Holy crap it’s my last full day in Ecuador. Today has come much quicker than I had expected it to. When I arrived back in Ecuador a month ago I felt like I had so much time left, but I suppose I’ve done quite a bit in the last month.
I experienced my first earthquake. I was lying in bed the night I arrived back at the station after being in the US and all of a sudden the bed started to shake, then the whole house. It only lasted about 10 seconds but it was a strange sensation. Yesterday, we had 2 more earthquakes. This time both strong – the first was at 3 am. At first I thought that the guy across the wall from me (Jonathan) was pounding on the wall and shaking around then Eva started yelling and it hit me like ‘oh crap we’re having an earthquake.’ I felt quite helpless, not scared necessarily but I mean what can you do when the ground beneath your feet is moving? Not much. There’s literally nothing one can do. So I laid in bed hoping that the bunk above me didn’t come crashing down on top of me. When it finally stopped after 45 seconds we all congregated outside and made a bet of how strong it was. 6.8 at the epicenter, and about a 5.0 magnitude earthquake for us. Then 9 hours later as I was putting on my shoes they started moving away from me. The house started rattling and the chorus of a thousand trees with millions of leaves shaking filled the air. The earthquake in the afternoon was a 7.1 – both of these are considered “aftershocks” of the original 7.8 earthquake that hit in mid-April.
On a less shaky note, we all went to the Amazon rainforest. We stayed in Cuyabeno River Lodge in Cuyabeno National Park. It was great experience. We spent our days out on canoes spotting monkeys and birds. I think I ended up seeing 4 different species of monkeys, toucans, a sloth, an anaconda, a pink dolphin, toucans and hoatzins (if you don’t know these birds, google what they look like – very cool!) In our free time we’d lounge in hammocks or jump off the rope swing into the Amazon.
Lately, my time spent at the station has been spent working and watching loads of movies. Cristian had his vacations for the past 2 weeks so I was working with Wilo. We cleared sections of forest where he wants to start growing new plants and make a patio type outdoor kitchen thing…not sure if I actually understood him right when he was explaining what he wanted to do. We’ve also both become friends with a little black chicken we call Negrita. She got attacked by the other chickens so she limps around and tries to flap from place to place. It’s quite endearing really. Every day she eats corn kernels from my hand and hangs out with me while I clear branches and sticks from the ground.
I’ll miss Negrita – I never expected to become friends with a chicken. I’ll miss a lot of things. The sounds of frogs croaking and rain pouring at night, working on cross word puzzles with Eva, joking around with Cristian, celebrating Dia del Abrazo with Wilo, hearing Nicole’s laugh, and being insulted by Jaimie and Jonathan (as sarcastic as that sounds I’ll miss it a little bit.) I’ll miss cooking with Wilo and Cristian, playing card games with the other students, Toga and Klex the two dogs here, and especially Bagira – Nicole and Wilo’s cat. I had a truly wonderful 3 and a half months at Un Poco del Choco and a fantastic gap year. From working in Iowa City to volunteering in the cloud forest of Ecuador it’s been a really incredible year. I’ve made many new friends and many more new memories.
Tomorrow I head to Lima and then to Cusco where I’ll meet my mom and make some more new friends and lots of new memories.
EcuaCora 
Buen viaje!
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