Gracias! November Highlights

It’s December and my official close of service Is January 20th. I’m not gonna lie, I’m totally freaking out. I have so much to do before I’m done. Besides all the PC BS paperwork I have to do (for the second time) I have to finish the World Map Project with my kids, plan a Christmas pageant for the school and rehearse it with my students, have a bunch of despedidas (going away parties) and find a decent truck to drive around South America in; plus I would like some time to reflect on my service as well as think about what I want for my future, all heavy emotional stuff.
But before we fast forward to January let’s rewind a bit. I want to share my best moments from the month of November, the things I’m most thankful for because Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday and it’s not the same spending it away from your family. Still, lots of good things happened and I’m always grateful to have the opportunity to be here doing what I’m doing. Wow, it must be Christmas time if I’m acting this sappy.

Andres comes to visit!

Andrew basically brought a candy store with him. Things I haven’t had in forever like airheads and starbursts, enough goodies to share with the whole town! I had a fish cookout with my friends in his honor, later we cleared the table to make a mini dance floor and campo boogied the night away. There was no running water in my site but we saw a lot of water. Laguna de Cube, Puerto Quito, and the beach! The absolute highlight was Andrew getting a shaman cleansing. I took him to n internationally famous healer, of course. He started by spitting a mystery liquid all over him. He looked completely terrified and I really had to struggle to keep from laughing. It’s one the greatest things I’ve ever seen, I hope it worked!

Boobies! I spent Thanksgiving at the beach in Puerto Lopez and went to Isla de la Plata (aka the poor man’s Galapagos.) I finally got to see blue footed boobies and they’re awesome! They are reproducing right now so most of them are coupling off or already have eggs to protect.

Both the males and females protect the eggs, one protects while the other gets food. They make a circle of their poop to mark their territory.

The females are bigger than the males.

Los frailes, a nearby beach that is part of the national park system was the most peaceful and pristine beach I’ve seen.

Sulfur baths, stinky but refreshing.

My house is a magnet for baby animals. Puppies and kittens think my house is their personal playground. I’m taking care of Pati’s puppy and Fresa is finally learning to share (a little, she is way too spoiled.)

Halloween’s in October but it’s practically November. David as Aladdin, Fresa as Apu, me as Jasmine.

Ecuador is full of waterfalls and they’re nice to look at, even when they completely drench you.

Dancing with the Stars, Campo Edition

September was a month full of campo bailes. For the uninitiated the campo baile is a town dance takes place on Saturday, a lot of beer and bad liquor is consumed, the whole town shows up (unlike for anything educational, like say my organic gardening workshops), there is a lot of cumbia music which means you have to do the cumbia shuffle until about 5 or 6 in the morning when the disco movil (dj) packs up. A fight or two usually breaks out so they often hire military personale to keep things under control. They are usually drinking and dancing too. At these things I usually don’t last much past 2 or 3 in the morning, even if I’ve done nothing but sleep all day in preparation. That’s what going to bed at 9 every night wil do for your social life I guess. But in the wee hours it’s usually a sad scene of drunks sleeping in their chairs and couples unhappily shuffling from side to side in an attempt to not fall asleep. Better off leaving at a high point, when the dance is still fun.

The three dances were the church dance (for some virgin or other, del Cisne I think), the school dance (for the end of the indor tournament, which if you’re wondering my team came in 4^th…out of 4 women’s teams, we’re the best at being the worst!) and the highs school dance (to elect the Reina, or Beauty Queen, something that is very big here, there are Reinas for everything.) My rag tag group of friends and teammates were asked to perform a traditional folkloric dance for the church and school dances. This meant I had something to do at night between the hours of 7 and 9, the something being waiting around with my friends until everyone showed up and then rehearsing and arguing for about an hour. For the church dance I wasn’t allowed to be partnered with David because he’s a foot taller than me. I was kind of annoyed because obviously it would be more fun to dance with him than anyone else. But since it was a “competition” they wanted everything to be perfect to ensure our vicotry. We danced to national music, banda 24 de mayo to be exact, and wore traditional costumes. It was a lot of fun even though we messed up quite a bit. But we didn’t lose! We actually came in second place….out of the three groups that performed. But still, that meant $50 which we were going to put towards the rental of our costumes for the next dance, but more than half of it went to promptly buy celebratory beers.

The school dance was just for fun and the kids also performed dances which of course were super cute. We performed “La Venada Quinceñera.” Not only did I get to be partnered with David, I got the star role as the deer that is being hunted for the sweet 15 celebration and he was the hunter. It was so ridiculous. The deer costume made absolutely no sense, it was a short black skirt, arm and head bands with feathers and a mask. I just jumped around like a lunatic (my own choreography) and got to fake my death twice. All in all, it was a lot of fun and a big relief when they were both over with. It’s definitely not something I get to do in the states and I was really happy that they asked me to participate. Plus everyone loves to see the gringa make a fool of herself. Everyone wins! There are also videos which I´ll post eventually...i.e when it won´t take me 3 days to upload them.

Why do I have this bowl on my head?

About to be hunted

Hauling off their prey

At the high school dance my neighbor Gloria won Reina, in no small part because of our insane cheering section that kept screaming her name.

She´s 15, btw

This was the only baile that charged an entrance fee, proceeds going to the high school of course, but also there were performances, cumbia, reggaeton, a traditional coastal dance, all that good stuff. The dj played all the faves and the animador kept the crowd going. There were over 300 people there which just reaffirms what everyone keeps telling me about the workshops I do “You can get people to show up for a dance but they’re not going to show up to learn anything.” Still, I try…

Work in the past few months has been okay. The garden is going and we harvested 21 pounds of beans. My melon plants are not doing so well but I did harvest a tiny melon and made a juice that was delicious. 100% organic melon from your own garden, you can’t beat it! I finally got worms! Composting worms that is, not stomach worms although I wouldn’t be surprised… Anyway, after harassing the nearby University, calling them every day for nearly a month, they finally gave me a free bucket full of good garbage eating California red worms to make organic fertilizer for the organic garden. I know they had worms here before and they went uncared for, which is discouraging. After all worm humus is the best fertilizer for the cocoa bean plant that is the major crop cash here and it’s totally free to make. They take poop and turn it into brown gold for your plants! Why isn’t everyone as excited about this as I am?

It has been a super dry summer, way worse than last year’s which I got here for the tail end of. We have hardly had any running water these months which means lots of trips to the river and my neighbor’s well. If I didn’t have access to that well I would have no other means of getting halfway clean water to cook with, except to buy it which is what I started doing for my drinking water. Obviously the river water is only good for flushing the toilet since everyone washes their clothes and themselves in that water and it’s super contaminated. When it does rain I try to store as much as possible to water the plants with. We have a very high tech irrigation system consisting of me and whoever else is around to help and plastic bottles with holes in the cap. Whatever works.

Kids watering the beans

Ecuador is also in an electrical crisis because there’s no water to keep the turbines turning so every day they cut power for a couple of hours. It’s during the day, either in the morning or afternoon, so no big deal, just annoying when I start to make juice and don’t realize there’s no power until after I’ve got pieces of papaya floating in my blender.

I started my children’s club in October. “Caritas Felices” meets every Friday from 3-5 in the afternoon. It’s definitely the best thing I’ve done here. The kids are a handful but it’s so much better than my classes at school because I don’t have to teach English! I can teach them whatever I want! I mean, I try to be creative and teach useful information in my English classes as well, but the parents expect the pages of the English book that they bought to be filled and the students are used to just filling in pages as well with little creativity and room for deviation. But on Fridays I can customize the activities. It’s a little difficult because about half are older kids (10-13 range) that can read, write and handle more complex tasks. The rest of the kids are under 10 and can only handle simple tasks like drawing, coloring, and a few can read simple stories. But the older ones help the younger ones along and only get frustrated when they don’t understand the rules to a new game. They’ve learned some classics like Red Rover and Steal the Bacon, and when my friend Andrew came to visit he taught them ultimate Frisbee, which they loved. He was a PCV in Guatemala and said that he could never get them to understand the concept of the game. But my kids are as bright as the Ecuadorian sun, they caught on and made him play for well over an hour after our class had ended. He even left the Frisbee for me to continue using it with them (thanks Andrew!) Besides the games we learn and create as well. I gave them a charla about how long garbage takes to decompose and then we made race cars out of recycled toilet paper tubes, old boxes, straws and magazines. For Halloween we did a bunch of arts and crafts projects, they made masks and we trick-or-treated (i.e. I gave them bags of candy.)

Now we’re working on geography, a subject that they know shockingly little about (one of my brightest students thought Ecuador shared a border with the US, I think she was momentarily confused.) This will culminate in a World Map Project which is just painting a map on a wall so that the kids and really anyone in the town can refer to it and hopefully understand their relation to the rest of the world a little better.

I also attempted to start a club for parents as well, but surprise, surprise no one showed up. I ended up going from house to house asking my neighbors when they had time to meet (never) and how we could go about starting this support group for parents (we can’t), because from what I’ve seen here it’s very necessary (they don’t seem to agree.) I know Doña Zoila was interested (the same lady who always shows up to help in the garden) but it’s not much of a class with one or two people, especially when it’s supposed to be a support group for parents. So basically I have to turn informal house visits to my neighbors into talks about nutrition and discipline whenever possible. At least this way I don’t have to worry about all the petty feuds and gossip that seem to be abundant here. If a woman doesn’t get along with another woman who I’ve invited to participate and she knows that she may be there she’s not going to show up. It’s hard to live in such a small town and have so many people who don’t get along for whatever reason. Children are so much easier and they show up. Plus, I believe they’re the future, I think there’s even a song to that effect…

The older I get, the more I want to dress like a pirate

I recently got older by a whole year and since this was my second birthday spent in Latin America I had to celebrate in both latina and gringa style. I spent my actual birthday in my site with David´s family and my Ecua friends. I actually had a compost workshop scheduled that afternoon, since it was a Saturday, so when my parents called to wish me a happy birthday I was with some ladies shovelng cow poop. Once I was done there I cleaned myself up and put the finishing touches on the cakes I had baked. David´s sister wanted to buy a cake but I figured I could bake a tastier one. Magola made a special birthday dinner of arroz marinera, basically rice and seafood. We were planning on heading over to my place with David´s cousins to crack open a crate of beer but it turned out that his great grandmother was having a raging party right across the street from me. Some friends who live in Italy were back to visit so tons of people were there and they had a disco movil (dj & sound system) and everything! We basically took the party over and danced until the abuelita kicked us out so she could get some sleep. My fellow Bolivian Cindy, not one to miss a chance to grind to reggaeton and do the cumbia shuffle made quite an impression on my neighbors, leaving with several numbers and invitations. I brought over my cakes and after blowing out a match I took the traditional bite of cake (¡muerde!) and David did the traditional shoving of my face into the cake. It´s okay, he promptly licked most of it off. I cut the cake into lots of tiny pieces and it was all gobbled up before I actually got a piece. No worries, the recipe was so easy that I made another one a few days later, mostly because Magola didn´t get a piece either (can´t snub the suegra after she cooked me dinenr!) I went to bed around 3 am, which in my old age is impressive; although some of my neighbors continued drinking non-stop into the next afternoon, a bad Ecua habit some people have when there´s a big party, they just don´t know when to stop. They keep drinking until they fall asleep in their chair or wherever they pass out. Not cool, but at least it´s not something that happens all the time, although I would say it certainly happens more than it should.

A Family Affair, some of David´s many relatives:
Me and little brother Daniel



Great Grandmother Gratulina and Cousin Jairo

























David and his sister Patricia (she´s single and wants me to introduce her to a gringo, preferably either Alok or Neil.)












The gringa portion of my birthday involved a reunion with most of my fellow Bolivia transfers whom I hadn´t seen since our second close of service (COS) conference in June. It was going to














be a sort of despedida but most everyone is staying past October now. So we made it into a sort of joint birthday celebration for me and Kasia, whose birthday is the day after mine. We headed to Guayaquil for a night time boat ride dressed as pirates. We took over the ship, and the open bar, dancing to Ecua hits along with classics by Michael Jackson, which we heavily requested. The next day David and I explored Guayaquil´s boardwalk by daylight. For me it´s the only draw the city offers, oh that plus the iguanas everywhere just hanging out. We got our fill of this expensive port city and headed home.

















I´m glad I had an eye patch handy for yet another pirate encounter.


Speaking of birthdays, I was invited to my first Quinceñera. My neighbor´s daughter was turning 15 and this naturally called for chancho. They called in Jorge and Mario to kill, skin and gut a pig. Then it was time to cook fritada and chicaron in a giant pot on a wood fire outside. David decided to be the official pot stirrer and taste tester. The fritada involved frying up pig skin which they ate for lunch. The meat was cooked to make chicaron and served for dinner. I ate a lot of yucca, which was delicious and a lot less greasy. After dinner we danced, ate cake and I tried to avoid taking sots of a really gross sugar cane liquor mixed with pineapple juice that they kept passing around. Really nasty stuff. The next day while almost everyone was hungover I went to work in the garden feeling great.

On the other end of the spectrum, I also went to my first Ecua wake, which was a lot more gruesome than I expected. I wasn´t going to go because the deceased was not actually from my town and I didn´t know him, but he was the nephew of Don Jose, a prominent leader in the town whom I did know, so I went. I was quite surprised when I went up to view the body that it was covered in blood, had an obvious odor and the face was not even recognizable. Apparently this man had been shot three times a few days before and they hadn´t cleaned him up or even changed the clothes. This isn´t really the norm here, and it certainly took me by surprise. I left as soon as it was socially acceptable to do so.

I am certainly experiencing a lot of new things here and learning a lot about latin culture. Every day is a struggle but also an opportunity. Así es pues. Sometimes I wish I had more structure, better work opportunities, an established group to work with, a functioning project... But I´ve learned a lot about the way things work in development and it´s not easy. People have real lives, real problems and real obligations. They don´t always have time for even the best intentioned person trying to teach them something new. I feel lucky that I have an active social life, I´m integrated in my community to the point where people not only know my name, but they know my dog´s as well. A lot of times I think that if it wasn´t for David I would have given up a long time ago. He helps and supports me in everything I try to do. From working on the community garden to drawing the background for a puppet show, he´s always willing to lend me a hand and open to learning new things. He´s easily the best thing I´ve got going here and my best ¨student.¨ Not only does he no longer throw garbage out of bus windows or on the ground like most Ecuas, but he´s taken on my personal passion for recycling, coming up with a great idea to recycle the plastic bags from the ice cream cones for his uncle´s ice cream truck to plant more boya tree seeds. Plus he was all for dressing up like a pirate. What more could a girl ask for?

Worlds Colliding (again?)

Living in the campo there is the illusion of free time. Most of my days are unstructured past 10 am, when I finish teaching at the school, and yet I feel like I´ve been incredibly busy these past few months. Every time I turn around another month´s gone by and I haven´t written a blog or posted new pictures. I have good reason, I suppose, since I was back in the states for two weeks this summer and kind of pre-occuppied with my brother´s wedding and seeing all those important people I haven´t seen in months, attempting to reconnect and all that. I have to admit that I felt slightly diconnected when I was home, which is to be expected I guess. It´s not like you can settle back into life in the states in two weeks. Running around trying to find shoes, a bag, getting fitted for my bridesmaid´s dress, all felt very surreal and distant from my daily life in Ecuador. I can imagine it was difficult for my parents as well, trying to balance all the emotions of marrying off their son while the daughter they haven´t seen in months comes home. But no worries, I got to indulge in some good old fashioned American fun, including celebrating America´s birthday, a baseball game at the new Yankee stadium, several BBQs, walks on the beach and the new High Line park in NYC, good beer in a normal sized bottle and hey my brother got MARRIED! Here are some photo highlights of my whirlwind Americana tour:


The new High Line park is such an innovative way to repupose old freight train tracks, I loved it!

Summer Ale! And rainbows!


NY Yankees, the World´s Team


Practicing eating at the Rehearsal Dinner

I MADE them pour these glasses of champagne for this picture

None of the other bridesmaid´s wanted to partake in this free bottle of champagne in our limo,
but I sure did!


My date Neil and I cutting a rug, as the kids say.
Cheryl´s Mom claimed our dancing was so good we could be professionals!

Bumping and grinding with my Mom


Aunt Diane looking red hot and my Dad as handsome as ever!


Once Dad´s jacket and vest came off, you knew he was drunker than everybody.

Cake!


Dan manning the porch-b-q

Alok and I being proud to be American

It was great to be home and spend some time with friends and family. I´m really grateful to everyone for making time to hang out and catch up. There´s never enough time, but I feel like I crammed a lot of America into two short weeks.

Back in Ecuador: very happy to see David and the puppy. Both greeted me with lots of affection but only one peed a little from the excitement (guess who!) Magola, David´s mom or as everyone here says, my suegra (mother-in-law) made her delicious crab soup as a welcome back dinner. The next few weeks were surprisingly busy, or as busy as things can be when you live in the campo. The first trimester of school was ending so I had to review with my students and prep their English exams. I also started an organic fertilizer workshop and we are finally cleaning up the land for the community garden. My sources for free seeds keep falling through so I´m trying to do some seed saving and plant what I have. The soil is really bad from the pineapple that was planted there before so I´m thinking I´ll start with beans to give the soil back some nutrients and of course we´ll use our compost to improve the soil. I also spent a lot of time working with David on his family´s land. We have balsa and passion fruit nurseries planted and hopefully we can transplant them soon.

Before I knew it, it was time to go back to the airport in Quito to pick up Michelle (F. Lang), Jessalynn and Maeve, who came to visit for a week. I was so nervous that they would get sick, or robbed, or attacked by giant frogs, or who knows what, but I worried for nothing, everything turned out great. We went to Otavalo first to get some Ecua chatchkies and attempted to hike a volcano with an amazing view of the Laguna Mojanda.

It wasn´t a very long hike but the altitude kicked our butts.
I think the view was worth it though.

Playing with some random kids in a random park in Otavalo.
I like this picture because it looks like Jessalynn is kicking a child.

I was super excited for them to see my site and after many buses and hopping a ride on the back of a truck we were finally there! Magola made shrimp ceviche and patacones, David grilled fish and prawns and for Michelle (still a real vegetarian, unlike me) I made peanut sauce to eat over farm fresh yucca. It was an Ecua feast! Some friends from the neighborhood came over and attempted to communicate with the three new gringas. When words weren´t available gestures and expressive faces worked just as well.

Sucking on cocoa seeds in my site.

I bet you didn´t know that the seeds they dry to make chocolate were in our mouths before they ended up in your candy bar.

The girls tucked in all cozy under my mosquito netting

The next day we went to the school to perform a puppet show on caring for the environment. The script was finalized the night before and we had a run through in the morning before leaving the house. It went over well but the best part came when in our spree of throwing garbage into the audience SOMEONE threw the second page of the script. It was recovered and the show went on, but it was by far a bigger laugh than any joke I´d written.

Discussing what we learned post puppet show

My students singing some Ecua kids´ songs

After that we went outside and danced the hokey pokey, which is a lot more exhausting than I remembered. Then we asked the kids what songs they knew and one adorable 2nd grader stood up and sang ¨Gasolina¨by Daddy Yankee. Our timing was good because the kids got out early and were on vacation for the rest of the week. I swear they´ve had like 2 months of class since they started in April, but anyway...

We went to the finca where I´d been working to harvest some hearts of palm and check on our seedlings. My friends referred to it as a jungle, which I found amusing.

Harvesting hearts of palm in the Ecuadorian ¨jungle¨

Later we went swimming in the river with a bunch of kids. As Michelle put it, ¨It was really cool how we went swimming and all of these children just popped out of no where and tagged along.¨For some reason we attempted to sit on this log, it was kind of painful. Then we headed to the soccer field to play football and fútbol. Michelle played her heart out, opening up great passes but I just kept eating the goals as they say. I blame the fact that I recently ran down the side of a volcano. After they had their taste of life as a Peace Corps Volunteer we headed to the beach for some fun in the Ecuatorial sun. Some of us got burnt. We headed to a less touristy, more out of the way beach called Mompiche so as we were waiting for the bus, which wouldn´t pass for at least an hour, a police officer came over and helped us hitch a ride on the back of a truck that was also carrying diesel. One of those only in Ecuador moments that I´m glad they got to experience.

Michelle can attest, it´s the only way to travel

It was like our own private beach!

From there we headed to Mindo and I got to see my friend Alicia before she headed back to the states and my friends got to try ziplining above the canopy forest. Their time in Ecuador was almost up but of course we had a huge delay going back to Quito. By the time we got into the city they had to head to the airport. As they sped off in a cab I was wishing they could stay at least another week. I was still nervous even after they left, wondering what impression they got from Ecuador. I´ll quote Jess if she doesn´t mind, who summed it up by saying: ¨I think that was the best vacation I have ever had. In large part because you showed us what it was really like in Ecuador. I loved that we got to see how people live there and didn't do the touristy thing. Really we are all grateful to your Ecuadorian friends and neighbors who were so gracious and friendly to us. I love that they were so excited to share and teach us about everything there.¨ This made me feel great. I felt like they had seen a lot of the real Ecuador and that they now understood my life here on a level that a blog and photos could never convey. I really appreciate that they took time out of their lives to come here and that they trusted me to plan how their time was spent. I feel the same way as the people in my town who continue to ask ¨When will they come back?¨ The thing is, it´s not that easy, I have to remind them, Ecuador and the US just aren´t that close. But at least now, it feels like they are.