Just When You Thought You Were Safe From My Posts…

For those of you who have been asking, I apologize for the long break between blog posts. For whatever reason, I just haven’t felt there was much to say or much happening. It nice to know so many of you seem to follow along! For most of February, I was sick with giardia, which is a parasite found in contaminated water. Where it came from—the jungle, Iquitos or my recent visit to the mountains around Cusco—is anyone’s guess. I can say I hope not to get it again! It took over 6 weeks to pass using two different drug scripts. Along the way I also got a nasty upper respiratory infection so the fun was never ending!

A few highlights of the last few months have been my new love relationship with “Skype”! I’ve never used it before but I’m signed up now and it’s been great. To be able to reach my friends and family, for free, anytime I want has been great. Even here in the jungle, the connections have been better than over the regular phone lines. Email me if you have Skype, too, and we can exchange addresses. Speaking of emails—where is everyone?? I know I’m out of the country and not around much but I’m not dead yet! My email traffic has dried up. I’m always happy to hear what’s going on with everyone and never want to lose touch with you all. Thankfully, there’s Facebook but a brief email from anyone, anytime would be great!

I had a couple of our biggest donors here last month and I took them around—you know, “wined and dined” them on clean water from our water treatment plants and the usual bill of fare at Explorama Lodges for our meals! It’s always great to have donors come and see the work first-hand. Often people give to CONAPAC without ever having been here. This is a great show of faith on their part but it certainly seals the deal when I can meet them personally and show them around, answer their questions and see the difference they are making.

After receiving one of those nostalgic emails about car tailfins and Captain Kangaroo from my brother, Tim, we started emailing back and forth some of our shared memories. Some were general things that everyone of our generation remembers but most were memories only we as siblings would know anything about--or at least find the most humor in it! Well, this went back and forth for days—what fun! I found myself unable to really sleep well for several nights as I kept waking up to jot down notes. After a week or so of this, I realized what a wealth of information we had gleaned from our aging brains so I stared to copy and paste the text into a Word document. We are up to over 20 pages of single space, 10 pt. font for this document! I can’t wait to get home one day, sit down with my brother over drinks and re-read what we wrote. I’m sure more will be dredged up and hysterics will ensue! For those of you with siblings, try this exercise out. There are family stories that everyone remembers and talks about, but if you dig a little deeper, you’d be amazed at different angles each person brings to the same event. How you have forgotten some things but remembered others and each new memory will trigger another—do try it! :)

I finally got a hammock! My neighbors from Colorado moved out about a month ago and left it behind as a parting gift. However, my landlord, who is a great guy, is quite picky about things so I had to wait until he was satisfied with how it was going to be hung. Well, like most things here, one must wait so my patience was exercised and finally the big day arrived. Now really, how can one live in the tropics (or anywhere else in the world) without a hammock? Life is very good!

I am currently in the midst of the big and final push to get the Adopt-A-School program off the ground for 2010. It seems we work on it all year long but really do the bulk of it all the last four weeks prior to deliveries. This will be my 3rd year to help organize it and my 5th time to participate in the process. I have to say, the first year I helped organize, I was clueless. The second year, when I had majority responsibility I was scared to death. But this year, although I know there will be bumps, I’m more organized than ever but still making enough mistakes to keep me learning and keep me humble! I’m looking forward to seeing many old friends and meeting new ones. It’s always fun to watch people “fall in love” with the jungle. You can see it on their faces as they are walking around in a daze by mid-week. They’re the ones I know will be back and really committed to the program. I wonder who it will be this year?!