At 10:30pm, I boarded a bus from Quito headed for the coast. This was definitely a high-class bus, as we were even served a little bag of crackers and a plastic cup of orange soda. Suffocating in the humidity of the night drive through the jungle, we made it to the dusty, intersection town of Portoviejo...

This past weekend, I made my way to a town a few hours south of la finca (the plantation) called Baños, known for thermal baths and a taffy they make by hand, working it out by pounding and twisting it against wooden hooks in the doorways of their stores (unlike the machines that do it back in the states...

available purchase on an ecuadorian bus: pears, cherries, mangoes, grapes, strawberries, sugarcane, phone-cards, roasted corn, fruit salad, soda, juice, ice cream, water, potato chips, chifles (fried plantains), fried corn, fried beans, potato-egg sandwiches, bunches of green onions, live chickens...

so, i've been teaching here in Ecuador at the Sierra Flor School (which is located on a rose plantation) for about two weeks now. my schedule is a busy ritual. i'm up by 6am, out the door by 6:30 and at school by 7am. all the kids then take showers and get dressed in their uniforms (t-shirts and...

it feels like i'm experiencing something real here... the llamas meandering around and the buses strapped with two feet of gear on the roof, and the dirt roads, and the hats and the wraps, and the bananas that are sold still attached to the tree branch; the villagers dressed in their indegenous clothing...