eso es

so it´s been a while since my last blog. . i havent had much time or money to use internet. this one won´t have a theme so much as just random ranting. i´ve been accustoming to living in tena, still not usued to working here. the people here are cool for the most part. it´s a really nice place, and if u can stand the humidity i recommend visiting. although, there are no good parks, they have a park in the center of a town butu it´s all paved and really not that big and its not really a park anyways, basically just a town square. there is a small park right across from my house that they´re abouut to finish remodeling, but it´s a little kids park and theres not much grass. maybe thats a project i can start, plant some grass in the city´s parks.



my dog yana gave birth to 13 puppies, and all of them ended up living. its crazy because when she gave birth several months earlier it was only one puppy, so this time we were only expecting 3 or 4 at most. unfortunately and a little ironically i was busy castrating pigs (which is another story) up at fabian´s house in baeza and his cabin in cosanga when it happened. when i got home that night my neighbor and landlady pati told me there was good news, and i heard her say there were 4 boy puppies. i said that´s cool , wondering what the bad news was. i walked over to the doghouse where yana and her puppies were and to my amazement i saw 13 puppies. i guess i missed the part where she said there were 9 girl puppies too. and there was no bad news. ok, i just realized i wrote this in the last blog. so read that.

fast forwarding to a couple months later, we have given all of the puppies away. i gave one to another volunteer named andrew living nearby in a kichwa community, one to a guy in his community, and one to a coworker. the other 10 we gave a way to neighbors, so once in a while i´ll see one of yana´s little offspring strolling around. i was saving one of em for elliott up in baeza but he´s usually not in his site but a few days a week at most and he wouldnt be able to take care of one well. i was thinking about keeping one for myself, but i´ve already got 2 dogs, and there´s also 2 cats that have started visiting my apartment whenever i put food out for the dogs. its funny cuz sometimes i´ll turn around and theres 4 sets of animal eyes looking longingly at me waiting for food. stupid cats.

only one of the dogs turned out looking like yana after the 5 weeks we kept most of them. one of them definitely turned out to be the mut, but she was really pretty with dark brown skin and green eyes. shes at one of my neighbors and about half the size of her siblings now. and a couple of them turned out to be large and portly. i gave one of those to andrew, and he named it ms. eleanor dashwood after a character in pride and prejudice. but the indigenous in his community cant pronounce that, so they just call her eli. andrew´s not gay by the way, but he jokes that since he´s started drinking wine whenever he comes into tena, he´s grown his hair long, and he named his dog ms. dashwood, somehow living in the jungle has made him metrosexual. the indigenous are notorious for not feeding their dogs anything more than rice or yucca so that the dogs remain hungry and voracious hunters of rats and snakes and other such jungle animals. since andrew feeds her actual dog food, at just 2 months ms. dashwood is already the size of most 6 month-old dogs in his site.

the social life in tena is is still slow but its picking up. i hardly go out at nights even though there a few bars and clubs here. i usually only go to bars when the nearby volunteers are in town, when we can vent our frustrations about ecuaudorian society and the world at large. the attractive girls here are usually the younger ones. it seems as soon as they hit age 20, its downhill from there. half of em get knocked-up by then. and a lot of times when they look like theyre 20 theyre 17 and when they look 23 theyre 20. especially with the indigenous girls i think, cuz in their cuulture theyre really expected to be married and have kids around the age of 15/16 so they try harder to look more sexually mature.

so i get some of those girls coming at me, and then i also get the older women, in or near their 30s, who didnt marry or divorced. one of my neighbors is a single mom near her 30s and made a pass at me. she recently found out shes pregnant (not mine) again, and the due date is around my birthday. she jokingly (i hope) asked me if i would be the dad, and i told her that if its born on april 19th and she names it jason then i will be the dad. unfortunately the child-support laws here arent very strict. the men here are pretty bad too, every guy i work with (even the married ones) that knows i have 2 sisters coming to visit in december has asked repeatedly to meet them. here´s a typical convo translated:

womanizing ecua guy (weg): do u have any siblings?
me: yes, i have 2 sisters. one is 26 and the other is 16.
weg: are they married?
me: the older one is married but the younger is not.
weg: are they coming to visit u while you are here?
me: yes, in december they are coming.
weg: that is good, you must introduce me to your sisters. you said the younger is not married?
me: that is correct, she is not. alas she is just 16 and it is not customary to wed at that age in the US.
weg: ahh, 16 is a good age. you know, we can wed at age 16 here.
me: yes, i did know that. but she is not from here, and she will only be here a few days.
weg: u know, it is not important here that your older sister is married in the US. she can have an ecuadorian husband, too.
me: right. u have 4 other women besides your wife, correct? but men usually only have one wife in the US. except in Utah. besides, her husband is coming as well.
(long pause interrupted by awkward silence)
weg: i was thinking, when i have a child with your younger sister, i will name him marco antonio, like the singer. his name will be marco antonio shiguango kaminsky. what a good name. i still haven´t got any sons. did you know that, brother-in-law?
me: no, i was not aware of that.