I can't sleep. It's a bit past midnight here in the Amazon and raining pretty hard. Joe and Carlie are in Quito five hours away getting some Visa paperwork done. Mine can't be done until next week because I ran out of free pages in my passport. So I'm alone, sitting here getting attacked by dive-bombing bugs and re-reading some old blog posts from about this time last year- November 2010.
What a great life I had back there in NC! Everything that made me happy was at my disposal. My family was there, all my best friends that I grew up with, a variety of great foods, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, my favorite downtown restaurant. Looking back I really did "have it all". And yet we traded it to live here in Tena, Ecuador. I have had some happy moments here over the past month, but overall this has been a much rougher transition than when we lived in the mountains of Ecuador in 2007.
Yesterday Carlie was attacked by bees and had to get a shot because her eyes were swelling shut. Joe struggles just to get people to understand one sentence of his botched Spanish. I killed a flying roach today in my dining room that was so huge I wasn't exactly sure if it was a roach or a brown parrot. I got bit by something on my ankle tonight that has made my whole ankle swell up like I have diabetes. I can't and doubt I ever will be able to afford a washing machine. It's so hot here during the day I have to take no less than 3 cold showers a day. There's a queen ant staring at me from the wall near where I'm blogging. I JUST WANT TO GO BACK TO RALEIGH!!
And yet, I know when I wake up tomorrow, I'll want to blog about our new friends here Tim and Monica, or Carlie's new friend Arianda who held her hand after she got stung by bees, or about how I drink my coffee on the balcony off my bedroom overlooking a tropical garden each morning, or how the sound of the rain and booming thunder each night makes me feel so content with how little we have, or how swimming in the rivers with Joe and Carlie make me feel so proud of our family for having jumped through so many hoops to get here. Maybe I should just stop reading old blogs and looking at old pictures and think about how happy I can be here if I let myself.
Ok, I'm going to bed now...under my mosquito net...
What a great life I had back there in NC! Everything that made me happy was at my disposal. My family was there, all my best friends that I grew up with, a variety of great foods, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, my favorite downtown restaurant. Looking back I really did "have it all". And yet we traded it to live here in Tena, Ecuador. I have had some happy moments here over the past month, but overall this has been a much rougher transition than when we lived in the mountains of Ecuador in 2007.
Yesterday Carlie was attacked by bees and had to get a shot because her eyes were swelling shut. Joe struggles just to get people to understand one sentence of his botched Spanish. I killed a flying roach today in my dining room that was so huge I wasn't exactly sure if it was a roach or a brown parrot. I got bit by something on my ankle tonight that has made my whole ankle swell up like I have diabetes. I can't and doubt I ever will be able to afford a washing machine. It's so hot here during the day I have to take no less than 3 cold showers a day. There's a queen ant staring at me from the wall near where I'm blogging. I JUST WANT TO GO BACK TO RALEIGH!!
And yet, I know when I wake up tomorrow, I'll want to blog about our new friends here Tim and Monica, or Carlie's new friend Arianda who held her hand after she got stung by bees, or about how I drink my coffee on the balcony off my bedroom overlooking a tropical garden each morning, or how the sound of the rain and booming thunder each night makes me feel so content with how little we have, or how swimming in the rivers with Joe and Carlie make me feel so proud of our family for having jumped through so many hoops to get here. Maybe I should just stop reading old blogs and looking at old pictures and think about how happy I can be here if I let myself.
Ok, I'm going to bed now...under my mosquito net...
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