bienvenidos a tena

buenas tardes de ecuador,

this is my first blog from the equator, i´ve been really busy and inaccessed to internet thus far. im in an internet cafe in Tena right now, on a ´site visit´to my community where i´ll be for the next 2 years beginning next month. it´s really cool here in tena, not literally though, it´s pretty hot and humid and very rainy so far. i´ve been staying in a very small room in a hostel here while visiting with my counterpart agency whose role is usually as a foot-in-the-door in the community but i think i will actually be working with them a lot. theyre the provincial government of the province of napo. . i kinda see them as the county govt, rather than the state govt because ecuador itself is actually pretty small. in an earlier email i wrote that i would be working with the municipal govt which was incorrect because thats the city govt of tena, and apparently they´re pretty competitive to the point where, according to another volunteer who´s been here for a year and has worked with the municipal govt, they would get so much more done if they worked together and shared projects but instead they don´t get much done apart. my english seems to be sucking in this blog, i think learning spanish for the last 1.5 months and quichua for 3 days last week is starting to take its toll. sorry if my grammar is sucky.

thus far my visit has seemed kinda like a vacation, a vacation to florida to be more precise. imagine florida but with twice the rain, and that´s the weather here. tena itself has about 15,000 residents, with about 15,000 more in small outlying communities that speak quichua as their main language. compared to olmedo, my small, cold, sleepy home in the andes, tena seems large, much warmer, and very much vibrant. there are lots of tourists here, mostly european (and mostly germans i think), and accordingly there are a few european karoakes here (i know how much they love their david hasselhoff). i have been growing a beard for the last 5 weeks, its pretty full now, and i needed it for the cold in olmedo and just cuz i am lazy when it comes to shaving. . but i think i will shave it off as soon as i am oficially living here (in 4 weeks), firstly to not be as warm, and secondly i have a goal of not being suspected by the locals and other tourists of being a tourist myself. i doubt an ecuadorian wont be able to tell im foreign, but im hoping the tourists will think i am ecuadorian, or at least south american. i have been getting plenty of sun the last 5 days and getting pretty bronzed, i think its possible for me to be as dark as some of the locals. too bad it wasnt this sunny in sb for our bet, liz ;)

yeah, so pretty frikin excited about living here for the next 2 years. unfortunately the internet here is 90 cents an hour here compared to 50 cents/hour in cayambe. o well, thats what i get for living in a tourist trap. peace corps found a place for me to live here this finally, actually, it was the volunteer thats been living here a year that found it, and thats cuz its the apartment right below him. its been unoccupied for the last month, and its pretty moldy-smelling and unattractive right now, but the landlady said she´s gonna clean it this weekend, and she´s gonna give me a bed so i just gotta worry about getting some basic stuff like a table and chairs and dishes and drapes when i move in. its got a very small bathroom with no hot water, a medium-sized living room thats about 15x15 feet and a connected kithen thats basically just a sink, and then theres a little doorway that leads to the bedroom thats about 10x15 feet. it kinda reminds me of amber´s old place in iv except it doesnt have any closets or anything, its just 2 medium rooms. and by medium i mean PC/ecuador standards. theyre actually quite small, but i´ve seen volunteers with smaller. actually, i was just staying in a smaller place with a volunteer down south near puyo a few days ago, and her place was probably half the size and had spiders all over and bats in the ceiling that kept me awake at night. so even though its gonna cost $80/month (im gonna try talking her down to $70 {we´re supposed to have $50/month apts in tena but PC was pressed for time to find a place for me} im happy with the place. but im still gonna look for a diff´t place for at least the first couple months. . can´t hurt to look.

for the last week my mouth has been weird, i had 2 cold sores on both cheeks that have finally started going away, my tongue has felt all scratched up and had a few small blisters on it, and my gums have and still are very swollen. i have drinken salt water to try to disinfect it if in case its an infection, and i ate a few grapefruits too even though it burned like hell. . i have pretty much only been able to eat pasta for the last few days, other foods here are a little too flavorful. . and its really just anything that has lots of flavor, even bananas that bother my mouth. yesterday at the advice from my fellow Olmedian volunteer Elliot who was visiting Tena that i probably need more vitamin C, i bought a couple apples and an avocado to see how that would be, and i loved the apples. . apparently theyre not too flavorful and they kinda feel good against my gums. the avocado was ok, but it was a little too flavorful. so over the last 24 hours i have eaten 5 apples, and am about to buy 5 more. now i know what they mean by an apple a day keeps the dentist away. okay, i´m getting hungry now. . chao