sorry i havent been posting stuff with gerat frecuecy but whatever. monday was my brithday. in the morning i went to work until about 12. two things happened that are worth wrtting about. the first thing is that when my group visited our first family we found that one of the family members (a 22 year old son) had been slashed with a machete. apparently this happened due to a heavy night of drinking. the three of us juconi workers were shocked. we then walked about a kilometer to the nearest doctors office. then the clinic shocked me. it smeled like infection, the "doctor" carried in dirty instruments, and he did a very bad job of stichiting up the wound. i didnt stay long at the doctors office. my job was for the day to take pictures of all the family members in our foundation. this is the second interesting thing that happened to me: i went out in the slums alone. most juconi workers refuse to do this because there is a heavy risk of getting robbed when you are alone. i feel safe enough in this particular slum and i know my way around quite well and therefore i did this. i got most of the pictures of the families (a few members were missing) and then returned home. at home my host family had prepared a lunch of lasagna and decorated the house with ballons. after lunch we had cake and took pictures with everyone together (minus evelyn because she was working). after a pretty basic afternoon some of my friends came over and we hung out on the porch until the wee hours of the morning. on tuesday i was supposed to go in early and teach math to some kids but no one bothered to tell me that they werent coming in. this made me mad because i now officially only have to come in on tuesday for two hours. jack and i ended up leaving early because we had a concert to go to. the concert was incredible to say the least. we were seeing mana. the first expirience came when we were about two miles from the stadium that they were going to play at. there was traffic stopped that far away. after we parked the car (i got a ride with fernando evelyns boyfriedn) we had to brave the lines. we did the line the latino way and cut in front of everyone else. then we went to find our friends somwhere in the 60,000 plus stadium. we ended up climbing over people just to get to four square feet of space. we then wated for the concer to start, it started on latin time about two hours late. we were in the bleachers and the stading room only spots where all below us. it was like a sea of black haired heads and then a giant stage surrounded with speakers the size of houses. once they turned out the lights (and turned the spot lights on) the sea of black heads turned into lights from cameras and cell phone, almost like stars. mana came out and played a song but i couldnt hear it because everyone was so amped that they sang along. it seemed like everyone in the stadium was a mana fanatic. i went for the expirience because i really didnt know the music and it was definatly worth it. wednesday i went to work completely solo. i liked that because i had a lot of freedom to do things the way i wanted and i didnt have to wait for people. one thing i did was i cleaned the wound of the poor guy who got slashed. thursday with some sort of glitches i didnt have to go to work at all. i mostly just loafed around and put off writting a blog. in the after noon all the exchange students met at one girls house to talk to a doctor about medical issues in ecuador. that was pretty boaring because the doctor was actually a specialist in diabetes and only talked about that for two hours. after that all us exchange student hung out a little. friday i only had to go to work in the morning. in the after noon i had another meeting at the afs office to meet the new guayaquil director. saturday morning, at the crack of 7 o clock, all of us exchange students met at the bus station to go to the beach. we went to the beach to stay at a hostel and have some sort of conference. the beach was right behind us as we talked about a series of really boaring exchange student topics. at the end of the day and the first part of sunday we had time to enjoy ourselves at the beach. i got home to guayaquil tired, feeling a little sick and a little discuraged. even though the beach reunion was boaring i came to realize that i hadnt done anything out of my way culturally. i havent taken dance lessons of learned about native art or anything like that. so i am going to try and do that with the help of my host siblings. this week has been different because juconi is doing some sort of workshop that they dont need volunteers, so i havent had work all this week. monday collin and max (two afsers from cuenca) came to stay at my house for one night-they were on theyre way to the beach. we did a lot of hanging out and catching up. they are having a very bad time with their situations in cuenca. monday night we met up with all the members of our group and had a party. the only problem was that i felt sick and didnt exert much. i felt bad about that but o well. tuesday i spent resting. wednesday jack and i planned to go to cuenca. i wasnt too sure if i was going to go because i had some kind of sickness that i was nursing but i got up the strength and headed to the bus station to meet up with him. our bus was nice and me and jack ended up sitting in the two front seats (what gringos), the only problem was that there was no window. o well we tried to sleep for the duration of the four hour bus trip. we didnt see much, including the bad roads, but at the end of the trip we drove through the extrodinary cajas national park(we did see that). when we arrived in cuenca we got in a cab and went to a really groovy hostel. they had room and so we decided to stay there. i must say one thing: i really like traveling with jack because we always try to do things as cheap as possible. this makes expiriences that much more interesting. our hostel by the way costs $6 a night. after setting our things down we headed to find some lunch. we did that at $1.50 and we ate until our stomachs were bursting. after lunch we wondered around town and stopped in at a tourist information office. then we rested at our hostel a little. after that we set out to find jacks host sister who is in town for a university seminar. we found her after a few minor mishaps. i should digress here to describe what cuenca is like... cuenca is a town high in the andes mountains in the south of ecuador. it was built by the spansih and there is an incredible old town with lots of cramped european like streets dalloped with sky-skrapping churches two monistaries and a cathedral-that means they are really good catholocs. the people seem very affluent and sometimes i feel more like i am in spain than in ecuador. people are also very sophisticated here-ill get into that. anyway once we met up with jacks sister she called a friend that we were going to meet up with. he picked us up and took us to his families bar. the bar was probably the coolest, most classiest bar that i had ever been to. there was all this cubist art on the wall, really cool lighting and it had a great view of the city. the guy who took us to this bar was also really interesting. he spoke four and a half languages and was a really classy dude. after the bar excurssion we headed back to the hostel early. to our surprise we forgot that our hostel was also a working bar-meaning very noisy. we went to our rooms and found the place still very noisy. the next morning (today) we woke up later than expected and ate pancakes for breakfast. at breakfast jack and i met a girl from argentina who was traveling to mexico-like i havent met enough of these people. we decided to go to cajas national park. so we went to the bus station and did that whole scene and finally got there an hour and a half later. the mountains in this park are amazing. they are jagged yet bumpy and glacier like ponds are speckled all over the place. the three of us set out on a trail but only made it about one kilometer. we climbed a bit of a peak and just chilled there for about an hour looking at the incredible scemery below. it was very cold, a little windy and of course there were some annoying bugs but the worste part was the altitude. this is probably the highest i have ever been- about 13,000 feet-without the help of an airplane. also physically speaking it was also the closest to the sun i have ever been(my hands and face got sun burnt. exhausted we limped back to the bus stop to wait for the bus. in cuenca we just rested, ate, and showered. after i finish this blog we are going to try and meet more cuencanas with jacks sister. cuenca is cool. my parents are coming this weekend so maybe i will have all new stories to tell soon. also i cant put up pictures on my blog right now, sorry the computer is a little sick.
-mark