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 4th…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…
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! 
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. 
