Finn Fixation

Ok, I am about to do something a little annoying and potentially lame but there are at least three good reasons for it. I'm going to post an essay I wrote fall semester for a personal narrative assignment in my writing class. I'm doing this because I have no original ideas, and because I have mentioned this particular essay to at least three family members promising them that I would send them a copy which of course I never did. Anyway, consider this a disclaimer: there are a couple of painfully cheesy parts, a few less-than-proud writing moments, some organizational issues, and just a touch of that mundane scholastic style we all feel needs to be included in anything being graded by a teacher or professor. But, I will say that the essay actually reflects a sort of epiphany I had last summer and helped me to sort of gather my thoughts about it. So without further ado, enjoy (or don't, you know, whatever):

It’s a Finnish Life for Me

“Finn Parking Only”—I read the familiar greeting as I enter the gravel drive. I hardly notice the subtle references to our Finnish heritage littering the landscape at my grandparent’s cabin anymore. Yes, the “You can always tell a Finn but you can’t tell him much” sign is still there. Why wouldn’t it be? Things have been here forever; the place is like a well-preserved museum exhibit of a 1960’s living room. The bright orange velour couch clashes glaringly with the turquoise rose-patterned cushion on the rocking chair and the various Finnish pride insignia tacked to the walls. The “SISU” hat is still hanging on the corner hook and I am fairly positive that I saw that jar of peanuts there the last time I was here three years ago. It looks like a scene from My Big Fat Finnish Wedding. Standing on the porch, I can see the Sauna my grandfather built with my Uncle Paul, the outhouse that my grandma still uses out of principle, and the faded red pump for the well that only gives cold water. This is my history.

This place is constant; it adapts with the generations that pass through it—little things are added here and there: the sauna stove is replaced, a loft is added on top of the garage, a bath house with a flush toilet is finally built, a paddle boat appears—but the cabin is still the cabin. It speaks history, it breathes the life of the family and our heritage, and whispers of times and people long ago. This cabin represents my inherited legacy. I am learning to embrace this heritage, and beginning to understand how it affects me. I am noticing how immersed I really am; how it infiltrates every facet of my life. I always thought of the cabin as the place where all of that family history existed, somehow separately from my real life; but the truth is that it is only the outward manifestation of something I carry within me, of the blood that runs through my veins: the red and pulsing, proud and hard-headed Finnish blood. ‘Finn parking only’ isn’t just a sign on a driveway, it’s a message engraved on my bones.

Looking out the window from my mountain home in Park City, I can see my grandpa, who is here visiting for a couple weeks from Northern Minnesota, sweating profusely while hauling huge rocks from the yard. He has decided that he will begin our landscaping by removing all of the rock from a small area so that we can put sod or flowers in. He must be crazy, I think to myself, the rock to soil ratio of our yard is roughly 10:1; there is no way he will ever even make a dent. He looks like a man trying to drain the ocean by hauling water out bucket by bucket. But my grandpa has already finished my mother’s list of things to fix around the house, and he certainly isn’t going to sit around—apparently neither am I, and I soon find myself by his side reluctantly filling a bucket.

Ridding the yard of rock was just one small manifestation of a lifelong devotion to Uurastus—hard work. Hard work is what brought my grandparents—and by extension us—to this country and to this lifestyle. Growing up in large families and difficult circumstances, my Grandparents learned the value of many of the luxuries I now enjoy. Working on the farm as a child with his brothers and sisters, my grandfather would turn his underwear inside out halfway through the week in lieu of putting on new ones. I have never been certain of the factual accuracy of this story, but the message is clear enough. Similarly, my grandmother May, who also grew up on a traditional Finnish farm in Minnesota shared a bed with her twelve siblings, whom she, being the eldest, would alphabetize for sleeping order. Though they are not my own, these experiences are collective and ongoing; they are as much a part of me as they were a part of them.

Waste not, want not: the unspoken credo of my family tree. I reflect on my grandfather’s hard set belief system as I stumble over to the wheelbarrow with a large grey rock. Always appalled at wasted food and picky eaters, he was party to the belief that everyone should be a member of the clean plate club, or else not eat at all. “When I was growing up I ate whatever was put on my plate, no questions asked,” my mother reminds me as I skeptically eyeball the too-rare, too-big, too-animal product hamburger on my plate. I am reminded once again of her family’s almost fanatic no-waste policy. This belief went far beyond food or any simple dinner conversation. Organic waste was composted, leftovers were reinvented for another meal, scraps were fed to the dogs, paper products were burned, cool-whip containers housed the rehashed leftovers, and pop tops were saved to donate to the Ronald McDonald House. Anything that could be made was never bought; grandpa could build just about anything with spare parts found in dark crevices of the garage—aesthetics of course always being second to functionality. My mother sewed all of her own clothes in high school, including her wedding dress and my father’s three-piece-suit.

On the day my young father packed up his old car and moved my mother and her two young children from their home in Northern Minnesota to Provo, UT, my grandfather bestowed upon him, as a parting gift and peace offering, a jar full of old nails. Offering little explanation he simply stammered “you might need these.” This was a man who had never thrown away a nail in his life. If he saw one on the road he would pick it up and add it to the jar. If they were bent, he would hammer them straight again. Those nails say more about him than any journal ever could. His values have become my values, his nails, my nails; the things that an old Finnish barber and insurance salesman believed in have sunk deep into the value system of a young BYU student.

My most treasured heirlooms are embedded in the actions of my predecessors. Though sometimes unacknowledged as morals and traditions that I have inherited, they are the most basic values I hold. They have been formed generations before me and passed on to me by the way my forbearers lived their lives.

Walking into my great aunt and uncle’s house, the last stop on the way home from the cabin, my eyes meet with walls papered in pictures of family members. After being warmly embraced, I am introduced to various extended family members who have stopped in, and am invited to sit down. Then the talking begins. After a couple of minutes have passed, I have been introduced to every face plastered on the wall as well as offered explanations of the sketches done by their granddaughter. It is not difficult to see what is important in this home. People. I now face my share of questions, all delivered with obvious sincerity. My dad looks comfortable and starts swapping childhood stories with some distant cousins. It occurs to me that even though at first glance my life seems so different from that of these people living on a farm in rural Minnesota, I am at home here. This is what my dad grew up with and it’s clear that he greatly values this history. There is name dropping everywhere in this conversation; each name that comes up has its own story and you can tell that they are just another string in this web of relationships. It amazes me that they remember the names of all seven of my brothers and sisters—it’s not like we are very closely related. I begin to understand that they remember because they care. Getting back into the car, my dad talks about the grand Finnish tradition of sitting down after a meal with guests and talking for hours. I can see that he really admires this. I begin to admire it too.

As my mind works, I realize that this is not so foreign after all, this tradition has been carried on by my family, and I have seen it at the cabin countless times. In fact, that heinous neon-orange velour couch is never without an occupant. Finnish homes are always filled with friends, family, neighbors, and loved ones. Whether they are just stopping in to say hello or have traveled across the country to visit with relatives, guests are always warmly welcomed and never without a meal. Mucada, cheese trays, cucumber slices, flat bread, crackers, coffee cake, pulla bread, lemonade, coffee. You never leave hungry or without a friend.

My history is the collective history of my family. My values have been shaped for generations, and I am as much a part of this legacy as my grandparents are. As I glance around my desk I realize that the tissue in my pocket that I have nicely folded because I didn’t use it all the first time, the leftovers in my mini fridge, and the pictures of family and friends tacked to my wall are not all that different from a jar of old nails, a couple of reused cool whip containers, and a wall papered with memories.

Free Falling

At some point in my scholastic career I had a teacher, possibly several (it's all become a blur at my ripe old age of 19) that required something called "free writes" during class time. This exercise, supposedly a sort of stretching exercise for the creative juices (if you can stretch juices...maybe a really viscous liquid--like honey? Can you stretch honey? How about taffy, I know you can stretch that, can that be called a liquid?). Anyway, the idea is to sit down (although I suppose you could do it just as well standing up, assuming you had some sort of solid surface high enough to write on so as not to strain your back) and begin writing whatever pops into your mind. You are not to stop writing before the allotted amount of time is up but rather to just sort of spit out whatever pops into your head without giving yourself time to even think about it (though it seems to me that by virtue of something popping into your head you've technically already thought about it). So as I was hopelessly gazing at my empty screen thinking that I should really write a new blog post (because somewhere in my mind some part of me is harboring the delusion that someone out there enjoys reading these and is waiting in eager anticipation for me to write another post--this part of me suffers from a guilt complex and then begins worrying that that one person obsessed with my blog will forget about it and let it become some old, forgotten bookmarked site, floating out there in the archives of their computer if I don't update soon) but not having the foggiest idea what to write about, my mind wandered back to those school days, and well I just began writing. And now I am writing. And now you are reading. And this is called free writing which apparently is just a friendlier term for mindless babble in my case involving an unsightly amount of parentheses in a futile attempt to add some sort of grammatically correct punctuation to a stream of consciousness composition.
Have I made your mind spin yet? Have you taken a breath? Are you suddenly remembering how fast I sometimes talk, especially when around Julie, and regretting beginning this post because you are already exhausted but you, like me, suffer from a complex with which you are incapable of starting to read something without finishing it even if it makes you want to poke your eyes out with pointy sticks? I almost couldn't remember what kind of punctuation to end that sentence with it was so dang long. But I guess that's what happens when you are "free writing". I feel so creative and free spirited. Not really. Except that I feel like this is something that "those" people do; you know the ones that hang out in coffee shops and recite poems to each other and wear skinny pants and big dark-rimmed glasses and have real and intellectual thoughts about literature and art but scoff at the rest of us when we think we have those thoughts because ours obviously aren't genuine. You know, them. I bet they do stuff like free writing. And I bet they use terms like creative juices also. They probably know which liquids are viscous enough to stretch.
Wow, I just felt a profound sense of guilt for actually writing something this unreadable with the intent to subject others to it's insanity. But I'm doing it anyway, so I guess guilt just isn't a powerful enough motivator. It's just been overcome with selfishness which is unfortunately one of the MOST powerful motivators. Isn't that sad? And isn't that really what we are all trying to overcome in our quest for self improvement in life? I mean it seems like most things universally considered "good" can be traced back to overcoming our own selfish desires and viewpoints. Maybe we think it's good because it's so hard to do. We have so many unsettling selfish tendencies that just come so naturally and are thus so hard to overcome. So we all wish we could overcome them and we admire those who have. Ok, I've lost that train of thought, which might be ok because it might have turned into a train wreck.
Ok, here's a thought: you know those word verification things they use all over the Internet where you have to type in the letters you see that are all warped and swirly to prove that you're a real person and not a destructive hacking machine? Am I the only one that gets them wrong disturbingly frequently? Seriously, I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, and a very good test taker if I might add, but I get those things wrong constantly! Aren't they designed so that the average person can complete them? Is there something very very wrong with me that I should see a physician for? Every time I get that little red error message informing me that I should type the letters as they appear (in case I didn't know already, as if it's yelling, HEY MORON! to me) I have serious doubts about my abilities. I have especial trouble with blog spot's verifications; I am not exaggerating when I say that there have been times I have had to re-enter letters three times before I got it right. So please, seriously, somebody tell me, is this normal?!
I think I'm going to end this now for all of our sakes, I don't think anyone wants to find out where my free-spirited mind is going to go next. Shalom.

Let Me Count The Ways . . .

I would like to write a post about my two favorite people in the whole wide world. There are two reasons for this: 1. They are my two favorite people in the whole wide world, and 2. It's always nice to be told how great you are, and no matter how much you deny it, we all know it's true (not that either of these two would ever deny it). Oh yes, and 3. I think everyone else should know how great they are too. Wait, wait, and 4. I miss them both terribly and think of their pretty little faces practically constantly. Let me revise; there are four reasons I am writing this.

And my two FAVORITE people are . . . (drum roll. . . . ) . . . Angelica and Julie! WHOOOO!!!!

Why I love Angelica Hatch:

1. She bears wonderful children for me to play with and uses words like "pregnanter"
2. When we get old, we're going to wear multi-colored, hideous thrift store clothing (including, but not limited to large hats and plaid pants) and swear and act completely inappropriately. Together.
3. She has the best hand writing on the planet and her lines are always straight.
4. She laughs at all the right parts in movies.
5. She has perfect style, which happens to be almost exactly the same as mine and gives me clothes when her weight fluctuates... you know, like when she goes and gets herself knocked up again or something.
6. She eats healthy, except when she is eating enormous amounts of junk food.
7. She orders 15 things at a Chinese restaurant even though I am the only other one there and it will all be leftover.
8. She likes sports AND shoes.
9. She reads books, uses big words, and does otherwise intelligent and well-educated things.
10. She watches bad movies with me, laughs at me when I run into trees, tolerates my blunders in cooking and art projects, and always hangs out with me.

Why I love Julie Garbutt:

1. She understands exactly what I'm saying even when all that comes out is a grunt or hand gesture.
2. She has super wicked (you know, in the way that English people use it) style and can pull off anything. Thus, her name is often found in sentences such as "that's cute, it's something JULIE could pull off, I don't really think I could".
3. She tolerates me remarkably well and understands emotional handicaps.
4. She pretends to monitor my junk-food intake but actually just lets me eat tons of it because she knows I want to and acts surprised later when I tell her I feel sick.
5. She might be the same person as me.
6. She likes nude art and other such scandalous atrocities.
7. She acts exactly the same around everyone.
8. She sings show tunes and thinks musicals are the greatest thing ever invented even though the rest of us know they aren't.
9. She jumps around like a wild banshee to express emotion. In public.
10. She walks around barefoot and burps and gets her hands sticky and eats food off the floor and sticks her finger in her nose. And I still like her.

Working It

I have recently started a new job at Dollar Financial Group working in collections. I am a collection officer on Cash til Payday loans. Or, in layman's terms, I call people all day that borrowed money from my company and try to get them to pay their stinking debts. I like to think of myself as a cronie of sorts, using verbal gymnastics and unspecified threats to convince the sorry debtors to give my boss da money. Not surprisingly, my job has a high turnover rate; I guess getting yelled at, hung up on, and bonding with answering machines is not every one's idea of a good time. I've been surprisingly entertained by it though, I see it as a kind of sociological study--I am exposed to a whole other side of the socio-economic spectrum the likes of which I never found in my upper-middle class neighborhoods and schools. For instance (and this is really very factual), I never actually thought there were that many people named Shaniqua out there.
The wide variety of names, answering machines, and occasional vulgarity keep me entertained, and when that gets old, I console myself with crossword puzzles and sudoku games. Much of my day is spent on hold at businesses and leaving messages, and I have become intimately acquainted with every answering service, call screening device, and disconnected number message out there. It is slightly disconcerting when I catch myself having actual conversations with machines, but I brush it off as boredom and hope it doesn't turn into anything that will be expensive to fix with a therapist.
I thought I would share with you all a couple of my favorite calls thus far, which I have recreated below to the best of my ability:
1. Subtlety's Overrated
ring ring ring
Bob: (we'll call him Bob to protect his real identity, which I don't know anyway) Hello?
Me: Hi I'm looking for Shwanda.
Bob: Hold on a second, I'm just comin in the house, I'll see if she's there.
In the background, perfectly audible to me:
Bob: Shwannndaaa!
Shwanda (presumably): who is it?
Bob: Dollar Financial
Shwanda: WHO?
Bob: (in an exaggerated tone) DOLLAR. FINANCIAL.
Shwanda: Hang up!
Bob: What?
Shwanda: hang up!
Bob: WHAT?!
Me: She told you to hang up.
Bob: uh, hold on a sec
CLICK.

2. Past Your Expiration Date
ring ring ring
Joe: Hello?
Me: Hi, joe?
Joe: What? Speak up, I can't hear you!
Me: Joe, this is Lanee from Dollar Financial
Joe: From what? (clearly strained on hearing)
Me: Dollar Financial, it's about loan mart, you owe $315, it's 189 days past due
(Joe can't hear and hands the phone to his wife)
Wife: Hello?
Me: I'm calling about loan mart
(the phone switches hands again)
Joe: How do you know I owe that?
Me: Because I work for the company
Joe: How late did you say?
Me: 189 days
Joe: 189 days?! No wonder I don't remember it!
(at some point during this call I look at Joe's birth date and realize he is 85 years old)

3. Answering Awesomeness
Just a little sampling of my favorite answering machines, in case anyone needs any suggestions:

• Gospel singing, American Idol audition style
• Really obnoxious couples answering in unison with a perfectly choreographed message in which each has separate lines as well as lines they pronounce together in a sing-songy voice
• Everyone in the south that says "have a blessed day" at the end of theirs (which is everyone)
• Scripture recitation (again, mostly in the South)
• Apocalyptic warnings (apparently these people didn't expect to have to pay back these loans....)
• Really loud rap songs about having a lot of money (clearly not accurate representations of their lives)
• kids that you can't understand which basically translates into undecipherable babbling
• Fat Albert impression

Jungle-icious

OK, first let me apologize for waiting so long to finish describing this whole jungle experience (I know you were all hanging on the edge of your seats huh?). I'm going to make this brief, and just sort of give an overview of the rest of the trip, as much for your sakes as for my own.

Our days in the jungle generally consisted of three meals eaten in the village which were cooked for us by one of the local women. The guide had food brought in for us from the city to "prevent depletion of their resources", though I suspect also as an attempt at comfort. This mostly consisted of rice, soup, some fruit, and a loaf of white bread. There were some seriously inaccurate calculations somewhere along the way and this "western food" ran out about day four. After that we pretty much ate yucca and.... no wait, yep, just yucca. This proved to be a fairly uncomfortable diet for someone not accustomed to so much starch and I even got a nice little starch belly (which disappeared days after departure thank goodness). Between breakfast and lunch we would usually go on jungle walks with Abel, our 23 guide from the city, and Gustavo, our local guide. This generally involved trudging through knee-deep mud (don't worry, we had rubber boots on at all times) and occasionally crossing bridges over streams (and by bridges I of course mean trees cut down over the river). The foliage was incredibly thick (as you'd expect in the jungle) and we saw an amazing variety of flora and fauna. Our guides would frequently stop to explain the use of different plants--everything ranging from medicinal to edible.

We encountered a fair amount of animals while we were out wandering (millions of species if you count bugs). Our guides were extremely enthusiastic about searching for monkeys, I think that somewhere along the way they got the idea that tourists are obsessed with monkeys and will not be happy unless they see them every day. So we spent a good amount of time scanning the canopy for primates and spotted some at least five or six times. But by far the coolest animal we saw was an anteater that walked right up to us and then stayed around for awhile climbing trees and searching for food. It was pretty amazing. It frequently rained, which made the jungle walks considerably less comfortable and the mud infinitely deeper. I must say I also thoroughly enjoyed our guides various animal calls throughout the trip.

There were definitely some amazing experiences in the jungle, but by the end, I was more than ready to leave. This unfortunately did not happen as planned (as nothing really did). On the day that we were supposed to leave there was bad whether in Shell (the city the plane leaves from) and we couldn't fly out. I don't think I have ever been more devastated in my life. Wait, that's not true, on the THIRD day of waiting with still no sign of a plane I was significantly more devastated. Finally, at the end of the third day our salvation arrived. The plane had left just as bad weather was rolling into Shell and the pilot was freaking out and yelling. At one point we were in the air in the middle of a gray cloud where we couldn't see anything, I really thought we weren't going to make it.

Because of our delay in the jungle we ended up missing our flight back to the States and couldn't get out for another week. At first this thought was horrifying, but after a massage and a facial and a couple of days in incredible Colonial Quito at churches and museums, my hope in life was restored.

It's been almost three weeks now since we've been home, and the whole experience is getting rosier in my memory. Though I do STILL have bed bug bites that itch every once in awhile. I'm not sure if I'll ever be completely healed.

Welcome To The Jungle (think Guns n Roses)

The next morning luck (or some other universal force, after reading our experiences, you decide) was on our side and we made our way bright and early to Shell, a neighboring city where the plane would be leaving from. I will admit that I was a little worried when I saw the old 4-seater plane that looked like it could be straight out of 1978 waiting for us. It didn't help when the pilot immediately began praying and crossing himself, but I guess it's always better to have God on your side.

After an hour and a half flight over miles and miles and miles of absolutely nothing (seriously, nothing) during which I began to question my decision, we arrived on a hand-cut landing strip in the community of Juyuintza. The culture shock set in almost immediately as we stood in the middle of a crowd of almost the entire community in the bazillion degree heat (that's a technical measurement) watching confusedly as naked children ran around and the adults had some sort of heated discussion about who would take the plane ride back to the city. We understood none of this, as the community speaks an indigenous dialect called Shiwiar and our guide had apparently momentarily forgotten about us. We were finally led to what appeared to be a community hut (which we found out later was the home of the teniente who was away in the city, but seemed to be a popular place for community gatherings) where we sat down on wooden benches and again commenced listening dumbly to a community discussion in Shiwiar. After awhile our guide told us that we were waiting for the president who lived a half an hour away on foot. We sat like that for another hour or so while the chicha was passed around and everyone talked (except us of course, who probably just stared wide-eyed).

Chicha is a traditional Shiwiar drink that makes up the staple of their diet and their primary beverage. They drink what appeared to be gallons of this stuff a day, drinking it out of bowls that they pass around, and always served to the men by the women. Now I don't mean to sound culturally insensitive, but chicha is quite possibly the most foul liquid ever created on the face of the planet (needless to say, I passed on trying it). Allow me to explain: chicha is made from Yucca, a root plant similar to a potato that makes up the bulk of the Shiwiar's diet. They harvest the Yucca, peel it, cook it, and place it into a huge canoe-shaped bowl to prepare the chicha. Once in the bowl, the women mash it up and then begin filling their cheeks with the stuff after which they proceed to chew it up until it is almost completely liquid at which point they spit it back into the bowl and continue mixing and chewing. Once this step is complete, they allow the mashed up and salivated yucca to sit for a day and ferment (they sometimes let it sit for up to three days if they want alcoholic chicha). Then they mix it with river water (brown, and taken from the same part of the river in which they bathe and wash clothes and dishes) and serve it in community bowls. When the women are serving it, they frequently stick their hands into the middle of the bowls to squeeze the yucca fibers and then run their fingers around the mouth of the bowl before handing it to a man. When drinking the chicha, they sometimes get yucca fibers in their mouths and so they hock massive loogies throughout the whole experience. It's all very appetizing. Chicha is one of the most important parts of Shiwiar life and, as explained by our guide: "Chicha is life".

We were eventually led about five minutes away from the main part of the community to the school, a cement building with a corrugated metal roof and the only closed in building in the community since it was constructed by the government. This was where we would be sleeping. They set up some one inch thick mattresses with sleeping bags and pillows and left us there to rest. It turned out that they actually cancelled school while we were there so that we could sleep in the school, an idea I found to be a little unsettling but didn't have much control over. Overall the mattresses weren't too bad as far as comfort goes (nothing even rivaling a motel 6 but I wasn't expecting much), although when we discovered that they were infested with bed bugs it became significantly more difficult to sleep on them. Still, I was grateful for a little privacy and a bed somewhat protected from the elements. From what I gathered the people slept on wooden planks under their huts, some of them with mosquito nets and a few with sheets. I was grateful we had somewhat better accommodations. I did find it a little weird when our guide told us he would be sleeping in the one room school house with us, but we just went with it. It was a little awkward when my mom asked him where the bathroom was for the school and he looked around a little confusedly and, with a vague motion to the surrounding area replied "anywhere". When in the main part of the community there was a three-sided outhouse with more species of insects than I have ever previously encountered; I learned to prefer the greater outdoors.

After a day or two of sweating profusely and trudging through knee deep mud, we finally brought ourselves to inquire after bathing accommodations. Our guides obliged very kindly by hauling two kettles of river water up to the school for us (these looked VERY heavy). We managed to achieve a mediocre level of cleanliness (which lasted all of an hour before we were just as dirty as before) and even succeeded in washing some clothes in the leftover water as we had already dirtied half of our clothes by the second day. I soon learned to accept the stench coming from virtually everything I owned as inevitable and we just did our best for the rest of the trip.

Well, I think I've at least covered the basics of jungle living, though I haven't even begun to cover all of what we did there. I'm going to have to stop there for now, but I promise to get into some wildlife descriptions in the next post; I can only take so much reminiscing in one day :).

Monkey Business

To be perfectly honest, I'm not exactly sure where to begin this post. I have recently returned from a trip to the Ecuadorian jungle and want to share all the gory details, but there are almost too many to think about. I find myself torn between getting my feet wet and just jumping right in. I suppose if you're going to get wet you might as well go swimming right? Consider this a bucket of water dumped on your head. So, per the Von Trapp's excellent musical advice, I'll start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

The original plan was to spend ten days in the Ecuadorian jungle, working through a very, very small, virtually unknown tourist agency to live in a small Shiwiar indigenous community. [Anyone seeing any warning signs yet?] A little apprehensive about this expedition with no reputation that she found on the Internet, mom opted to pay only half before we arrived and put up the rest of the money when we met Pascual (owner, director, and tour guide) and confirmed the existence and legitimacy of the trip. When we arrived in Puyo, the day before we were supposed to fly to the jungle, we met Pascual, decided that he seemed legitimate enough, transferred the remaining money, and packed up our stuff.

The next morning, we were met with what would prove to be a common occurrence on our expedition, bad weather and a change of plans. Because of the weather, we were unable to leave for the jungle, since we would be flying in a small, 4-seater plane into, well, the middle of nowhere. After waking up at 7 am as directed, we waited around the hotel for a couple of hours awkwardly attempting conversation with our 23 year old and clearly inexperienced and less than social guide who kept assuring us that the weather could clear up any minute and we thusly had to be ready to go on a moment's notice. [It should be noted that this guide was not the aforementioned Pascual, but rather his younger brother Abel. Pascual apparently decided that since we didn't require an English-speaking guide (of which he spoke a little), he would take this opportunity to stay home and work at his various pursuits while sending us out into the jungle with his kid brother.] The team (by which I mean Pascual, his wife, and Abel, which, from all that I saw seem to be the whole of the company) eventually decided that we should do something other than sit around waiting, since, by all calculations, the plane would not be flying today, and we were still paying for a day's accommodations and activities. (This thought had occurred to me hours before).

After a sufficiently awkward lunch during which I discovered that they believed that vegetarians only eat vegetables, we headed to a sort of nature preserve outside the city for jungle animals. Here we were introduced to many of the animals native to the jungle we would soon be exploring. Unlike any zoo or preserve I've been to in the United States, they invited us right into the cages where I came into much closer than comfortable contact with several unsettling reptiles.

The most eventful part of the day however, occurred when we were walking the muddy path around the preserve through trees and jungle. We saw several monkeys jumping around the trees surrounding us and got pretty excited. The guide mentioned we were in the vicinity of this particular group of monkeys' haunts, so we stopped, presumably, to observe. When Abel took out a banana I wasn't sure exactly what to expect, but certainly nothing even close to what happened. Within seconds there were four or five monkeys jumping all over me and, from the shrieks I heard behind me, my mom too. Alarmed but not wanting to miss the moment, I quickly shoved my camera into the hands of Pascual's wife standing in front of me, as much so that I wouldn't drop it as that I wanted a picture of what was happening. The monkeys were climbing and jumping around excitedly all over me trying to get a piece of Abel's banana. I can't say I really enjoyed the moment at the time, I was so shocked that I didn't know quite what to do and concentrated primarily on how many animals I had on me and where exactly their hands and tails were going (I am fairly positive that several of said appendages made their way down my shirt at some point). I am also pretty sure that I was left with a couple little presents on my shirt, something I think happened sometime while two monkeys were fighting over some banana on my back. It was all over in less than a minute, but it was certainly a memorable experience.

After that adventure we headed back to the hotel for another night, once again anticipating departure in the morning.