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.