put on your amazonicas.

it´s wednesday morning and i am getting back into the swing of things at school after a life-changing weeklong trip to the brasilian amazon with my grade 10s. yesterday we had parent teacher interviews, and today i am spending the day actually teaching before the madness of ´congreso de literatura´ begins tomorrow, this incredible congress that the spanish department puts on every year. the students are all busy decorating and at the moment we have a big SHIP outside in the courtyard, as well as about a thousand yellow butterfly cutouts hung up (from one hundred years of solitude). cool beans.

we left for amazon at 4am saturday the 14th of april. if you had the pleasure of talking to me the week before amazon, i was pretty much the most stressed out i´ve ever been. taking 25 kids over the brasilian/colombian land border and spending a week in the middle of the jungle? and i´m in charge? i was crying most nights, let´s be honest.
but 4am on saturday rolled around, and we piled on a bus to pereira, caught our flight to bogota and then to leticia, crossed the border into tabatinga, and took a boat 5 hours down the amazonriver and then the jabarí, where reserva palmarí is located.
maybe it was my lack of excitement in general for being responsible for 25 16 year olds in brasil, but en serio, the experience shocked me to the core. the amazon and reserva palmarí are possibly the most magical places i have had the pleasure of visiting.
we spent mornings on the river fishing for pirañas, swimming with pink dolphins, kayaking through essentially a water jungle, hiking to mud baths, canoeing in traditional amazonian canoes and getting bitten by every kind of bug imaginable.
the afternoons: canopy climbing and ziplines through the forest, walks to the surrounding communities, making artesanias and natural tattoos, boating to nearby lagoons, going to an indigenous community called marubos to try rapé and venomo de rana.
the evenings: one afternoon we hiked an hour into the jungle and camped there in hammocks, with a campfire and spirit of the forest spooky tales. at about minight, maybe 8 of us walked into the woods about 15 minutes, turned our headlamps off, joined hands and made our way back to the campsite in pitch black. the glowing worms and mushrooms, the incredible sounds of the nighttime jungle, and the ability to really FEEL the path with your feet and know whether or not you were going the right way. undescribable.
we spent another night sleeping on a platform 60m up in the canopy. it rained all night, and it was pretty effing hilarious.
we went nighthunting for crocodiles.
we played a severely out of tune guitar and sang at the reserva.
we became incredibly close with the guides and staff at palmarí. we were truly welcomed into their entirely different lives for the time that we were there. the experiences shared with them were so valuable to me and the students.. being able to closely relate with someone who lives their life completely differently from what you know..
anyway. here are a few shots. check out the bookface account for some more.
i want to go back.