pictures!

Here is where weve been spending tons of time - the table, the swinging chair, the hammock in the background and about half of the kitchen area is shown here. Our little room is directly above this space ... Ill try to get a better picture of that soon.
Better pictures of the monkeys! Elvin has taken it upon himself to take the best pictures ever of the monkeys and all of the birds. I think this one is pretty good.




Today, after I got over my two-day fight with various travelers ailments, I chopped palm fronds and cardboard (to mix with some water and make mulch) with a machete for two hours. exciting! I am still finding it hilarious that this is what I decided to do with my zillion dollar Oberlin education, but I guess its only temporary. I was feeling pretty awesome and campo-savvy until Elvin came over and chopped way more, way faster and in way smaller pieces, but we decided that I am still pretty great. Although my right arm is now very sore, but it was worth it. It looks like I FINALLY got some pictures up here, one of these is of me trying to chop down a small tree in the jungle (for a post to help some little trees grow straight) - which was a lot harder than palm fronds and I didnt do a lot more than just posing for this picture! The other is from our pizza night a few nights ago, where Im enjoying the pizza made by my fellow Oberlin friend. The picture of Elvin is him holding the daily batch of passion fruit (maracuya, or kalala in this country apparently, thoug Elvin keeps aciddently calling it kelele, which has transformed into kilili and kululu and kololo) that we picked up from the little orchard. Delicious - we used it to make pinneapple and passion fruit jam the other day.

And I finally got one of the pictures of the spiders! I personally didnt take this picture, since I didnt want to get that friendly with its terrible eyeballs, but we noticed this guy hiding in a corner the other day and decided to take a picture. Elvin also saw a snake yesterday (the first one so far), but luckily for me and my potential panic attack I wasnt with him at the time. However, I have been noticing that Im getting used to the cockroaches.

We had another pizza night last night (thats four pizza nights this week!). This time the occassion was Patricias parents visit from Spain (Patricia is the owners girlfriend, who is running the NGO that Totoco is starting). Her parents were hilarious, full of great Spanish accents and dirty jokes and pizza-making skills. Her father couldnt remember either one of our names, and kept calling Elvin either Pepe or Jose, and called me Mari, which turned into Maria Cecelia when he saw me this afternoon. I told him that my middle name actually is Marie, but I think he had just decided on my name and wasnt interested in any other options. Anyway, it was pretty funny.