Well, I’ve been back in the States for three days now. It’s nice to be back. I was asked about the culture shock of coming back. There hasn’t really been much. A very loud, self-centered American was sitting in front of me on the flight back. He was rather annoying. [...]

It’s hard for me to believe that I’ll be flying back to the States in just seven days.  The time has gone so quickly.  I don’t have a lot to add about the projects I’m working on.  I’m mostly turning them over to the Summer interns and wrapping things up.  I’ve had a lot of thoughts [...]

A couple posts ago, I mentioned seeing a young girl selling avacadoes in the street. A friend, Sara, who is from Quito gave me this response. (I did fix some of the English). I was reading your blog on the internet and I want explain a couple things: of the 13 million of Ecuadorians that are [...]

Yesterday was a grand day. My friend Paul and I decided to hike up Pichincha, which is the volcano just west of Quito. You might recall that I hiked part way up with another guy a week after I got to Ecuador. We weren’t able to finish, though, because of time and [...]

I got a lot done this week, but it’s not terribly interesting.  I finished the water system design for three of the communities on the Cayapas.  In the fourth community, the one that won’t get a water system until the end of summer, we still haven’t decided on a well or water tower location, so [...]

So, I downloaded my GPS data of the trip up the Rio Cayapas and put it in Google Earth. Here’s a neat pic. Notice we went practically from the coast to the mountains. That would be why the trip was six hours…. By the way, the yellow thumbtack in the top [...]

Last Monday morning, we left Quito for the Pacific coast. From there, we took a six hour ride up the Cayapas river in a canoe with a 15 HP outboard motor. Talk about a sore rear end! The four communities we visited were called El Tigre (The Tiger), Agua Blanca (White Water, for the [...]

Well, this past week was very busy.  I don’t really remember how the week started (it feels like so long ago!), but Wednesday, I went back to Cajabamba for some more meetings I didn’t understand (Spanish).  After that, though, we spend Wednesday afternoon and a long Thursday morning surveying an existing supply line in Sul [...]

Well, first an update on last week.  We did go to Cajabamba and Lupaxi Grande for two days last week.  It was supposed to be three days, but the Panamerican Highway was blocked due to protests of some sort.  So, we left a day late.  My boss had some meetings with the guys in charge [...]

Oops!  I thought I posted this last week.  Somehow, though, it got saved as a draft on accident.  Anyway, this is what I wrote last week: I know it’s been a while since I posted anything. Mostly it’s because not much has been happening, or at least not much that’s very interesting. I’ve been [...]