Back from Intag!

(I wrote this a few weeks back but then accidentally deleted it so now I am reposting it. Just to calm your confused brains for those of you who already read this.)

So I am officially back from my two weeks in Pucara (Intag) and man am I happy to be outta there! I mean, don´t get me wrong, Ali and I had a great time doing absolutely nothing for two weeks and just hanging out together 24/7 ... but I cannot wait to get back to my real host family and my real Ecuadorian life!

The town we were living in for the past few weeks was not so much a town as just a street with some houses and two tiny stores that sell soda and cookies and toothbrushes (which came in handy for me when I dropped my toothbrush on the bathroom floor and no matter how much I scrubbed it with anti-bacterial soap could not bring myself to put it back in my mouth).

My first day there we went and bought a baby pig and then brought it home in a bag.  I thought for sure it would die before we got home because of suffocation, but it managed to make a hole and stick just its nose out so it could breathe. How smart. I guess we picked a good pig with good survival skills. One of my first nights there I was sitting on the floor with my host sister at the Cabaña where my host family eats all of our meals (it´s a wooden hut next to our house where the town hangs out on Saturday nights) when I see a brown blob out of the corner of my eye. I figured it was just some dirt or string or something, but then I did a double take and yep, it was a tarantula. I showed my host sister and she just said calmly, "Oh, a tarantula." And I was all, "UHH YA, a freaking tarantula!! Should we evacuate?!?!" Her mom came over and saw it and asked me if I was scared and I calmly said, "Just a little" ... what a liar I am.

That night I killed three spiders in my room and then woke up the next morning to the feeling of something crawling on my head. I switched on the light and grabbed my little mirror to see what it was and found a beetle crawling around in my hair. Everynight I slept to the sound of rats crawling around above my cardboard ceiling.  Whenever I could hear their little feet right above my head I just imagine the cardboard breaking and the rats falling on my head. But thankfully the cardboard held up just fine for two weeks.

We only took two showers while we were living there and both were in a river. I actually loved it, which is probably not surprising to many of you who know that I used to go jump in the ocean instead of showering at home.

We hitch-hiked everywhere during the two weeks and I never thought about that being strange until the very end when I realized that I would never hitch-hike in the U.S. But here it´s just so normal! Don´t worry, it´s actually safe. Everyone in town does it and it´s the only way to get to the next town over unless you want to hike a mountain (which we also did, and I hated it).  We always just rode in the back of trucks and only once did we actually get into someone´s car but they were really nice and I knew we could trust them even before we flagged them down. Trust me, I know these things. And you can´t blame me for hitch hiking everywhere because I´m George Hurley´s daughter and twin!

Ali and I also got suckered into teaching English classes at the school in town and let me just tell you one thing ... NEVER ask Ali and I to teach anyone or anything how to speak English. The first day was so crazy and awful that I would just turn my back to the class and pretend to be writing something on the board just so I could hide how hard I was laughing. It was pure chaos and Ali and I would just look at each other and start cracking up about how we did not know what the heck we were doing. It got better though and by the last two classes we actually felt like we had made some progress with them and the kids were so fun.

We spent our afternoons knitting the local natural fiber of Cabuya with an old woman on her front porch. We were in the process of making purses and I was so excited to bring it home and give it to someone but then two days ago we showed up at her house to work on them and she told us that she had taken them apart. She thought we weren´t coming back for them because we hadn´t been there for a few days. She showed us the basket she was making with our Cabuya yarn instead. It was so incredibly awkward. We were just like, uhh ok thanks bye! And awkwardly walked away and laughed. Oh well. Sorry to the person who I would have given my purse to.

The town itself was actually really beautiful and everyone had gardens full of tons of different fruits and vegetables.  One day when Ali and I were on a death hike to find a river we stopped and just picked coffee berries off of trees for probably an hour. We split them open and got the beans out of all them and put them in my pocket. My plan was to keep them until I got back to the US so I could try to roast them but instead they just became a moldy mess on the shelf in my room so I threw them away. So much for my dream of making my own coffee from scratch. We got to drink fresh fruit juice every day and Ali and I made the best blackberry popsicles from the bush behind her house.

It was a beautiful place and I had so much fun with Ali every single day, but I am so excited to get back to my family where I feel at home! Love and miss you all. And guess what ... today is my one month birthday eve (does that make sense to you?) Guess what also ... only 54 days until I am back in the US of A! Hollllllerrr.