We’ve all heard of the expression, ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch,’ meaning there are always some strings attached. Well, I’ve got a new one, ‘there is no such thing as free mangos.’

While out on my old boss’s mango farm in Arenillas climbing mango trees and picking bags of free mangos, I was unknowingly bit by a caterpillar.

The day after I’d been out in the farm I did notice that I had a weird rash on my wrist and a bite in the form of a caterpillar. But being how I always am with medical issues, I just ignored it and decided I’ll worry about it next week (this week is Christmas, no need to bother the doctors). A few days later, I traveled back to Quito for Christmas celebrations. The rash was still there but at that point it wasn’t bothering me. The Monday after Christmas I was going to take a bus down to the beach and visit one of my friend’s sites for a few days since we had vacations for the holidays. I had literally just gotten my bus ticket and was on the metro to the PC office to get some work done before my trip , when all of a sudden my arm started to itch, and I noticed my fingers were red and swollen. By the time I got to the PC office, the rash had spread up my arm, down my back shoulder, and onto my hands, face and ears. I ended up having to get a painful steroid shot and was prohibited by our doctor from going on my trip until I was better. I spent the next few days with a horrible skin reaction and fever, pretty much like an uglier version of the chicken pocks. It turns out while out on the mango farm, that bug that bit me was a poisonous caterpillar, and I had a delayed allergic reaction to its venom. It took 10 days to get rid of completely; three shots, 30 pills, and lots of anti-allergy creams later I was healed. Luckily, by the time New Years came around my face and ears had cleared, otherwise I would have been wearing an año viejo mask for the night! I never did make it to the beach to my friend’s site.

“There’s no such thing as free… mangos.” I definitely paid for that sack of mangos… but I think if I had to do it again I would, it was worth it for a day out on the farm and delicious mangos for the week.

For about a year in a half while working in the Environmental Management Department of the Municipality in Arenillas, I heard about our boss’ farm on a daily basis. He was always disappearing from our office and going to his farm somewhere on the outskirts of Arenillas. It became a joke that the Ingeniero was at his ‘farm’ meaning really in who knows where, since no one had ever had the honor of being invited to his farm. My coworkers and I always suspected of whether there really was everything he said there was out on this farm and if he was always really there. I had asked a few times if he’d take me to his farm, and I always got the same respond ‘one day.’ That day never came, my two years flew by, and before I knew it I’d move to Quito for my third year.

Then the day came. There I was sitting in the Municipality stealing their free internet while I was back in Arenillas for a few days visiting before the Christmas holidays, and in walks the Ingeniero.

Ing: Hola Rosita! Ay chuta, you’re not Rosita! Sarita! What a surprise to find you here.

Me: Si, aqui estoy. Just here chilling, visiting Arenillas, hoping to go to this supposed farm you have. (being totally sarcastic… which doesn’t always come across so great in Spanish).

Ing.: Do you really want to go? I’m going in 5 minutes to fix a water pump and you can come.

Me: Really?! I can FINALLY go to your farm?

Rosita and Dani: Not fair, we want to go. Can we close the office and say we are doing inspections for reforestation.

Ing.: No. Human Resources is here today, we can’t do that. Sarita lets go.

Ecstatic, I quickly grab my bag and head out with the Ing. to his farm. It was like fruit paradise: banana, maracuya, guava, and mango trees galore. I learned that day that he had three types of mangos on his farm; and that the one I had always liked the most for its sweetness coincidently is called the Edward variation (obviously not the scientific name, just the local nickname). He also had another variation Ken. Who would have thought that types of mangos have men’s names as nicknames. I asked the Ing. if I could pick a small bag of mangos to bring back to Quito with me. Of course, he said I could. So as went off to fix the water pump, I started filling up my bag with the best mangos I could find. A few minutes later the Ing. returned and gave me a big old rice sack and told me to go ahead and fill that up. Now being that a sack can hold like around 100 mangos I assumed I must be filling this so that he can sell in the market. So, for the next hour I went from mango tree to mango tree picking out the ones that were ripest to fill the sack, climbing the trees to get the best ones at the very top, and eating lots of mangos right off the trees in the process. I was in mango paradise. Nothing but me and acres of mango trees. After a while the Ing. came back and we had to head back to Arenillas. When he dropped me off at my friend’s house I grabbed my little bag and was ecstatic to have some mangos to bring back to the sierra. Later that night my friend (the other pcv in town) got a phone call from the Ing. He was outside his house with my sack of mangos. Apparently, somewhere along the way the Ing and I had a miscommunication. That entire sack of mangos I’d picked wasn’t to sell after all, it was all for me to take back to the sierra!! Who would have thought. I mean it was extremely generous of him, but really what can one person do with a 100 mangos, and how can I bring the sack back to the sierra on a 14 hour bus ride and later a metro, if I can’t even lift it off the floor? So, the next day I was the Ms. Clause of Mangos! I divided the mangos into smaller bags and went and gave a bag to most of my youth group members’ families. I ended up keeping about a fourth of the sack to bring back to the city… and let’s just say I got a look or two on that trip home. Here I was dirty gringa (my clothes were filthy by this point in the trip) dragging a sack of mangos that I could still hardly lift all around the bus terminal and then the city. But hey, it was worth it, I was still in mango glory for the next two weeks!

(above a photo of the river recently, its now a soccer field, below a view of the river a year in a half ago fromthe same angle of the bridge)

Three years ago (the year before I got to Arenillas), the river was actually so high that kids would jump off the bridge into the river. Two years ago the water was still high enough that while at the river with my youth group, we could climb the boulder rocks and jump into the river. One year ago, the river started to become shallower and was only hip deep. This year while I was back in Arenillas visiting, the river was pathetically low, probably ranging between ankle and knee deep. What was once part of the river when I first moved to Arenillas is now dry land, and has been made into a dirt soccer field. Scary reality of how fast we are losing some of our natural resources because of weather changes and droughts.

When a group of Peace Corps volunteers get together there is always an adventure to be had. It was a cloudy cool day in Zaruma and with the rains from the night before our original plan for a long hike was knocked out. But there is always a plan b as pc always says, so we first trekked our way through clay mud up to the cross statue overlooking all of Zaruma. Later we headed down for what we all were really excited about, paintball!! Yup, PAINTBALL. Who would have thought that they have paintball here in Ecuador, and especially in the small conservative town of Zaruma?

Now, I’ve never actually played paintball in the US, although I had always wanted to, but even so I imagine it doesn’t compare to the bad ass paintball that Zaruma has to offer. We’re talking no rules, free range, and in nature, not in a small cement constructed court.

Imagine….an acre of hilly overrun muddy banana fields, climbing trees, planning ambushes from up above, sliding down the muddy hills, and running around in old military equipment playing war. I’m not sure paintball gets better that this!! We ended up playing PCVs against our local friends, and it was awesome. In the end we lost but I guess we should have figured that would happen since one of the locals is actually in the Ecuadorian military. He actually knew how to aim, while the rest of us just shot until we accidently hit something. I did hit one person though, so that was exciting. I didn’t think that with my no-aim strategy that one of my paintball bullets would actually get someone!

Playing in banana fields definitely set the bar high for playing paintball one day back in the US! (Jay and Ryan get those old paintball guns ready, I’m challenging you’ll once I get home!)

A few months before coming home I heard Toby Keith was performing in Atlanta my second weekend back, so being a good big sister I got tickets for Julia and I. It would be our first little road trip together.

That Saturday morning after hearing my parent’s rules for the 42nd time, Julia and I headed out, as our parents nervously watched us drive away. You would think we were driving into the wilderness far away with all the preparation talks they gave me, not you know 4.5 hours north to Atlanta.

Now, I have never claimed to be a good driver. I have never gotten a speeding ticket and I’ve never been in an accident. But on the other hand I am a slow poke and I have no sense of directions, not even when the GPS is giving them to me.

Julia’s comment one hour into the trip> Sarah, you’re going 45 in a 60 zone! NO wonder I feel like we aren’t moving. Woops!

Julia’s comment two hours into the trip> Car passes by and Julia screams “yay, speeders!” I respond, pointing at same car “mother!” Clearly when it comes to driving, I’m not my mother’s daughter.

Julia’s comment three hours into the trip> Are those grandmas passing us again? What’s wrong with this picture?

Julia’s comment six hours into the trip> Are we still driving? It’s only suppose to be 4.5 hours away! (not in Sarah speed!)

Once we got to Atlanta, our GPS was outsmarted by road construction. We ended up lost in a really bad ghetto, and then lost on a totally different interstate. After being lost for another hour praying the car didn’t run out of gas, we finally made it out and back onto the interstate. Next mission, find a hotel that’s not a motel. Let’s just say that’s not easy task in southern Atlanta. We finally found a little Days Inn next to a police station. I figured it’s not the best looking place, but what are the chances of something bad happening next to a police station? So we took it.

After getting ready, we headed out a good two hours before the concert just to be sure we had time to be lost. Luckily, we saw some big pickup trucks all heading off the exit of the amphitheater and Julia said lets just follow these cars they look like country concert going people. SO we did, and sure enough we all got to the concert.

The concert was a blast. I never would have thought that tailgating was big at a country concert, but the entire town was probably there tailgating, so Julia and I went next to the gas station and got some quesadillas, opened up the truck in the Explorer and joined in the tailgating. Later we went to the amphitheater, and I think Julia may have been the only person under 18 that I saw at least. The opening act was Eric Church, And this is why you have to love country artists: during one of his songs about beer, he grabbed two cans of miller lite popped them open and double fistedly drank the two beers, well by drank I mean most of it ended up on his shirt with some maybe getting into his mouth. Later he was singing a song about the beach, and grabbed a big water gun to shoot the audience, except he didn’t realize he was holding the gun backwards and ended up shooting water at his guitarist and drummer. When the music stopped, he turned around and realized they were both sitting there drenched. Later, Toby Keith had a great performance. Best song of the night: the red cup song. Yes, it is kind of like a teletubbies beat, but about a red cup, accompanied by stage crew dancing around in large red cups.

The next day we headed back to Tally and made it in a Sarah record: 5 hours and 15 minutes!

Now, when most people are home on vacation from the Peace Corps they dream of sleeping in their bed, in their air conditioned home, mosquito-net free. Not me. My first weekend home I wanted nothing more than to go camping in the beautiful forgotten coast of Florida in the little beach town of Grayton Beach. Grayton Beach is one of the small fisherman towns along the northern gulf, it’s a bit of a hippy artsy town with lots of little shops and bars on the beach.

Nothing sounded better than the 5 of us cramming into our little tent, falling asleep to the load deafening snores of my parents, and peacefully sleeping on the ever so comfortable hard gravel beneath us. Sounds pretty flipping fantastic doesn’t it? It was for me! (and based on everyone’s complaints for the next two days about how their backs hurt, I guess I was the only one).

We got to Grayton early in the morning and spent all day at the beach, swimming, playing football, and drinking our warm coronas (warm beer is better than no beer!). Later there was a wedding ceremony on the beach, and we had perfect front row seating, so we moved our lawn chairs back a little to give the wedding party some space, grabbed another warm corona and spent another hour making up the life stories of the marrying couple and their guest.

When we got back to the camp site, we found Ryan who had left the beach earlier sitting behind the tent on the cooler, with the computer and wifi router connected to a little electricity box playing fantasy football. Who brings a computer and wifi router camping?! Clearly my brother doesn’t get the concept of roughing it and being one with nature for the night.

After setting up the tent, we realize we don’t have the tent cover, and its suppose to drop down to 60 degrees tonight (yes, that is freezing by Florida standards!!!). Realizing we are going to freeze to death, we take our towels and a spare blanket and try to cover our tent. Redneck much? Let’s just say next to the clothing line and Ryan sitting on the cooler our tent fit right in.

We may have had the most ghetto tent in the campground, but I guarantee we had the most elegant meal to go with it. Only an Italian mother thinks to pack wine glasses, wines, good cheeses, wheat thins, specialty bread, and salad to go with the fire-grilled hamburgers.

After a great dinner, we squeezed into our tent with high hopes for a good night’s sleep. We had laid out some sheets and blankets on the ground, and tried to level out any big rocks in the gravel. The night went something like this…

10:00 PM Girls got into tent and fall asleep

12:00 AM Dad and Ryan get into tent, Ryan steps on us, and wakes us up, Dad hits his head and there go those towels and blankets covering our tent.

1:00 AM Is there a train in Grayton Beach? Oh no wait... That’s just dad’s snoring.

1:30 AM Or is there a train? Nope, now mom’s snoring too.

3:00 AM Ryan wakes us up. And in the most pitiful about to cry voice says “Guys, I’m freezing to death” as he tries to pull the blanket from under me. “Ryan, stop trying to steal my blanket I’m wrapped in it.” Ryan: “mom, julia, give me blankets I’m freezing to death.”

My mom then turns on the flashlight and shines it on Ryan. He’s in shorts and a t-shirt curled into a little ball on the hard plastic of the tent with only Julia’s little princess sleeping bag wrapped around half of his body. Our first reaction: Oh my gosh, how cute is that, we need a picture of Ryan like that! Second reaction moments later: Ok, actually yeah that looks pitiful and painful here’s some more blankets. We’re such good sisters.

4:00 AM The trains returned. AKA mom and dad’s snoring.

5:00 AM Finally morning, time to get out of the tent, and walk on the beach to Seaside for a nice Starbucks coffee!

5:05 AM The complaining from mom, dad, Julia, and Ryan starts.

6:00 AM Breakfast of champions> first get out a left over hamburger bun, make a circle hole in the center of it, put some cheese on it spread out, and call it a bagel with cream cheese.

All in all, our family camping outing was a trip to remember. Camping may not give you the best night’s sleep but it definitely makes for lots of laughs and fun stories to be told. After packing our car (which looked like we’d gone away for a week, not a night), we headed to the beach for one more dip, before heading back to the air-conditioned, mosquito-net free, beds made of more than sheets, comforts of home.

What do you call a woman when you dont know her name? Well, you can say hola Mi reina (my queen), mi princesa (my princess), mi gringita (my little foreigner), mi preciosa (my precious), mi delisiosa (my delicious)… these are just a few of the names men typically call me while walking around Arenillas. It use to drive me crazy, I´m not your queen, or your princess, or your precious one. Now, I don´t even hear them, I´ve mastered the skill of tuning them out. Women typically call me Niña (little girl). And kids for a long time called me Señorita AREvista (Ms. Arevista, since that´s the name of the youth group I was working with).

Recently I was in the market, and this little prekinder age girl passed me with her mom, and she pointed to me and screamed ¨hola senorita de basura!¨ (Hi, Ms. Garbage!). Her mom smacked her in the beack of the head and looked at me with the mortified face as she hurried away. A few moments later I was in the back of the market, and the little girl and her mom were at the same stand.

Girl: while jumping up and down screams ¡¡¡¡Señorita de basura!!!

Mom smacks her in the back of the head again. I greet her back with an hola niña and start buying my fruits. She screams it again. Her mom smacks her again. People start to look towards me. And then the mom turns to me and says ¨I am so sorry I don’t know why my daughter is calling you Ms. garbage.¨ I then had to explain to her now worries, this happens all the time. I teach about recycling in the schools so the little kids associate me with the garbage cans. The mom signed ¨I am so realized. I thought it was because you are a foreigner.¨ Foreigner… Ms. Garbage? Not sure how the mom made that connection, but hey if I had to choose between being called My Queen, My Princess, My little foreigner, or Ms. Garbage, I think I´d choose Ms. Garbage any day!

The rats home...

How do I know two years in the Peace Corps has changed me? Well, anyone that knew me before the Peace Corps knows that I was well, a bit of a germ freak. I obsessively washed my hands, cleaned my room, and freaked out at the sign of a bug. If I ever saw a roach, I would simply try to trap it under a container, and leave a little note on top of the container for my dad or brothers to kill the insect inside. Not the best strategy, but I thought it was brilliant at the time.

Boy have things changed. Evidence #1: This past week we were making a compost at one of the elementary schools and there must have been a roach inside one of the bags of organic materials that one of the kids brought in. This huge roach, literally the size of my fist came scurrying out of the compost. My first thought was ¨Wow, look at the size of that thing. That may be bigger than that big one I saw on my ceiling once.¨ After marveling at the size and how slow this giant roach tried to move, I realized I should probably kill it. If the director of the school starts to associate compost with roaches she´s going to put an end to this really soon, so without thinking twice about it I smashed that sucker with my flip-flops.

Evidence #2: A while back I opened my front door to head to a friend´s house, and this huge rat zoomed by. I screamed, slammed the door, and called my friend and told him due to fear of the giant rat outside my door which is now hiding somewhere in this garage with me (my apartment is in someone´s garage), I couldn´t come over. I didn’t see the rat again for a while, but I assumed it must still be around.

A few months later, I started hearing noises in the middle of the night on my metal roof. After a few nights of listening to the noises trying to figure out what it could be, I realized it was like a Tom and Jerry movie on my roof, the rat has to cross my roof to get back to the garage while trying not to get eating by the neighbor’s cat. So the cat and rat ¨play¨ on my roof at nights. Not a gross concept at all, right? I actually started to find it amusing. Until one night about a week ago, the stupid rat must have falling into the draining pipe along the side of my apartment, and spent the entire night squealing. If you´ve never had to hear a rat in a pipe squeal consider yourself lucky.

My theory on this rat, is well, there´s nothing I can do about him, and as long as he stays outside of my apartment I don’t care where he lives in this garage. Just don’t enter the apartment!

Two nights ago, the rat and I had quite the startling encounter. A year ago it would have freaked me out, I would have ran into my apartment, slammed the door, and hid in my mosquito net for the rest of the night, and probably have nightmares of rats attacking me. Now though… I was brushing my teeth (my sink and bathroom are outside of my apartment), and I heard this movement under my sink where I have some stuff stored, next thing I know this cat size rat runs right in front of my feet along my bathroom wall and into his home, the storage unit right outside my apartment door. My first thought was ¨damn I can´t believe he just ran out in front of me, aren’t rats suppose to be scared of people?¨, my second thought was ¨he must be eating our garbage, cause that rat is definitely bigger than a few months ago.¨ What should have been my reaction? Holy shit, a rat by my feat, run!

Since I arrived to Arenillas, I have been collaborating in a little community on the other side of the river called El Cisne. The moms and I have done small business workshops, exercise groups, cooking/health lessons, and started the community bank El Bankito El Cisne. The community bank has been an extremely successful project for this community, it started its first year with 85 members, each giving $0.50 a week. With the money they had in the box each week they could take out small loans for a one month time period at 10% interest. Many of the women started income generation activities that year with their loans, one lady bought a printer and started making copies for neighbors from her house, another sells humitas every Sunday, another bought a grill and sells grilled meat skewers at night. After one year, the bank liquidated and each member got $38 in return (a $14 interest gain). We then restarted the bank for a second year with 122 members, and a weekly contribution of $1, so they now can take loans of up to $100. Almost every week for the last two years I’ve been present in the weekly bank meeting, more so to socialize with the moms, since they run the bank completely on their own.

This past week the moms told me that the community bank meeting was changed to Friday because of the festivals. Little did I know their real motive was to throw me a little goodbye party. The community members had a big surprise for me, they presented me with this beautiful plaque, it even has both the American flag and the Arenillas flag.

The plaque says roughly this in English: The community bank of El Cisne presents this to Sarah Ashley Edwards, Volunteer of Peace Corps, for her unconditional help in converting this grand dream into a reality, she will be remembered in the hears of each one of the members of the community, we thank this precious volunteer that served with integrity, sacrifice, and deep care for the collective community. We will always be sincerely grateful.

I couldn’t believe they were presenting me with this, it definitely caught me by surprise. It made me realize how much having worked with them over these past two years meant for each of the community bank members. Every day I pour my heart into all of my projects here in my site, but I never really take the time to reflect on what I’m doing and the impacts it has had on community members. Hearing the community bank members at that moment, made me realize just how much it has meant to them and that in this community I have made a difference, a community bank gives them the chance to take out small loans, to make investments, to take part in income generating activities, and try to better their situations. I had to hold back tears when I was presented with the plaque, and they may never know how much it means to me, but I am sure I will remember that moment forever.

One of my good friends here in Arenillas, Rosa, recently had a baby girl, Andrea Victoria. She’s the tiniest little thing, born preme weighing only 4 lbs. For the first month, she didn’t officially have a name yet so we called her UGita. Since UGA is the office we work in, she was the little one of course. When she was just over a month old her parents asked me if I would cut her nails. Apparently there is some spiritual significance to being asked to be the person to give the baby her first pedicure, and later when it’s time her first haircut. Now being I bite my nails and have never had nails, and I currently have a horrible Ecuadorian haircut, why I was chosen for this role is beyond me, but I accepted. So one morning I headed over with some tiny clippers and scissors to try to cut these tiny little nails. I think her little nails may have been longer than her fingers, either way it was extremely nerve racking and a hard task to complete. First three nails cut, no problem. Then the fourth nail I must have missed the nail and I cut a little bit of skin. Andrea woke up screaming. From there it was down hill, as the mom held her fingers as I finished clipping the nails. One hand and three nails down, she twitched her hand and I cut another finger. I felt awful. She was clearly screaming in agony, but the job was done her first manicure was complete, the nails were shorter and there was only some blood on two fingers. Two out of 10 not too bad right?

A month later, I was visiting Andrea and Rosa again and they asked me if I would be the madrina de agua, the godmother of water. Now, I did explain to them I’ll eventually be back in the USA so I wasn’t sure I should accept this role, but they understood that and that´s why this little ceremony wasn’t the official baptism in the church. They also tend to have multiple godmothers and godfathers here. More than anything they wanted Ian and I to be part of the baptism and serve as role models for little Andrea Victoria. How could I say no to that, of course I will be the godmother of water.

The following weekend Ian happened to be visiting so we went to visit Rosa and her family, not thinking that the baptism would happen at that moment. After about half an hour at the house, the husband hands me a baptism guide he got from the church saying the order of the prayers and the process, next came the cup of holy water and the bucket, and a few neighbors. The baptism was on.

First, everyone recites the our father three times, then we recite the hail mary three times. Then the godfather holds the candle while the godmother puts the water over the baby´s head, and makes the sign of the cross after each prayer. At the end the two godparents blow out the candle and baby Andrea is baptized!

After the ceremony, we headed to a restaurant for a lunch with Rosa, her husband, and the baby. Here´s the pictures of my goddaughter!

Last week one of my youth group members and I were invited to give a ¨how to start youth groups¨ workshop to the new peace corps trainees in Quito. Although I was dreading making the 14 hour bus ride again, I knew it would be a great experience for my youth group member, so we had to accept the invitation.

Off we go on the always so fun 14 hour bus ride, movie of the night a 3 set series about a man eating half shark half octopus creature in Mexico, their fantastic choice of movies is just one more plus to the long ride. Luckily I have Tylenol PM, so I can usually knock myself out until close to Quito. So at about midnight I decided I wanted to be barefoot, and put my flipflops underneath my backpack under my seat.

9 hours later… I wake up only about half an hour from the bus terminal in Quito, I begin to gather my belongings and reach under my seat to get my shoes. And… nothing. My shoes don’t seem to be anywhere within reach. I ask my youth group member to look under her seat, embossed to tell her I am without shoes. Nope they aren’t under her seat either. The lady on the other side of the aisle realized I´m searching for something, and asks me what I have lost.

(translated to English)

Lady One: What are you looking for?

Me: My shoes. They are gone.

Lady One: (screams to other women close by) Hey you all, look under your seats do you see her shoes?

Everyone starts looking under their seats, and still no sign of my shoes. So I get up and decided I’m going to have to pace the bus barefoot looking for these flipflops. The three women get up as well and the four of us are searching under all the seats for my shoes. Still no sign of the shoes.

Lady Two: shoot, they look to be gone. Do you have any other shoes with you?

Me: No!!!! I only came with that one pair of flipflops.

Lady Three: Just wait til everyone gets off, I’m sure then you’ll find them.

So we get to the bus station. I can tell my youth group member is slightly embarrassed to be with the barefoot gringa at this point, so I tell her to go ahead and get her bags from underneath and I’ll stay on the bus. Everyone gets off and I start searching again under every seat… still no sign of my shoes. So I put on a pair of socks that I had (why I packed socks when I only had a pair of flipflops with me, is beyond me but hey they came in use!), and got off the bus into the rain onto the cold wet ground to find the bus drive and his assistant to see if anyone had seen my shoes.

Me: Assistant, did you see shoes on the ground at all during the ride?

Assistant: Did I see what kid?

Me: Shoes! Look! I have no shoes, they disappeared.

Assistant: (screams) driver, come help me look for this kids shoes.

So I continue barefoot outside the bus in the bus terminal while the bus driver and assistant search for my shoes. A few minutes later they came back each with one shoe, I don’t know how one show ended up in one side of the bus and the other one on the other side, and how none of us managed to find them, but the bus driver and assistant saved the day! When they handed my shoes, there was actually a round of applause from the 10 or so people outside the bus waiting for their luggage. Needless to say it was an embarrassing moment, but hey it could have been worse, I could have had to walk through the bus terminal, onto a metro, and through another bus terminal to a bus to the training center all barefoot! Lesson to be learned: while traveling one should never leave their shoes unattended. From now on shoes will be put inside the backpack.

Looking back I distinctly remember being in Starbucks one day long before my Peace Corps service, and seeing an advertisement for a chance to win a week at one of Starbuck´s local coffee farms in Costa Rica. I definitely went on to Starbuck´s homepage and signed up for the one in a million probability of winning such a rare experience. Back then the idea of helping out on a coffee farm seemed exotic and far stretch, something that screamed the attention of my adventure seeking self.

Now, I find myself living in a small town in the middle of banana fields (we are proudly the banana capital of the world, if you ever wondered where bonanza bananas or even ocean product shrimp comes from, it comes from about three blocks from my apartment). About an hour from my site there is another site that produces coffee, cacao (what you make chocolate out of), and other more tropical climate products. For the last two years, I´ve been saying I was going to go out to the farm for a day and test my coffee harvesting skills, but with other projects in the way I never made it out during harvest time. This past weekend, I finally made it to the farm and had a great day of firsts… things I know my parents would not believe I had done if it were not for photo evidence!

First, we went to milk the cows. Back when I was in training in Cayambe I always wanted to try milking the cows but my host family used a machine since they had a large scale cow farm, so I never had the chance. Now I know why they had a machine, it is much harder than it looks! First, you have to round up the cows and tie their legs so you don’t get kicked. Then you bring in the baby cow who helps start the process making it a little easier for the person milking the cow. Then you try to fill up those buckets, and after about a minute of trying I was already tired. I would work so hard to get a drop of milk out of the cow, then the owners would step in and they were milking the cows with two hands at once and had the bucket filled in the time it took me to get a drop of milk out. So needless to say, I may need a lot more practice until I can be an expert in that area.

We later headed up the road to the coffee farm. Even though they are one of the smaller coffee farms in the area, they have a pretty extensive process and successful business. I´m not sure I´ve got the process a 100% memorized but it goes something like this:

1. Pick the yellow and red coffee beans.

2. Then you put all the beans in a bucket of water and the ones that are not as good to harvest (either it´s too premature or too old) rise to the top of the bucket, you separate these from the rest of the beans. These beans can be placed in the sun to dry, and sold in local markets to make instant coffee (like Nescafe instant coffee).

3. Then you use a grinder machine (obviously not the official name) which takes the shell off the bean. The coffee beans at this point are in a giant bin, and can be processed a couple of different ways depending on the type of coffee you want to make. If you don’t wash the beans (they naturally have this slipper honey coat on the) and take them directly out of the bin to dry, then you will have caramelized flavored coffee. Otherwise, you would let the beans stay in the bin for anywhere from 8 to 24 hours (the more time you let them stay in the bin the more they ferment and the stronger coffee you will produce). Later, you fill the bin with water and the beans soak for another day, then the water is drained, and the beans are placed in a type of greenhouse where they dry for three days (or more depending on the weather). Once the beans are ready, they are later toasted and grinded (that part I haven’t seen yet, but I´m hoping to make it back out to the farm for another day).

After harvesting coffee we headed to another part of the farm where they have tilapia pools. Goal for the afternoon: catch our lunch. Being the Floridian in the group and the fact that there were 3,000 tilapias in that pool, I should have done much better than I did at fishing! Although, I will say fishing with a homemade fishing pole (piece of wood, tied to a string with a worm at the end) is much harder than fishing with regular poles and there was a net over the pool making it a little more difficult to cast the pole. After about an hour, I finally had something, excited I yanked my strings up as fast as I could… only to find a tiny itsy bitsy baby tilapia stuck to the hook. When everyone laughed at the size of my fish, I just explained I was trying to catch one for the family’s cat to eat for lunch, now that I had one for the cat I was going to try to get a bigger one for us. In the end, we did catch 6 tilapias, and that Albert (the owner of the farms and counterpart to another volunteer), went shoulder deep into the pool with his net and caught 5 more. Back at the house, we killed, gutted, and cleaned the fish. They tried to teach me, but I apparently must not be very good at it cause my fish went flying off the table twice as I tried to kill it, and then the señora told me she´d step in, basically a polite way of saying ¨wow, you are awful at this and if we want to eat today, step aside!¨ After a great day of firsts (first time milking a cow, harvesting coffee, killing and cleaning fishes) and a delicious lunch of fried tilapia it was time to head back to my site. I can honestly say a few years ago when I signed up for the Startbuck´s competition, I never would have imagined I´d actually know the owner of a coffee farm and have the opportunity to go out to the farm whenever I want to adventurously try out all types of farming only an hour from where I live!

1. I was on the always´pleasant´ 14 hour bus to Quito for the end of service conference, struggling to sleep with my legs jammed up against the chair in front of me and shivering with the freezing cold breeze coming in through the broken windows that don’t actually shut, when I felt something big and wet touch my flip flops. I thought hm someone must have thrown their food container on the floor or a bag of juice. No biggie. So I ignored it and did what all Ecuadorians would do kicked it back under the chair in front of me. A few hours later it made it back to my feet and now that it was a little lighter out I realized it was a dirty diaper. Now, two years ago I would have been appalled that a dirty diaper just touched my feet on the bus, but now my first thought was hm, that´s funny I didn’t even hear a baby screaming on this bus? And rekicked that diaper across the aisle so it wouldn’t come back again.

2. Lesley and I are walking in the mariscal, one of the really nice parts of Quito, on our way to treat ourselves to a really nice wine and tapas restaurant. Lesley tripped and her flipflop broke. We both hesitated for a minute thinking of what we had on us that could possibly put the strap back into the flipflop: No band aids, no duck tape, no gum, but I do have a hair tie! So you stick the hairtie through the hole on the flip flop double knot it and you now have a strap for your big toe and your sandal is as good as new (walking at a slow pace for a few hours at least!).

3. Word on the street is there is a Mister Bagel in Quito and they have REAL bagels. We set out on a mission to find this little shop. After three hours of walking aimlessly we were successful! Bagels galore, even had a variety of types! I bought a half dozen of bagels and ended up devouring two bagels right there in the restaurant out of excitement. The other four I put in a tied up bag to save until I got back to site. Next stop, splurge on some peanut butter at the store to complete my bagel eating experience.

Two hours later I´m in the bus station waiting for another fun 14 hour bus ride, and decide a bagel with pb is calling my name. This brought back a flashback to when my dad was visiting me and we were making pb sandwiches in a bus terminal, I didn’t have a knife and didn’t think twice about needing one. I just said ‘dad you want a sandwich’, took out the pb, and was about to use my finger as a knife when my dad freaked out and made me buy a plastic spoon for $0.30. This time I debated what I should do, and decided well if they have a plastic utensil I guess I´ll buy it and be proper. But to my despair the little store had nothing. What does a peace corps volunteer do? Look around at the crowded waiting room, take out the pb, rip open a bagel and use the very handy always available utensil of your fingers to make one great pb sandwich.

4. I get back to my site early in the morning after a long sleepless bus ride, put my bags on the counter and fall into my bed for two hours. When I wake up I right away think about having another bagel with pb and a banana, a classic breakfast sandwich! I look at my counter and see a line of ants leading up to my bag. Oh no!!!! Not the bagels!!!! Sure enough there were hundreds of ants on my bagels. Now, back in the states I probably would have thrown those away, but being I dreamed of those bagels and I won´t get them again for months I had to try to save them. I picked them up one by one and blew the ants off of them as fast as I could (meanwhile ants are now crawling on my arm), and then I throw the slightly still ant covered bagel into the oven, and I toast those pesky ants until they are dead and I can eat my bagel.

5. When I got back to my apartment I found one of my sports bras on the ground bitten in half thanks to my landlord´s annoying dogs. I pick it up and without even thinking twice about it put it into my rag pile for cleaning purposes. Any moldy shirt or ripped up clothing works great for dusting, cleaning, and as a potholder.

6. I also returned to a waterless apartment, always a joy in 90 degrees heat. But luckily I have quite the water system now, I fill up two liter bottles of water before the water goes out. Then I have an extra bottle top that has little holes poked into it. When I have to use water I just put on the top with the holes, and this allows drips of water to come out and conserves my two liter bottle of water for an entire day.

I can distinctly remThe Inca trail to Machu Picchu.ember back in my 9th grade Spanish class studying Machu Picchu, one of the seven wonders of the world, and thinking that one day somehow I was going to go to Machu Picchu. It has been a dream ever since. Back then, the idea of visiting Peru seemed exotic and far stretched, I never would have thought back then that I would now find myself having lived on the border of Ecuador and Peru for almost two years.

I remember even back then thinking if I ever had the opportunity to go to Machu Picchu I would do the Inca trail, it only seems right to make a hard trek to see something so beautiful. Luckily Lesley also wanted to do the trail, and about 7 months ago we started planning our trip.

We have 9 vacations days to take, that means two days of travel to get there, one day to acclimatize to the high altitude, four days on the trail, and 2 days of travel back to site.

Being that we are sketched out by the border by our sites, we decided to fly to lima from Guayaquil and then from there we would catch a 22 hour bus ride to Cuzco. And let me just add in there, that I would take a 22 hour bus ride on those nice buses over my 14 hour bus ride to Quito any day! Nice big spacious chairs that recline, your own headphone set so you can choose if you want to listen to the movies, meals on board, and a little pillow and blanket, it was almost like being on a plane.

We arrived in Cuzco on Easter Sunday late at night, now since we´d been on a bus for 22 hours we didn’t quite realize it was Easter and as soon as we got to Cuzco hit the town for a night out… after all putting two volunteers living in small towns in a big city overrun by British pubs, chill bars, and international food restaurants is like two kids at Disney for the first time. It was only the next day that we realized ooh did we close the pubs on Easter Sunday?

That next day we spent waking around Cuzco trying to breath at the high altitude, walking in and out of markets, trying not to buy everything we saw, exploring the plazas and some of the ancient ruins, and eating some of the foods we´d been craving, for me gyros!!

On Tuesday morning at around 6AM we were picked up by the tour company and off to KM 88, where the Inca Trail starts. From there it would be four days and three nights of hiking a total of 42 km and climbing over 5,000 feet. Piece of cake right? Not to mention the 20 lb backpacks on our backs the whole way!

Of course being our luck, the rest of the group we were with got admitted to the trail and for some reason our passports were denied. We ended up waiting anxiously with one of the guides to get clearance and after about an hour finally were off on the trail! (I´m pretty sure in the end the check point guard was just paid off, no figures).

The first day we crossed the Urubamba river and saw the Llactapata archaeological site, an important site for the cultivation of food back in the Inca times. Then after lunch we hiked to Patallacta, one of the Inca villages. After about four hours of hiking we arrived to Huayllabamba, our campsite for the night. (Also, the beginning of me freezing to death, apparently a Florida girl now living in the desert heat of Ecuador does not do so good camping in the cold Andes in like 30 degrees weather, achachay!)

The second day we started our hike around 5 AM. This day we hiked for about 6-7 hours uphill climbing from 9,000 feet to dead women´s pass at 13,776 feet and then descending for an hour some 2,000 feet.

This is the description from the guide info for the day: ¨this is the most difficult part of the trek. You climb abruptly upwards until you reach Warmihuañusca Pass (literally means where the woman dies) at 13, 776 feet. You will arrive to Llullupampa half way, which is a good place to stop and rest as you need it for the last part of the climb. It is known as the smugglers route during the XIX century and is the only point along the way where you could become altitude sick. Normally there are strong winds and low temperatures up here. Once across the pass you will need additional rest to recover before the decent to the campsite. There are also very steep staircases, ones of which steps are almost vertical putting a heavy stain on everybody´s unprepared knees.¨

Yeah, that actually is a great description of the second day! It was cold and windy, a straight incline, altitude sickness is a bitch even chewing those coco leafs and hard candies doesn’t help, and those 3,000 cobblestone vertical steep stairs at the end leave you feeling like a dead woman after going through dead woman´s pass. But on the bright side the views were incredible, the mountain range breath taking, at the second pass a lady was selling M&Ms and other American candies, and you just had to keep reminding yourself, that you must get through the second day for the great ruins on the third day and machu picchu on the fourth day!

Day three also starts really early around 5 AM and is a long day of hiking, around 7 hours, but this is the day where you go through most of the ruins on the Inca Trail. The first ruin was Sayaqmarca known as ´the Dominant village,´ it is built on the side of a steep cliff and is a religious site for the Shaman (medical healer) of the Incas. Then we hiked to Conchamarka, a smaller site that was used as part of the Inca messenger system (they had messenger sites all along the trail and messengers would run the trail from site to site with messages from Cuzco to Machu Picchu for the royal family). From there continued hiking through some of the inca tunnels to Phuyupatamarca known as ´village about the clouds´ because is it in the cloud forest. It was a ceremonial site to perform purifications before continuing to Machu Picchu.

By this point we were dirty and exhausted, wet and cold, sore all over, but somehow at the same time filled with adrenaline knowing when we arrived to the last ruin we were at the campsite and close to entrance to the sun gate of Machu Picchu. I was so excited (and had no feeling left in my legs) that when I saw Wiñayhyayna in the distance I literally slid down the trail into a pile of mud (luckily my walking stick stopped me from going right off the trail!). Wiñayhuayna is huge, it was the last urban center before Machu Picchu and has multiple sections for religious ceremonies, guard towers, cultivation, and living quarters all built on the side of a mountain.

The last camp site had two public showers, and like everyone else on the trail it was well worth the wait for a 3 minute cold shower after 4 days of hiking and being dirty. We also had a big dinner and thank you celebration for the porters on the trail with us.

The next morning we started the trail around 4:00 AM, to be at the Sun Gate Intipunku which looks over Machu Picchu just as the sun was coming out. It was incredible reaching the sun gate, and seeing the first site of Machu Picchu in the distance. The Inca trail had taken us from the Andes to cloud forests into the Amazon. And here was Machu Picchu the hidden fortress that was never discovered during the conquest since it is so well hidden at the tip of a mountaintop surrounded by a cloud forest. Luckily, the day we arrived was gorgeous, not a cloud in the sky! Just incredible views of Machu Picchu and the ruins! I don’t think the pictures I have can even do justice for how gorgeous the Inca ruins are on the trail and at Machu Picchu. That day I was like a kid on crack according to Lesley, with a huge smile on my face and content as could be to finally be at Machu Picchu!

After a full day of exploring the ruins, we dragged our sore bodies down to Agua Calientes and went to the oh-so-nice local hot springs before catching the night train back to Cuzco. From there we had an early afternoon bus back to Lima where we spent the night in a hostal in Miraflores, the nice beach front part of Lima. Now, I know I am a Peace Corps volunteer and easily impressed with just about anything, but this part of Lima really did impress me! It had nice grass parks, cliffs looking over the pacific ocean, and this great mall built into one of the cliffs, that had everything you could dream of eating, dunkin donuts, cinnabon, the cookie factory, sandwich shops, and best of all a starbucks!

If you haven’t put Machu Picchu on your bucket list of things to do, I strongly recommend it, it is truly incredible and unforgettable!

I climbed into my bed and did my normal routine, lift up sheets to double check for bugs and then make sure my mosquito net is completely tucked in on every side. When I got to the far end of my bed and went to tuck in the net I saw this large black bug right there on the side of my bed inside the net with me. I jumped back as it crawled up towards me. I looked at it and thought ´what the heck is that? It is not a roach but it is huge and black…´

I scream for Lesley who was outside washing her face. She comes in and screams ¨oh my god, that is a scorpion. **** A scorpion in your bed!¨

Me: OH god you’re right that IS a scorpion. Holy crap how do I kill a scorpion? Are scorpions poisonous? What if I try to kill it and it gets away in my bed? Ahhh!!!!!

Lesley: Sarah, take your flipflops and kill it fast!

Me: Here it goes. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. (as I repeatedly smacked it like a mad women, armed with a flip flop in each hand. I hit it so many times it flew off the bed and hit the wall.

Lesley: ok ok Sarah, I think it is dead.

Me: It may be. But oh god what if it has friends living in my bed too? Do scorpions travel in packs?

Needless to say we did not sleep that night. The next day I got help to take apart my bed and apartment on a scorpion hunt. Luckily I haven’t found any since. I’ve convinced myself it was a lost scorpion who somehow found his way into my apartment and that I’ll never find another one (fingers crossed!).

This past month, some of my kids from the youth group asked me if we could start a television show. Sounds like a great idea! We have the youth-run community newspaper, the youth-run website and facebook page, and the youth-run weekend radio show, having a television show would only be logical. After meeting with the owner of the local television station, he agreed to give us a one hour show that airs twice a week.

Each week the youth do a show with three segments. The first being youth news, then a social theme such as teenage pregnancy, contamination, etc that consist of interviews, debates, skits, etc., then the last block has celebrity gossip, jokes, and a talent of Arenillas spotlight (bands, artists, artisanal work, etc.).

So for we have filmed 5 episodes and we get better with each one. It was probably one of the highlights of my peace corps experience when the first episode aired and the youth and I gathered around a tv in the municipality to watch the show together, the excitement on their faces was priceless. It is moments like that one that make anything we go through as volunteers worth it.

kids in the journalism camp, usng the cameras and microphones they made out of recycled materials to practice being journalist.

Me and some of the kids doing obstacles at the military base.

Yup, it is summer time here in Arenillas. You know what that means, time for summer camps. Last year another volunteer and I ran a summer journalism camp for 50 kids aged 6 to 16. It was well, crazy. We even called in the help of three military conscriptos (trainees from the local base) to help us. After that camp, I remember calling home and telling my parents ´I think I don’t ever want to have kids. ´ Lesson learned, right? Hm, I guess not, cause here we are year two of summer camps. My goal this year was to keep it small and simple, especially since the other volunteer in my site would no longer be around to help. I figured I would do a leadership and communication camp for around 20 kids aged 9 to 14. That seemed doable. Next thing I know my counterpart group wanted to help out with the camp. Then I saw a poster one day with the title of my camp Juega. Rie. Aprende. and in big letters ´offering 5 courses this summer: soccer, basketball, leadership, communication, and dance.´ Huh? So I go into the office to ask what happened to the small simple camp. The answer ´well if we are going to do a camp it has to be big there are a lot of possible youth participants!´ Well of course, ideally big camps are great to offer, however they forgot one major detail for a big camp you need one camp counselors and two resources. We have neither. My simple small summer camp quickly blew up into something big. Before I knew it there were 75 kids signed up, that´s when I had to put my foot down and say no more spaces, we are full. After all, we don’t even have teachers or coaches yet. Things have been crazy for the last five weeks, but it has all come together. My counterpart group was able to get me sports equipment and a few boxes of school supplies. Unfortunately though my main counterpart switched to another office in a neighboring city in the middle of the camp, leaving me completely in charge. Although it has been crazy and exhausting, an amazing things has happened during this camp… we have volunteers helping us! And no I don’t mean peace corps volunteers, rather local high school and college students who have volunteered their time as coaches and camp counselors. This is something I´ve never seen happen in my time here. The whole idea of being a volunteer is basically, well, non-existent, but our summer camp is 100% volunteer run, offering all 5 of the disciplines for 75 kids. I co-coach the basketball camp with a high school basketball player and lead the communication and leadership camp with the help of 5 high school youth counselors, who help me lead the activities. Then we have two college students coaching the soccer camp and a local dance instructor teaching traditional dances. And we´ve been able to offer all of this to the youth for the low price of $1 per week, definitely the cheapest summer camp here in Arenillas! Next Friday the summer camp comes to an end, and each group will present what they´ve learned to their parents. Although it has been a long 5 weeks of jam-packed activities coordinating these summer camps, seeing some of the breakthroughs the kids have had makes it ´vale la pena, ´ worth it all.

Above, my street after the storm. Below, the muddy brown river.

My water source for a week.

My apt when it rained.

On the night of February 13th Arenillas had its worst Aguacero. An aguacero isn’t just a typical rain storm it´s a downpour, and this time it was the worst we´d had, at least during the two rainy seasons since I´ve been living here.

The rain started at 7pm and lasted for 6 straight hours. My older brother just happened to call me from skype right around the time we lost electricity. Although I couldn’t really hear anything he was saying over the loudness of the rain hitting my tin roof, it was better to be on the phone with someone as I searched for candles and then put out pots throughout my house collecting rain puddles. (my apartment typically resembles a little waterfall when it rains, rain comes in on every wall).

Then I hear my landlord outside my apartment she´s preparing the garage for any flooding. When she sees I´m on the phone, she grabs the phone from my hands and hangs up on my brother. And then proceeded to scream at me about how I am going to cause the lightening rays to come into my house and electrocute me if I talk on my phone or even touch any electronic. She made me promise to keep the phone off. I then got that same lecture for the next two days just to make sure I understood and wouldn’t ever talk on my phone in my apartment when it´s raining. She claims her cousin was struck by lightning in his house while talking on his phone during an aguacero.

I waterproofed my house the best I could and decided a Benadryl to knock me out sounded perfect. The next morning Arenillas looked like a disaster zone. The dirt road outside my house was more like a river, and half of the dirt and rocks had been washed out into the main road, blocking the entire street. The civil defense cars were loaded with belongings, helping the many families whose homes were destroyed move into classrooms in the elementary schools, where they will live for the rest of rainy season. Power was out, and didn’t come back until the following night. And apparently something happened to the water plant by the dam, and water was out all as well. That afternoon in my journalism summer camp the kids did mock interviews as if they were at the radio station, and shared their stories about the aguacero, four of the kids´ families had been evacuated into schools.

By the next day things started getting back to normal. Electricity came back and people came back to work. Water came back in most of the city, but for some reason my street and a few of the other streets close by were still without water. Now, I´ve gone a few days in the past without water and as long as there is a source to steal some water from in a container than it´s totally doable. But this time there really was no water. I luckily had a sprite 2 liter container filled with water as a backup, and that held me over for a full day.

Then came the second day without water: Bathroom smells. I can´t really cook cause I can´t wash the dishes. I just taught my basketball camp for three hours in a muddy court, I´m dirty and could so use a shower. There is not a drop of water on my street. Alright, desperate times desperate means. I take a pot and head down the street, I´m going to half to beg someone ¨no sea mailto, prestame agua¨ (literally meaning don’t be a little bad person, loan me some water). Yes!, being a beggar worked I have enough water for a bucket bathe and some dishes!

Third day without water: It´s hot. 95 degrees and no water. That bucket is empty again. Bathroom smells worst. I don’t look so clean. Walked over the bridge to El Cisne to talk to community bank. The brown muddy dirty Arenillas river looks tempting, I think I may just have to jump in there. No, can´t do it just yet, held myself back.

Fourth day without water: Oh my god I think I am going in that river. Then I remind myself the last time I did that it ended with parasites. Think again. I´ll just stay dirty one more day.

Fifth day without water: I woke up, no water. Thought well I´m already sweaty I mines well go running and spend the day even sweatier. Get back from my run, turn on my faucet just for kicks… and there is water! Granted it came our slightly brown, but there´s water! I took two cold showers that day, my cold showers had never felt so good!

Yesterday I was on the CIFA heading to Machala, the main city an hour in a half from my site. As it never fails to hold true, the CIFA was as usual a miserable experience, one that is only endured out of pure necessity to leave my site every once in a blue moon. I had spent an hour in a half on a steaming hot overcrowded bus trying not to look at or accidently bump into the breast feeding mother on my left side, with her breast hanging out on full view, and having a smelly overweight man´s butt in my face and occasionally hitting me since his balancing act standing in the aisle wasn´t the best. Needless to say, I always hope for something positive in Machala to make up for the ride there.

Entering Machala, the bus passes by Shopping, the strip mall with a great food court and walmart-type grocery store. Now having passed by Shopping so many times in the past it usually doesn’t catch my attention, but this time was different.

There it was, a huge red chili logo right next to the movie theater´s sign on the outside of Shopping. It caught my eye even on a speeding bus, and I had to look back for a second look just to make sure it wasn’t an illusion.

Nope, it is real. THAT is the Chili´s Logo… Chili´s THE restaurant has a logo outside of Shopping…? Strange, real strange. First instinct, I pull out my phone and have got to call a fellow Machala volunteer:

Me: ¨Oh my god, I think there is a logo for Chili´s outside of shopping.¨

Volunteer: What? The restaurant?

Me: Yeah the restaurant! Could that really be Chili´s, or do you think someone is just using their logo, cause that wouldn’t surprise me as much either…?

Volunteer: I don’t know, I was in Shopping two weeks ago and didn’t see anything, but maybe it could be.

Me: Hmmm tomorrow I think we need to go to Shopping and investigate this.

My investigation the next day confirmed it. Chili´s is opening a restaurant in Shopping, just an hour in a half from my site. Now, it´s not like I´ll probably ever really go since I´m sure it´s way out of the Peace Corps budget, and our usual $1.50 lunch deals, but just the idea of a well-known American restaurant opening up so close took me by surprise and for some reason is really exciting. It even has the same ugly red-white striped window coverings from back home. And the ugly matching strips on the booth seat coverings. Now, we just have to wait for the opening to see if the food and drinks are also a taste of home!

Ever imagine slow cooking a jelly over an open fire for three hours? I know I never had, but I can now say I´ve done it, and it is so worth every hour of cooking! Last week I was invited to my friend´s house to cook a dulce de banano with her family. I had never had this before, and didn’t really know what we were cooking or how, but if someone tells me come over to learn how to make something new, I´m there!

Dulce de banano, is like a slow cooked sweet banana jelly, and it is a rare delicacy due to its tedious preparation.

It calls for about 35 really ripe bananas, 3 full squares of brown sugar, two cups of orange juice, and a dash of cinnamon and vanilla extract. First you have to mash all the bananas. Then make a fire and place a large iron cast type pot over the fire so it gets just enough heat spread equally throughout it. Use a large wood stick as a spoon and continuously stir the mixture so it doesn’t stick to the pot. Then after an hour slowly start adding in all the other ingredients. For the next two hours continue stirring the mixture, and it will start to thicken and take on a brown chocolate-like color and odor. About three hours into the process, it should be a darker brown color and a thick paste, that´s when it is ready to be eaten. You can eat the sweet banana jelly on crackers or bread and it is really good, better than any jelly I´ve ever had. I mean after all it would have to be amazing after being slow cooked over a fire for three hours! Just another wonder of the many things you can do with bananas.

Sometimes extreme indecisiveness occurs in the most unexplainable moments. Decisions that should be a no-brainer, eat away at us, tear us apart, and make us doubt everything in your mind saying ¨yes, do it.¨ It is that battle between those two talking little people on your shoulders telling you what you should or shouldn´t do.

I recently found myself in this state of severe indecisiveness. After all, it was a very ´big´ decision.

You see, I´ve been in site now for a year in a half. I live a pretty simple life in my little apartment, and somehow always manage to completely forget about all those modern technologies that make life just a little easier. I mean after all laundry is a two day chore, with my bar of soap, bucket, and scrub brush. Killing spiders and other insects is also a normal Sunday afternoon chore. So, when it came to making two little purchases I was completely torn.

My site is hot, really hot. And right now we are in the middle of hot season, meaning unbearably hot. A year ago, I found a half-broken fan that a neighbor was throwing out. I decided hey it still blows air so vale, that´s good enough. For the last year, my fan has been propped up by a book, held down by a jenga game and still only blows air to the ground. But on the bright side, it is circulating air in my apartment at least. When my dad came to visit he left me money to buy a real fan, but I couldn´t get myself to do, make the investment on a new fan when technically I have one that still turns on at least. Then, a month ago, my fan decided it wanted to die, literally. Three nights in a row the fan would just tumble off of its chair and startle me in the middle of the night.

This same week I had another major issue arise in my apartment. You see I´m a bit of a coffee addict, without coffee the day just doesn’t start. When I first moved into my apartment I had this cheap $2 coffee dripper. It was a tedious process, usually taking me 30 minutes just to make my two weak cups of coffee. After a few months with this, I finally invested in a $15 French press, and loved every sip of that coffee. Recently though after haven just washed my dishes and set them on the counter to dry, I picked up my electric mosquito-killing racket and went at it with some flies. Trust me, playing tennis with an electric racket is even better than playing tennis on wii, not only do you always win against the insects but you get to hear that gratifying zing when you get one. I must have gotten carried away though, because next thing you know the racket hit a pot, the pot fell and knocked over a plate, and that bumped my French press right off the counter. There is was, shattered. I was devastated. Now, back to using that weak little coffee dripper. For two weeks I would spend 30 minutes preparing and cleaning up after the coffee dripper, only to still have coffee cravings after drinking my morning coffee. It was clear it was not going to cut it.

What now? I decided it was time to go into the stores in Machala and make some investments. So another volunteer close by and I headed to Shopping, a little mall in Machala. I thought for sure they´d have a French press. But no luck. They did however have a coffee pot and a little fan that I´d be able to get back to my site. I stood and stared at these two beautiful pieces of technology for a good couple of minutes thinking should I or shouldn’t I. I really don’t know why it was such a hard decision. A working fan for $23 and a real coffee pot for $26. I could afford it, and they would make a world of difference in my apartment. But there was this guilt factor, I´m a Peace Corps volunteer. Should I really own a coffee pot and a new fan? And is it worth the investment when I´m already half way done with my service? It is funny how after not having these things for some time, they became this idealized luxury that seemed too extravagant to own. Before coming to the peace corps I probably never thought twice about my coffee pot in my college dorm. Now, the decision to buy one was tearing me apart.

To buy or not to buy?

One hour later, after a walk through the entire mall, I returned to the food store and starred at both items again. Ok, I will buy the fan, but maybe I should hold off on the coffee pot? Oh I don’t know, I need more time.

Another hour later, after a lunch in the food court and consulting two peace corps volunteers, I finally returned to the store and bought both items. Up until I walked out of shopping and traveled the hour back to my site, the battle between those two little people talking on my shoulders continued. But as soon as I walked in the door, plugged in my new fan, and made a fresh pot of coffee, I knew I had made a good decision and two great investments. No more 30 minutes for making coffee or being drenched in sweat every time I sit in my apartment. Now, I get up in the morning turn off my fan, turn on my coffee pot, and the day just seems to start a little brighter.

Recently I found out that one of my youth group members was in a motorcycle accident and broke her knee and arm. I told my coworker who was sitting next to me at the time. She then says, that once her sister broke her arm and had to wear a sling for a time. And the mom made her this remedy which she had to drink a little glass of every day. This remedy made her joints reconnect, and cured her.

Theory goes, mix in a blender a piece of raw cow liver, a handful of grapes, juice from one orange, and a couple of leafs from a plant called Gerano. Drink some of this every day and those joints just grow right back together in no time. A man sitting close by, was so interested in what he had overheard, that he asked for more insight on this remedy and the recipe.

I’m sure the sling had no role in the healing process, it was definitely the raw liver drink.

This past December I got the best Christmas present in the world, I spent the holidays at home with my family after having gone a year in a half without seeing them. I couldn’t have asked for a better present.

You see, last Christmas I spent in my site and I wouldn’t say it was bad, but there is nothing like being with family for the holidays. Plus, last Christmas I tried to teach the moms in my mother’s group about potluck dinners, only to realize someone’s potluck at the party was really not lucky at all and must have come with a side of parasites. Needless to say I spent Christmas to New Years throwing up worms, and taking a tour of Ecuador and Peru’s dirtiest public restrooms. So even the thought of being home for xmas this year was too good to be true.

Now, after having been gone for a year in a half and kind of living in my own little world in my little site, being back in the US did present some culture shocks. When I landed in the Miami airport, I entered the iphone, ipad, blackberry world. It was like walking through an obstacle course to get to my gate, you had to keep dodging people as they all walked with their heads down, eyes and attention fixated on their little itouch thing. I had actually never even heard of an ipad. When I was boarding my flight, a lady passed me that was boarding the priority line and she had this ipod in her hands that was like an ipod on crack, my first thoughts were an ipod for the visually impaired? I mean really it was bigger than my laptop! I was never much of a technology person before the peace corps (I once was given an ipod, but I never learned how to use itunes, so to this day it has no music), but being down here I really felt like I’d been living in the cave age or something. I wasn’t very good at using my mom’s touch screen phone either, the first time I tried to call someone all I heard was “Sarah, I can’t really here you, it must be a bad connection.” I thought “that’s weird my mom was just using it fine.” I guess it helps to be holding the phone the right way up so you’re talking into the microphone part, didn’t make that mistake again! I also played wii for the first time while home, and by play I mean became obsessed with! Now, although my 11 year old sister beat me in every game possible, I’m gonna have to blame that on my lack of wii experience not my umm lack of coordination and balance. I also went to my first 3D movie, TRON. The only thing I’d ever seen in 3D was Hunny I shrunk the kids at Univesal, who would have ever thought back then that soon you’d be able to watch 3D in the movies and in your home! I also went with my brother to Best Buy one day, it was like a grownup Disney World. Touch screen desktops, a 3D tv, the play station connect… amazing. Although I know realistically I would be that person that if I ever had one of those things in my house, I’d probably read the instruction manual and then still have to call my older brother who is much more tech savvy every couple of hours to get it to work again (I think in three weeks I must have hit the wrong button and throwing off the digital cable at least 15 times, oosp!).

Another big culture shock was prices. No more food shopping for the week on $5. When I got to the Miami airport I wanted just a snack to hold me over til Orlando. I searched for the two cheapest things in the wing I was in… an apple and a water bottle for $4.35! Yikes!

One day I went for a jog through our community. As I ran down the nicely paved sidewalk, I ran past this house where a lady had just opened her front door and out came running these two huge greyhound dogs. They were barking and dashing towards me. Now, being that in my site I usually run with a rock in my hand to fend off street dogs who will bite you before you know what hit you, I was prepared to take action when I saw these two dogs. First instinct, pick up rocks fast. While continuing my jog, I scanned the ground for a rock only to realize “oh no, I’m on a paved sidewalk, with grass on both sides, there are no rocks!” Then I looked up realizing the dogs were close… and bam! They ran straight into their electric fence. Yup, the two dogs ran right into their barrier and were stuck, right there on the other side of that invisible line barking at me. Now, after having been bit by a dog once here in Ecuador and being almost attacked many times, I had to enjoy that moment more than the normal person. What else would be expected than to stand on that sidewalk and antagonize those dogs for a couple of minutes?

December in Florida, and on the East Coast in general, was especially cold this year. When I left Arenillas it was probably in the 90s but felt even hotter. When I got to FL, 16 degrees! What’s that?! In Florida? Some even said there were snow flurries on Christmas day in Tallahassee (I was further South in Brooksville though, although it was equally cold there!) My parents have a cabin in North GA, and they had more snow than ever, up to 14 inches! Of course, we couldn’t miss snow days being so close to Florida, soon after Christmas we headed up to GA. The night when we got to the cabin it was freezing cold and there was lots of snow on the ground. Julia and I ran inside, went through Tupperware containers of random winter clothes, put on everything we could find, and although it was midnight, started our snow ball fight. That is how you can tell Floridians from northerners. Floridians would play outside at midnight in the freezing cold. Floridians come to the snow in flocks and wear an odd assortment of every piece of winter clothing they could find. None of that looking cute matching brands stuff. Heck, I wore my brothers size 13 men’s boots the whole time even though I felt like I was walking with those giant ski boots on! Our snow days were a blast! The snow lasted for three days, before finally melting, but we packed those days with snow ball fights, snow angels, building snowmen, and sledding.

I learned three really important lessons about snow that week.

Lesson one: those puddles that you see in the road aren’t puddles. That’s ice. And when you try to walk on it, you slid, and it hurts. It took me two falls to remember that one.

Lesson two: When the locals park their cars on the side of the highway, that must mean you shouldn’t follow that small road going up. Only tourist make the mistake of driving into ice filled parking lots.

Lesson three: I only had two pair of shoes with me, the sneakers I got for xmas and a pair of heals I wore for xmas. After our first day of sledding my shoes were really wet and cold, and that afternoon the plan was to go to the cabin, change quickly and head an hour south to Crane Creek Winery. Now, coming up I didn’t see much snow south of Clayton, GA. SO I figured the winery probably didn’t have any either. I decided to let my sneakers dry and wear my heels. Ooh bad idea! They had over 14 inches of snow, more than Dillard! As my feet sank in almost knee deep into the snow, I could not feel my toes, I thought for sure that had to be what they call frost bit. So, new rule, wear the wet sneakers next time!

During the rest of our trip, we went to the Rabun Gap School each day to sled. They have these great hills, and everyone in town or passing through heads there to sled. It is what one could call, hmm, Redneck Sledding. No sled? No problem. There are many things you can use to sled. When we first got there we saw this one family having their kids sit in plastic garbage bags and try to get down the hill… most ended with big wipe outs. Then there was the girl who was using the top of a Tupperware container, although it didn’t take her too far. There were also families using pool tubes and rafts to go down to snow covered hill. And the best of all someone had used a broken stretcher, and someone else a piece of cardboard. Desperate times for some fun in the snow, desperate means! We had little snow disks, and with those we went flying down each time… with the occasional “oh no, that’s a tree, abandon disk fast!” type-of-wipeouts.

No worms. A little culture shock. Lots of rice balls (thank you grandma). Great food. More food. Wine. More Wine. Snow days. Wineries. Great times. Great memories. Best of all, my family and friends. What could be a better way to spend the holidays!

When extreme boredom sinks in due to the local festivals and no work for two weeks, one must find new hobbies to stay sane. This festival holiday I decided I had three goals, cook some recipes I´ve been wanting to try out, finally get on that bike I bought a year ago and is now home to spider webs in the corner, and try out some of the home remedies in our peace corps cookbook.

In between a lot of procrastinating, I finally starting all three of my goals for the week. Yesterday I decided to bake homemade biscotti, something my grandma always did. I successfully made two batches: one cranberry chocolate and one raisin walnut. Not quite grandma´s, but it was a first attempt. Today I started my day by killing the spiders on my bike and in my helmet and got air in the tires. Getting the bike clean was at least one step towards actually riding it. (I never was one to ride a bike, and only recently really learned. Here I got on my bike once, got scared by the vicious street dogs and have said for 7 months that this week will be the week I get on it again).

After cleaning my bike, I opened up that home remedy book and did my ¨festival¨ cleaning. I continued cleaning for hours, every time looking at that bike, thinking do I really want to go on it today? I could just envision myself peddling down the road, drunk men riding their motorcycles by me on one side and dogs chasing me on the other side.

Opening that home remedy section of my book I learned one thing for sure, I will never use white vinegar for eating purposes again. I had no idea you could use white vinegar in so many ways, but now I don’t want to imagine it in my stomach.

The many uses of white vinegar for the day include: mixing white vinegar and bleach to scrub mold off my walls, bolting white vinegar with water to get mold out of clothes, mixing white vinegar, water, and chopped garlic to wipe down counters (it helps kill and prevent ants), and soaking white vinegar, salt, and hot water together to get rid of coffee stains on cups. Who knew there were so many uses for white vinegar? And I´ve only done a few of the home remedies, apparently it can also be used as a deodorant, window cleaner, a copper and brass cleaner, and gets paint off windows.

After cleaning everything possible to clean with vinegar and realizing there was nothing else to do to procrastinate, I stood outside strarring intimitdely at my bike for a good 20 minutes. Twice I pushed it towards the door, and twice I left it there. Finally after an hour longer of putting it off I pushed that bike out the front door, and walked it down the road. And I kept walking it for another 10 minutes. Once I got to a section of the road where I knew there were no dogs, I finally got the courage to get on that bike and start peddling. Turns out it really wasn’t as intimidating as I thought it would be, and only parts of my envision came true, a guy did pass me on his motorcycle while the guy sitting on the moto with him was drinking an open beer, and as I got about 2km down the road two dogs that I know from bad experiences are vicious were in the road, so I turned back. I can now say all three of my goals for this festival break were accomplished, and there are no broken bones, oven burns, or dog bites to show for it!

Contamination and garbage management are two huge issues here in Arenillas. A part of the problem is lack of resources, but a larger part of the problem I think is just lack of knowledge and concern for the environment. It still amazes me how people will walk down the streets and as soon as they are done with their drink or food in their hands, the bag or container just magically slips from their hands to the floor. It is almost like an unconscious action as it has become such a conditioned social norm. People also frequently burn their garbage on the street or dump their garbage on the highway or in green areas. Now, although the lack of awareness and environmental concern is one part of the equation, one also have to realize that an adequate garbage management is nearly impossible with the resources the city hall has. Arenillas produces around 20,000 tons of garbage a day, but only has one garbage truck to serve the entire county and its 31,000 residents. There are also areas where roads are in such poor conditions it´d be hard for the garbage truck to make the trip. So logically between these two parts of the equation, this is a serious issue.

For the last 6 months or so Ian and I have been preparing a recycling program here in Arenillas. We started with a pilot program in two schools, each went decent. I think after 6 classes on recycling and the environment, kids at least started getting down the correct answers when we asked what is recycling, what can you recycle, and how can we take care of the environment. But it really took doing recycling competitions and giving out prizes to get the kids motivated, and unfortunately once the competition ends they assume recycling does as well.

Although recycling won´t solve the problem, it is a good step in the right direction at least. After all they say 80% of the waste we produce in our houses is recyclable or reusable. And it makes sense, what do we have in our garbage cans that is not plastic, aluminum, glass, cardboard, paper, or organics reusable in a compost? And even if people treat the recycling bins as garbage cans, that´s ok, at least the garbage is ending up in cans and not on the street (right now there are few public garbage cans around the city).

We are now getting ready to launch the recycling project (officially called the Program for Recycling Urban Waste) after many months of paperwork, meetings, and talking. A local resort has donated 30 sets of recycling bins, each set has three bins: one for organics, one for paper and cardboard, and one for plastic, aluminum, and glass. The organics will go to the tree nursery to make a community compost, and the recyclable goods will be left outside the garbage dump for the workers to utilize (there are a few families who work in the garbage dump, sorting waste to find recyclable materials so this will hopefully minimize the time they spent in the garbage dump).

We have started giving our workshops to promote the project in select areas around town and in schools. We also have some great looking posters and brochures. The only thing we are missing now is the recycling bins, still waiting to be repainted. Hopefully these get repainted before 2011 (only two months away!). I think that is a reasonable goal now a days. Once they are painted we´ll have the bins in 30 public locations and we´ll fully launch the program.

To start promoting the idea of recycling in the community, we convinced the office that we should walk in the big parade during the festivals this week. Now, neither of us have participated in one of these big parades so we had no idea what to expect. With our coworkers we made these great foam recycling bin costumes and signs to put on our boss´ truck. Then we put the set of recycling bins in the truck.

We may not have had the best decorated truck, but I don’t think anyone else had as good of a message or as creative as outfits as our group, I mean who else was dressed as a recycling bin? Our boss´ 2 yr old granddaughter wore an adorable outfit made out of all recycled goods and rode on top of the bins. Now, who wouldn’t want to recycle after seeing her? She had this cute dress made out of tires, a hat made out of the bottom of a bottle, and a cute plastic bag purse.

The parade was suppose to start at 5pm, so we showed up at 5:30pm. But even shown up 30 min late, we were still an hour and 15 min early. Ecuadorian time of course. The parade ended up starting close to 7pm, so not only was it getting dark by then, but it was getting close to my now normally ridiculously early bedtime.

Had we known that each group was dancing or acting something out, we would have planned something like this as well. But oh well the important thing is we represented the project at least. I was the giant blue recycling bin, where you put your plastic, aluminum, and glass. I have to say I never thought I´d get the chance to be a giant recycling bin in a parade before. Now, I´m normally a little shy in big groups so walking in a parade is not the easiest thing to do, and little did I know that there were two presentations in this parade. You see a parade here doesn’t just lap around the streets like I thought it does, it goes to the main park where someone is on stage talking about each group as they enter, then you have a couple of awkward minutes where you are there in this big space in front of like a couple hundred people (obviously I had no idea what I was getting myself into)... And that was only the first presentation, we had to go through two of those parks that night. Although it was extremely nerve racking I just tried to remember that even if I wasn’t wearing this giant foam costume with garbage taped to it, people would probably still be staring at me just because I´m the ¨gringa¨ in town. After three hours of walking and waiting, I think our mission was accomplished, people saw the recycling bins for the first time, and now maybe when they see the bins located around town in a few weeks they will think ¨oh yeah these were those recycling things that people were dressed up as in the parade.¨

Our mayor may not be the best at implementing projects, constructing new centers in the city, or at getting things moving under piles of paperwork, but he is great at giving things away. His big campaign during elections was to give out 6,000 pairs of school shoes to elementary school youth during his term. He has given out around 2,000 but people are getting anxious to see the rest of those shoes (side note: these little shoes cost only a few dollars and the age he is given them will outgrow them in probably one year).

The new campaign is to give out wheel chairs, so far they have constructed and given out 30 chairs. Each wheel chair is a plastic chair with arm rests nailed into 2 sets of wheels. At least this campaign is more meaningful and you really are changing someone’s life by giving them a wheel chair, creating self mobilization (to a small degree at least, many of the roads and buildings here are not handicap friendly).

Now, although the idea of having a ceremony to give out the wheelchairs is a great idea, the way the city government went about this seems all wrong. If you are going to give out 30 wheel chairs, where should you choose to have the ceremony? My logic would be the ceremony should happen in an open space, a space that is, well, handicap friendly… maybe in the central park or in front of city hall.

As I was sitting in the office on the second floor of city hall working on our recycling project, I hear lots of commotion in the lobby. I go out into the lobby to see what´s going on, and it turns out today is the day of the big ceremony. Right here on the second story of the city hall… which of course has no elevator. Therefore, they then had to gather up some of the men in the offices to go and carry each person up the stairs. After the ceremony, the line formed again and each person had to be carried down the stairs in their new wheelchair. What better way to promote this new ¨self-mobility¨ then to hold the ceremony in a place where the participants cant get to on their own. (sarcasm of course. Although, I think only us volunteers saw anything wrong with this whole picture.)

When I do finish my service I want to bring Ecuador markets and supermarkets with me. Food prices here will never stop amazing me.

Exhibit One- For $3.40 in the local market I bought: a pound of tomatoes, a pound of onions, 2 peppers, a cucumber, 2 pounds of sweet potatoes, 3 apples, 2 pears, and a big head of broccoli.

Exhibit Two- Yesterday I went to Machala and stopped in the super market, and for $4.20 I got a big bag of fresh spinach, a bag of lettuce, three zucchinis, 2 eggplants, and a big bag of natural granola.

Amazing.

In a recent article from the Peace Corps Times (Peace Corps Headquarters newsletter), there was an interesting article debating how Peace Corps should celebrate its 50th anniversary. Someone had written to headquarters proposing a reality tv show featuring peace corps volunteers. I had always thought a service oriented reality show would be cool. I found the explanation in which the author compares peace corps to reality shows interesting and entertaining, so I thought I´d share parts of the article in my blog.

From the article: “What better way to show the many benefits of serving in the Peace Corps then producing a Peace Corps reality series? Perhaps we could call it Pacific Shores or simply retain the titles Surreal Life or Survivor since volunteers are able to identify with either in some way… Survivor, one of the most popular reality series of all time, actually has nothing on our volunteers. After all, its stars have a network of fellow Americans within close confines who are only asked to live in an unfamiliar environment for a month or so. Some of our volunteers have to travel a day to visit someone else who speaks English and find themselves in another country for over two years. However, after the first few weeks they realize it’s not about being a survivor, it’s about being a contributor.”

In then continues: “[volunteers] have all made it through the casting call, which could be compared to those frustrating months of waiting to hear if you had been accepted to the Peace Corps. [they] then followed that by being an Apprentice during training, and then, in many cases, became an American Idol in their communities.”

“Despite what we have been led to believe by the Biggest Loser, losing weight does not make you a better person. It just makes you a thinner person. So why not devote yourself to good works for a year? Take a trip to Haiti or Sudan, or join the Peace Corps or Habitat for Humanity. You could help those in need, encourage others, and lose weight all at the same time- you would be amazed how a little hard work, a lot of water, and monotonous diet of normal proportions can take off the weight”

“Regardless of the title, each volunteer can bask in the reality of everyday life that is so much better than any reality television show could be. After all the Peace Corps truly is the best reality series and we have the pleasure of living it every day.”

Since I have a new found addiction to reality tv shows, I found this article rather amusing and pretty accurate. I mean that long one year wait to get that letter saying ¨Welcome to the hardest job you will ever love¨ could very well be compared to a casting call, the only difference is you go in person instead of sending in a video of yourself. Training was its own apprentice filled with ciaos, uncertainty, awkward moments, being constantly judged and watched, having to fulfill certain tasks successfully each week, passing those final tests, and waiting passionately on edge to receive that second letter with your site information. Once in site American Idol is a good way to compare your situation. You live in what is called the fish bowl effect, you are the fish and everyone gets daily entertainment by watching your every move. As one volunteers homemade shirt said: ¨I was once famous… in Ecuador,¨ we are all these gringo idols in our little towns and usually accompanied by our 100 or so little friends. All Peace Corps volunteers at some point get sick, if not all the time, making losing weight an instant side effect of your circumstances. And in the end you have Survived it all, the roller coaster of living and working in a third world country for two years. Although I would say Survivor is the only none accurate comparison, and maybe that’s why it’s one of the few reality shows on the monthly burned disks I receive that I haven’t gotten into. Now, if Survivor were to drop these people in the slums of a major city in a third world country, with little directions, language training, or communication, I think that would be a real reality of survival.

A few months ago the other volunteer in my site started training for the Guayaquil Marathon, a vigorous 42 kilometer race. Now, I know my limits enough to know I could never train for that. But I did decide since we run together anyways I would train for my first 10k. The Guayaquil race had a 10km, a half marathon (21km), and a marathon.

So for about two months I was running between 7 and 14 km about 5 days a week. Leading up to the race I felt confident I could run the 10k without a problem. Then one of my friends who was running the half marathon suggested we all go big and run the half marathon. So I tossed the idea of ´go big or go home´ for a few days leading up to the race. Then the day before the race the other volunteer in my site and I set off to Guayaquil early in the morning. While on the bus, I finally make up my mind, tomorrow I am going to run the half marathon, I think I´m ready and well, if not I´ll just suffer afterwards.

When we got to Guayaquil we went to register and get our chips. They gave each of us a ticket to a free pasta dinner at the gran chef. Now we all had to wonder two things… first how good can a pasta dinner be in Ecuador? Second, who gave this guy the title of gran chef?

When we got to this restaurant and walked in, we screamed attention to ourselves as being way out of place. And no not just because we were the only Americans there. But this place was nice: white table cloths, way too much silverware around every plate (I mean all you ever really need is a spoon, right?), wine glasses to put water in, and 5 big buffet stations, with every type of salad, starch, meat, and fruit you could imagine. A peace corps volunteers dream. And the funny thing is they actually had very little pasta on that buffet, not sure where they copied the ´pasta dinner´ invitation from.

We rolled out of the restaurant onto a bus, slowly climbed up the 5 stories of stairs to the apartment, and rolled into beds full as can be. But being I was so nervous about the race I didn’t sleep a wink for a second night. That Sunday the whole group of volunteers running (three brave souls running the full marathon, and 5 of us running the half marathon) set off at 4 am to get to the race, which was set to start at 5am. It actually was not too badly on Ecuadorian time, being it started at 5:20.

About 700 racers were gathered at the start line behind the giant Gatorade blowups waiting for some sign the race was going to start. We were really expecting someone on the microphone to announce the beginning of the race or give a thanks for coming kind of speech, but then all of a sudden we heard a faint countdown tres, dos, uno… and all of a sudden the massive herd of runners were off!

Running 21km really wasn’t too bad (at the moment at least, I did feel it for the next two days though). At around kilometer 18 I started getting feeling pain around my toes but I just blocked that out and kept going. I knew that by making it to that finish line, I was earning my Subway chicken teriyaki on whole wheat bread. I finished the race in 2 hours and 16 minutes, not too bad for my first race. But man was I excited to see those two giant Gatorade blowups at the end. Upon finishing the race we got chocolate milk, bananas, a fancy medallion, a nice jersey shirt, and best of all a certificate of completion. AND we got to treat ourselves to the 30 minute taxi ride (only $5 here!) to a mall in a suburb of Guayaquil, where there is the one and only subway restaurant in Ecuador. And these were real subway sandwiches, they even had diet coke and the fresh subway cookies. Let’s just say I ate my cookie before the lady even gave me my change back and savored every bite of that sub. I think I would run a race any day if it means getting to treat myself to that afterwards.

When I was a kid my mom often said the famous line “Well if your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?” I always responded with “of course not.”

Now, my mom never said “if your friends jump off a cliff would you?” But now I would have to answer “Um well maybe.”

A few weeks ago to celebrate our one year anniversary in country, some of my peace corps friends and I met up in Mindo, a tropical town full of extreme sports in northern Ecuador.

We had two goals for the day: zip line and waterfall jump, both insane adrenaline rushes. We found a 15 line zip line for $10, could you ask for a better deal? It was awesome, and surprising not scary at all.

Then we headed to the famous waterfall jump. As we were hiking down I could feel my heart beating and my legs getting ready to be shaky. I knew I wanted to jump, I’ve always wanted to jump from a waterfall like what you see in the movies. But the idea of jumping off a 70ft cliff into a waterfall started to really hit me. When we got to the top of the jumping point my nerves definitely hit but there was not backing out. I may have been the slowest in going and actually making that jump off the cliff aiming for that circle clearing in the water below, but after 30 minutes of hearing the directions about 10 times I finally did the leap. It was like doing a dead man’s walk in a pool, only you just fell a really long distance before the painful impact of the water in the end. But it was worth it to do once in my life. So as the expression now goes my friends jumped off a cliff and well, yes I did too. Sorry mom.

Last month I received an invitation to go to a two day conference put on by the Organization International for Migration and USAID in the neighboring town of Huaquillas titled ¨Lavado de manos con jabon y agua¨ (¨Wash your hands with soap and water¨). Now being that I have successfully passed the challenging one week puppettering course and the three day intense banana cook course, I figured what better certificate to pursue that hand washing. An art that I practiced all too well growing up… for those that knew me back during my well, clean freak obsessive days.

Upon registering for the conference I figured it would be somewhat ridiculous and didn’t really think I´d ever find myself teaching hand washing, it was just a way to bring one of the AREvista newspaper youth to a conference for a good professional experience and well, add another certificate to my wall.

Day one of the conference comes and the youth member and I set off for Huaquillas at 7 am as the conference starts at 8. I don’t know why I thought that a conference sponsored by two international organizations would start on time… we were there a good hour before the real start time and two hours before any of our fellow Arenillas coworkers started wondering in. Fashionably on time.

Although the idea of thousands of dollars in training people to become promoters of hand washing sounds ridiculous, after two days I was sold on the idea. After first I sat back thinking, now how is this part of the mission of USAID and the International Organization for Migration. I mean the logic was I guess that if people practice better hygiene and they can reduce infant mortality rates and the number of cases of diarrhea, people may feel better about their situations and stay in their country and not be enticed to immigrate to the US… but it is a far stretch, being that the reasons for immigration lie much deeper than hygiene and illnesses.

However, in those two days I did learn that the practice of washing your hands with soap and safe water could reduce the number of child deaths due to diarrhea by 40% and the number of respiratory infections by 25%. Also, over 90% of people in a study of this area have some type of soap in their house but only around 22% wash their hands with soap on a regular basis. Also, due to bad hygiene practices diarrhea is one of the top causes of deaths in children under 5 years old in Ecuador, therefore, teaching the simple art of washing your hands in running water and with soap is actually an easy way of trying to help this situation. At the conference we broke into groups and each group had to do a replica of a workshop in front of all 70 participants. My group had to teach the lesson ¨All poops are contaminants¨ … and now there are 6 Ecuadorians teachers in my group, but who gets chosen to present this information about poop being filled with bacteria to everyone?… the gringa of course. Yup, I had to get up there and keep a straight face and my Spanish going for a full 30 minutes as I held up pictures of poop and explained why after touching poop you should wash your hands with soap.

Now that I successfully passed the conference, I am considered a ¨social promoter¨ of hand washing here in municipality of arenillas. Our first mission after the conference was to plan a big open house event for international day of hand washing (yes, that’s a real international holiday, it´s celebrated on October 15th). The open house was a huge amount of work leading up to it, and a mountain of paperwork between letters, invitations, and reports, but it turned out great. I also spent a very intense work day cutting little water drops out of cardboard and gluing these to 300 pencils to give the youth a message to take home saying ¨always wash your hands.¨ This day happened to be Peace Corps 50th anniversary, so as I was sitting there on my fourth hour of cutting out these water drops all I could think is wow, if JFK saw me sitting here doing arts and crafts in a third world country wouldn’t he be proud. Around 150 kids came to the casa abierta and learned the importance of washing their hand and how to wash their hands correctly.

Then on the 17th I did a replica workshop with the AREvista youth member and 15 youth in her community. It was actually a lot of fun. We did skits about hand washing, each kid had to sing a song about when they should wash their hands, and we made little door hangers for them to bring home and put on their bathroom door.

I now have the full workshop kit in my house so I feel obligated to do some more of the replicas. Who knows what will come out of this. But it´s almost like getting to be a clean freak again for just an hour at a time at least.

So, for those that have not been to a hand washing conference, there are some principal things you should know:

1st the critical moments in which you should always wash your hands: after going to the bathroom, after playing outside, after taking out the garbage, after changing a baby’s diaper (a lot of people here actually believe that breastfeed babies don´t have contaminants in their poop), before eating, and after touching animals.

2nd if you wash your hands only with water you don’t kill bacteria, you have to use soap.

3rd if you don’t have a towel, you shouldn’t dry your hands on your dirty clothes you should air dry your hands.

4th all poops are contaminants

5th clean hands are happy hands, happy hands is good health.

6th the ROUTE OF CONTAMINATION… it goes poop->dirty hands-> mouth=diarrhea (via food or putting hands in your mouth)

So although at first teaching hand washing may seem like a ridiculous task, it is actually kind of an important issue here in Ecuador. Many times people say they are poor and therefore have bad hygiene. But really poverty does not have to mean dirty, washing your hands and taking of your hygiene is a basic step anyone in any financial situation can do, and doing this can prevent diarrhea and other illnesses. So one hand washed at a time we may be able to spread these messages.

The festivals in honor of the Virgen del Cisne have finally arrived! Being that I work in the community El Cisne here in Arenillas these festivals were anticipated since they ended last August. Starting in February the church members began holding bingos on Saturdays to raise money to fix up their virgin statue and altar. In May the community began renovating their little church. Since July there have been weekly meetings planning the festivities for the two weeks leading up to the main festival on August 14 and 15. El Cisne is a big deal in this part of Ecuador, it would be the equivalent of a Virgen Mary in Italy or Guadalupe in Mexico. There are cars and buses with Virgen del Cisne written across the front, there are hostals and restaurants named in her honor, and a pilgrimage made to El Cisne Loja every year by thousands of people.

Here in Arenillas, we celebrated the virgin in the weekend festivities of El Barrio El Cisne. Ecuadorians may not be the best at calling you back, or showing up to your workshop, or turning in their work on time, but when it comes to festivals they know how to do it. Festivals here can be summed up in few words… incredibly insane.

To set the picture, imagine a couple hundred of people gathered in a small basketball court and along the road leading to the court. Then somewhere in the middle of the crowd there is a giant castle structure called a Castillo and another line hanging between two structures called a waterfall, cascada. The festival starts with a Vaca Loca, a crazy cow.

The first time someone told me to wait for the Vaca during the festivals in the beginning of my service, I was actually looking for the cow, wondering how a big cow was going to make its way into the festival. Then, out of nowhere came a man running through the crowd holding a cardboard cow over his body as it shot off fireworks and sparklers in every direction. Now, at this festival I knew what was coming and strategically selected my spot in the crowd, close enough for a video but right beside a large quantity of beer boxes which I could hide behind if the fireworks start coming at me. The vaca loca really is a crazy scene, a cow up in flames chasing the people while the rest of the audience ducks or hides as sparks come at them. Here is a video of the vaca loca from the recent El Cisne festivals:

After the Vaca Loca, comes the burning of the castle and the waterfall. Basically the castle starts from the bottom up shooting off flames and exploding until it gets to the top, sets off fireworks and triggers the waterfall, which then sets off sparks over the audience. Here´s another video!

In my most recent blog I wrote about a ridiculous incident on the bus where a mother held her around 5 year old boy up to the window so he could pee out the window of the moving bus. The other volunteer and I were outraged and in disbelief. Locals did not think twice about the obscenity of the incident. You see peeing in public here in Ecuador is widely accepted, and is just as common as a breast hanging out in public as the mother breastfeeds.

Some cases for evidence: just the other day I saw a mother take the diaper off of her baby girl so that she could squat naked and pee, right outside a restaurant on a main corner (which probably had a bathroom inside). I´ve heard of a grown women pulling up her skirt and peeing on a side street, of a boy peeing in the middle of a crowd of people at the bus check point (and of course pee trickling around everyone’s belongings), and of course the everyday pee scenes as you walk down the road, at least the men usually turn towards a wall to pee, while little boys will pee facing out to the road as if hitting someone would gain them a point .

Needless to say, peeing in public is more than widely accepted and common. It is one thing I will never get use to seeing or understand, I use to think well if women have to hold it until they find a restroom men should as well, although now that I have seen a girl popping a squat in public not even that holds true.

Recently we were traveling for the day to a town in the northern part of the providence, Zaruma. Zaruma is a small town set in the gorgeous mountains. It was once a mining town, which left a strong European influence on the residents. I always saw Zaruma as a more sophisticated, clean city, I guess y could say holding them to higher standards. As we were wondering through their cute central park, we stumbled upon this…

There it was, right there in the middle of this cute central park in this conservative Catholic town a prominent statue of a peeing boy. We joined the other visitors gathered around posing for pictures with the statue. The statue defiantly ranks as the most ridiculous statue I have seen in Ecuador, followed by the giant statue on the border crossing of a man exchanging money.

Now, when I saw the statue I had to wonder if it were there because the people of Zaruma are proud of the habit of public displays of peeing, or if they were making fun of other cities where this is a common scene. So, after some research at the tourist office it turns out some French people brought the statute and left it there and that´s why it´s there. I was really kind of hoping for an outrageous story to go along side an outrageous statue, although regardless of the story for how it got there, the peeing boy statue defiantly tells its own story about this all too common habit of public displays of peeing here.

The CIFA, just hearing that one word makes me cringe. The CIFA is the provincial bus here in El Oro. Hatred for the CIFA is wide spread whether you are a foreigner or an Ecuadorian. Just to give a visual… you are on the side of street waving down the bus, you jump onto the still moving bus, and are herded into the crowded aisle amongst way more people than the capacity of the bus (or stuck hanging out the doorway if it is really overly crowded), and you are swung around while hanging on to the top bar for dear life trying to forget the uncomfortable lack of personal space all the meanwhile your life is in the hands of a time-possessed, under qualified, care-free CIFA bus driver. That is the CIFA. Someone once described it as being like sheep herded onto a vehicle.

The CIFA makes any day trip to another close by city an adventure. Every once in a while when you do get lucky and get on a CIFA that actually has some seats open, you are left in shock wondering whether you really are on the CIFA.

To make the CIFA even better there are two check points between Huaquillas and Machala, so anytime we leave our site we have to face one of the checkpoints. At the customs checkpoint the CIFA becomes a panic zone to hide your contraband goods. Bags will be thrown from person to person as they are hidden in any spot possible. The other checkpoint is the immigration checkpoint, where typically everyone has to get off the bus to show your ID, only to then have to fight your way back onto the CIFA.

Today´s CIFA ride was one of those adventurous experiences. Just before getting onto the CIFA in Machala I realized I had a bug on my back inside my shirt, I tried to scratch my back and get whatever the bug was. It turns out it was a wasp which then stung me on the hand. Since I didn’t see the wasp and wasn’t sure if it was a wasp or bee that stung me I began to worry. I´m allergic to bees and if this was a bee that means in the middle of my CIFA ride the allergic reaction may hit, so to be safe I tried to find Benadryl at a pharmacy but no one understood what the heck I was talking about. So after 10 minutes I decided I´m still alive, no swollen tongue, time for the CIFA.

We were lucky and had two seats in the back of the bus. 15 minutes into the trip we notice the people around us laughing and looking at the lady sitting across the aisle from us. There she was holding her my guess 5 year old son up to the sliding window of the bus. The other volunteer looked at me and said ¨Is he peeing out the bus window?¨. We couldn’t believe what we were witnessing. A mother holding her 5 year old up high enough to stand facing out of the moving bus´ window in order to pee. Really? And no one else seemed to be bothered by this act. Now, it is a known cultural norm here for little boys to pee in any direction in any place outside on the street and for older men to pee on street corners although at that point with the decency to face in to the wall at least, but peeing outside the window of a moving bus is one I sure haven’t seen so far. So next to us we had the boy who peed out the window, and behind him in the last seat of the bus a serious-you-should-get-a-motel-room make out session going on, and then for the last 30 minutes of the bus ride the pee boy became nauseous and wanted to throw up so his mother tells him to just keep facing towards the aisle in case he feels the need to throw up (which means a direct aim at us…thankfully he didn’t get sick). The only thing our bus ride was missing was a mother nursing her baby with her boob hanging out for the entire bus´ viewing (usually a normal occurrence to see multiple breasts just there, hanging out there while on a bus).

I can envision it now, after two years in the Peace Corps I will have quite the list to put on my resume of certificates received and conferences attended. It will go something like this…

Conferences and Professional Certifications:

Bananito Amigo (¨A Little Banana Friend¨)- certified in over 50 ways to cook a banana

Titerero (¨Puppeteer¨)- Professionally certified in how to construct and maneuver puppets made of recycled goods and trained as a promoter to teach others to be a puppeteer

Grito de Juventud- Certified in using the radio equipment at the local radio station

Professional Hair Cutter- Although I haven’t officially gotten my certificate yet, I´ll have it one day. I now have three haircuts worth of experience cutting really curly fros, using a broken hand held mirror and scissors from a medical kit.

This past week I attended a very intense two hour a day, five days of the week Puppeteer course. Yes, a puppeteer course, not just to be certified in the construction and maneurving of a puppet, but all to be certified as a promoter to teach others the same. I too thought this course sounded ridicouls when I decided to go. But my logic was this is going to be a rough week with my other projects and I need something to make me laugh, so what better way than to be a kid again for two hours a day every afternoon.

Day one- Ian and I show up to our puppets course, and it is just us, the teacher, and one of our AREvista youth. Hmm, not looking so good. Then, more kids showed up. 30 minutes after the original time the class was started doing some activities of how to properly talk using a puppet. As we stood in the circle towering over the children, using our hands to say tongue twisters, I think we both felt like this was going to be a little too much for us. We were the oldest participants over… 10 years old probably. But then our comfort level was greatly improved when a group of teachers showed up for the course and we weren’t the only adults.

Technique learned for the day: When using your hands to make the puppet talk, you should have your hand in the form of the mouth of an alligator, when you are saying a vowel you have to open the mouth wide and when you are saying an consonant shut the mouth, that way the puppet looks like it is saying what you are saying. I didn’t quite past the final test, but let’s blame that on the tongue twister being in Spanish not on my lack of coordination.

Day Two: Today’s class was focused on constructing the puppets. The whole idea of the puppet course was to teach people how to use garbage for the arts. So every puppet had to be made from recycled goods, things in your house that no longer are useful, and any type of garbage you can find. Since Ian and I are the only ones that brought in recycled goods, the day’s activity was to go out in our groups walk up and down the streets and find garbage… not a hard task here in Ecuador considering the garbage is everywhere on the streets. Needless to say we found a great amount of useable garbage.

Day Three: Trained in creating the perfect masterpiece of a puppet out of anything possible- cans, bottles, bags, broken plastic bowl, buttons, soda tops, etc.

Day Four: How to make your puppet come alive. As our teacher said ´once that puppet is in your hand you are no longer you, you are the puppet!´ Yes, I laughed to myself when I heard that, but tried to get into it for the sake of the course. So next task, give my puppet a spirit, a name, and a life story. My group was going to act out the story of the turtle and the hare and I was playing the part of a butterfly that oversees the race between the turtle and the hare (this is the story where the phrase ‘slow and steady wins the race´ comes from).

Floppy la Mariposa (Floppy the butterfly) was my masterpiece of a puppet made from a bottle, old straws, some paper, and a throwing out birthday present bag. Floppy had wings that didn’t flop and two different color eyes, making it a little more special. After a day of practicing using floppy, not only did I feel a little crazy for having just walked around a room for thirty minutes talking to myself as if I were a puppet, and my arm was tired from making it fly, my puppet was complete and ready for its big show.

Day five: Show day! Was time to show off all those puppeteer skills I´d just acquired. The show went.. well, as expected and in the end of it all I know have floppy la mariposa sitting on my bookshelf at home and another certificate to put on the wall soon, certified in being and teaching others to be a puppeteer!

Well America´s birthday was coming up, and what better way to celebrate it than with a group of volunteers in a small expat town.

We went to Vilcabamba, a small town outside Loja that has become somewhat overrun by foreigners but is still really cute and was a great get away, kinda felt like I was in Saint Augustine, Florida. The town is now famous for having been named home to one of the oldest living populations in the world. People from this town often live well over 100 years, some as old as 135 years old. Although I don’t really believe in the ¨fountain of youth¨- type superstitions of longevity, I will say just spending three days in this valley town I did feel (and probably looked) so much cleaner and refreshed. Granted that could just be because for three days I was not covered in dust and sweat but let’s stick with the claim, it’s the water there.

We stayed at this great hostal and filled our fourth of July weekend with swimming in the pool (although in the cold sierra weather we lasted only 5 minutes), steaming hot showers that make any bus ride worth the trek, bon fires, watermelon (that made a long 6 hour trip along my side on two buses), smores, ping pong, American board games, boxed wine but made classy in real glass wine glasses, and of course laying in hammocks with the mountain view.

And of course no get-away is complete without some adventures. When we got there on Saturday we went horseback riding around the valley. The guide had the rustic cow boy look pulled off head to toe. We broke up into two groups, the walking group and the trotting group. Although our horses didn’t really trot…they sprinted until they finally made it home again.

On Sunday, we did a great hike called Mandango Loop, it´s one of the higher peaks around Vilcabamba and has great 360 views of the area. The hike and ciews were great, although I freaked myself off on the long ridgeline that screamed death trap, and I willing crawled down a large part of that part on my butt. I think the guide for the hike has to be among the best I´ve read in Ecuador, recently at least, here is the official version…

Overview: After a steep ascent, you arrive at the first and second cross offering 360 views of the valley and area. After catching your breath, your continue along the ridgeline sometimes as narrow as 2ft. Be careful here, you don’t want to lose your balance. To come down from the ridgeline, you have to climb a fence, brave barking dogs, and get to the rock quarry.

Precautions: This hike should not be done if it is rainy or windy. If you feel nervous or already scared after the hike to the second cross, its best to turn back and not finish the loop (side note, this is because on both sides of that 2 ft wide ridge there is a like 3000ft drop, aka death zone). If a dog starts barking at you pick up a rock or at least pretend to and they will usually leave you alone. Take care when passing farm animals by leaving plenty of space between you and them (just in case we were thinking of touching that donkey or bull on the path).

Trail Description: Begins on main highway and to access the trail you must pay a fee of $1.50 (or be like us and climb over the barb wire fence whatever floats your boat). The path up to the first cross is steep but easy to find. From there follow the ridge towards the foot of the mountain and the path at the right side. The path is narrow and along the cliff, be careful. Follow ridgeline, until you see the roof of the farmhouse and hear a barking dog. Climb over or under barb wire fence towards the abandoned house. From there walk downhill, if you don’t find a path go back towards abandoned house and try again.

I think it´s fare to say that Ecuadorian guides and directions are one of a kind.

After one year of working in El Barrio El Cisne with a small group of mothers, I was able to see a real impact I´d made on them first hand today.

As I climbed up the hill to the little store in the community, I saw the group of 5 mothers who are in my small business class sitting on the tree stump-benches waiting for me. As I went around shaking hands and saying buenas tardes to each mother, one mother goes ¨wow, sarita, way to be late.¨ I looked down at my watch, it was 5:01…. I was a full minute late. I couldn’t believe it. One year ago when I began doing weekly workshops in El Cisne I was lucky if one person showed up. I´d have to go door to door announcing the workshop and then tell them to come at 4pm so that by 5 pm maybe they would be showing up… of course on good Ecuadorian timely fashion. Now, one year later the mothers actually show up before the workshop begins and I don’t even have to go around and announce the activity, they actually remember for a whole week what day I´ll be there. It didn’t occur to me as anything out of the ordinary when it happened today, but now looking back, I´m kinda shocked. I mean that really is a huge change, I may be making a difference in the concept of time for these mothers if nothing else. I don’t know how many times I´ve told them in the USA if you are 10 minutes early you are technically right on time, and now they actually show up early! The funny part is I´ve started taken on more of the Ecuadorian concept of time, and well would normally come late to my own workshop knowing everyone else will be late, but for the first time in my Peace Corps service I´m on American time and so are the Ecuadorian mothers!! (Note on Ecuadorian time… the most popular phrase around is ya mismo, it means something like ¨almost right now¨… meaning anything from in 5 minutes to 2 hrs from now or maybe even tomorrow. Typically you have to plan any activity at least one hour before you plan on really starting to give that lead way as well.)

Today I had a great workshop with them. All the mothers in this class are members of the community bank in El Cisne, and I really wanted to get them thinking about income generation activities instead of just using the loans from the community bank to pay off more debt they can invest it in a simple activity, like selling tamales or a handicraft, and make some additional income. We´ve now had 4 workshops and they´ve learned how to do a market study, develop a ¨business plan,¨ distinguish yourself from competitors, and today accounting. And boy is accounting hard to teach in Spanish, trying to explain how to calculate interest, how to determine your profit, etc. is quite the task. I had the mothers divide up into three groups and each group was giving a mock business with some financial statements easily written out. They then had to make a simple bookkeeping list of the sales versus the expenses to figure out the net income. It was really confusing for each of them, but after going over it 6 times and really confusing myself and my Spanish in the process, we finally got there. Then, I threw a real curb ball at them. I gave each mom one of the accounting sheets but this time broken down for their personal finances, the homework for the week… they now have to figure out their monthly incomes and expenses. Just about every mother assured me that they would be in the negative range, since they spend more than they make. I think that can be said with most Ecuadorian households though. Everyone lives on small credit since expenses almost always outweigh the low incomes, and your monthly income may not even be stable since whether or not you get paid on time can be so flaky. Needless to say, back in business school I always wondered how I would one day be able to use all those formulas, math equations, and concepts, I´ve finally found a use! Only I put everything into the context of selling those tomales (like a corn based cake sold on the street) you´ve worked so hard to make, how you can make your tomales different than your competitors tomales, how can you lower the cost of your ingredients to make a better profit, how you can keep track of what you spend and make to know if you are profitable, how to have good customer service and hence gain over those clients in other communities, etc.

As my 23rd birthday slowly approached I tried my hardest to make sure no one would know, dreading the idea of celebrating more holidays abroad. However, my newspaper youth group somehow found out and it turned out to be a great surprise and a great birthday to remember. Let´s just say no matter how old you turn you can always be a kid at heart.

I never would have expected the youth to plan a surprise birthday party for me. It was definitely a complete shock. After our Sunday youth radio show I was walking with some of the youth and the youth were in awkward silence trying to signal something to each other without me catching on. My suspicion caught on. Then one of the youth finally broke, and said ¨ok I don’t know how to lie to get you to go to Ian´s house, so we are throwing you a surprise party lets go there and act surprised, act so surprised that you could like fake fainting.¨ I didn’t faint, but I was definitely surprised and the best part is my first ever surprise birthday party was planned by my 10-15 year old youth group members, really cute. They´d planned it at Ian´s place and had decorated the place with confetti and balloons, Ian made a cookie cake and one of the youth brought a vanilla cake.

It´s funny cause sometimes working with youth here can drive you crazy, sometimes they are just all over the place and no matter what you do they just won´t come through with their parts. But when it comes to something like this they actually planned, coordinated, communicated between themselves¸ all things we try so hard to get them to do for the newspaper. It just takes a party to get those skills to shine.

The party tuned out great and it was a wonderful birthday. And I got a really cute picture frame that I´m going to put an AREvista group photo in and a scented candle. For a while we had some awkward silence, so I decided time to pull out those famous youth and family´s volunteer dinamíca games! Ian and I grabbed a broom put on some beach boy music and taught the kids how to do the limbo. I will say there was a major height advantage, those little kids could do it some much easier than Ian and I who fell by the third round each time. Then, we played hot potato but with the balloons. The rule was if you got stuck with the balloon you had to then pop it without using your hands. The kids had a blast.

When it came time for cake as I was going to blow out the candles, the morditas chants started. I knew where this was going. I remember quite vividly from birthdays in Mexico that the birthday person has to literally take a bite out of their cake before they can start cutting it, only as they go to take that little bite of the cake someone pushed their head into it. I tried to stick to my ¨I refuse to morder, bite, my cake cause that´ll ruin it¨ but the kids wouldn’t hear it. So I finally gave in and leaned in to take that bite, knowing my fate was doomed, I was soon to land up with my face in that cake. And did they get me. Three hands soon swooped in to push my face into the cake and let’s just say I was still blowing my nose to get cake out of my nostrils an hour later. Today not only marks one year older, but also one year since I left for Miami pre-staging for the Peace Corps, can´t believe a year has gone by, time really does fly.

Quote from Motorcycle Diaries that I just watched (by the way if you haven’t watched it you should)

Let the world change you, and you can change the world./ Deja que el mundo te cambie y tu podras cambiar el mundo.

Every morning from 7 am until 8 am I tune into the local radio station here in my site. When I first got here I never tuned in, but lucky for me my neighbors on every side of my apartment did so I still got to hear everything. Now, I´ve found myself to be a morning new radio show addict as well. There is nothing like waking up to Don Telmo, the radio broadcaster here, talk about the local football team, whose birthday it is today, and of course hear the many complaints called in for the mayor as Don Telmo patiently listens and then changes the topic on them. And of course it is the best clock around as you’re getting ready for work since the time is announced every 5 to 10 minutes maximum.

Today´s morning show especially caught my attention. I had to actually sit and listen to make sure I was hearing all this correctly.

Apparently there is a new campaign to help people with disabilities in our providence, they are using a model from Cuba and sending three doctors to Cuba to receive training in treating people with disabilities. It is evident that there are plenty of cases of disabilities (I mean from working in schools I can say way too many have what I would call attention deficit disorder but I´m no psychologist) but unfortunately there are no special programs, treatments, help, anything really for this group. And although you can see the cases if you walk around in the different communities, the local government apparently has no track of how many cases exist.

So this morning’s radio show aimed to promote the new campaign to help people with disabilities. It started with a long spiel about how this sector of the population needs to receive government assistance and special care along with community interventions. Sounds like a great idea and the passion transferred on the radio was empowering.

Now, the daunting task is how do they find all these people in our providence with a disability in order to begin their work. Now, call me crazy but I would say if there is no current tracking the best way would be to use these means of communication, like the radio, to tell people that If you have a family member or know someone with a disability to please come register them at the social workers office in the municipio, that´s like a city hall in the US. Then from that they could go visit those homes and give the necessary attention.

But the director of the campaign had a different take on this. So on the radio they informed everyone in Arenillas that if you have someone in your household with a disability to please put a whit flag in a high visible area outside your house, and if your don’t have a white flag you can put a white piece of cloth or a white tee-shirt. Then the red cross workers are going to drive around in every community, supposedly on every street (even though many are not accessible by car… hmm), in every part of the providence (probably about the size of the panhandle of Florida) and look for those white flags. When they see a white flag they’ll come into your house to investigate the case and give the necessary assistance. So as the radio said today put up those white flags or shirts in a place clear and high if you know someone with a disability. Call me crazy but that seems like a daunting task to find and assist these people. Granted I believe this is coming from the same group that held a disability assistance day at the city hall, and offered diagnostics and free medicines. Probably about an hour into their day they realized a big mistake…they put the doctors on the second floor of the city hall… you can’t treat patients in wheelchairs on the second story when that would require climbing stairs….

I was walking through a community this afternoon and I did see a white wash cloth and a white tee-shirt outside of two houses… but I’m not sure if they were laid out to dry or if that is a signal that someone with a disability lives in the house…

picture caption: i did find one clearly marked house, she really has a white flag!

Contraband… it´s hidden in the bus seats, in the local restaurant by the bus stop, in your friends´ houses, in random cars, one could say it is everywhere. That is one aspect of living near the border, there is a high dependency on contraband. Clothing, shoes, and basic goods are cheaper on the Peruvian side of the border, so most business owners have women who will cross over and get the goods back to the store. Although the military and the police both have check points set up along the highway in attempts to control the trafficking, there really is little that can be done. The truth is people will always find a way to get their products across the border and into their stores, and the officials really can´t crack down on the issue too much because the entire economy of the southern border basically depends on this income.

When you leave Huaquillas, the border town anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes from us depending on how many times the bus stops, you have no choice but to face contraband first hand. Imagine the scenario… the CIFA public bus pulls up there are about 30 people pushing with big black bags of illegal goods to get on the bus, all the while the 70 or more people that are crammed on the bus are trying to squeeze their way out. The fight is not just to get on or off the bus, it is a battle for the seats. You see almost every seat is slit in the fabric and as soon as people get on the bus, they start digging through those big black bags, stuffing pants into the seats sticking shoes between the seats, and distributing the rest of their products to innocent passengers with the famous, ¨no sea malita, ayudame con esto¨… ¨don’t be a little bad person, hold onto this for me. ¨

About 10 minutes outside of the town on the way back to Arenillas, there is a military customs checkpoint. Sometimes they make everyone get off the bus so they can search for illegal goods, but the rule on buses is if you are old, pregnant, or have a baby you don’t have to get off.

Now you would think the police and the military would catch on, or if they have already maybe act on this, but for this very rule you will never see a man smuggling the goods. There will always be a group of women each with a little baby on their lap hiding the goods. And sure enough just about everything will make it through this point. As people get back on the bus, bags start getting passed around to the rightful owner and goods and coming out of every space imaginable.

Back here in Arenillas, it is like the hub for contraband. And why shouldn’t it. If people need a place to store their bags and you have a house or restaurant on the main road it makes for a great side business. I once left for an early morning bus to Guayaquil at 5 am. I´d never seen Arenillas at 5 am in the morning. As I left my house that morning, what I ended up seeing was contraband being dragged out of houses all along the main road, waiting for the next move.

Usually the checkpoints and system is easy to crack so it´s not hard to get your products back, the other day though we came across an extremely odd checkpoint. We were heading back from Huaquillas, when the police stopped the bus at the gas station. Everyone (except the exceptions) had to get off the bus. But instead of checking bags or ids, they just took a digital picture of each person and then patted down the men. We asked the office when we got back why they would be doing something like that and apparently they were looking for weapons. How the photos play into that I have no idea… and good thing is if you want to smuggle weapons just give it to a girl because they’ll never know. And if you do get caught with any contraband, just be sure to have some extra money ready for a little ¨tip.¨

Contraband, on the one hand you may try to control it on the other we all benefit from it so no one really wants to do that.

Yesterday I ventured into the Arenillas soccer stadium for the second time in my eight months here. As pathetic as it is, I´ve always had this little… or maybe big… fear of entering that stadium. I just imagined all the men who sit on the street drinking reunited in those walls for every soccer match. But to my surprise, it really is a family outing and you run into just about everyone you know among the crowd. Of course you have those occasional drunk men, but what I´ve found to be the secret to going to game and being able to fully enjoy it is, sit between Don Telmo, the local radio broadcaster and Ian. In front of the youth from our magazine project and behind a family with babies. In this setup any fears are washed away.

My goal is to become a soccer expert in time for the World Cup, even though Ecuador won´t be in it, we know that for every game the town will be dead as everyone gathers around the tv watching with intensity. I can´t say I´ve mastered the expert thing yet, but I´m at least able to follow who has the ball now.

For me the most entertaining part of soccer so far is seeing these grown men act like drama queens, as they roll on the ground and drag out their fall until someone pays attention. Scenario: player trips and falls, rolls on ground for a good minute as the game goes on without him, finally ref will give him attention, the firefighters come onto the field and usually carry player off on a stretcher, a trainer will then spray some magic liquid on the leg, and the player bounces up and is back in the game, or at times is carried off in the stretcher and the second they put him on the ground without receiving any real medical attention roles over, gets up, and is back on the field. To be a good soccer player you must have this over exaggeration skill mastered.

The local team, Condor, has had a pretty good season and are close to qualifying to continue in the selection. Saturday´s game could be considered a make or break it for the team, had they won it would have been almost a shew in for the selection.

What started as a great game in our favor soon ended with an up rise from the crowd. In the second half of the game, it all went downhill when the referee called a penalty kick in our favor, which they say to be a guaranteed goal. However a minute later after much debate it was decided that it was not a penalty kick and we just got possession instead, but had we gotten that kick there is a high possibility we could have tied the game. The up rise against the referees started with this and only progressed when a player from the visiting team was tripped, and our player was giving a red card, means he is kicked out for this game and the next game. Even though afterwards we were told by some fans that is was fairly called they just weren’t happy that it happened. Needless to say a player did have to hold back his own coach from the referee. At the end of the game, as the other team ran off the field celebrating, police also had to run on the field, to protect the referees who were now surrounded by the entire condor team and coach screaming. Angry fans pushing towards the gate of the field and throwing plastic bottles. Keeping in mind our no pasa nada mentality we watched from the top of the stands this great entertainment breaking out in front of us, took some photos, and then decided we better sneak out the back side of the stadium before the winning team trys to get out, because that is when things may get ugly. It was a sad day for Arenillas fans, although the up rise did make for great entertainment, although now we have the big decision ahead of us if Condor should get the front page of the next magazine the youth produce, or if this upset knocks them to the back...the big debate to come...

Just your typical day in the office… lots of women gathered around looking at the local clothing magazines, interns searching the internet, one or two dedicated employees frustrated and trying to actually get some paperwork done, and of course lots of gossip.

Today´s conversation started with lets plan our class tomorrow because we have to teach in the schools about the environment. Our planning lasted maybe 5 minutes when we started to get a little off topic.

This topic was worth the distraction though. I learned today about two great cures for Ecuadorian superstitions.

First, there is ¨chucaqui.¨ I believe it is something around these lines, you are with a group of people, and something happens to make you so embarrassed that you turn red and your stomach starts to hurt later on. Kinda sounds like the idea of thinking about something so much that you make yourself sick to your stomach or have butterflys..? But no worries, there is a cure… and no it is not time. You should massage your stomach with laundry soap, and this will get rid of the chucaqui, and your upset stomach.

Second, people can have an ¨ojeada.¨ This is kinda like the idea of an evil eye or a really bad energy about them. And apparently if a person is like this they can then pass it to other people by just being around them, and in turn that person will get sick. Now the good news is that there is a cure for this evil eye, bad energy. So you take an egg, can be cooked or raw, and you rub it all over the person that now has this bad energy. Next you put that egg in a glass cup that is half full with water, if you´ve captured this bad energy the water will bubble, and the more bubbles that come up the more energy there was. But only certain people have the skill to work the egg correctly… I´m still on the hunt for someone here that knows how.

15 years old…it is the big landmark for an Ecuadorian girl. As is common in many Latin cultures, girls have a large birthday celebration called a Quincenera in honor of their 15th birthday.

This year I should be experiencing my share of Quinceneras as many of the AREvista youth are getting close to this milestone.

The first Quincenera was about a week ago for one of the most active members of our youth group. It was the talk of the month between all the girls in the group, what colors she was choosing, when she was going over to Agua Verdes (the Peru side of the border with cheaper clothes) to get her dress, what they were going to wear to the event, who they were going to go with, and all the details of high school gossip… all while we were really trying to plan for our meeting with the mayor but you know minds were elsewhere.

Quienceneras are more than a regular birthday party, they are extravagant all night festivals, in which parents and family members work for weeks to pull it off. And they can be quite expensive as well, since it´s all about impression.

At this Quincenera, the theme of the night was fusion pink. Everything was pink from the dress to the entrance sign to the ribbon wrapped around the plastic glasses. It is actually pretty incredible what they can pull off with homemade décor, much more talent that I will ever have with these materials.

So leading up to the party, I was told probably.. I don’t know 10 times, now remember be there at 8 pm en punto! (on the dot!) But after living here for 8 months I know better. If someone tells me a birthday party will start at 8 that means maybe if they are really running on time it should start around 10 pm maybe 10:30. So to show up in good fashion I got there at 9:45 thinking I would then cut my awkward wait time in half, as everyone else that missed the don’t show up on time memo also sits around in a silent circle. But even showing up almost 2 hours late, I was still early, you have to love that.

Around 10 pm the grand entrance was made. There´s a pretty established tradition for a quincenera, first you have the flower girl and a girl carrying a pair of heels enter, followed by the parents. Then the quincenera, birthday girl, enters with her chaperone for the night, usually a brother or close relative. She makes her entrance and sits in the front of the room facing all her family and friends. The parents then remove her slippers and each replace them with a pair of heels. Then another relative comes up and puts makeup on the birthday girl. This signifies leaving behind being a girl and becoming a young women, although really these girls have been wearing makeup and heels for many years now, but it’s the idea at least.

After the representation of becoming a young women, the birthday girl makes a speech thanking her parents and the first dances start. Followed by an all night dance party, in which about ¼ of the invitees may dance, while the rest still sit in the awkward circle watching. Later on the best part came when the borther was blind folded and the best friends of the birthdaygirl had to line up in the center of the room. The brother then had to remove a guarder from his sister`s leg, like one of those you have at a wedding, and move it to the thigh of one of the friends, repeat this for each of the 6 guarders on the birthday girl`s leg, all while being blindfolded and the crowd cheered on sube sube, ¨higher higher. ¨That is a Quincenera...the elaborate 15th birthday marking the beginning of being a young women. Needless to say I was in that awkward circle watching group, but I can know say I`ve been to my first Quincenera here and I`m sure there will be more to come!

One thing you have to love about Ecuadorian culture is the certificates. If you are going to have a workshop and you really want people to come, tell them you will make them a certificate and they will be there. If you are inviting a local to a conference and you want to assure that ya mismo attendance, tell them a certificate will be given at the end, and they will be there on that bus with you.

When you apply for any professional job here you have to present your folder, carpeta, and the most important part of that is how many certificates you´ve accumulated. It doesn’t actually matter who gave the certificate or what it is in, it´s just the fact that you are ¨certified.¨

I am proud to say I have a new certificate to add to my resume. I am officially certified by the local provincial government in gourmet banana cooking. Yup, I passed a strenuous three day gastronomy course in the 100s of ways you can cook a banana. I even have to promote the uses of banana in the community.

You may wonder how many thing you can really make with a banana, well according to this certificate the possibilities are endless. I can teach at least a 100 recipes, everything from cocktails to cakes to ice cream to main dishes.

The banana just in case you´re wondering has vitamins b1, b6, c, e, iron, copper, iodine, sodium, and potassium. It is also proven to be the easy fruit to digest, just in case you´re ever sick or for kids. And you don’t even have to wait until the banana is mature (yellow banana), you can do lots with the green ones too. El Oro (where my site is) is called the banana capital of the world so lots of chances to eat bananas and plantains.

Here are some recipes to try out:

Banana Cocktail

1 tsp of vanilla essence, 1 jar of condensed milk, 1 yellow banana, 2 cups of ice, 1 glass of rum, 2 naranjillas o 1 glass of passionfruit juice

Put everything in the blender and enjoy!

Banana Ice Cream

1 cup of orange juice (freshly squeezed), 3 yellow bananas, 1 tbsp of sugar, 1 pinch of salt, 1 cup of milk cream

Blend for one minute all the ingredients except milk cream. Put milk cream in a pot and beat until it stiffs. Mix the milk cream with other ingredients. Put the mixture in an iron pot and cover it with aluminum paper and freeze it.

Sauté Bananas

3 tbsp of butter and 4 yellow bananas

Cut the bananas right by the middle. Put them on a pan with butter at medium heat. Fry until they are soft and leave on turned off burner rotating until lightly toasted. Sprinkle salt and serve.

Chocolate covered Bananas (best alternative to ice cream you will ever find!)

Yellow bananas, ice cream wood sticks, cocoa powder, and vegetal butter

Cut bananas in half and Put bananas in fridge for one day. Dissolve cocoa with butter by steaming it and stir from time to time. Get bananas out of fridge and cover with the chocolate. Put in freezer for a while.

Banana Meatballs (I know not Italian, but hey it really is good)

3 green bananas, 1 egg, achiote, salt, any spices you want to add, cooking oil, and ground beef, shrimp, tuna can, or chicken.

Fry the bananas, add achiote, then beat the egg, salt and spices and finally the meat or seafood you are adding. Make into small ball shapes like meatballs, and fry with enough oil on a large pan. Makes 30 meatballs.

Green Banana Patacones

5 green bananas, 1 cup of grated cheese

Cut bananas vertically, like into half dollar size. Fry the bananas in frying pan, rotating until lightly fried. Remove and use the bottle of a glass bottle or something in your kitchen, to small them a little. Put a little cheese in the middle part and serve hot. Really good!

Jelley

Once you know how easy they are to make, you´ll never want to buy them in the store again.

The other volunteer in my site and I played around with some jelly making the other weekend. I just made some new jellies this weekend, and I think I´m perfecting this new skill, it´s time for a certificate in jelly making.

Basically you can make the jelly with any fruit you want, but if it is not an acidy fruit you may need to add a drop of lime juice or passion fruit juice.

The first one we tried out was pineapple with bananas. You cut one pineapple and one banana into really small pieces and you can lightly blend it, you don’t want it to be like soup, but just a little better chopped. Put these fruits in a pot with a little sugar and put on low heat. Let cook stirring continuously for about 20-30 minutes. You want to cook it until all the natural water from the fruit has absorbed. Then let it sit until it cooks and package.

The other jelly we´ve tried out is mangos with strawberry. Cut two mangos and four strawberries into small pieces, or lightly blend to make it into small pieces. And put a drop of an acidy fruit, like passion fruit or lime juice, and sugar. Stir in a pot for 30 minutes or until water is absorbed. And you know have homemade jelly!

Just got back from a tech exchange to one of my friends sites up on the coast…. It´s amazing the things you learn in the peace corps, jack of all trades doesn’t even describe it.

The other volunteer lives in Santa Elena in a really great little fisherman´s town right on the beach. Not gonna lie, kinda jealous I saw the most amazing sunset I’ve seen in Ecuador right from the bed room window of the apartment.

You never know what you are getting yourself into when your Peace Corps volunteers… and I can definitely say I never imagined learning what I learned on that trip.

One of the microenterprises of the youth in the site is to raise and sell chickens. Just happened to be my friends day to care for the chickens when I was there. Chicken duty starts at 6 am, then you have to give them food and water in the middle of the day, then again at night and once the sun goes down you close all the tarps around the barn. We get to the chickens bright and early, and they have an order placed to sell 12 chickens. They have a tricicleta, like a bike but the front is a big bin to put things, and who would of though you can stuff 12 live chickens into that. My friend was a pro at this, she grabbed the chickens and had them in the bin like it was nothing. I on the other hand, would scream, get scared, almost drop the chicken, grab it by the wrong part so its wings would be going crazy, struggle to drop it into the bin, I didn’t quite master my chicken carrying skills. But we got the chickens loaded up and stuffed into the front of that bicycle and off we were to sell chickens. Once you are actually selling them you hang a weight from a string, and then put three chickens into a bag and hang that bag from the weight, then you´ll know how many pounds of chickens you´re selling. It was quite the site… two gringas going through town still in their PJs, on a bicycle with a bunch of chickens, getting stuck in the occasional mud and pot holes, let’s just say we got lots of looks. But mission complete, chickens sold, feed, giving water, and closed for the night.

That weekend a group of kids living with HIV or affected by HIV, came to visit my friend´s site also, they were doing a CARE interexchange with her youth. It turned out great. I had started to kind of despise kids after trying to run a summer camp for 40 kids in my site, but after spending the weekend with these kids I realized not all kids are little diablitos or malcriados (little devils or badly created, as they call them here), just the ones in my site are this way. These kids came from really rough family situations and parts of Guayaquil, but they were some of the coolest kids I´ve met here so far. Of course, they had their malcriado little boys in this group too. But the cool thing is they called everyone brother or sister, and they all looked out for each other. Like when we did activities or were out on the beach, the older youth were looking out for the younger ones and vice versa. Or when we were out swimming I was paying attention to the wave coming, and a little 8 year old grabbed my nose and pushed me under the wave, so I wouldn’t take in water or get hit by the wave.

I also saw the best scavenger hunt ever, so the two youth groups were broken up into teams and had to find 5 things, a pair of blue pants, a crab, salt water, a red flower, and a puppy. I couldn’t imagine how they were going to find these things, I think if I told kids in my site this they would just look at me like I was crazy and not move. These kids though were awesome, next thing you know there are little boys sitting in chairs, pantless holding shirts over themselves since their team members took their blue pants, there are live crabs crawling in the room, somehow they really did find 5 new born little puppies and got the owner to let them borrow them.

One Sunday the youth from AREvista, the youth newspaper were invited by the radio channel of Arenillas to help in a fundraiser for a community member with cancer. A great cause… and I was excited when a group of 4 girls told me that they´d be at my house by 7:30 in the morning to go with me. Little did I know a fundraiser could be a hazardous accident waiting to happen. It started out like your typical fundraiser in the US, youth on the side of the street with bowls collecting money…except of course they have a mariachi band playing music outside the market on a little stage. After a couple hours of collecting money, the coordinator decided they needed to put more pressure on these vehicles passing by. Keep in mind this is a busy Sunday market and the main street of Arenillas. So, he has one of my youth stand on one side of the road and one on the other, next thing I know they are holding up a rope across the road. Yes… we created a road block to raise money for cancer. If you want to pass you have to at least search your pockets for money and attempt to make a donation. Money was rolling in now!

Then came a bus, the crazy infamous CIFA. The youth decided they were going to road block the CIFA in hopes that the driver would give money. Now you would think if a bus was coming towards you, and you were holding a rope wrapped around your hands across the street, that you would lower that rope or let it go... Guess again. There was a really bad failed attempt to blockade a bus. Next thing I knew one of the youth was being swept away by the wrist. The coordinator whistled to the driver to stop the bus so he could untie the rope. Luckily, she just had minor rope burn, no pasa nada… she even picked up the rope and kept blocking vehicles for a couple more hours.

So next time your planning a fundraiser and cars are zooming by without donations…. Just think a road block rolls in the money… and remember not to try to block a bus or a fast moving vehicle coming your way.

Last month a group of the volunteers in the southern part of the country from my omnibus had reconnect, it’s the 6 month in reunion to present your projects and community diagnostic… for those that actually had one the rest of us just BSed 15 minutes in Spanish. Best part though is it was in Cuenca. Cuenca is to Ecuador what Miami is to Florida, it is a whole nother world. The people are different, the food international, they don’t liter they even recycle, It has beautiful Spanish architecture, it´s not polluted, and best of all there is a park with grass. You have no idea how excited I was to see grass, take off my shoes and pretend like I was in the quad back at the university. And this isn’t just a park with grass it is a park designated to speed walking and joggers, who would have thought. So Leanne and I got to go running each morning in the park before the conference, and nobody stared at us like we were the oddest things on earth running around in a circle… an idea that still bewilders people in my site when I go running.

After the conference, I procrastinated my bus long enough to come to the Super Tía. I hadn’t food shopped in a big store in three months, talk about overwhelming. I was in my glory… at least to see all the food… because then I reminded myself I´m on a Peace Corps budget. I did splurge though to buy eggplant and asparagus, and of course crunchy low fat jif peanut butter. You can only imagine how hard it was to sit on a 4 hour bus and not crack open that JIF peanut butter; but I made it home and had the best peanut butter banana sandwich dinner. I closed up the peanut butter knowing it would be my breakfast. The next morning I get back from my run and get ready to make that delicious peanut butter sandwich… only to find that somehow those pesty ants invaded my closed peanut butter. I sweat insects here are miraculous… worms find their way into brand new packages of oatmeal, ants create ant farms in your sealed tight containers over night, it’s a never ending battle. The sad part is my instinct was just to grab my spoon and scoop those ants out of my peanut butter, I got all the ones out I could see, and still ate my peanut butter sandwich breakfast. It was only afterwards that it dawned on me that never in my life would I be picking ants out of my peanut butter, continue to eat it, and not have that phase me as abnormal. Oh peace corps.

I should probably get something in my blog about what I do in my site too. Well, whoever said Peace Corps volunteers have lots of free time and chill in their hammocks, definitely had the wrong idea. Granted I´m sure there are volunteers that do that, but here in Arenillas things are always busy.

Ian and I started AREvista, the community newspaper of Arenillas. Arenillas is kind of the forgotten town in between the border town of Huaquillas and Machala, the province capital. They don’t have a local newspaper and the only thing about Arenillas in the providence papers tends to be negative about robberies or accidents. So we decided to start a monthly community paper, with 20 pages of positive local news, and sections on health, nutrition, sports, values, environment, conservation of natural resources community events, etc. There are about 25 kids actively participating in the group and almost every day we meet up in small groups or individually to work on different aspects of the paper. The kids have to write their own articles, do interviews, take photos, sell ads, design their column, and sell the papers, usually door to door in the communities. Each month we print 1,500 copies to sell for 35 cents each, and all of the sales money is reinvested into the microenterprise of the youth so that they can continue each month with a new edition. It has turned into a big project and the community has been very supportive. The youth are learning journalism, business, and computer skills and you can actually see youth empowerment at work. The first edition we realized we invited the parents and youth to Ian´s place (which turns into our office when we put the AREvista office now open sign outside) for the inauguration of the paper… and really to fold all 1,500 copied bc we can’t afford the $45 extra to have it folded at the print shop. But one of the youth told us that her parents didn’t support her participation in the group and that her dad told her she is wasting her time participating bc it is not possible for a group of youth to publish a newspaper. When she had the first copy in her hand and handed it to her dad, you could see the pride in her face that she proved him wrong and showed what they are capable of. We just had our third edition come out and now we are working on setting up a summer camp (we are on summer vacation right now). The camp will be a hands on workshop in computer skills, journalism, and photography.

Besides the paper, I taught 1st through 5th grade, a different class each day about protecting the environment. And I am still doing my sports programs and mother daughter health and exercise club. Now, we are also starting community banks. I helped start one last week and we have another one that will start soon. The community banks are a local system of savings and credits, based on the whole idea of micro financing. In the community bank in El Cisne, I´m working with 40 moms. Each week they put in 50cents and at the end of each month the bank will give out small loans to the members that want loans. Then they have one month to pay back the loan with 10% interest. The idea is that they will use the loans to take advantage of income generation activities, for example buying the ingredients or materials to make something to sell. At the end of the year the bank is liquidated and each member receives an equal portion of the savings and interest gained. There are a lot of community banks like this set up by peace corps volunteers and the communities here in Arenillas seem to really grab at the idea so we´ll see how it goes.

Another cool project going on is the Concejo Cantonal de Niños Niñas y Adolescentes, it´s the youth council of the kids and adolescents of Arenillas. The council puts together youth summits every month and the 10 youth leaders on the council serve as the voice of the youth of Arenillas to the local government. It´s great to see the youth voice idea taking grounds down here in Ecuador too.

Once we got back to my site, the girls headed up north to another beach town. I stayed in my site to celebrate with friends and their families here.

On the day before New Years we had another party with the moms from my community. But this time no potluck dinner. We just bought a case of beers and a cake to celebrate the new year together. It was funny to see these moms drinking. You could tell they don’t get out much or have opportunities to drink. Three small glasses of beer and these moms were falling over their musical stools. It was a site to see. Then we made a muneca. That’s the tradition in Ecuador. Each family makes an año Viejo muneca, an old year doll. We made a Michael Jackson doll to burn, and stuffed him with lots of paper and fireworks. I´m not gonna lie I loved burning Michael Jackson, he is ridiculously famous here and little 5 year olds still are imitating thriller.

On New Years I went to my friends family gathering. We spent all day eating, drinking, and dancing to salsa and meringue. I ate tripe relleno, it looks like sushi… but I knew better than that. The seaweed part of sushi was replaced by the cooked intestines of a pig. Then inside the wrap, there was rice mixed with dry pig blood. AND I wonder why I get sick.

At midnight, we burnt our ano Viejo. I actually like the tradition, even though it is horrible for the environment and contaminated the streets… and maybe a bit crazy. Basically you construct an object or a doll to burn with your family, and as it´s burning at midnight you are saying goodbye to the old year and putting everything that has happened bad behind you to be able to start your new year off fresh. We had a kickass ano Viejo. It was about the size of two real cars, we had a replica of the local bus the CIFA, which is a death trap waiting to happen. The CIFA is known for cramming people on the bus until you are literally hanging off the front and driving reculously. I´ve actually been on a CIFA that broke down for being overweight with too many people on it. So we had a CIFA and they a little red truck and three people, basically trying to recreate an accident that happened with the CIFA and then we wrote on the side of the bus messages about driving responsibly. We put like a 100 explosives in the ano viejos. It sounded like a war zone at midnight. There were fireworks being shot off in every direction from every house, dolls and objects up in flames on the street, and booming from all the explosives. I made a sangria that was a big hit. Then the next day one of the uncles gave me a homemade wine, some grapes he´d put in a bottle and left for three years, it was actually pretty good and it worked good for another sangria. Adios ano Viejo, ahora ano Nuevo!

The day before Christmas Eve I coordinated a Christmas party with the moms in the community I work in. I thought it would be cool to teach the idea of potluck dinners, here we called it the Olla Magica. We told the moms to come at 5 that Wednesday that way they would be there by 6, 6:30, you know Ecuadorian time. About 25 moms came each with a little dish to share and we played icebreakers, the limbo, hot potato but with balloons, musical stools, and it turned out to be a great night.

Unfortunately, the next morning I woke up horribly nauscious and the Pak town girls were on their ways to my site to celebrate Christmas. Horrible timing to get sick again, especially knowing that good wine and chesses were on their way from the other sites. So I tried to ignore it knowing it was Christmas.

You know you are Peace Corps volunteers when everyone is stoked at the idea of any food not including rice or potatoes. We also attacked the bagged ranch dressing dip from the US and veggies that Stephanie brought, kuscus (no idea how to spell that), beans, bread with real cheeses, and chicken. And best of all wine in a bottle. I was sick to stomach from the night before but couldn’t let being sick get in the way of xmas dinner. We realized afterwards though that we need some etquete classes before eating in the US again. When we went to buy the chicken in the market we had to hold our breath, make a run to the stand, and ask for that head, legs, feet, and heart to be cut off that sucker before putting it in a bag for us (and you wonder why I don’t buy meat here). Then the stove was so infested with ants that I couldn’t put it in my kitchen so I piled two chairs on top of each other and stuck a little grill above these, and wedged the stove on top of all three of these to connect it through my window, talk about ghetto. And we were tempted to use those forks and knives but it really is faster to eat with that spoon or your hands.

Dinner was great and we had a good Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, I spent the rest of that night outside on my bathroom floor puking up a worm. Turns out in that potluck dinner I had in the community, someone’s dish came with a special side of parasites. But on the bright side, who needs to ever worry about diets when you have stomach friends that help you out. I know gross thought. But it didn’t really phase me as that bad to be throwing up a worm. That morning we did our little Christmas exchange. I made stockings out of poster material for each of the girls and then Leanne drew a little tree that we hung on my wall. Later on Christmas day we headed to Peru to go to Mancora, a beach town there and spent a couple of days at the beach. Too bad I spent that whole time sick and tortured by not being able to eat the good seafood or drink at the beach, but I did get those worms taking care of after a week of sharing my stomach with them. It was great to see a beach after 6 months in site. And Mancora is a cute little surf town, lots of tourist, some places to go out, good international food that I couldn’t eat. We basically spent every second just burning in the sun and loved every minute of it. Funny thing is we found Peace Corps Peru volunteers. We were eating at a Mexican restaurant and we´d been told other Peru volunteers may be in Mancora, so in walk these rough looking young people and we all agreed they looked like volunteers. Not that we were ease dropping, but we happened to hear them talking about their sites, vacation days, counterparts, and so we knew they were volunteers. After dinner we ended up drinking some wine on the beach with the Peru volunteers, and let’s just say after hearing about their 2 yeah host family stays I was glad to be an Ecuador volunteer.

Travel in Peru is rough. They don’t really have reliable buses or any formal transportation at least not in the northern part. At the border we had to haggle a taxi to take us to Tumbes. In Tumbes we finally found a bus. Then to get back we took a cumbi, they are these vans jammed with like 20 people in each one and its basically like organized hitch hiking. You just stand on the road and a van stops to bring you to the next city. Then everyone gets out and the next van brings everyone to the next city. It was an experience to say the least.