In The Jungle

This past weekend we had Spring Break #2 for this semester! We went to the Amazon jungle in the eastern part of Ecuador. We left at 3am on Thursday morning and had about a 7-hour bus ride to get there. The first day we went to a monkey rescue, where they take monkeys that used to be pets or were found in the city and take care of them. Several of the monkeys that were pets run around freely, so they were walking and jumping on us while we were there. Afterwards we hiked to a waterfall in the jungle. It was fairly small so we could swim under it. It was so beautiful and we had fun swimming even though the water was freezing cold. The next day we went a town nearby and rode along the river in motorized "canoes". We stopped at a Quichua village, which is the tribe that lives in that area. They showed us a few of their dances and we tried a couple different drinks that they make, which were pretty good. We also got to see several wild monkeys near the river. They liked to steal food and drinks from the people on the beach, which was pretty funny to watch. We also went through some caves later that day. There was a river running through them, so we got to swim inside the caves as we were climbing through. It was really fun! Our last day started off with white-water rafting, which I had never done before. I loved it! I even got to be one of the captains of my boat. :) After rafting we went to another waterfall that was really big, so there's no way we could swim near it. We just hiked up next to it and were able to go through tunnels that had been built so we could walk behind it and touch the water. We also went on a cable car ride over a river. It was kind of like zip-lining but you were in a cable car with several other people. The views were gorgeous! On Easter Sunday we spent the whole day driving back from the jungle. It was really strange to not go to church, but we didn't need a church service to remember the importance of that day. This Easter was especially hard for the Taylor University community; Wednesday night we learned that Josh Larkin, a student at Taylor, had died in his room. I didn't know Josh, but I had seen him leading worship at school and knew that he had tons of friends on campus. Only a few people on the trip with us knew him, but all of us have friends who knew him well. We were all able to watch his memorial service on campus last Tuesday night, and we were all glad that we could see it. I'm so thankful for the group that's down here with me. This semester has been amazing, but I know it wouldn't have been as awesome without all of them. I knew a few of them really well and there were others that I didn't know at all when we got here, but now we're all really good friends. We have so much fun together and get along really well- I'll definitely miss them this summer!