GOOOOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLL 2!

When Angelica excitedly called me over I never thought that what she had to say would fill me with such dread and unease. She wanted to know if I would join a women’s indor team that she was forming to enter the newly expanded women’s league. Indor is like small scale soccer, smaller ball, smaller field and smaller team with only six players on each side. I had played soccer as a kid but I was never very good and I quit. My brother was the athletic one in our family while I was what some may call intellectual, but what I’ll more honestly call dorky. So it was with great hesitation that I agreed to participate .

At our first practice I was relieved to discover that I was not the worst player on the team, we were all pretty bad. Except for the girls who are in high school, these women were never given the opportunity to play in a formal league. Until recently playing sports was seen as something “unwomanly” and there is a derogatory name (machona) for women who “act like men.” Best then to leave it to the men and boys. But that is an old fashioned way of thinking and today there are boys and girls teams for elementary and high school students. Still, since we practice from five to seven in the evenings one of my teammates who is married with children reminds us to have supper ready before we come to practice. And we’ve definitely lost some potential teammates because husbands or mothers didn’t want them to participate.

Realizing that most of my teammates had never played an organized sport, I knew we had our work cut out for us. But what they lacked in skill they made up for in spirit. Over the course of a few weeks I saw them grow in skills and confidence. We held our own in practice games against the guys and the high pitched screams and screeching that ensued whenever they had to kick the ball were much more infrequent now. Even I had improved to the point were I was scoring goals and stealing the ball from my opponents. I consider becoming known as the gringa that can play indor one of my greatest accomplishments in PC thus far.

But an even greater accomplishment related to joining this team was when we were discussing the possible team name and I successfully made a pun in Spanish (remember dork > athlete). I suggested that since we were the underdogs we should dress in purple and call ourselves “Las De Moradas,” since morada means purple and demora means to take a long time. Also, a third meaning may be added after a particularly rough game where we all got beat up pretty badly, because morada is also the word for bruised. While everyone enjoyed the pun (not as much as I did, but still) they went ahead and bought light blue shirts and we go by the name ¨Luz del Mar¨(light of the sea).

Left: Me, as red as a tomato. Below: My teammates attempt to score















But our light isn´t shining too brightly at the moment. We´ve lost every game so far. The two games I was there for were just pathetic. Our goalie basically scored for the other team at one point and we lost badly to two really bad teams, which shows how bad we are. I still revel in the fact that I´m actually one of our better palyers, which if you know how unathletically gifted I am, is rather funny. I´m kind of waiting for one of those 80´s movie montages where we start out as this horrible team and then through perseverance, training and maybe John Cusack is involved somehow, we get better and better until we win the championship and I´m being hoisted up on the shoulders of John Cusack.

But back to reality. I’m glad to have this opportunity to bond with a diverse group of Ecuadorian women who are improving their self esteem, getting exercise and having fun. The work of goal one (the more technical work, starting a project, etc.) can be slow and incredibly frustrating at times. Making goals while working on goal two (a better understanding of your host country´s culture) has helped me relieve stress and make connections with people I may never have gotten to know otherwise. Score.

Fresa is also a soccer fan, here she shows her support for Ecuador, she has given up cheering for ¨Luz del Mar¨because she´s embarrassed.

Leading a Double Life

I´m at a point in my Peace Corps service where it´s hard to figure out which life is more real, the one I´m living here in Ecuador or the one I left behind in the States. I can´t seem to reconcile how life here can be harder but simpler while my life there was easier but more complicated. Regardless, life has become strangely familiar as I´ve settled into a routine and grown accustomed to the pace of my small community. As I walk down the dirt road on my way to work in the school my mind distantly recalls the pushing, shoving and waiting of a NYC subway commute. Maybe I´ve been watching too many telenovelas, but I feel at times I´m leading a double life. I´ve fled the crowds and concrete and traded them in for pollos and platanos but all the while I try to maintain an acrobatic like balance between who I was in the states with who I am here. This life feels just as real as the one I left behind, so what will I do when it´s gone? What would Maria Jesus do?

It´s like all this amazing fruit here that is so exotic I often need instructions on how to eat it. Daniel is up at the top f a Guaba tree throwing down ones that are ripe. Everyone wants one. I break open what looks like a giant pea pod and pop a seed covered in what has the texture and color of cotton but is certainly sweeter tasting. I spit the large seed onto the ground. David asks, ¨You´ve never had one of these before?¨ Like with many fruits here, not before living in Ecuador and probably not after. And even though you can go to a supermarket and find pineapples I would maybe buy one once a year. Here, I´m given one practically every week. What will I do without a free daily supply of fresh fruit once I´m back in the States?

It´s hard for friends and family stateside to understand these things. My Dad calls and as we´re talking asks ¨Is that a rooster crowing?¨ As if that´s something unusual. ¨I thought they only crowed in the mornings.¨ They do. But also in the afternoon, evenings and at 3 o´clock in the morning when you´re trying to sleep. It´s some cartoon version of life on the farm where roosters only crow for their 6am wake up call. But will I miss the constant crow of roosters when they´re replaced once again by honking horns?

When I fill up my basket with dirty laundry and lug it down to the river I distantly remember pushing a cart to the laundry mat in the dead of winter. In both my lives, I find doing laundry is a huge pain and I avoid it as much as possible. But at least when I´m beating my clothes against a rock I get a good upper body workout. I´ll come back to the States with laundry muscles, which may come in handy for pushing my way through the rush hour crowd as I try to catch the train home. But will I long for the days when I could hitch a ride home in the back of a neighbor´s truck?

And more importantly, which Ecuadorian habits will become permanently embedded in my personality and which will fade away? Will I say it´s going to rain when it´s already started raining? Will I eat every meal with a giant spoon? Will I borrow things and give them back months later, if at all. Somehow I know that the tightrope I walk between these dual lives will have to continue indefinitely.