god is going to make a change. mmm?

yikes. for some reason, blogger has opened my account on this computer in spanish (or portuguese?). at least i know the buttons on here well enough to manoevre around and post.

easily, the most exciting news to come to me lately has been this:
http://www.asthmatickitty.com/music.php?releaseID=63
i just found out about it minutes ago. my heart is racing. whew. anyways.

ylp went on a community visit to the village of massara this weekend. it is a really pretty community with about 400 residents. i was sick with a bad cold the entire time, and my eyes were burning again for some reason, which made the whole trip considerably uncomfortable, but it was still pretty neat. on saturday afternoon, the toshau (chief) of massara took us upriver in a motorboat. after about half an hour, we landed on a big sandy bank. toshau and the boys went into the forest to cut some trees and collect some bark to construct and tie up a shelter. it was so neat! they found about 8 logs, about 10 cm in diameter, each splitting into a Y on top. they dug holes in the sand and put the logs in there, and then laid two long logs parallel to each other across the Ys. they secured it with stripped bark, and then tied a tarp on top. we slung up our hammocks, and then went fishing. it was my first fishing trip ever! i didn't actually fish, but everyone else did. they just used line and hooks and bait - no rod. they would spin the bait/hooks around above their heads and then throw them out and reel them in. cute. everyone caught at least one fish - most caught piranahs, which were bright orange on some parts so it looked like they had been spray painted. while we were fishing, we saw about 8 or ten monkeys in a tree along the riverbank! they were so close! i think those are the first wild monkeys i have ever seen. we went back to our camp, and everyone ate fish while i ate bananas and peanuts. i was still feeling pretty sick, so i went to bed early. but not before i saw a caimen (crocodile) swimming in the river, about 30 feet away from us! exciting! the caimen come out at night, and apparently they are just like bears - they don't bother humans as long as we don't surprise them. it was right at dusk, so it was a little hard to see, but i definitely saw the caimen's head and back. crazy. i slept in my hammock and had a miserable sleep because of my cold, but was thankful for my midnight pee break because it gave me the opportunity to wander around alone on the sand under the stars and the moon. amazing. i hope we get to do that kind of trip again sometime when i am not so sick.

when i woke up that morning, i felt even sicker than before. we packed up all our things by 6 a.m., and were back in massara around 7 a.m. i stayed in my hammock most of the day, while the rest of ylp went to church and then played volleyball with the villagers. massara has lots of fruit trees, so we enjoyed a lot of oranges and lemons and marvelled at how beautiful the mango trees are. mangoes aren't in season quite yet, but they are just coming out, so there are a lot of little green unripe mangoes everywhere. apparently during mango season, thousands of mangoes just go to waste because there is such an abundance of them. anyways. pretty trees. in the afternoon, i was able to venture out of my hammock, even though the sun continued to scorch my retinas. i watched volleyball for a bit, and then walked to the river with crystal and garreth (a welsh boy who is here to do natural resource management). a side note relating to this walk: a few weeks ago, i succumbed to the allure of flip-flops. i bought a pair of brown havaianas, and have stayed in them since. but on friday, i decided that since my feet were getting dirty anyway, i'd rather go barefoot than flip-flopped. so i have been shoeless for the last couple of days (including aforementioned walk to the river), and it has been wonderful. i read in my "rediscovery" book a little while ago that an elder said if she could do anything over again, she would "go barefoot earlier in the spring and later in the fall." done and done.

in the evening on sunday, ylp had to go to church again in massara to thank the people for having us. i was distracted because i was really sick and really hot, and we didn't even end up doing the presentation we were supposed to. but i'm glad i went, because the pastor was wicked awesome. at the end of EVERY sentence, he would end with "hmm?" he probably said, "god is going to make a change. hmm?" about 15 times during his sermon. my brain registered that that would be something i would normally laugh at, but i was too uncomfortable to actually laugh. i wasn't sure anyone else was amused by it, but when we got out of church, all my ylp youth were making jokes about it on the walk back to our "house." neil especially was super funny. my youth rule.

today? uneventful. sore eyes. oh! i got my first care package! i received a package sent by emilonely on september 18. yikes. thanks, em! i JUST ran out of chocolate today, so the vanilla bean hot chocolate and pirates of the caribbean m&ms are definitely appreciated.