water here and there, mostly a nice float in a beautiful place. what we got was something quite different. once we finally got our crew, our gear, and our raft, we practiced as an equipo a little bit on land and cleverly coined our team TEQUILA, ahem. just before we set out with our guide he asked us if we wanted to have a nice time or a fun time, and of course we yelled in unison A FUN TIME!! (and by 'we' and 'unison' i mean mt and i...the others looked terrified). our guide sat me in the back next to him, and the first rapids i suddenly found my body flailing amongst rocks and rushing water. what just happened!!?!! so it turns out our guides idea of a fun time was pushing me out of the raft in the rapids (not just once, multiple times) refusing to help me back in, and then proceeding to tip the entire raft. luckily for us there were rafts behind us that picked us up or im not sure what we would have done. lets just say i got my fill of adrenaline.

back in quito for a few days...
since a new student moved into my host familys house for the quarter, mt and i stayed at our friends familys house. it was really nice for many reasons: 1. there are always lots of people around, especially adorable children to play with. 2. francisco became our new host brother and he is amazing. 3. the first night was a cousins birthday so we had a feast and met extended family. when we have to return to quito we will go back and stay with this family :) :) and of course i will visit my old host fam.

yesterday was a day of pure magic. we arrived here in mindo in the early afternoon to a group of smiling individuals. have i told you much about what im doing here? probably not because i didnt have it locked in for a long time and didnt want to get my hopes up too much. so we are living on an organic farm which has a hostal that provides practically all of the revenue for the community. when we initially found out about this place we understood the mission of this project to be teaching the community about sustainable organic agriculture. yesterday we found out that they do much much more. as we sat and ate a delicious lunch together, hummingbirds dancing above our heads, we learned that their main goals are to learn to live as a community and to provide the community of mindo as a whole opportunities to expand their creativity and world vision. there are dance classes, artesania classes and shop to sell what is made, the only library in all of mindo, and a bajillion other things i cant think of right now. did i mention there are 89 different species of hummingbirds!?! 14 on the farm alone. i almost cried yesterday at lunch because it all seems too beautiful. im thinking theres got to be a serial killer or something, its just too good to be true. we havent really done much work yet, monday begins the back-breaking labor :)

sending you smiles from the cloud forest