Eighth Grade Speech + more!

Hey all, I know it's been a while, and that is because I realized that I still hadn't done all the homework that I was supposed to do during the six months. Because of this, I have been working non-stop on my history textbook (Four units in two weeks. Four hours a day), finishing up science, and working on my eighth grade speech. Upon looking at my recording, I give it a "mediocre" grade. But I recorded it and posted on Youtube (where else) for your enjoyment. The paper is good. The speech is not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bETSaeQFdcU

Let me the last months that I have not blogged about. In not so much detail. Ready go.

After the Inka Trail we went back to Cuzco, which was a charming town that is extremely touristy bad had some pretty fantastic restaurants. We stayed there for a few days before heading off to the Manu Biosphere Reserve, a nine-day trip through the rivers that flow into the Amazon. The second best thing after the Amazon. There we saw some monkeys. And some birds. And some bugs. Every day we spent another four hours on a fantastic boat, wind blowing in our faces with a bunch of good book time. I have been burning through the books. I just finished 1984, and am SO ready to talk to anybody about it.

Several days later we headed to the Galapagos. This was pretty fantastic. Four nine days we boated from island to island (usually during the night). It is a special feeling when you wake up at two in the morning to the boat tilting forty-five degrees to either side. You could hear my toothbrush flying from inside the shower and hitting the porthole. The guide(s) were great, and the foot was more than great. Instead of having the usual sixteen people on the cruise, the economic recession came to our benefit, and only three more people joined our family. One was an old sailor guy that I'm sure had pretty awesome stories to tell, and by the way he cut his meat, he had class as well. The other couple was Canadian, kind but quiet. We saw a ton of glowy fish that bit you, a tiger snake eel (that was its actual name) some huge stingrays and a hammer head. This was hardly "snore"-kling. Ho ho ho.

We saw blue-footed boobies, and birds that puffed up their throats until all you saw was a big red balloon. We saw sheer cliff faces that looked like they came out of Pirates of the Caribbean. It was pretty spectacular.

After our Galapagos trip (which you can find pictures of at jenson.org), we headed to Quito for a couple days, and then Tumbatu, Ecuador. This was a small village where we were working, consisting of descendants of slaves brought over during the 17th century to work the plantations. We rode there in the back of a truck, which had out-of-this world views. Our charity project for the next two weeks was to build bleachers for the soccer field.

I don't usually complain about these kind of things, but I have to say I was kind of disappointed about this assignment. The houses that many people lived in (including us) did not have bathrooms, walls consisted of cemented cinder blocks, and drinking water came out of canals that had ben used to irrigate fields. Well, that's not fair. They did have bathrooms, just with squat toilets, and running water came from a hose that was stuck in the canals. A truck with clean water came weekly to give each family a bucket of clean water. But still... bleachers?

For the next ten days we mixed concrete, scooping, picking, digging, sawing... it was tough work. In the afternoons we tried classes with the kids, art for the younger ones and English for the older ones. It depends on who you ask on this issue, but they turned out to be... difficult. The kids in the art class (well, some of them) just could not share, hitting kids, and pinning them to the ground, yelling at the top of their lungs. The soccer ball that we brought was taken the first day by the older kids, and for the rest of the trip the kids continued to think that we had it, coming to our house in the evening, calling us bad names. When we closed the door, they went around to our widows. Some of them were cute, but others found the art supplies to be something that, if they could, they would steal. There were several breaks for the door with handfuls of crayons. Other kids, when they stuck out their hands for two stickers, would get them, put that arm behind their back, and use the other. My mom was more patient than I could ever be, managing to teach art throughout our stay. By the second day I want to beat up every single on of the ignorant little-

It was great.

After we played it rustic for those two weeks (it gets tiring waking up to spiders over your bed), we flew to Panama City, Panama, which is the most westernized place we've been. I made myself several dozen PB and Js, my dad finally cooked his magical bread, and we found root beer. We spent a week eating and looking at the canal, and it was something special.

Now we are all freshened up with our American food, and we just arrived in Caracas, Venezuela. Although the place is a tad dangerous, we have been keeping to the safer side of town, only leaving our hotel for meals, and for no more than one or two hours at a time. We are going to head to Angel Falls (waterfall with the biggest drop in the world) for a couple of nights, and then we are going to relax for the rest of the trip. We have less than five weeks left! A little less than four here in Venezuela, and we spend our last week in Colombia. I've made plans, and my summer is going to be freakin' nuts!

Anyway, don't worry. There will be more blog posts in the future.