How many of you can say you went to the Amazon?

Hey Everone, if you want to find out what´s new with me, read on. For those of you who don´t, well, you probably know what you can do. Anyway, before I get started, I´d like to give a couple belated birthday shoutouts to Cory Nelson and Robby Gilbertson. I´ve already talked with Robby, but Cory, if you read this, I´d like to know how you and Lar-Dogg are doing, so write me or something.

Well now, stuff about me. ^robably the biggest thing sticking out in my mind that most of you don´t know about is that I had a reunion with a bunch of AFS students in the Amazon. Yeah that´s right, the Amazon. I really like saying that, but it actually isn´t what you all are probably thinking of, because where I went was just the begining of the Amazon. However, the drive there was probably the prettiest scenery I´ve ever seen. I live where it´s totally mountianous, but there aren´t many trees. But on the way to Puyo (the city where the reunion was) the mountians are just thick with tropical trees. There are cliffs with nearly shear drop-offs but their sides are still completly covered in trees. It was really really cool.

Anyway, it was a weekend trip and I went to a zoo (which is way different than zoos in the U.S.) and a monkey ate a lemon on my head, and yes I have pictures. I also just got to hang out with other exchange students in the city during night, and that was cool too.

Alright, now for other stuff that´s going on. My band is totally international now. I keep giving burned copies of our CD to classmates as presents and if anyone asks, I give them a copy. Some of them really like it so I guess that´s good. I´m planning on burning copies for all the other exchange students here in Reobamba, so in about 9 months my band will be in at least 5 countries.

More other stuff: I went to a funeral the other day. Here they have funeral processions and a little band was playing at this one, so that was quite different. The person who died was like, the mother-in-law of a worker for my family here (people here go to funerals for people they hardly knew or even never met out of respect for a friend or reletive who knew the person). I don´t know though, it really wasn´t that sad for me because I was one of the people who didn´t know the person. In fact, I didn´t even know who it was until after the funeral. Anyway, the funeral was in this tiny town way up in the mountains. The weather there is really weird because the altitude is so high, you are actually in the clouds. It was sort of like being in an airplane when it´s flying through clouds. You can´t see very well and it seems like fog, but it isn´t exactly. Also the temperature there was way colder (I think around 40 degrees), which was nice because it reminded me of home which should be about that temperature now.

Moving on, I went to a two hour church service today, that wasn´t too exciting. I actually was kind of alarmed during a lot of the service for this reason: It was all about ¨Madre Maria, Nuestra Señora¨. The service started with a big float being carried in by a bunch of guys (by the way, the service took place in a bull fighting arena) and on the float was a framed picture of the Virgen Mary and while it was being caried in, the head priest (there were like, twenty of them) said to wave to our ¨holy mother¨. Also, there was a giant thirteen foot tapestry of Mary hanging in front of the main stage in the arena... Oh and did I forget to say? Not a single picture of Jesus! Throughout the service everyone was saying ¨Viva Maria!¨ and I was just thinking to myself, ¨Wow does everyone here want to disect to word CHRISTian?¨ Anyway, that´s enough of that.

I think I´m going to wrap this up now. I´d just like to say that being sick sucks (I forgot to mention that I got sick again), carving stuff out of soap if fun, I am losing the ability to spell words (I had to think really hard about how to spell the word ¨straight¨ today) and also everyone should listen to the band Winter Sleep. Ok that´s it, peace out, I´m done.

Truly all of yours,

Noah Eggebraaten