Enjoying the city... while I can

I am just getting very comfortable in Quito... just in time to leave Saturday morning for Puyo.

The doctor in Puyo hadn´t emailed me. I asked the program coordinators here in Quito to call the doctor for me but they were like "nope, you do it." So I called the doctor on his cell phone. I don´t like speaking Spanish on the phone, because I can´t see the person and it´s a lot more difficult. Well, he claimed to have sent me an email on Monday. I said I didn´t receive it. He said, "okay, I´ll send it again," and about hung up. I was like "wait, wait! I probably didn´t receive it because you probably have the wrong email address." So I told him my email address, which was difficult because letters and vowels sound very different in Spanish than English so I had to say "a" when it was "e" and "oo" for "u" ... I thought certainly he didn´t get it all... but then I got his email this afternoon. Sure enough, he had had the wrong email address before.

It appears that I will have some interesting opportunities. One of the sites is Voz Andes Shell, fifteen minutes from Puyo. My parents probably best know this town from the movie The End of the Spear, a controversial film to say the least, but Shell is the town where the missionaries lived.

I also might stay a few days with an indigenous Shuar community a 4 hour hike from Puyo, learning about their culture and tradional medical practices with a Shuar healer.

The rest of the sights are hospitals and a diabetes clinic in Puyo.

So that´s the plan for now.

I have to go to a bank to change my twenties into fives before I leave Quito, because people can´t except more than a five dollar bill around here... it´s simply too much money.

I started my anti-malaria medicine last night, and when they say that dizziness is a "side effect" they mean it´s an ACID TRIP... I was so dizzy, I could hardly walk. The room looked all wobbly and the numbers in my Su Doku book swam around the page. I am still dizzy today. Hopefully, I get used to the medication because this side effect is pretty intense.

Needless to say, debilitating dizziness is not what I need right now. Well, hopefully I´ll post a little something tomorrow before heading off to Puyo, where the calls and Internet posts are going to be a little less frecuent.

Hasta entonces...