I swear to God, if I have to explain to one more person why Sam isn't talking to me, I'll freak out. Seems only fair that he can explain to some of our many, many mutual friends why he's being a child. Whatever. Maybe I'll just write up a summary and distribute it en masse. The whole thing is very juvenile and is pissing me off.
Good news on the Ecuador front: My dad's friend Mauricio put me in direct contact with Mario Brito, the guy in charge of FEDETA in Ecuador, and I've exchanged a couple of emails with him, as well as spoken with Mauricio on Skype. It looks like I'll be heading down there sometime around the end of May. In mid May I'm probably going to South Carolina with Mateo. He said that Megan can come, and I think she's going to. Of course, if we find a significantly cheaper ticket to Ecuador that interferes with that, then that will preclude the beach trip.
I need to get the details sorted out quickly so I can buy a ticket. I told them that I don't need to be paid, I'm happy to volunteer, but if they could provide me with a bed and some food for the summer, that would be pretty groovy. I don't know exactly what I would be doing, but Mauricio today told me that one of the things they might put me to would be translating some of their literature and website stuff into English, which I can totally do. (Just don't ask me to translate back into Spanish. Then we'd run into problems.)
At any rate, they sound super welcoming, and this Brito fellow told me not to worry about not having any expertise in the sort of the thing that they do, "Siempre hay algo para hacer." There is always something to do. I'm stoked.
I'm about done with school though. Fuuuuck this shit. I've been bored with it all semester, I think, and now, three weeks out, I'm just ready to be done with classes and getting on with other stuff. (With the exception of my Modern Middle East class, which is AWESOME.) We did have really nice weather all week, spent lots of time reading/napping in the sun, but now it's like 45 degrees F with intermittent rain. Boo.
Right now I'm in Berea with shitty weather. In under two months I should be here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quito,_Ecuador Baller.
I'm listening to a song on Pandora by los Enanitos Verdes, something about "Tu Carcel" (your jail cell), but some of the melody and guitar licks sounds exactly like a Kinks song that I can't place.
I also suspect that I am being hit upon via facebook by a rather ambiguous young lad who goes here. It's pretty funny. His Spanish is not-so-great.