The amazing race!

So we have been in Iquitos for 4 days and it's hard to believe that in 9 days I'll be on my journey back home! This trip has flown by and just seems to be picking up speed! It seems as though I blinked and 4 days passed here in Iquitos. Upon getting off the boat on Monday, the first thing we did was grabbed a meal that consisted of fruit and vegetables, a commodity that was in short supply on the boat. After that we went in search of clothing so that we had something to wear as we washed the smell of the stink boat and amazon mud off of our clothes. Side note: Mom instead of going outlet shopping in the US for clothes you should come down here, it's super cheap. I got 2 shirts for 10 solas (4$ Canadian) and a pair of shorts for 20 solas. After finding something cool and clean to change in to I beelined for the hotel where i showered (with clean water that wasn't pumped from the amazon river) and took every piece of clothing that i brought with me to the laundry mat, where there is someone that cleans it all for you. That night we met up with the crew of the Lobo de Rio and ate dinner with them and said goodbyes and thank you's. Then I walked around Iquitos for a little while just trying to get some exercise in while taking it all in. Then everyone packed it in early exhausted from the heat. The next day we also had off from classes and lectures, but we had a big project and homework to get caught up on, so the day was mostly spent in the hostal drinking coffee and doing homework. That night, needing a little piece of home and craving pizza, 4 of us splurged on dinner and shared pizza and wine. Well the wine went down so good that me and my roommate dara decided that we needed to have a wine night and proceeded to buy 3 more bottles of wine. It was fun, a bunch of us just stayed up talking and drinking a couple glasses of wine in the courtyard of the hostal.

The next day (yesterday) classes started up again, and we had to go to the Belen Market in the morning, prepare a presentation of it, then 4 hours of lecture that afternoon and finally that night prepare another presentation for the next day... busy busy busy... The Belen market was definitely a different place, not somewhere a tourist would normally visit. It is a market of everything from meat to vegetables to clothing and school supplies. It is situated right beside the belen slums which is a floating shanty town on the amazon river. The purpose of this exercise was to pretend we were an NGO and we had to come up with a development plan. Well, there was definitely alot of stuff that you could change, it was nothing like the farmers market back in calgary that's for sure. The streets are mud mixed with animal guts, stray dog feces, and rotting fruit. Perhaps that is where the stench was coming from, but it may have also been from the tables and tables of raw meet sitting on tables fermenting in the 40 degree heat. We saw butchered turtles, cow heads with eyes still in them, and caymen meat (which is illegal). Our group lasted about 30 minutes wandering through the market before the sites and smells overwhelmed us and we had to get out of there. We tried to go down into the slums, but a police officer kept following us telling us not to go down there because it was unsafe. The project that we came up with for the market was one of sanitation, creating washrooms, cleaning the streets and creating proper drainage systems. My first instinct was to get rid of the market all together, but there are thousands of people who depend on this market, either consumers relying on the cheap food or the entrepreneurs depending on it for their economic livelihood. Anyways, it was interesting to say the least.

Today, started with a little bit more light hearted exercise... It was a mini amazing race!.. They gave all 4 groups a GPS unit and a map with 4 locations and 4 questions and we raced against each other trying to find out the answers to the questions. We raced all through Iquitos on Tuk-tuks, going from a cemetery to a square to a market then to the boardwalk. Our tuktuk driver spoke english and got all into the game. He was running around with us and running red lights! And well it paid off, our team won the race by a minute!... The reward was 24 beer, a bottle of rum and snacks.. which we will share with everyone hopefully tomorrow night since we can recover all day on saterday with our day off... It was a fun morning. Now we have presentations and lectures all afternoon, and then homework and an early night since i'm an exhausted and feel like i'm getting run down. There has been alot of work on this trip, but i have changed my attitude. Normally I am so concerned with getting good grades but the stress of the classes and working conditions has gotten to me. But, I have now realized that I am in Peru, and I have to enjoy the experience not be stressed out about grades and school work. If I get B's and C's in these 3 classes it won't effect my GPA by much, and at least i'll be enjoying PERU!.. I could have stayed in calgary and stressed about grades and did readings all day at a desk, that is not what i am here for. I only have 9 more days and I plan on enjoying it.