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