July 7th, around pucallpa and the ucayali river

Wow, so much has happened since I last posted. We have been doing kids programs with skits and correography for the past couple weeks. We have a particularly hilarious clown skit in which we are trying to get to Heaven using a balloon, mattress and finally a superhero, me, ´superchica´which is really fun to act in. The kids, and their parents, laugh quite a bit at the skit. I really enjoy the opportunity to act in Spanish, it´s muy chevere. My Spanish was pretty bad at first because quite frankly I´m a lot worse at it than I thought but I can understand a lot more now which is really nice. I´m becoming very close to Victor and Dick, Victor even wrote me a little song haha. A few weeks ago, I learned to salsa dance a little, which has always been a goal of mine.
The highlight of this trip has been the river trip that I just returned from less than 4 hours ago. All the gringos (us white folk) took a boat trip to the Shipibo village of Caimito along the Ucayali river to do more programs and to get to know the indigenous people. The village is on Lake Imiria, named after a flower plant (like a lilypad) which grows in the lake. We headed for the boat at 2am, boarded two hours later at 4am, and didn´t leave the dock til 5:30 or so due to engine problems. The boat has no cushions and the benchs were not made for american-sized bums but there was no complaining by anyone. The boat ride lasted 22 hours. We took the Ucayali river south (which is upstream in the south hemisphere) stopping along the way at sand bars for potty breaks. The neatest sleeping experience of my life was resting in the hammocks which were strung from one side of the boat to the other, there is a lovely gentle swing and the breeze is peaceful. Unfortunately after the sunset it was very cold and the bugs were bad at the potty breaks. Poor Liz and Erin have so many bug bites they look like they have chicken pox. We arrived at the Shipibo village at 1:30am, cleaned two teranchulas out of our sleeping areas, setting up mosquito netting and finally got to rest of something not made of wood. The following 3 days we did programs every morning for the children, 130 of them, singing, doing skits, and playing games. As we left each morning, the kids would follow us back to our place and would watch whatever we were doing. Liz and Sarah and i think Erin too played with them quite a bit. The first night I played futbol with a bunch of guys, the only gringa girl around, and they laughed at me as I showed up because they didn´t think I knew how to play but I actually did pretty well, yay breaking down stereotypes. We bathed in the lake at night and all the kids would watch. After a candle lit dinner, we watched movies with the village and sang a few songs in Spanish with one verse in English. When we first arrived here, they were a little worried that we were just coming to the village to fulfill some type of requirement for school but then they really grew to like us. The Shipibo (at least the ones I´ve met) are more kind and friendly than any I´ve ever met. They picked fresh fruit every day for us and would help us make dinner and clean, anything that needed to be done. The last day, John, Amy, Kenji, Sarah and I all took a walk to find a path through the forest and on the way we found one of our friends who took us to his house for fruit. I bought some jewelry from his mother and then she gave us each extra jewelry for free cause she liked us. I think that that walk was one of the most pleasant experiences I´ve ever had; the weather was perfect, we ate fresh fruit with a local family who treated us like family, I can´t describe it, it just seems like the way people should treat each other. The river trip was hard to wrap my brain around, how on earth did I get to a remote indigeneous village in the Amazon basin? It still seems surreal to me. The last night before we left they presented each of us with hand made gifts such as wood carvings and jewelry. I´m blown away by their hospitality. Oh, and i got a sweet Shipibo skirt, sooooo cool. The trip ride back was fun, a little tiring but nice. The weather here is absolutely perfect, 80-90 degree weather every day, a gentle breeze, big puffy clouds, blue skies.
Tomorrow Pucallpa is going on strike, for what exactly i´m not sure, but all the transportation will be shutting down for 2-3 days. We´ll be safe, i promise. Hopefully we´ll go water skiing again. oh, totally forgot to add that last time (maybe?), I went water skiing in Peru. Also I took a plane ride, that was another sweet experience but I am out of internet time now.