My New Addition (Even better than Bobby Brown´s)

Four months deep into 2009 and a lot of things have changed for me here in Ecuador. I´m on an upswing right now but haven´t written in a while because life here has taken on a certain constancy, a sense of routine, an overall feeling on familiarity in unfamiliar territory. A brief debriefing of what´s been happening in my life:

Carnival happened: Dancing, fighting with foam and this weird powder to color your face, I was wet for 4 days straight. No pictures, because, well, I was wet for 4 days straight.

Mangoes 6/$1 and I hear when mango season is in full swing they become 20-30/$1. Avocados also 6/$1 or as-many-as-fall-from-the-avocado-tree-by-the-river-when-a-rock-is-thrown-at-it/Free 99.

I finally got to visit Cuenca, largely renowned as the most beautiful city in Ecuador. I was more excited about seeing some of my fellow ex-Bolivian vols and about rocking our awesome Emo Morales t-shirts, a tribute to graffitti encountered in Sucre and indirectly to the man who repeatedly called us spies and caused our expulsion from the country.

Also finally got to go the beach. It was hot and crowded and made me nostalgic for Coney Island. Ate lots of good seafood and got a little less white. I got to see some Ecua volunteers that I hadn´t seen for a while. The puppy and boyfriend also came along.

Oh yeah, I got a boyfriend and a puppy, in that order. Both are Ecua and are greatly contributing to my newfound contenment with life here.

This contenment worries me of course as a big part of PC is waiting for the inevitable down swing whenever things are going well. We´ve got a C-130 on standby just in case.

My rountine has been pretty solid these last few months. In the mornings I taught an informal vacation school to whatever kids show up at my house after breakfast. This can be anywhere from 0-8 kids ranging in ages from 3-11. With the help of a bilingual children´s book I bought in Peru, The Little Prince, The first Harry Potter and the Giving Tree in Spanish, a few puzzles and coloring books I bought in the city and some Sunday comics that were sent from the states (thanks Andrew!) I had my curriculum. The kids were all on different levels and not just based on age. I was teaching the alphabet to a 6 year old who can´t read or write yet. I was reading with an 8 year old who wasn´t much further along. With the more advanced kids I had them read a story and answer questions about it. They also wrote and illustrated their own stories and cut up the comics, which are in English, and wrote their own story lines in Spanish. With my literature background I of course have a bias and think every child needs to develop a healthy love of the written word. Reading is just not big in Ecuador and most of the children say simply ¨I don´t like to read.¨ But I think it´s more that they don´t have access to fun books and they´re definitely not read to at home and I´m pretty sure that story time is not part of the school curriculum either. But with a little exposure most children can appreciate a good Shel Silverstein or Dr. Seuss. The other day when Daniel finished his math problems and I told him he could pick his next activity and he said enthusiastically ¨Quiero leer!¨(I want to read!) I have to admit that I felt I had accomplished something. True he was probably just happy he didn´t have to do more long division but he could have colored or drawn a picture, but he wanted to read and since my supplies are so limited it´s not like he hadn´t already read that story before.) Daniel, who I´ll admit is one of my favorite kids and not just because he´s my boyfriend´s little brother, also made me feel like this is so worth it when 3 pre-schoolers randomly showed up one day and he read them El Árbol Generoso and even tried asking them questions the same way I do after we read a story. Children reading to other children, what a sight!

Now that real school has started I will start working more formally with a larger group of kids. I´ll be teaching ¨English¨ (with an emphasis on reading, writing, creativity, grammar in English and Spanish and hopefully incorporating computers if I can convince the director that it´s worth getting the computer fixed.) The school has 1 teacher for every 2 grades so students obviously don´t get much personal attention or extra help when they need it. Kids often miss years or are left back so some of them are really behind. My plan is to have homework help in the afternoon for the kids from the 2 primary schools and the high school. I want it to be a space where kids can continue learning beyond the 4 hours (or less counting recess/lunch) they get during the school ¨day¨ (half-day is more accurate.) I hope to find more books and resources for them, maybe even set up a little library, just trying to figure out how to make it sustainable so that the kids will still have access to the books when I´m gone...

Now a shameless plea for free stuff: If you want to be a part of my experience here you can, I am desperate for materials and can´t always afford to go out a buy stuff. Plus, I haven´t seen too many good bilingual children´s books. I´m not sure if Dora the explorer (who is now a tween? I´m so behind the times) has made it to Ecuador yet. I had some books of hers that I left in Bolivia. But if you can´t find Dr. Seuss in Spanish I´ll take coloring books, puzzle books, anything to stimulate these kids would be very much appreciated by all of us. My address is posted on the top right of the page, please nothing over 8 lbs or else customs charges me a ridiculous amount of money. End of shameless plea portion of blog.

Back to my oh so exciting life in Ecuador. After lunch it usually gets unbearably hot and sunny so we head to the ¨river¨ to bathe. The river is really more of a creek but with the rainy season it´s grown enough to be pleasantly refreshing- Then I go home and change into dry clothes. I continue sweating because even when the sun starts going down it´s still humid. Then I visit my neighbors, watch the daily volleyball game at Viviana´s or just chill out at my house catching up on the newspapers and magazinges and eating the candy I´ve been sent (shout out to my Mom and Dad, Aunt Diane, Ellen, Andrew, and Pat you guys are awesome!) The puppy and the boy take up the rest of my time. First stats on the puppy. I was hesitant about taking on the responsibility at first. I´ve never had a dog of my own before and I wasn´t sure I was ready. But then my absolute favorite dogs in my community got it on and made some adorable babies so of course I had to have one. Gladys, the owner of the mother, willingly gifted me one of the females and when she was a little more than a month old I took her home. Her name is Fresa or Fresita since she´s so little. It´s Spanish for strawberry which David, who helped name her says is slang for something that´s really cool. I like it because I think her head looks like a strawberry and it confuses people because dog names here are woefully unoriginal, like everyone suggested I name her Negra because she´s black. Some people when they hear her name like to reiterate to me that strawberries are red and she is in fact black. Silly gringa. So far people have told me that she can die from all of the following: being held too much, being held by too many different people. the evil eye or jealosy (hence the red ribbon she wears which is supposed to protect against this), being vaccinated, not being vaccinated. drinking cow milk that´s not diluted with water and probably a whole bunch of other things like sleeping too much and being too well fed. Spanish is her first language but like my students she´ll be learning English soon. Like I said, I don´t know that much about dogs, I always considered myself a cat person and never had a dog but I´m pretty sure that Fresa is the most awesome puppy on the entire planet. I totally get the dog thing now. And the parent thing too because whenever I have to leave her home or with someone else there is a part of my mind that is thinking about her, wondering and worrying. But how wonderful it is to just instantly love something even though you have to clean up their poop. And like most new moms I have about a million pictures of her. Here she is at her cutest.

Okay, the Ecua boy, David. Well, we were just friends. We would talk and drink mate, which every other Ecua who tried it seemed to dislike. Then carnival happened and we danced together pretty much the whole time. He was just so fun and different from other Ecua guys. The chisme was going full blast since people had seen us dancing (oh my god, they danced together, they´re practically married now!) But yeah, we did start ¨dating¨shortly after that, so I guess people do have something to gossip about. He lives right across the street from me which is either terribly conveinent or terribly problematic depending on how this relationship goes. Right now it´s the former. He´s so great to have around, he kills spiders and gets frogs out of the house with a lot less squemish squeals. If I´m making a salad and I need lemon, he goes out back and bajars some from the tree. When he comes back from the finca he always brings me fruit to make juice. It´s like at what other time in my life am I going to have a boyfriend who brings me pineapples on a regular basis? He even sweeps and cooks which is so not typical. I do feel a bit like I´m dating his entire family, which is basically everyone. His 2 youngest brothers were my first students, his uncle is my counterpart, his great-grandmother is the matriarch of the town (whenshe immigrated from Colombia with here husband and children no one else lived here yet.) Everyone else is a cousin or aunt or uncle. And they´ve all got something to say about David and the gringa. I´m officially a puma, which I just found out is like being a cougar except in the age range of 25-35 because he´s only 21. When I told my parents they of course freaked out and assumed that this means I´m going to go all Green Acres latina style and live on a farm in Ecuador for the rest of my life. This, as far as I know is not the case. Although this is a pivotal moment in my PC time frame. April would have been my one year mark in Bolivia or halfway through my service there. Instead it marks 6 months in Ecuador (half a year!) and technically is also the halfway point for my service here. Bizarre. My tentative plan (which I haven´t actually discussed with PC yet) is to finish in January when school ends since I would like to be able to teach for the full school year. It´s hard to believe that my life at this moment is so full of stability and contenment when just a few months ago I was ready to call it quits. Of course there is an election coming up and while another Santa Cruz style vacation/consolidation would be lots of fun, I swear I will not be evacuated again! Keep your fingers crossed.