Last week! (of work)

7/11/2011
Well just re-doing a bunch of my surveys and putting the "Animal" data into excel for analysis. It's been pretty exciting we've been able to do some preliminary analysis of demographic data and the first few questions! I'm excited to be back in less than 13 days!! There were a 101 different plant species named by people in my surveys ranging for uses from food and drink to religious and medicinal purposes! As well there were 65 animal species named by people that had the same range of uses!

Not a whole lot of new happenings we went back to Vilcabamba this last weekend for a birthday party and played volleyball and had a BBQ. It was really good food. But I can't wait to have the wide variety of food available again in the good ol U.S. We also met a guy from New Jersey this past week that runs a 'Street food' restaurant he's got like steak sandwiches and what not with fries. It's really good he made us feel pretty at home except that we're not from New Jersey haha.

Some little things I haven't really mentioned before (i don't think) is that they use the Sacajawea Dollar here instead of dollar bills. Their money is all from the U.S. with the exception that they have printed some of their own .05, .10, .25, and .50 cent pieces! It's pretty cool a couple of the places we go they constantly ask us if we have American .50 pieces to trade for but those are pretty rare to come by even in the states (unless your in Vegas Thanks again for that Dad that was a blast!). I'm looking forward to my pack schedule once I get back into the U.S. all the way up until school starts I've got just about every day planned out!

We leave this friday night to take the midnight bus for 12 hours to the beach so we'll get there saturday morning just in time to hang out and sleep on the beach! Then we're touring poor man Galapagos' and Tuesday night catching the midnight train back to Guayaquil. Spend our last day in Loja wednesday saying goodbyes and finishing up packing then Thursday it's back to Quito where we will climb the towers in one of the churches and then Friday tour the city and Saturday pack up and get ready to head back home!

It has been an awesome trip there's not a thing different I would do...okay that's a lie. I wouldn't have drank the stream water!!! I've lost  like 5lbs this last week and am down to my last notch on my belt and about ready to cut another notch. I can now understand why back in the old days doctors would sell parasites for weight loss, it's worked pretty good for me. haha Just kidding. I've got a couple "home remedy" ideas given to me and will be trying those to see if I can kick this. And for all of you who were hoping to see me come back with a Bot fly, I haven't been so lucky sorry to disappoint you!

Hope all is well with everyone I have added more pictures to my photobucket of the zoo and what not! Also there's a construction picture in there I would like to dedicate to my Dad. I'd imagine it was the same kind of work he was doing back when he first started construction using sticks for framing! Haha hope you enjoy it here's the link http://s1085.photobucket.com/albums/j422/raus2120/More%20Ecuador/?action=view&current=DSCN0731.jpg#!oZZ11QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs1085.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fj422%2Fraus2120%2FMore%2520Ecuador%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DDSCN0731.jpg > Be sure to click "Next" to see the second picture.