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