I´m back in my site now.

It´s interesting, but coming back to Tena was a lot harder than coming back to Ecuador. i felt guiltier the closer I came to where I have been living for the last year. It´s odd, I felt bad for leaving people back home, which is expected. However, I also began feeling bad about being gone for so long, I imagined people feeling abandoned, feeling that they weren´t important to me, and perhaps they thought these were the reason I was gone for so long. I did really keep in touch as well as I should have.

It was an odd feeling, but being medically held in the states made me feel a bit embarrassed. It´s not bad to get sick, as long as that´s the only thing that happens to me. Come on though. I have gone through a lot of stuff in the last year, and I think my cumulative score adds me up to be a clumsy, accident prone gringo. There is a very certain type of finesse that I have achieved in this country and it leaves me wanting to wear a helmet to the open market, take multi-vitamins and carry a fire extinguisher with me at all times. I don´t remember being this person in the states, but perhaps it was just less noticable.

Many Ecuadorians have told me that I should invest in a five dollar curse removal. This includes a shaman, an egg, some leaves and perhaps a prayer. This makes uncomfortable, but I may be desparate enough to try. I´m about 74% sure that instead of being unclumsified, it would more likely leave me with a confused scrunched face, five dollars less in my bank account and an egg to scramble to eat. Perhaps eating the egg that you were cleansed with is a bad idea. It may be like eating the mop head with which you just finished mopping.

All of this makes me feel like I´m in a bad horror movie. It´s the classic horror house movie. Some idiotic family, in this case a idiotic guy, moves into a house, in this case it´s Ecuador, and the house does everything it can possibly think of to get the family out. It beats the unaware family up until the realize that hey this place doesn´t want me here, then they move out. I on the other hand am not going to move out.

I am committed to continue working hard.

Since I have been back I have:

Welcomed the latest group of volunteers into the country.

Had my camara and mobile phone stolen from my checked luggage.

Attended a Gender and Development meeting that was highly productive, where I helped plan one camp, was eleceted co-president to the committee, was invited to help facilitate a camp on the Galapagos Islands, and learned that Peace Corps has some quality volunteers.

Found that my dog has been knocked up before she turned a year old. I´m hoping the puppy process is not too horrible. Yeah, pregnant.