A complete month has passed without another entry. The stamina fails and the ambition becomes ambitious. Since the last entry I have been working on a few things, busy some days, bored others. A quick report for all you back home on what I have been doing. Camp A.L.M.A Aventura y Liderazgo para Muchachas Ambiciousas I helped run a facilitate a week long camp for fifteen teenage girls. It was the single most amazing thing I have experience in Ecuador, after ten months of developiong views of how everthing works in Ecuador, this camp shattered every bad thing I ever thought about work habits, general moticiation etc. Shattered, temporarily perhaps. These girls are indeed ambitious and worked so hard throughout the camp. They really enjoyed challenging themselves, and really thought outside of their Ecuadorian boxes. They did the adventure course of death with very little hesitance, falling from tables and jumping through webs with motivation beyond anything I have experienced in a camp atmosphere. We visited manglars on the coast and saw birds that don´t exist anywhere else in the world. Yes, I say blue foot boobies. The manglars are trees that grow interacting with salt water, they are amazing and are one of the few things in nature that create new land. The nature in Canoa, Ecuador was ridiculously beautiful and mind boggling. We also visited a secluded beach that is a good two hour hike to the Pacific Coast, this beach was secluded and we were told it is one of the biggest human trafficing points in Ecuador, people say a lot of things so I don´t always believe everything. The girls received a few capacitation classes on small business ideas, like recycled paper business. A few of the girls really had business savvy minds and it made me think that people really do have opportunities outside of their circumstances. My favorite part was what they called joven a joven, which means youth to youth. It was basically a sex ed charla. It amazed me how little these girls actually knew about sex and even about their own body. With such a different culture it strikes me as wrong, but they learn what is socially acceptable, but were happy to know more. It was amazing, World Aids Day On December first we celebrate World AIDS Day. I was trying to get connected with a high school where I could give an educational talk, but sex education and catholic high schools didn´t really go hand in hand. So instead I made borchure on HIV AIDS statistics and made red ribbons then stood on the footbridge everyone has to cross for three hours and passed information and ribbons out. It worked. People probably think I am the weirdest gringo in the world but who cares? I wore my ribbon, brought Yana and put a red ribbon around her neck and we double teamed the city. I seriously think that a lot of people learned a lot that day. I passed out 500 brochures and 125 ribbons. Grant Writing Oh man! I used to argue with my dad, I remember trying to convince him that money was not important and that you didn´t need money to be happy or get things done. I was an idiot, of course you do. It´s obvious. Some people here earn a living by cutting down tress, exploiting nature and all the stuff Captain Planet was fighting against. How do you stop this, you don´t just go and tell them to stop, you have to give them an easier more productive was of earning their money. The ideas are endless, but the latest one that I have started working on is a semi precious stone jewelery course. Basically taking river rocks, polishing them, and then putting them into jewelery. Great idea and a couple of people are very, very into the project. The thing is you have to start off with money. To make money you have to have money, interesting concept, that I´m sure everybody already realizes. I´m just young and have recently fallen off of the idealistic band wagon. This means I have had to learn how to write grants, which is not easy. I used to think that people that hired grant writers were just lazy, but it is tough work. Ridiculous work. So here I am writing grants in English and Spanish, trying to help some kids make enough money, so that they stop unsustainable practices. Bamboo Long term project. Slow starting. Here is in called caña huadua. You can make anything out of this bamboo that you would make out of hard wood, you just have to know how to manipulate it. The good thing about it is that it grows to maturity in 5 years instead of the 40-70 the other types of wood takes, so again it is sustainable. I am kinda waiting for next year´s funding to come, but I´m starting the leg work. Talking, talking and hoping I won´t stick my foot in my mouth. | 
