Monday, December 20, 2010

I start my trip to the States tomorrow!

So I just thought I would take a moment to reflect upon the fact that I have been living outside of the States for a year and a half now...and it is finally starting to really hit me! I never really realized how living outside of the States for that amount of time can really change your view point on things.

Tomorrow I start my 36 hour trip, give or take, back to the States to visit for three weeks. I take an over night 12 hour bus up to Quito where my flight to Miami leaves from. Then after a 7 hour layover I fly out from Miami to Nashville arriving around 11pm and getting to my parents house at about midnight. It is really crazy to think that my visit back to the States is finally here!

It is also very strange how weird it seems to be leaving Ecuador, even knowing that I will be coming back. With that said, I can only imagine how it will feel when I leave for good to return to the States. It really is amazing how much we adapt to what is around us and how comfortable we become with what we have now matter if it is really what we want or not. That wonderful word of "change". No matter if it is a good change or a bad change, it most often proves hard to do.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Thanksgiving in the Jungle

Just a quick update for those of you that are still following my blog.

Thanksgiving as you can imagine isn't a holiday here or anywhere else in the world really than the States. So we tend to make our own celebrations here in the PC for events that are just celebrated in the States. For this past Thanksgiving a group of PCVs got together in a city in the Jungle of Ecuadorean, also know as Macas.

The original plan was to raise three turkeys and then kill them all the day before Thanksgiving. However...two turkeys died from causes unknown and one escaped and probably died shortly there after. So we ended up buying two turkeys from Quito and then bringing them out to Macas. It ended up being a great success with lots of food. Everyone pitched in and made a dish to share with the group. There were about 50 people give or take and plenty of food to go around. Pictures have been upload onto Facebook as well.

After cooking all day, we then ate and drank ourselves into a solid sleep. The next day we went white water rafting, filling up two rafts, on one of the rivers in the Jungle. We were told that the river we went down was a 3 to 4 on the white water rafting scale of difficulty. It was a lot of fun...and yes I did manage to be one of the two people that fell out. We had no hope of staying in once we hit that rock. But we were out and back in the raft before we even realized what was going on. A great wrap up to a fun Thanksgiving Jungle trip.

Now I am back in site wrapping up the school year as it comes to an end the start of January and I will be leaving for the States on December 22nd. Needless to say, I am very excited to be visiting the States and getting to spend Christmas and New Years with my family. I will be in the States for a total of three weeks coming back to Ecuador on January the 12th. When I do get back into the States on the 22nd, it will have been a year and a half since I have been there. Sounds absolutely crazy when I put it that way...but then again what about this experience isn't crazy when you think about it?