I was doing so well at keeping up my blog for a week. And then I stopped. FAIL.

Life these days is a bit odd. I’m busy all the time but I really don’t feel like I am accomplishing much. Maybe it’s trying to keep up with the pace of living in a big city but yet having to manage the chaotic public transportation system. For example, to get to my office in the mornings I have two options: the city bus which weaves in and out of the 6 lane highway and slams on its brakes to catch each and every $0.25 customer OR the Metrovia which is a street tram that has set stops and its own lane making for efficient travel time but if you’re not packed into the Metrovia like sardines then you must’ve caught the wrong street car and are certainly not on the Metrovia. Every morning it’s a debate of whether I would prefer to elbow onto the tram to spend 20 minutes standing, analyzing the pores and hair follicles of a stranger or spend 30 minutes in a seat on ride that reminds me of when Dad tried to teach Rachel Cahill (formerly known as Koehnke) how to drive a stick-shift. Oh the choices.

Last weekend was a holiday weekend so Jordi and I decided to take advantage of the extra time and headed to some of the northern beaches of Ecuador. It was an eight hour bus ride each but well worth it to soak up some glorious sun rays and drink fresh coconut water poured straight from its shell. We both also participated in the race that is traveling around all the provinces of Ecuador to raise support and awareness for a nature reserve that is being destroyed by oil companies. We had a great time and it gave us a wonderful chance to meet new people and contacts.

Speaking of running, now that I am down to having only half of my toenails I have finally given in and decided to buy new running shoes. Easier sad then done. Apparently the only Ecuadorian sportswear chain here refuses to carry any shoes larger than a women’s size 9. Which is frustrating when you’re a 9.5 and can almost squeeze into the shoes but not quite. After numerous unsuccessful trips to different stores all over town (just think about how many uncomfortable bus rides that cost me) and hearing from fellow runners the weekend past that big sizes just don’t exist, I spent an absurd amount of money on some ugly men’s shoes. While they have proven effective in protecting my remaining toenails in turn they have become the source for humongous blisters. Toenails or blisters oh the choices.

I spent this past weekend in Cumanda and it was just such a good weekend. Maybe I really am assimilating to Ecuadorian culture for I never truly understood why a large majority of Ecuadorians prefer to escape to the small country towns for the weekends but now I am defiantly on their page. Spending weekends in Cumanda remind me of how much I really don’t enjoy living amongst the stress and grime of a metropolis. I spent the weekend visiting the family and catching up with friends, attending the fiestas of a local community and the fiesta of a friend’s birthday, preparing food and devouring food. Nothing is as good as a home cooked meal. Everything is better in Cumanda.

This week is an exciting week for my site mate Alice and me. We leave on Thursday for the Dominican Republic with some really close family friends to partake in their family reunion. It’s an all inclusive vacation package for 5 days and 4 nights at a 5 star resort in Punta Cana. I’ve never been on a vacation like this and am suuuper excited yet a little nervous. I hope I can escape from living in my mindset of needing to be cheap and feel the need to eat and drink everything I come into contact with merely because its free. Oh the choices…

Well my friends, I think I will leave it at that. Cross your fingers for me that Hurricane Irene doesn’t cause any problems and I promise to post an update from the trip soon after! Love.

Please forgive for the recent pause in updates. I was traveling all last week with work and was too busy to update. Let me tell you, it was a rough week; discovering new parts of Ecuador, spending a day meeting and checking up with volunteers, and returning each night to my $7 hostel on the beach. ROOOOUGH week. Would hate to have to suffer through that again...

Today I got a great letter in the mail. My mom does a fabulous job of keeping me updated on local news and monthly credit card statements by sending me weekly letters in the mail. Sometimes she'll even include a personalized post-note to say "hi". However today's letter included an INCREDIBLE full page hand written note from three fabulous cousins and one loving grandmother. Even though the letter was written to explain the absence of cookies being sent (they ate them all, shocking) their wittiness left me happier than a box of cookies (and guilt-free!) could ever do. You all have made my fridge, right next to my boyfriend. Ok not really my boyfriend but rather the super sexy latino who held the umbrella over my head while I got a FREE professional haircut the other day. Shall I touch on that story?

So last weekend (saturday) I was walking along the uber-touristy boardwalk (where about 80% of guayaquilenos spend their weekends) and noticed that a local hair salon was giving free haircuts and then remembered how badly i needed a haircut and how i much i loved the price of FREE. Apparently all I had to do was present a bottle of shampoo and they would give me a new "look" in exchange (they really do use the english word "look" but it sounds more like "luuook"). After emptying it out into numerous travel bottles, an old aloe vera bottle, and a reused salsa jar for it was recently purchased and returned the following day to the boardwalk with my almost empty shampoo bottle in hand. I wasn't sure if they were looking for full bottles, partial, or empties but there was no way I was going to turn in my practically full bottle of shampoo. Turns out they only wanted EMPTY bottles for a recycling project they were promoting (clarity must've gotten lost in translation) and dumped the rest of my shampoo into a plastic "to go" cup. They then add my name to the list, I'm third up, and am asked to wait.

Finally my turn comes, they wash my hair, give me a good scrub, and then set me in the main chair. The hairdresser presents himself, Marcelo, and tells me "Don't worry, I'm going to give you a super hot luuooook". So I sit, awkwardly staring up at the sexy teenager shielding me from the harsh sun with the umbrella meanwhile getting my head corrected to the forward position again while the crowd on the boardwalk gradually starts to build, gawking at me. I honestly can now say I now know how it feels to be a zoo animal. Being tall and white here obviously gets me a lot of stares and I'm used to walking into a room causing all conversations to stop and heads to turn to look at the awkwardness that just entered BUT this crowd was on a whole different level. Usually people understand that its rude to stare so when I catch them starring they'll nervously look away. This time however I put myself in the position where starring, gawking, admiring if you will, was completely acceptable. The crowd that formed to watch reached such a point that I had to clasp my eyes shut out of embarrassment. Shit, I'd take parading around in my swimsuit and heels over getting my haircut in public ANY DAY. But like Marcelo promised, I left with new friends (sadly no boyfriend despite my relentless stares and eye-battings) and a super hot luuooook. Free is free. Free haircut in exchange for free public entertainment. Winners all around.

Today I planned out my running schedule for the next 10 weeks. Its marathon time baby! Although I'm not really excited about the idea of running 16 miles in inner-city Guayaquil. I'll have to start getting clever with my long runs. I think a weekly trip to the beach might be my best option...Still looking for running partners if anyone is interested.

Welp thats about it for now...hope you all enjoyed and see you around for the next post. love.

Today's blog will provide you all with insight to the past few months of my running life...

So a while ago, I'd say maybe in May, I decided with a bunch of friends to compete in a half-marathon in Peru for the 4th of July and hence started my rigorous training schedule. Thanks to runnersworld.com I found a great 8 week half-marathon training schedule and i'd be lying if i said i stuck to it like glue; I'd rate myself a "mas o menos" or a 6 out of 10 on following the workout plan. Sometimes its hard to run 8 miles while dodging cars, inhaling city bus fumes, running through large packs of inattentive school children. Brief recap of races and "fun times" while training:

MAY 1st: Start half-marathon training

MAY 2nd: Actual first workout for half-marathon completed; yesterday's workout was postponed due to hangover.

MAY 15th: 10k Race over the bridges of Guayaquil. Ok so one bridge may have been an overpass but hey 2 out 3 is pretty good. Ran the race with an ecuadorian male friend and I left him in the dust at kilometer 6. Granted he hadn't been training and I convinced him to participate for the "fun of it". I had a lot of fun beating him however he wasn't the most thrilled about it.

...continue training like normal...started making friends with local security guards in my neighborhood. One had a tendency to run with me for a block. the first time it was cute, not so much the following 298304 times that he continued to do it. Running route has since been changed.

JUNE 13th: Almost eaten alive by a giant vicious german shepherd. I didn't even see the dog coming, i just merely sensed the presence of death behind me. Had I turned around a half second later I would be writing this story with one foot less. I felt the dogs presence, glanced over my shoulder to see his lips pulled back and some of the most gnarly teeth I have witnessed in Ecuador (thats saying a lot). Out of absolute, down to the bone fear, i threw my hands up in the air, screamed AUXILLO, SENORA, AUXILLO (attempting to get the dog owners help) as tears instantly began spurting from my eyes and was jolted into panic mode. Now I am pretty confident when it comes to running and avoiding dogs. In the country the dogs are much worse and more aggressive than these primped city dogs. In the country the most common technique used to shoo away a dog is to bend down and pretend like you're going to throw a rock at it (most of the time i don't pretend but thats because i know with my aim, try as i might, my rock will never hit intended destination). Anyways back to almost being eaten alive, after screaming to no result, i took a deep breath and remembered what I learned from my ancestors, "GET A ROCK" i thought. I bend down, keeping my eyes locked on the dog and grope the ground for a rock, anything i could pick up. DAMN YOU CITY OF CONCRETE AND ASPHALT. "don't worry" i thought "just pretend to throw something. surely the dog will get scared and run off". Despite numerous arm flailings and attempted imaginary rock launchings, the dog doesn't flinch. This is when real panic set in. so much that i seemed to have blacked out what happened next and actually have no idea how i came to free myself from this flesh-loving dog still intact (outside at least). The next event I remember is me sitting on a bench trembling and holding my knees to my chest. TRUE STORY. Running route has since been changed.

JULY 3rd: Time for Half-marathon in PERU!! woohoo! but i ended up not going to Peru to run my half-marathon. Why should I pay an absurd amount to travel to peru to participate in a painful two hours when I could do it right here in my home town? Thus, thats what I did. Along with 4 other volunteers.

We also participated with a local celebrity who is solely referred to as "la flaca". She is a talk show host on channel 2 and has become famous because she's a runner and just so fit that she's more famously known as "the skinny" than her actual given name. No, that is not resentment that you hear in my voice. Anyways she only ran the 10k (granted she was recently hit by a car about 2 months ago while on a jog and said she's still "recuperating) and we all did the 21k. After the race we got a quick photo with her which the instant i got home i upload to my facebook wall (famous by association, yes please) and looked up her results from the 10k. Her time beat my PR for a 10k by 4 minutes; and she's not even "fully recuperated". Yes, now we are hearing resentment. At least I've got a new goal to work towards...to beat la flaca!!

Fellow PCV Deanna, La Flaca and the Hunchback of Guayaquil

JULY 10th: Half-marathon # 2! This race was a little less formal, so informal that we used my garmin watch to track the distance of the race. With my rounding abilities hey really shouldn't leave me responsible for tracking the distance as I cut this race about a half mile short since I was too tired to go on. Close enough right?

This race is part of a fundraising project to support Parque Yasuni which is in the Amazon and being destroyed by oil companies. The project is touring the 24 provinces of Ecuador and running a 21k in each province. Its got a great atmosphere as everyone is out to support nature and healthy habits and there to have a good time. I'll leave you all the link to their webpage and even though its in spanish they have lots of pictures from the race (especially of Deanna and me). Check them out: Reto 21 x 24

UP NEXT:

August 14th: next half-marathon with the previously mentioned organization is in Esmeraldas, a province in the north of Ecuador, famous for its delicious coconut-infused foods and beaches. Yes please.

September 4th: 30k here in Guayaquil

October 9th: FULL MARATHON in BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA. Still looking for a racing partner. Please email me for applications.

So to continue where i started the previous blog i would like to take this opportunity to introduce you all to my source of inspiration that i consider to be my new "neighbor". For those of you unaware, i changed houses once again (the good news is i'm back down to only 2 human sized suitcases worth of crap) and moved about a mile down the street into a fellow PCV's apartment because she has now become an RPCV (points to whoever can guess what the R stands for). Fortunately the apartment came fully furbished with two beds, two fridges, two chairs etc (fellow RPCV believed things were better when in twos, a bit like Moses) and i have been able to make a very comfortable new life amongst her old things. I even found a dusty bag under the guest room bed that was hiding a brand spankin' new stick of men's Old Spice. I honestly get more complements on my new, slightly manly smell than with my flowery perfumes. Who knew?

Anyways, along with acquiring a fully furbished apartment I was also blessed with acquiring a new "neighbor" whom is oh so much more than just a "neighbor". Jordi is a PCV (don't get her confused with the RPCV) that lives next door and so willingly shares many things with me, such as her kitchen stove. Like a poorly planned divorce, Jordi got the stove but yet I got all the pots, pans and kitchen supplies. Unlike a poorly planned divorce, Jordi and I have adapted an incredible ability to share and go about our ways borrowing and taking as needed. Jordi likes to think we have created our own ecosystem due to our high degree of co-habitation. She's a blast and has a real fun blog that I highly recommend you read instead of mine. Find Jordi at: jordaninecuador.blogspot.com. She will be able to use google's fabulous "Stats" options to know if I sent you, so read it. Oh yeah, she also has TWO cats (even more like Moses).

So on the news front of the housing situation: things are great. Life in Guayaquil has defiantly improved since i've moved in, my host family from Cumanda came and gave me a surprise visit two weekends ago, my artist friend Jorge adorned one of my walls with a beautiful tree mural and I feel very content and at peace in my (hopefully) final ecuadorian living situation.

Please note lovely handmade afghan made my talented dear friend and RPCV Megan Petras.

Okay so due to inspiration from my new "neighbor" I am going to catch you all up on life, but poco a poco or little by little so as not to overwhelm you with one looooooong blog.

First things first, did you know that with gmail blogspot you can check the "stats" of your blog? You can find out all types of information such as where people are viewing your blog from (germany, hong kong, japan) but the most interesting "stat" is what keywords people used to search google in attempt to locate your blog. My personal favorite string of keywords was "Amanda Sandau Swimsuit"...interesting choice of words being as how i haven't told anyone about my shoot with Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition and the magazine isn't even scheduled to be released until August.

Amanda Sandau Swimsuit:

A few weeks ago, a good friend and fellow volunteer hosted an all day fundraiser in her community in order to build a children's playground. The fundraiser started out as a sports day with an all day soccer tournament and turned into a community dance/swim suit competition and in the spirit of supporting a fellow volunteer I managed to be convinced into competing. Being placed as candidate number 5 of 5, not only did they choose the order by saving best for last but also choose the tallest, oldest (by 8 years), least graceful and most awkward to be the caboose of the candidate train.

Let me draw you a brief picture of the entire event...Candidates file one by one out of the one classroom school, waltz onto the basketball court (which is surrounded by approximately 100 heavily drinking men, their 100 annoyed and sober wives and about 200 wild children), strut a lap around the court while waving and blowing kisses, return to center of court, present yourself (Amanda Sandau, Age 20, Business Major living in Guayaquil, I like Sports), and then take place in line next to fellow candidates. Group lap around the court trying to out-do each candidates sexiness, friendly flirting with the judges and then back to center of court for question round number 1. Answer your pre-assigned question: "If you were stuck on a deserted island and could take three things, what would you take?" My tailored answer to the likes of the crowd: "My machete to make a hut, my boyfriend 'cuz i really like him, and an endless amount of local moonshine to make things fun!" After all questions are answered, time for another lap around the court, oh wait, they didn't get enough eye-candy, make that a DOUBLE LAP.

thats some pretty tough competition

Judges select the final two candidates: Candidate number 4 and candidate number 5. WHOOOOO i made the final cut. The two remaining candidates do a celebratory lap (by this time i'm actually starting to enjoy the laps), return to center and answer "Improv question". "If you could hold a conversation with God what would you talk about?" "I would like to talk to God about the members of my family who have passed away for I know that they are in Heaven under His care" (A well received answer amongst the strong catholic community). ANOTHER lap while judges make their final decision, return to center court, oh the anxiety, wait, is that "gringa" i hear the crowd chanting? Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner, through the final decisions of the judges and the applause of the crowd, we would like to announce CANDIDATE NUMBER 5 as this years Senorita Miss Tanga!!!!

judge #1 and me

Never have I imagined that I would be comfortable parading in front of a crowd scantily clad in a swimsuit and heels but I guess that's the beauty of living in the present and valuing each and every day. Stay tuned for there are many more exciting updates to come soon.

love.

Okay lets see where we last left off, last blog I was saying my goodbyes to Cumandá and embarking on a new journey to Guayaquil. Now that two months have passed since I moved to Guayaquil I feel it’s an appropriate time to send out an update…

Work wise things have been going fairly well. I split my week working between the Peace Corps office and my new organizations office (ACDI-VOCA). The first few weeks were a little rough getting my positions worked out and getting comfortable in my new environment but things are defiantly looking up. Between both offices, my main responsibility is to work as a supervisor of the new volunteers and so I have been making lots of visits out to their individual sites, giving advice, providing support and a helping hand where needed.

Life in Guayaquil has been slightly boring due to my constant fear of being robbed and refusing to leave the house after 7 pm but my courage is beginning to build; not sure if that’s good or bad.

Last week we celebrated Peace Corp’s 50th Anniversary in Quito and I was one of the few volunteers who were lucky to get invited. Although after the 10-hour trip there and 10 hours back in two days merely for a 3-hour ceremony was barely worth it. Had it not been for the yummy food and free wine it defiantly would not have been worth the trip. The things I will do for free food and drink these days…

I must share my yesterday (Sunday) with you all for it was so glorious it has me still on a high. I started the morning off by competing in a 10k, which was the race of the bridges, and I finally got to run across the two giant bridges here that I’ve always dreamt about AND I also ran a new PR. Yay. Directly from the finish line I went to the bus terminal where I met up with 4 fellow volunteers and we jumped on a bus towards the beach where we spent the whole afternoon lounging in the glorious sunshine. Great company, fresh seafood lunch and a couple ice-cold beers under our umbrella makes for the ultimate Sunday afternoon one could ask for.

I still go home to Cumanda just about every weekend. I still have my old room with my host family, which is super nice and convenient. It’s still my favorite bed and the place that I refer to as home.

Well that’s about it for updates from here, either things are finally starting to settle down or I am getting accustomed to life in Ecuador. Hopefully it’s the latter…I hope you all have a great May and a safe Memorial Day Weekend! Love.

March 4, 2011

After a total of 98 weeks, a few short of two years, I am finally embarking on my last official week of being a resident in Cumanda. The end has come a lot earlier than expected but I will be going out with a bang, as Saturday is the start of the four days of Carnaval. Following tradition the kids (and some adults) have already started launching water balloons, tossing buckets of water and spraying silly string; the holiday hasn’t even started and I am ready for it to be OVER.

My time here in Cumanda has been incredible and I have been avoiding thinking about leaving for quite awhile now. Looking back, its as if my time here is split in half, the one half which I spent looking forward to the day I’d be leaving Cumanda and the other half dreading that same day.

Well, that first part was written about 10 days ago and life has changed over night. I just completed my third day of work and I think its safe to say that I have done more work in these past three days than in my previous two years. Is it too late to go back to Cumanda??? I got really comfortable with being the celebrity gringa and getting by on my whiteness. I guess all good things do come to an end.

Gratefully I report that the move to Guayaquil was a safe yet tearful experience. Granted that I had lost the paper with my new host families name, telephone number and home address I was still able to locate the home and to my luck they were actually there! My biggest fear was the taxi driver throwing (more like painfully dragging) my suitcases out of his car and leaving me stranded in front of some random house HOPING its residents would allow me to stay.

I am happy here. Its different. I miss greeting everyone I encounter on the street. Here the strangers just stare at me and ignore my greeting. But its fun that everything is a new adventure. Like the 50 minute bus ride I took this morning when its normally takes me 20 to get to the office, but magically I arrived at my front door. I’m still baffled, 12 hours later about how we ended up in the perfect spot. The adventure of finding new running spots. I live two blocks outside of a very posh neighborhood (home to Guayaquil’s Mayor) with cobblestone streets and cars that stop giving me the right-a-way.

Tomorrow for work I am meeting 4 new PC volunteers who will be working in sites that ACDI/VOCA is also involved and delivering them to their new sites. I’m excited to witness their transition as I feel it wasn’t that long ago that I was the same over anxious volunteer ready to set the worlds problems straight.

Anyways I know this is short but I just needed to send you all an update that I have survived the change and am ready to start thriving. I have a few more weeks until the end of march and then it’s a week off to visit the Galapagos islands with my Mami! It couldn’t come soon enough. Well, actually it could wait ‘til my diet kicked in and sheds me of my “rice baby”. I’m worried I’ll be more of a site than those cute little blue footed boobies! Hope you all have a good lent and stick to your promises!! Love love.

January 2011, done. What a month. January brought the end of the school year here in Cumanda and also a very important conference for my fellow Peace Corps volunteers and me; the Closing of Service (COS) conference. It was during this week long conference that the 29 of us remaining volunteers (we started with 46 back in February of 2009) submitted our final documents of completed activities, had our last medical examinations with the doctors (I’d say about 70% of us were diagnosed with amoebas) and informed the office our selected final dates of service.

It was a bittersweet week to spend time with all of the other volunteers and office staff. The office hosted a delicious dinner for us and presented with us a surprise slide show and Mariachi band. It was great to have the opportunity to share memories and stories of all the craziness that has passed in our time and incredible to see how much has developed skill and personality wise. There wasn’t a single volunteer that wasn’t grateful for their experience or without remorse to pack up and leave in a few short months.

It was during this conference that I was presented with an unexpected opportunity to extend my service and continue working in Guayaquil with the international development agency ACDI-VOCA. ACDI-VOCA has a strong relationship with US AID to develop food security projects. Here in Ecuador ACDI-VOCA focuses on working with Cacao growers (Chocolate) and teaching modern techniques to improve production rates and quality. The previous few years ACDI-VOCA has been responsible for creating Co-ops of cacao growers and assists them in matters of exportation. This past year Peace Corps and ACDI-VOCA agreed to collaborate on projects and with the new group of Ag volunteers that is arriving, 7 of the volunteers will be sent to ACDI-VOCA sites here in the Coast. The job that my boss presented to me is working in the Guayaquil office of ACDI-VOCA, visiting project communities, overseeing the projects and necessities of the 7 PC volunteers and also developing future sites for new volunteers.

While living and working in Guayaquil will be a complete change of pace, I am so thankful for the opportunity to stay and also to work in a more professional setting. I cannot say that the decision was planned out, but in the short time that I had to think about it I am absolutely positive that it is an opportunity I cannot (and do not want to) pass up. Thus, instead of coming home at the end of April I will continue with the Ecuadorian life until November 16th, 2011. Just in time for Thanksgiving and snowboarding season!

This past weekend was a great weekend here in Cumanda, celebrating my 25th birthday and the Superbowl with friends. Saturday night we had the typical night out at my friend’s bar full with friends and plenty of beer, dancing and live music. On Sunday (after a slow morning) we headed over to my sitemate Alice’s house to grill hamburgers and watch the Superbowl. We tried to explain the rules and game of American football to the Ecuadorians but they got bored after the first quarter and left. The only disappointment of the day was the lack of commercials during the game for the new ones weren’t aired here.

In the previous posts, I put up two videos. One is of Cumanda and the other is of Bucay. If you watch the Bucay one, you can get an insight of my friends and life here. The Bucay video was organized by my good friend here and thus he arranged that all of his friends be interviewed. There is also a clip of my friend’s bar, which we regularly frequent (it’s a great place to socialize as well). If it doesn’t take too long to download I recommend watching them. Sorry they’re all in Spanish though…

Well that’s about it from here. This week I am helping a friend teach swim class to 25 kids under 10 years old. Yesterday was the first day and it was an interesting and fun day. We shall see what events today’s class brings. I hope you all enjoyed the Superbowl and aren’t suffering too terribly with the storms and cold weather! Love.

Quick update on life: 2011 has started off on a great path! I was lucky enough to coerce a great friend of mine, Ali, to spend Christmas, New Years and her birthday here with me in Ecuador. We had an incredible time celebrating the holidays with my host family and traveling to Peru!

About a month ago, Ali and I were chatting online about the endless adventures her trip to Ecuador would bring when she mentioned Machu Picchu. On a whim we looked up tickets to Peru, found a steal of a deal and booked them instantly! And that was the extent to which we planned our Peruvian trip. Looking back I am amazed at how much we were able to accomplish in our ephemeral 6-day stint with such limited planning. All we knew is we were going to Peru to see Machu Picchu.

We coined our Peruvian adventure “the trip of compromising situations” and took to giggling when fellow travelers curiosity questioned us about hostels, reservations and planned means of transportation. Like I said before though, we did pretty damn well for how little prepared we were. For example, it might have been helpful to know before that its best to fly to Cuzco, not Lima, to visit Machu Picchu for it’s a mere 24 hours bus ride from one city to the other. Another helpful fact would’ve been to make advanced reservations on the train to Machu Picchu which would’ve allowed us to arrive at a reasonable hour to seek out a hostel, buy entrance tickets to the park of Machu Picchu and make a quick, well needed trip to the natural hot springs. Instead we bought tickets when we should up to the station and bought 2 for the last train up the mountain for 11 pm, giving us 8 hours of wait time (quickly passed with the help of Peruvian beers and fried potatoes) and putting us into the base town of MP at 1:15 am in the pouring rain. Having thought we learned our lesson about lack of planning ahead, Ali and I used a few spare minutes of our 8-hour wait to call and reserve a room at a hostel so as to have a place to lay our heads but after a good half hour of searching in the dark and rain we gave up and settled on a different hostel whose host was made so uncomfortable by my “tears of exhaustion” that he gave a us a very reasonable price. In bed by 2 am, up by 5 am in order to get in line for entrance tickets and bus seats and attempt to catch the sunrise from the tip of MP. I missed the sunrise while buying entrance tickets and Ali witnessed it from her spot in line for the buses. However we did arrive to MP by the refreshing hour of 6:30 am to catch the entire monument covered in a dense fog that prohibits seeing more than 10 feet in front of you. We just kept “giggling” and muttering “compromising situations”.

Machu Picchu was spectacular. We took a side-hike up an immense mountain that overlooked the ruins and took our breath away. The clouds burned off and allowed for serene views and photos. Despite the impossibility of watching the sunrise from the top (much recommended by guidebooks) our early start paid off for we were out of the ruins and headed back to town by time all the guided-groups were filling the tiny paths and lessening its innate beauty.

The rest of the trip went well; train down the mountain, mini-bus to Cuzco, 22 hour bus ride from Cuzco to Lima with an early AM stop at a questionable rest stop in the middle of the desert which caused sleepy, Benadryl induced Ali and Amanda to believe they had caught the wrong bus and were headed towards Iran. By noon the day after boarding the bus, we arrived back in Lima for a day of site seeing in its historical center. Well for me at least, Ali was a little “under the weather” and preferred the comfort of being near a toilet rather than meandering through the metropolis’s crowded streets. Our Peruvian trip (and Ali’s Ecuadorian one) ended with one last night in Lima, a quick flight to Guayaquil, bus to Cumanda, quick re-packing of all bags and one final night in Cumanda, bus back to Guayaquil, our last supper at a food court in the mall (I had a very satisfying hamburger from Burger King and Ali savored a few bites of Yuca bread, who was still attentively questioning the abilities of her stomach), and a gloomy final return to the GYE airport.

Last night I dropped Ali off at the airport and now I am attempting to remember what “normal life in Cumanda” is. I feel like I’ve had an incredible stint of visitors and grand vacations these past few months that life has been even more surreal than usual. However, much to my dismay I don’t see the “surreal-ity” diminishing for in two weeks I will be heading to Quito for our “end of service” conference, which is basically the beginning of the end. During said conference we are required to submit final reports on all projects completed in our two years, have another round of medical tests, attend workshops for resume building, job searching and how to deal with reverse culture shock and most depressing of all, we will select the date for our return flight home. RETURN FLIGHT HOME? I could’ve sworn I just got here.

Well now that I got thinking about the end and how near it is, I think its time to get out of this internet shop and enjoy one of my last Sunday afternoons in Cumanda. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and memorable New Years. Thanks all for your support in 2010 and I wish you all a prosperous 2011!!!! Love AES.

Okay so I know it has been quite a while, almost on the verge of forever, since I last updated my blog; but lets blame it on the good note that I am more involved in projects and life in the mango lush that has become Cumanda.

Ever since overcoming my one-year mark this summer my time remaining here has been diminishing faster than the glaciers of the North Pole. These past few months have been highlighted with numerous memorable trips, studying for the GRE’s (expecting results in January, ugh), graduate school applications, and oh ya trying to maintain projects with the community.

September brought to end the 2nd trimester at the high schools, which concluded our study of “geography” and the painting of our World Map Project.

We’re still working on our gardens with some more successful than others but we have seen a healthy turn out of tomatoes, cabbage and corn. Yum! A handful of us volunteers have taken on the task of creating a Peace Corps wide “seed bank” with an end goal of providing each incoming volunteer a basic packet of seeds in order to aide in transition into sites. AKA something we ALL wish we had been provided in order to obtain community trust and respect. So in attempt to get this project off the ground, I am growing lots of zucchini and radishes with my girls in order to harvest their seeds to help stock our Seed Bank.

September also saw the end of my working relationship with my original counterpart organization, the baby banana growers. After dealing with my counterparts lack of motivation and respect for me I decided enough was enough. So instead I’ve been spending more time helping a recently formed co-op of cacao growers map out their goals for the upcoming year, apply for their own volunteer and teach them the basics of methods of recording finances. They actually need help and value the time I spend with them, which is a complete 180 from the previous group I was working with. What a relief!

In short, the past few months have been some of the best I’ve seen in awhile. Whether that is owed to my distant end nearing or a newfound efficiency, I understand why people say the last 6 months of service are the most rewarding.

These next few months I feel are going to pass in the blink of an eye with many exciting events on the horizon. The end of December brings Christmas break in which classes and work do not exist, the visit of a good friend and a trip to Peru and the welcoming of the New Year! Mid-January is the end of the school year here and I will also spend a week in Quito at our “Swearing Out Conference” in which we pick our final date of service, complete the last stage of medical exams and submit an unimaginable amount of forms that no one will ever read but are required of us. January, February and March are what we call “party months” for between All Kings Day, Carnival and Easter Week there are surprisingly few days in which people actually work. Long live the Catholic Church and your infinite reasons to celebrate! But as always, good things must end and that very April will bring the sobering reality of my 24th and final month of service. Where life will take me from here is as undetermined as the headless chicken from Sunday’s feast. Any and all suggestions are welcome as I continue my personal search for answers at the bottom of Pilsener bottles.

With the end of the year nearing we will see the end of mango season (more glorious than college football if you can believe it) and the onset of obscene amounts of rains. As this will be my final entry for the year 2010, I thank you all for staying updated on my happenings and the continual support. I wish you all a very merry Christmas and hope you enjoy these special moments with your families; for you never know when your adventurous twenty-some-year old child will decide to abandon you for a few of the world’s deepest canyons and remarkable ruins!

I just read this and wanted to remember it so i'll share it with the few that regularly check this thing...

"Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos."

-Charles M. Schulz

wow this year is flying by! its weird to hear about friends starting the school year again or about life settling down now that the summer months are over. I say that its "weird" because life here after a year and a half, still seems to feel like the unending summer vacation, which is glorious!

things have continued to be going well since i returned from home, i guess its been over 2 months, almost hitting 3 months! I've been making some ground on the same work projects. My counterpart of the banana company and I have finally submitted our application for a small business grant through Peace Corps and now we are waiting the wait to hear back. One year and a half of working with this man and I finally feel like i have earned his trust and dispelled his belief that i am as useful as a blubbering 5 year old.

things continue with the girls at my school. its been an interesting few weeks for studying maps, learning country names etc. I was shocked, and still am, at how little they understand the concept of a map and telling direction. Even the most basic ideas such as which are continents versus which are countries are abstract ideas. but it makes me glad that i have chosen to teach them maps and to do a World Map project with them at the end of the trimester, so even if they don't ever learn anything at least they'll still have a reminder of what a map is!

weekend have been full of adventures and i've been posting pictures on facebook if you haven't had a chance to see. One weekend included a backpacking trip to a group of beautiful lakes with a friend. However, the lakes were WAAAY up in the mountains, at about 3500 meters (thats higher than the highest point of Mt. Hood) and were very difficult to get to. After taking a 3 hour ricktey rural bus ride filled with indigenous mountain folk returned home after buying their goods in town, we finally got dropped off at the entrance to the lakes greeted by nasty weather which felt like someone was perpetually throwing snow in my face. despite how unprepared we ended up being (no water, little food, limited clothing etc) it ended up being a great trip and the lakes are absolutely breathtaking. i defiantly recommend a visit but make sure you have your own car.

i also just got back from a fun weekend in Quito, the capital city. With two friends, I went and visited a company that makes dehydrated fruit amongst a variety of other products which was a great learning experience and a super fun day. they are growing a fruit called Uvillas, in english its something like Physalis

Later in the evening we ran a 10k race (La Ruta de Las Iglesias/the route of the churches) which goes through the old town and past 11 different churches. We ran this race last year as well and had such a good time we decided to do it again. This time however we were "Team America" with decorated shirts and obnoxiously colored red, white and blue running tights. I finished in 14th place for my division in 53 min, 10 minutes faster than last year! whoo whoo!

next weekend i am headed to the beach with 2 friends from the Municipial to watch the whales migrate. i am super excited and my friend and i have been trying to plan this trip since i got back. we are both very happy that the weekend is finally so close! well this is short but hopefully it means more people will read it and not intimidated by its length! I hope you all have a great labor day weekend!! love love.

well my trip home has come and gone but i am happy to say that those 3 weeks were as glorious and incredible as i was anticipating. my trip was so great that i have decided to forever live abroad and solely vacation in the united states; but hopefully i'll have a job that will allow me to vacation more frequently then my current situation.

i've been back in ecuador for about a week and half now and its almost as if i never left. i have great memories and stash of great american foods to last me a few more weeks but life here has easily returned to its normal flow. i actually did a great job of planning my vacation time because i arrived back just in time to kick off the two weeks festivals of Bucay and i came back during finals week at the high school. My sitemate Alice kindly played substitute teacher in my classes and even wrote up a final exam for me to give the students. so last week and this week there has been limited work with the municipal, which consists of basically attending the festival's events and this week the high schools are all on vacation. two more additional weeks of vacation? yes please and thank you.

The good news is, actually i hate to say this in the case of jinxing ourselves, but i feel that we are finally making headway with the dehydrated banana project. a few weeks before i came home, my boss from peace corps in quito came down to do his annual visit/check up and it proved to be very beneficial. he helped to get my counterpart and i lined up to see eye to eye on things and now my counterpart and i are working on filling out a grant for small business start ups through peace corps. we're hoping to have it completed by friday so that we can get production started asap. i'm excited that maybe this banana project will turn out after all!

lets see, what else do i have on my plate for upcoming events...oh this trimesters theme is going to be geography. one because i love it and two because then we can include peace corps #1 favorite project: World Map! i helped another peace corps volunteer with this project almost a year ago and decided i defiantly wanted to do one in my community but its a simple project of painting a map of the world and labeling the countries which will be great to do with my students.

also some exciting news from cumanda, last week 4 men attacked a women as she was leaving the bank and robbed her. she had withdrawn $4000 and was in the process of transferring the money to another account in a different bank. The police caught 2 of the men and placed them in the local jail and left to go seek out the remaining two. while the police were gone, a gathering of Cumanda-ians went to tantalize the robbers who where just as rude in response and ended up upsetting the people so they decided to punch holes in the wall of the brick building in order to beat them. when they couldn't get the prisoners out they decided what better thing to do then to smoke them out? so through the wholes they managed to make in the walls, the cumandaians threw in gasoline and a tire lit on fire. One of the inmates managed to crawl out of the hole and ran into an abandoned shack down the road while the other inmate ended up suffering 2nd and 3rd degree burns and was in very unstable conditions by time he made it to the medical center (wont even call it a hospital). they ended up removing the other inmate from the shack once the police arrived and he was sent off to jail in another town. hopefully one that had more secure walls. but anyways moral of the story as stated by the local news broadcast is that if you steal in cumanda, you'll probably get burned.

as i mentioned earlier, bucay is having its festivals right now. i'm having a little deja-vu because it was last year at these same fiestas that i had my first "night out" with my neighbors and it was funny/weird to see how much has changed.

welp, its lunch time and i am craving my bowl of soup so its time to get going! thanks for catching up on my blog and i'm sorry for its delay :) love.

I thought that April was one of the slowest months to ever pass, but now I realized I may have been wrong. I think that May is going to go by even slower…June (and my trip home) just can’t come any faster.

Its not that things are going badly, they’re actually going really well and I am really happy but I feel like as if its 4 pm on a Friday afternoon and I just want my weekend to be here already!

I had a pretty fun experience a few weekends ago that I’ll share with you guys. I had a swollen lymph node (two actually but one giant) growing on my neck for about 2 weeks and it continued to get larger and larger and more painful I decided to call the Peace Corps doctor. He asked me to email a picture of it (which I then shamelessly posted on facebook) and the next day he called me and told me I needed to come up to Quito to get it checked out. So I scheduled an emergency trip up to Quito, spent all day in the medical office getting tests done. The doctors measured my growth and stated that since it was over 2 cm in width they needed to perform all possible tests. I mean you name it and I got tested for it. Had my ears checked, blood drawn, went to another medical office and received a TB test, went to the hospital got an X-ray done, pap smear etc etc. It was a stressful day. And as for the results, well the doctors informed me my white and red blood cells were normal (our biggest concern) and as for the million other tests performed they’ve yet to inform me on the results (more points for peace corps…) but the lump is almost gone and no longer visible. Thank goodness for I was getting to be worried that Rachel would kick me out of her wedding party with a lump like that.

Anyways after spending the entire day in Quito in the office, I went with some friends to a national park where we camped (I had planned ahead, brought along the tent), spent 2 hours trying to make a fire with damp wood and foot tall grass and slept under the stars. In the AM we got up early made some yummy oatmeal and headed out on a hike, which turned out to take us 9 hours up and down. But what an incredible view! The hike was glorious and moderately difficult. The last 40 minutes required scaling rocks with our hands and feet but made for a great picnic spot once we were on top.

This past weekend was a good friend’s birthday here in site. I had made his family an Easter bunny cake which I ended up not giving to him because it got destroyed I told him I’d make him another cake for his birthday instead. Well, with the aide of bad translation, he proceeded to assume that I just offered to provide the cake for his 60+ guests birthday party. Uhh…not what I had in mind. But I did a little cheating, bought 4 boxes of Betty Crocker Double Chocolate cake mix in Guayaquil, baked two boxes together for the bottom layer and the last two individually and made him a 3 layered chocolate cake infused with caramel layers, topped with vanilla frosting and chocolate covered strawberries. Only had a mild heart attack while I was stacking the third layer one and it started to crack. Next time I’ll cut the layers flat before stacking them. But the cake was a hit, I got many questions on how I made such a magnificent thing and the best I could tell them was “it's a baker’s secret” aka Betty’s secret…

This weekend I am planning on doing some more baking. I found a recipe for mango coconut bread so I want to make a loaf for Melita for Mother’s Day. Tomorrow (Friday) for Mother’s Day with the Women’s Group of Cumanda, we are hosting an afternoon potluck type thing for all of the elderly women of the community. Friday night a Peace Corp volunteer is organizing a welcoming potluck for all the new Ag and Natural Resource (What I was one year ago!!) volunteers in Guayaquil. Saturday am there is a 5k for Mother’s day in Guayaquil which I am doing and Saturday afternoon with the Women’s basketball team we’re going to a neighboring town to play a game. The Sports League president of the neighboring has specifically asked that the “Gringa” show up and play on Saturday. Does he think that his team has someone that can challenge my abilities? Please…ok maybe it has been about 4 weeks since I shot a basketball, maybe I should go practice a bit.

We’re now in our 6th week of classes I believe. I am really enjoying teaching. I have about 60 students (in 4 different classes which is perfect) and they’re all females with great attitudes and are very forgiving with my poor Spanish abilities. They laugh at me, I laugh at me, and then we playing an intense round of hangman.

Welp speaking of which I have some classroom plans to fill out (I have to fill out a form EVERYDAY of what we’re going to do in class for that day) and I’m managed to not fill them out for two weeks. Oops.

I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend and that you all send many thanks and love to your mothers. I thank my mom for teaching me to be independent and to constantly challenge myself, which have allowed for me to be here miles away from what I know and love. She says she shot herself in the foot years ago by always taking us on trips and instilling in us the love and adventure of travel; but that's not true ‘cause she knows if I weren’t here, I’d be at home driving her up the wall. So for the sake of both our sanities, thank you Mom.

As always, I wish you all my best and we’ll be seeing you sooooon. Love love.

homemade carrot cakes :)

They say that here April is the rainiest month of all the year. Its actually pretty incredible how the weather here has its variations. These days I wake up to crisp clear mornings (which are a rarity here) and it will be a beautiful clear hot day until mid afternoon when the clouds roll in and we’ll have thunder, lightening and torrential rains that cause flash floods and force you to stay put where ever you are. Rains that bring the kids outside giggling and cheering, rains that knock out power poles and cell phone towers, rains that cleanse the street of dirt and trash (I’ll just pretend like I don’t know it all goes flowing into the river) and rains that bring me fresh, cloud free mornings.

We just finished the Easter celebrations. Easter is obviously a bring holiday here because of the huge majority of Catholics. Friday morning and evening there was a procession through town for the Stations of the Cross. I went with a neighbor friend Friday am and 3 hours in the blistering sun and 2 water bottles later we went to her house to eat a very traditional soup that they only make during Easter called “Fanesca”. It is a delicious, incredible soup and is made with 12 grains, each grain as a representative of an apostle. Last year at this time I was in Cayambe and with my host family we made Fanesca and they must have ruined me because the Fanesca here in Cumanda is way different and not nearly as good as it was in Cayambe! I was mildly disappointed but it was still delicious. Just goes to show how there are many faces and very distinct characteristics in tiny, little Ecuador.

The Monday after Easter is always the day when classes for the schools start up again. So being as how I recently agreed to teach 12 hours at one of the local high schools here I had to attend the “open ceremony” yesterday where they presented me to all of the students and parents. After introducing me, the director asked if I would like to share a few words. A typical Ecuadorian would’ve said yes, taken the microphone and obnoxiously ranted for about 10 minutes expressing their gratitude, their expectations, their life story etc but me, being me, hating public speaking and unprepared to give a thank you speech in Spanish, I said no and turned down the offer to speak. The director then continued to say that while I speak minimal Spanish, big words and formal greetings was something I lacked and it was for this reason I kindly declined the offer. She speaks the truth that lady.

Easter Sunday I had the opportunity to call home while the whole family was having Easter lunch at my parent’s house. It was great to be able to be able to talk to family members that I haven’t spoken with in over a year!

And as most of you know my family and a few friends recently visited me. We had an incredible trip here and I am so impressed by their dedication and patience. It was truly an honor to have all of them here, to share my daily life with them and also for them to share so much with my community. They left an incredible impact on the people here, I have had so many strangers come up to me on the street and ask me where my giant friends went and when they are coming back. Their presence here is a perfect example of how actions speak louder than words. Endless thank you’s to all of you that made this trip a possibility.

Can you believe that I am at my halfway mark here? I cannot believe how fast time has gone and even though I’m only halfway, that I still have another year, I know that this year is going to fly by. I have spent my first year struggling, learning, giving everything I can climbing up this mountain of nonsense and now its time to enjoy the descent (ha if only it were that easy).

Oh and for more exciting news, you’ll never guess what the Easter Bunny brought me this year. A beautiful new tent!! The camping trips are already in planning. In two weekends my friend and I are going camping to check out a 3 day hiking trail, which we have planned to attack in May. Time flies when you’re having fun…

Welp, that's about it from here. Sorry about the delay of updates. I’ll try and keep you updated between all of my camping trips. Take care and remember, it's a two person tent so there’s always room for one more!!

Well I am once again lonely, after a great few weeks of Stefanie being here, she has finally returned home. But the good news is she says that she wants to come back and live in Quito so my fingers are crossed!

The past few weeks haven’t really seen much work, just a lot of fun rather. The last weekend in February we celebrated our 1-year mark of arriving here in Ecuador. A good handful of us got together in a little town outside of Quito for the weekend and celebrated our accomplishments thus far. It was a great weekend and a lot of fun to see some faces and catch up others’ experiences and stories. That was Stefanie’s and mine’s last travel for the Wednesday following we packed up and dropped her off in Guayaquil to go home. So sad.

In the time that she was here though, I did manage to continue working with the students and the chickens. It’s been a lot of fun getting to work and “play” with the students. They really are great kids; when they show up that is. It's the same group that we’re hoping to start the beekeeping project with and I finally figured out how I can apply for funds so I am super excited that the project might actually have a chance of making it from our heads into reality. The funds are called partnership funds and I have to apply and if I get approved, they basically open up an account that anybody (NGO’s, USAid, friends, family etc) can donate any amount until I reach the amount that I applied for. I’ll keep ya’ll posted…

The best part about this past week was when my counterpart asked me to type up our business plan for the dehydrated Oritos project and while I was confused as for why he wanted me to re-type this 30 page manual when its obviously been typed and printed before thus easily located on a computer somewhere, I thought I would be nice and please him and do the work anyways. Turns out, I need to clean my ears, because he asked me to TRANSLATE the plan into English (which while typing it in Spanish, I realized having a copy of it in English would be really beneficial). I swear though he never said to translate it or put it in English. Hmm no wonder he thinks I’m incapable of anything….

Well, that's about it from here. These next two weeks I’ll be working on retyping the business plan, in English this time, and anxiously waiting for my parents’ arrival!! Current countdown is 11 days. Guess I better get started on their Spanish-English cheat sheet I promised them.

Hope all is well, wish you all a very merry March!! Love love.

Well once again, its been way too long since I’ve updated but I have to say that this time its only partially my fault. I did type up a blog about a week ago with some good stories for ya’ll but I only saved it to my flash and when I went to post it on a computer with internet, it told me that the flash had a virus and was unable to open the documents…thus I have managed to ruin flash #7. Lets hope #8 will have more luck…

So as of recent things have been a party here. The last week of January was a week of fiestas for the city of Cumanda. I was lucky enough to be forced to parade with the group of wives of the Municipal members (because I am my counterpart’s chosen representative) on the final day of the fiestas. It was fun except for the fact that I had to wear a creamy orange blouse/more like suit jacket with shoulder pads with black dress pants that sat embarrassingly high on my hips, we paraded at 9 am, it rained on us (weren’t allowed to use umbrellas), we had to watch 3 more hours of parading from the judges platform, had to sit through 2 hours of “meetings” in a boiling hot, air-condition-less room and didn’t get to eat until 4:30 in the afternoon. So when I say it was fun; well I hope you can catch my sarcasm. It was as if I had a real job and was expected to be a grown up…not fun.

Another reason why I was so irritated about the parade, it happened to take place on the same day that our doctors would be in Guayaquil to give us our required Swine Flu Vaccinations. Obviously I couldn’t miss the parade so I had to travel to Cuenca (6 hours to and 6 hours back) the following Tuesday merely to receive a damn shot. I was not happy. But I have to say it was well worth the trip merely because I finally met my one true love, Maria Jose, my new, precious, smelly, 8-week-old kitten that has a fascination with peeing on my shoes.

Two weekends ago I celebrated my birthday and two days before I received the greatest birthday present ever; a visit from my super great incredible friend Stefanie. We have had a great time reconnecting, catching up, traveling, drinking beers and just hanging out. For my birthday, we have had the fortune to celebrate all weekend long. On Friday night after the ritual service in the Temple with Melita, they surprised me with an ice cream cake and a Melita dedicated a few songs to me. Saturday (actual Birthday) Stef and I went for a hike-jog in the am and then went to the market with friend Jorge to buy meat and veggies for the BBQ on Sunday. Afterwards we went back to the house, relaxed, returned to Jorge’s house for a special birthday dinner that he made for me and 3 other friends. Stef and I then went back to my house where friends Alice and friends were waiting for us with Margaritas and tacos. We then headed to my friends bar to celebrate the night away. On Sunday we all meet up around noon, packed everything into the back of a pickup truck and headed to this awesome local pool that provides a free covered area to BBQ and eat. So we spent the afternoon grilling meat, chicken, sausages, shrimp, potatoes and green bananas while throwing buckets of water (carnaval game) and drinking beer.

All in all, I had a great weekend and couldn’t of imagined a better way to spend it. Although I did wake up Saturday morning craving Mom’s Birthday breakfast…

I spent this the entirety of this past week in Riobamba attending a Beekeeping conference. I went with a professor from the local high school because we’re hoping to start up a beekeeping project with the students this following school year. She’s the same professor that I am helping with the chicken project. Which is a lot of fun but slightly frustrating because I am just supposed to chaperone the students and help them clean, feed, care for the chickens but since they’re in summer vacations they haven’t been doing a very good job of showing up. So it basically turns into Amanda and the chickens project.

This past weekend was Carnaval and it was a weekend of pure craziness. Technically Carnaval starts after Epiphany in January and by “start” I mean it allows people to start “playing carnaval” which is only played by getting people wet with buckets of water and water balloons. So the past few weeks I have had the occasional balloon tossed in my direction which was fun and didn’t bother me but I think that today is the first day that my clothes have remained dry since Saturday. Kids and adults went crazy. It was literally impossible to walk down the street without getting water thrown at you. But Stef and I took it into our hands and used my third storey apartment to our advantage and spent afternoons just throwing water balloons at cars and pedestrians. Sunday afternoon a friend invited us to her family’s pool and the instant we arrived, they covered us in buckets of water and face paint. We spent the day swimming in our clothes, tossing water and dancing. It is crazy here how they go all out and it is a lot of fun, but I am glad that it is over!

These upcoming weeks have in hold for me continuing to take care of the chickens, I’m starting an Tourism based English class in the evenings, working on finding a good week to organize my girls basketball camp and getting ready for my parents visit in March. There have been so many people that have already invited my parents over for dinner, how they want to have a big BBQ or kill a chicken and roast it, it makes me even more excited for them to be here, to see where and how I live!

Well I hope that all of you are doing well, hope you had a great Valentine’s Day and have made your promises for lent! Take care. Love love.

Today as I was sitting on my roof trying to digest the 2 lbs of rice I’d just consumed for lunch, I was looking at all the rooftops lined with clothes and I started to think how I am going to miss seeing them. What I once saw as a chore has now become a game for me, guessing when I get my clothes washed, when will it be sunny enough, how long can I leave them out, can I make it back to the house before the rain starts? Sometimes I win and sometimes I fail miserably but I just have to laugh and try again tomorrow. Work is sort of the same way too…

Two weekends ago a friend invited our women’s basketball team to come and play a game of soccer at his farm because they were hosting their annual party. I realized its been quite a while since I played soccer last but it was a lot of fun playing even if we lost. We drove about 45 minutes outside of town, crossed three rivers and traveled through acres of banana trees to find a well manicured football field, pond and open aired bamboo huts. We played, we lost, we ate, we drank and we danced. A great Saturday in my mind despite the loss and dancing.

One of my new years resolutions (there are many for this year) was to be in better contact with my counterpart. This past week we attended a conference together about how to make successful business plans which was very interesting and I shocked him when I added my personal opinions to the discussions. I know I may speak Spanish like a 3rd grader but I’m not an idiot, I do know some things, like how to do a strengths and weakness analysis.

Also another one of my goals (many of these as well) for starting the year off was to meet with the director of the high school and I finally did that last week. Turns out you do have to have some sort of credentials to teach high school classes but they have a bunch of other projects they have asked me to help out with. Later today I am going with a professor to see where we are going to start an organic garden and worm beds with the students. The professor that I am going with also worked with an Ag. Volunteer that was here 5 years ago so he already has an understanding of how the program functions and in what ways I can help. Tomorrow I am meeting with another professor to learn about their chicken raising process and she has asked me to research what types of value added projects we could do with the chickens and eggs. So if you have any suggestions, ideas, send them my way.

Last weekend I made attempt number one to buy canning jars in Ambato, a city that's 5 hours away. I traveled halfway and stayed the night with a friend and we were going to continue together the next morning to this town but plans got cancelled because the president made a surprise visit to Ambato in order to try and prevent strikes with the indigenous people. So this coming weekend will be attempt number 2.

English classes have now come to an end for the school year. I gave the final exam last weekend. The exam was about 80% of the questions I used on the pre-exam and then gave them bonus points if they could draw and label 5 parts of the human body. I had an average of A-‘s.

So the fiestas from Christmas and new years finally came to an end last week. But this Friday began the fiestas of Cumanda. So once again, no one is working and all the kids are on summer break. The fiestas of Cumanda end the 27th I think and then Carnival starts the 14th for a week. I seriously believe they are “in fiestas” more than they are “out of fiestas”. I tell you, it's a good life here.

Ok that's about it from here. Keep your fingers crossed that attempt #2 at locating canning jars is a better success. Take care. Love. And Happy Martin Luther King Day!

As of yesterday I have officially returned home to a hot and muggy Cumanda; such a treat after spending the week shivering in Florida. The trip was a great trip, full of delicious foods, wine that doesn’t come from a box and wonderful people. The transition back was fairly easy; the hardest part was having a numbered amount of meals and soo many different restaurants and things to eat! Defiantly could’ve used two stomachs for this trip.

The week before I left for Florida (Christmas week) was spent handing out little baggies of goodies to the school children. Since I live in Cumanda and sometimes work in Bucay (two different “towns”) I got to help deliver the bags for each community. Also Alice and I took it upon us to make over 300 Christmas cookies and handed out small boxes to our friends to share some of our Christmas traditions and to show how thankful we are for their help and patience. Why does baking dozens and dozens of cookies seem fun until you actually start doing it and then it just turns into work?

It's a new year and my work calendar is empty. I'm headed to meet my counterpart in a little bit so hopefully he’ll have some suggestions of things I can work on. One can always be hopeful. The school year for the students ends at the end of January so I’ll continue with my English classes and I also have a personal goal to meet with the director of the high school here in Cumanda and ask for an hour time slot to teach a basic geography/social studies class for the upcoming school year. Hmm I wonder if I need any type of credentials to teach a high school class.

I’m also hoping to host a basketball camp for the girls here in February so I should probably start planning activities, funding, locations etc in order to make that a successful week.

This morning I woke up to clear skies (rarely ever happens in the mornings here) and birds chirping in my own bed that is lined with freshly washed and dried American sheets. I can’t help but believe it’s going to be a good year. LOVE.

I just got back yesterday from a great weekend (was actually less than 24 hours) at the beach! There’s a volunteer that lives 2 blocks away from the shorefront and she invited a group of us to come for the weekend to celebrate an early Christmas and played secret santa. Most people got in Thursday night but I didn’t get to her site until Saturday afternoon because in the morning we had our 2nd women’s basketball game. Which we won, 48-26! The game was scheduled for 9 am and we had to travel an hour by bus to get there so we agreed to meet at 7:45 am and then all go together in a bus. Well by time we finally got everybody roped up and in the van, it was 8:30 and we set out for the game, arriving at 10 am, which we started shooting around meanwhile, the morning started turning into early afternoon and along came the heat. Its finally by quarter til 11 we started playing and it must’ve been at least 85 degrees by this time (we played outside on a cement court). Halfway through the game, some other women come up to our team and invite us to stay til after the men’s game and the women can against another, better team they said. Sadly I wasn’t able to stay because I had to be on the bus by 11:30 to get to the beach but our team won the second game as well!

The beach was a lot of fun, short lived, but fun. I arrived with Mitch (he waited for me halfway) and everyone had gone for a hike so we enjoyed a nice relaxing walk along the beach. Mitch graduated from Willamette and is my only somewhat Oregonian and we couldn’t help but pretend that we were walking along the Oregon coast, we even declared a far off boat to be Castle Rock. I think we’re both ready for a trip back to the states. He leaves in a week, me in almost two weeks!

On Friday, the parents of Alice (my sitemate) arrived and are staying here for a week and a few days (they’re actually on the same flight home as Mitch to Miami). All of our friends here were super excited to meet her. On Friday night I was working at my friend’s bar (can’t wait to put that on my work report and see what kind of feedback I get from Quito) and one of my friend’s kept telling everyone that his “In-laws” were coming into town and will be at the bar tomorrow (Sat) night. It was a pretty good joke and he asked me how to say in-laws in English and he promised me that on Saturday he was going to introduce himself as their future in-law, but rumor has it, he got too shy and didn’t say it. But I finally got to meet her parents last night on Sunday, they invited me over to dinner (Alice is now living in her own apartment as of last Thursday) and it was sooo nice to have an American mother cooked meal. Alice’s mom apologized that it wasn’t anything special and just food thrown together but to me, it was extravagant.

Last week, what a week it was. Defiantly goes down in history as my busiest week of the entire past year (I’ve recently now realized I’ve been “unemployed” for a year now). I’m trying to get all of my projects wrapped up before I go back to the states as to have a clean start when I return. Mostly last week consisted of working with a bunch of high school students getting them ready for their cultural open house, which was held on Saturday (which sadly I couldn’t go to). But I worked with different groups and we made 2 different types of medicinal drinks, fresh peanut butter (sooo good), a red sauce for cooking (pasta de achoite, which is really popular in Oaxaca, Mexico) and cheese! It was a great learning experience for me but I felt bad because they all expected me to know exactly what I was doing. So I tried to hide my doubts but how am I supposed to know when these leaves of some plant that I don’t even know its name are fermented enough to be for medicinal usage?

Also a big tradition here at Christmas is to buy little goodie baggies and have them delivered to the poorer communities to provide gifts for the little kids. So working with the women’s group of the municipal, we have spent the fast few days bagging up crackers, suckers, candies and tiny plastic toys to donate to a bunch of areas. It’s been a lot of fun and every morning this week, we’re going out to deliver the bags. I get to go Wednesday and Friday and am super excited.

Other than that this week I picked up a few more English classes so I need to get prepared for those. I’ve defiantly started enjoying teaching more and that this is an incredible experience, which has a lot to offer me. And then also I am working on writing a grant to get funds to start making 3 gardens in the high schools for the following school year (they have summer break Jan - April); which I want to get submitted before Christmas. I have decided that I am talking next week off (for the most part, I’ll probably still be working on the grant proposal) and Alice and I are dedicating the week to making Christmas cookies to give to all of our “loved ones” here.

For Christmas, I’m not quite sure what I am going to be doing here. I think we might have a small get together here in Cumanda and have dinner and what not. But Christmas here isn’t a big deal, there’s more celebration for new years. Everyone I ask about Christmas tells me the tradition is to have dinner on Christmas eve with family and then at midnight everyone goes out to the dance club/bar and celebrates…But what about the eggnog???

All right well I hope that all of you are mostly ready for the upcoming holidays! I hope you all have a safe and fun time with all of the family. Take care and hopefully I’ll get another blog up before I go back to the states. LOVE.

Last Friday I was sitting eating lunch with Melita and the normal crowd at the Tienda and my friend Jorge calls me. I answer and he says “its suuuuper sunny outside, lets go to the pool.” I tell him, “Jorge I can’t its Friday and I have work to do lets go tomorrow” and he says “come on, its sunny and warm, lets go.” Needless to say an hour later a group of four of us and a bag of mangoes were headed to a beautiful afternoon at the pool.

For thanksgiving, a small group of us go together at my friend Abbie’s house. She lives in a tiny po-dunk town of maybe 200 people so we were literally out in the middle of nowhere. Her site made Cumanda feel like a metropolis. But the small town was a great atmosphere for us to get together and have a good time. On Thursday we woke up at 11 and were cooking by noon and eating by 8 pm. A day full of cooking but a day well spent. We feasted on turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, zucchini bread, whole wheat bread, walnut/blue cheese salad, cranberries, berry cobbler and fresh delicious pumpkin pie. The best part, everything we ate was made from SCRATCH. Except for the cranberries, we luckily found a can of those. I was actually pretty impressed that we found all of the ingredients and it turned out to be an incredible, beyond words, meal.

Before I allowed myself to leave for Abbie’s house, I had a list of things I had to accomplish here in Cumanda. One of them was to teach my first, official English class. I was dreading it and nervous as all get out but it was actually really easy and slightly enjoyable. The most frustrating part is having to deal with the teacher. Before I began teaching, she told all the students to pay extra attention to my pronunciation because it's a rare chance for them to learn from a native speaker. But yet anytime I asked a question, she was ALWAYS the first one to respond with the answer in her crazy spanglish which all of the students mimicked what she said. Guess I’ll need to teach the teacher first and then maybe we’ll make progress on the kids. On Tuesday I have class number 2 and at the request of the teacher, we’re going to learn Christmas songs. This I can handle…

I’ve been thinking for a while about starting a project of teaching how to can fruits and vegetables because its super easy and I know that it would be really popular here. So last Sunday I set out on an adventure to find jars suitable for canning and as I went on my search, I ran into one of my friends who decided to accompany and help me. We searched for 2 hours and found nothing with a metal or sealable top. Guess that’s why nobody cans their own food. So instead of spending my Sunday afternoon canning as I had hoped, my friend invited me to his nephew’s 5th birthday party where we listened to the entire N’sync album and had platters of cheese, bologna and candy passed around.

Yesterday I worked with the women’s group from the municipal selling food at a memorial service for the kid that just recently passed away. I returned from traveling at 2 in the afternoon, showered and changed and went to the memorial service at 3 which is where I stayed until 11 pm that night. I thought it was only going to last one or two hours but like always, Ecuador fooled me and took way longer than had expected (and necessary if I may add). But it was really impressive that this kid of 22 years old was so well known and respected in the community that there was a special memorial service with at least 500 people in his honor. After the service ended (at 11) I went back to my house, changed once again, and went to a dance fundraiser that my friend was hosting, unwillingly danced for an hour and then went to another friend’s bar. Hmm what a weekend.

I took a break from writing and just got back from picking my first crop of green beans from my garden. I finally ripped up all of my lettuce because I got so frustrated with my neighbors rabbits and chickens eating them before I even had a chance. If I can’t eat them, nobody can eat them damnit. But now I have fresh basil and green beans to make for my dinner. I don’t think I’ve ever had a pesto green bean salad mixture before but welp, tonight’s going to be the night.

Also, I added a few photos to the blog. The other day my friend Jorge got asked my a local school to paint a mural on one of the school’s walls so I decided to help him out. The last line says “to love is to teach” which I is how I feel, I may not be doing tons of work here but at least I have my love to give!

Anyways I hope all of you had a great thanksgiving. These past few weeks and months have defiantly improved for me and that is what I feel the most thankful for. I am thankful for the people here in Cumanda that have opened so much of their lives for me and are willing to share them with me. I am thankful for each of you that continue to stay updated on my sporadic adventures and for all of your encouragement and prayers.

I hope that all of you had a great thanksgiving with friends and family. Love love.

So I’m sitting here snacking on carrots and mustard (two of my favorite things which are absolutely delicious together) and I have an hour until the service in the temple with Melita starts so I decided what better way to pass my time than to update you all! I am still uncertain as to what “type” or “religion” the service that I go to every Friday is but last week I discovered that the guy who occasionally leads the service is “Lutheran”. It felt great to finally be included and to be a part of the club. But remind you, he’s also different than any other Lutheran pastor I’ve ever met, for example he’s strictly vegetarian, incorporates yoga positions into his messages and manages to tie in the proper, religious way to breathe during sex, every week.

The festivals of Bucay have ended and they went out with a bang and a weight gain on my part. A weeks worth of beer drinking will do that to you, but hey, it's the fiestas, they only happen once a year…but its nice to have life back to normal, it means that it will actually be possible to get some work done, I’ll go back to having a normal schedule and there won’t be band practice at 5 am anymore.

Right now we’re in the dry season weather wise and because this year is an “el nino” year, it means its super dry. And when its super dry, there’s not enough water for the damns to function and thus not enough energy to supply electricity for Ecuador. So we are now experience daily blackouts from 4-7 pm, which means all of the area loses power for the 3 hours. During the fiestas it was really fun because everybody would say “welp, there’s no light, guess we should drink the beers before they get warm” but now it's a huge inconvenience and causes a lot of businesses to lose money. But I actually look forward to those hours, I think life by candlelight is fun.

Alright, well I wrote all of that last week Friday and now another week has passed without an update so here comes the rest…

We still have power outages, but now they’re no longer from 4-7 but instead we lose power for 3 hours whenever the power plant decides to turn off the power. For a few days, it was only 10 am-12am which was nice but lately its been 6-9 pm but its always a great conversation starter with my neighbors, discussing when we’re going to lose power, when we prefer to lose power and them telling me about their horrible government system.

As for projects, I’ve got a little bit going on everywhere. Because my counterpart just recently got elected to a position in the municipal of Cumanda (which is why I don’t work much with him anymore) he elected me to be his “representative” for the women’s group that consists of most of the wives of the men in the municipal. With this group, we’re working on organizing the fiestas for Christmas so the next few weekends are full of fundraisers. I have sat through 8 hours worth of meetings and still have a VERY vague idea about what is actually going on, all I know is that I signed up to make 200 empanadas…

I’m still working with a high school helping them prepare for their open house the first weekend in December. They’re focusing on making a bunch of new products like wine, pickled fruits and veggies, breads etc out of all the same products that they have here in the area. It's a great idea and there’s a bunch of alternatives and will be great to teach the community. There’s about 5 different groups that I am working with and they all think that I am an expert at how to prepare each of these new products when most of the fruits, veggies, cultivation that they use I’ve never even heard of! Good thing I know how to follow a recipe.

Alice and I started going for jogs every other day around 5:30 and now we have 2 other neighbor ladies that come with us and I’ve started walking with a few ladies from the women’s group on the other afternoons. It’s pretty funny walking and chatting with them. They cannot get over the fact that I am single and I enjoy being single. Every walking session they ask me if I have a boyfriend yet, who I would want to date and make every attempt to set me up with their son, nephew, cousin, friend…anyone.

I’ve finally broken down and decided to teach an English class at a rural school outside of Bucay. It’s about the poorest school in the area and it's a K-7 and there’s no one that teaches English. The 7th graders are required to know a basic level of English before entering High school so I’ve decided that they could really use my help.

Next week is thanksgiving and I am going to my friend’s site to have a small dinner. There’s a few big peace corps gatherings going on but I’m not really ready for another big pc gathering, I just saw everybody in September and October…I need sometime away in order to miss people.

Our next basketball game is Dec 12th and I am super excited. Plenty of time to practice and prepare ourselves.

I think I’ve mentioned this before but my neighbors that live below me, have a pet monkey who is not the nicest nor quietest. The way that our apartments were constructed was fairly poorly and there’s about a 6in x 2ft gap in my kitchen that leads to the stairwell and my neighbors have the same (but they’ve placed a wooden slat propped up by a broom in the stairwell to block there’s off, slightly inconvenient for me cuz I’m the one that passes it everyday, not them). Anyways one morning I woke up and there was a handful of papaya seeds that were dug out of my compost bowl and a half eaten tomato on my table and last night I came home to find half of my banana that I had left on the table eaten. Either I have some giant crazy bugs in my house and thankfully I’ve never seen them or this damn monkey is coming into my house and eating my food!! I can’t decided if I should set up a booby trap for the thing or just block of the gap in the wall…booby trap, defiantly is a better idea. Teach the monkey a lesson.

But well that's about it from here, I’ve got a little more than a month until I’m stateside for Christmas. I’m getting excited but I am also sad to leave here because I’ve been invited by a few families to share the holidays with them. Here, Christmas isn’t a big deal but New Years Eve. They have a huge parade, all of the family gets together on New Years and they make life-sized dolls and fill them with secrets and then set them on fire. Guess I’ll just have to wait until next year to experience it!

Well I hope that all of you have a great Thanksgiving and enjoy all of things we have to be thankful for!! Love love.

i added new photos to my album on facebook from halloween and just recent times :)

PHOTOS

new blog coming soon...keep your eyes peeled.

My life has taken a turn for the best, it has now turned into mango season, which means that the streets, stores and hands of every Ecuadorian are jammed full of ripe delicious mangos! What a sweet treat after 6 months of bananas but dont get me wrong, I still love bananas and eat at least 2 a day. But the mangos here are eaten like apples and they are deliciously messy. So that's the best part of my life right now! But with the other things…

Work: Ive basically stopped working with my original boss and the baby banana company. I do a little bit of work for them when theres something I can help with me Im tired of being told to have patience and there will be work. I now call my boss every Monday morning and he always tells me that he wants me to help him out or attend some meeting with him later in the week but as always, I fail to hear from him. So instead Ive been filling my time with other projects. Alice (the other peace corp volunteer) and I gave our first trash charla, which is like an informal presentation about properly disposing of trash and protecting the earth, at one of the local schools to over 100 kids. It was suuuuper nerve-racking and Im not sure if any of the kids could understand our Spanish but they sure loved the games and candy we handed out. Our goal is to give this charla to majority of the schools by the following june because june 5th is the worldwide clean water day and we want to host a river clean up with all of the kids. There´s about 30 schools we want to do so that's about 3-4 a month or one a week so its defiantly do able. The other main project IÕm working on is helping one of the high schools plan an open house about the variety of opportunities that our region has to offer. Im super excited about this because my group is focusing on how to prepare a variety of foods so I am going to take advantage of this and create fliers about nutrition and proportion sizes and also new recipes and meal plans that include more fresh vegetables.

Life: a few weeks went by where Alice and I were spending a lot of time together (mostly because I went through an angry spell with Ecuador itself and turned to her for support) but we both decided that we cant hang out so much and we need to make new friends. So we are currently having a fun competition about who can make the most friends which has actually been really beneficial for the both of us. I joined-created a womens basketball team and we had our first game the other night because bucay is in the middle of their annual fiestas. We won by like 15 points I think and I have now become famous for being an incredible basketball player but in my defense, for the advantage that I have, I really did not play well. I know I had at least 6 fouls but my friend was in charge of the books so he helped me out. The game was a lot of fun and since we won, we got invited to play another game in December and now that I have seen us play, I have a lot of things I want to teach them. Like how to catch a basketball to playing defense. Ha, one of my teammates had the ball and the girl guarding her grabbed her arm and fouled her but instead of walking away, my teammate backhanded the girl in the face. I could not believe it. She got kicked out of the game which sucked cuz she was defiantly the best one of them all. So I guess we´ll also work on controlling our tempers. A downer in my life here is that last week one of my friends from Cumanda died in a car accident. It was very sad and he was very popular here in the community. He was the son of one of Melitas very good friends so it was a hard week with everything that was going on.

Traveling: a few weekends back we had a big party here in Cumanda for a housewarming and birthday party. It was a lot of fun and was a good success. We ate a lot of good, delicious American food and spent both evenings at my friends bar. The night life here is so different, we stayed out one night until 9 am the next day just sitting around chatting, singing and listening to people pass the guitar around. For Halloween, we had a big peace corps party in a town called El Chaco and its in the eastern-jungle-amazon part of Ecuador and was my first time in this area. It was an incredible weekend and we all went rafting on Saturday and then had a typical Halloween party in the evening. I dressed up as a crab. I´ll try and get photos up soon.

I cant believe its already November. That means I have less than two months until the end of the year. Wow wow wow! I need to stop saying how fast time is flying by and actually grasp my time here. Anyways forgive me for horrible efforts at keeping you updated, November will be better, I promise!! Love you all and take care!

Its been way too long, I know. As always I am shocked at how my daily life seems so tedious but yet the months just fly by. September has actually been a great month for and quite possibly my busiest, thus an excuse for me to not have shared an update with you all.

I was fairly busy for the first half of the month putting together my presentation for the “Reconnect” activity for Peace Corps where we made a small presentation on our communities and what future projects we are going to be working on for the next two years. Due to “safety reasons” peace corps decided to host 3 different reconnects for our group of volunteers based on regional areas, costal, mountain and jungle. So all of us that live in the ‘coastal region’ were lucky enough to have our Reconnect in one of the worst areas of Ecuador, often referred to as the armpit of Ecuador. The town we stayed in is always humid, dirty and is currently having a problem with a local gang that has been on a rampage of murdering someone every weekend. And yet we were sent to this lovely town for “safety reasons”. None the less, in the coastal group, there were 10 of us and we had a great time catching up and having our own parties in the hotel, where we felt safe.

September brought me two great visitors. The first was my program manager from Quito who came and checked up on my progress here in Cumanda. It was great to have him here and be able to share with him my future ideas with where and what I can do to help and to hear his feedback. He also really liked my new house and felt that it was a good choice.

The second visitor was a good friend from college and my first actual visitor from the states! I felt a little guilty when I made him bring me a bunch of goods from home that I’ve been missing (peanut butter, mom’s dried fruit etc…) but thankfully he didn’t mind. After the Reconnect event, I went to Quito to pick up Christian and we spent a few days in Quito, stopped over in Riobamba and then headed to Cumanda. We spent the week in Cumanda so that I could get some work done since I’d just been gone the week before and as we were leaving on Friday to go to Guayaquil, he admitted that he was ready for the next city and slightly bored of Cumanda. Hmm….i guess it’s a place you just grow to love. We spent the weekend in Guayaquil and were able to make a quick trip to the beach and then he flew home after the weekend. All in all, it was a great trip and so much fun to have a friend from home here. It felt so good to be able to share my everyday life with someone and for someone to experience it with his or her own eyes. But as I have come to learn having a visitor also has its downsides, for it was hard to adjust back to the normal life.

This past Sunday I was invited by a friend to go with his family and group of friends to do a biking tour of the waterfalls around Bucay. It was an awesome trip and was something I’d probably never do but it was free so I couldn’t turn it down. Afterwards he also invited me to lunch at this beautiful resort style ranch about 20 minutes outside of town. While at lunch, I was talking to one of the caretakers and he asked if I would assist him in starting an organic garden to supply food for the kitchen. He showed me a huge plot of land that they have available and it made me super excited for the opportunity to help him.

Also, Alice (the new volunteer in Bucay) and I have been working on a fun little presentation about soil and water quality to give to the elementary kids, which we’re starting next week. Slightly nervous for the presentations but am proud that we’re finally getting this project started. Its defiantly something I should’ve done a long time ago but only now am feeling confident enough in my abilities to be able to do it successfully.

I think that due to the Reconnect and great month of September, my mind was given a bit of a break or rest from the daily pressures of Cumanda because I now have new feelings of confidence, feeling ready to tackle some of these problems and actually do all these projects that I’ve said I would do. It feels good. I feel good.

This weekend is a friend’s birthday so we’re having a joint birthday party and house warming party here in Cumanda. I am excited to see everyone and have everyone here but there have been a lot of issues with teachers and striking so peace corps has limited our traveling. But I am being hopefully and am hoping that everyone will still be able to come. So if any of you don’t have any plans for the weekend, feel free to drop on by!

My apologies for keeping you all in suspense about what I have been up to. I promise things will go back to normal now. I don’t have any other big events planned. Just working, which I am excited about.

Oh yes, the other great thing my mom sent me was a mixture of seeds to plant in my garden. I made miniature seed boxes to keep in my house and I planted them a week ago. I have an herb garden in my kitchen and the basil has just started to poke out of the ground and in just a week my pea plants have grown about 6 inches. I think I’m going to have to transplant those soon. The glorious thing about living here is you can grow things year round. Its hard to keep track of the months because I feel like I’m eternally living in July where as its actually October. Hmm life on the equator has its benefits.

I hope all is well and that you are all having a beautiful fall!! Take care, love love.

…I am living in my new apartment and it has been a glorious transition!! With the help of Gloria and her husband we moved all of the rest of my stuff in and I stayed up the entire night before packing because I was too excited to sleep. Fernanda, the saint that she is, helped me unpack and completely organized my kitchen. She even alphabetized my spices. I now have a full size bed, a closet to hang my clothes and a warm shower. I have nothing to complain about these days :) I even found a cockroach the other morning but it was like a foot away from the door and was upside down dead. I don’t know how it died or what happened to it but I am thinking that my apartment has a built-in anti-cockroach system. Couldn’t be any more perfect.

I just got back last night from a great weekend in Quito. I left Cumanda early Friday morning with my counterpart. He was headed to Riobamba, which is halfway on the way to Quito so I decided to catch a ride with him thinking it would be faster, more comfortable and FREE-er than taking the bus. But turns out, after waiting 45 minutes for him at 5 am on Friday I figured he had forgotten about me so I started to walk to the bus stop but apparently he was just running really late cuz he drove past me walking and picked me up. I then crawled into the backseat of a little dinky car and sat in between my counterpart’s son and another friend of my counterpart. How comfortable. As we left town, we passed the bus that 6 am bus to Riobamba that I would’ve been on and I was relieved to think that yes, it may be uncomfortable but at least you’ll get there sooner. We drive for an hour merely to stop, pick up another full-grown friend, who kicks the son up to the front with his dad and joins me and the other full-grown man in the tiny backseat, and then go and eat breakfast. Needless to say, had I taken the bus, I would’ve arrived 40 min earlier, been more comfortable and not had to deal with falling asleep on grown man’s shoulder and waking up to him stroking my arm. But when it comes down to it, free is free.

I arrived into Quito around 3 in the afternoon and went straight to the office to pick up my new cell phone (had a little incident with my other one in Guayaquil two weekends ago). I then met up with my friends Abbie and Megan and we headed out to Megan’s site, which is about an hour outside of Quito. Megan had just moved into her new apartment as well so we enjoyed a delicious dinner of nachos (with cheddar cheese and refried beans) while sitting on her floor just sharing story after story of the crazy things that happen to us while in site.

Saturday we spent the day putzing around town and then headed over to another volunteer’s house for spaghetti before running the big race at 7. The race was a lot of fun, there were 7 of us all together that ran it. It was incredible how many people were there. They only let 4500 people sign up for it (only) and it would literally be impossible to run if they let any more people in. the first half of the race was running through the old town on narrow, cobble stone streets which were lined with spectators cheering us on. It was actually super chaotic for the first 5 km until we made it out of the old town and on to actual streets. I survived the race and didn’t even have to walk!

Sunday I subjected myself to 9 hours in the bus traveling back home and didn’t get home until 11:30 pm but I am so happy to be back in costal weather. I spent two days shivering in Quito.

This morning after work I went to the “supermarket” to buy groceries and after making small talk with a local, he asked me to write a two-page article for his magazine about organic gardens. Uhhh okay I said. Apparently my Spanish speaking abilities didn’t give him any inclination about my Spanish writing abilities.

This week my project is to finish organizing a potential mission trip for my parents and friends. They want to come in the following spring to build a classroom or kitchen for a school so I am working on getting all of the costs and arrangements made to see if Cumanda would be a feasible opportunity for them. Also what I need to get done is what Peace Corps calls CAT tools where I am basically doing a general survey of my community to assess potential needs and future projects. We’ve been given 4 months to work on it and have to present it to our bosses of Peace Corps in two weeks!! Welp good thing I’ve been using my time wisely and have been doing it little by little rather than leaving it all for the last two weeks before it’s due to start working on it…right. Once a procrastinator, always a procrastinator.

I have gone three days without my typical soup and plate of rice for lunch and I have defiantly been having cravings for soup. So I guess its time for me to make my way over to the Melita’s tienda to satisfy my cravings.

Take care, love love.

First, we’ll start with work. I’m still being “patient” as my boss asks me to do everyday because there’s really not much work for me to do and I am beginning to wonder how I ever even got assigned to work with him. I hate that he thinks of me merely as his secretary and would blow him off to find a new counterpart if it weren’t for the fact that I really want to work with his company to help produce and market their future product. He tells me to be patient and that in a few months things will be better and I believe him, until I remember this is Ecuador, a few months can last up to 5 years and I only have two!! But I guess I will take my time to research dehydrated bananas and better prepare myself…

In my lack of work, I have been finding other projects to work on. Last Friday there was a mini-festival for Ecuador’s independence day (it was 10 days late) and I attended it with Melita. After I received a free manicure from the students of the beauty school, Melita introduced me to a friend of hers who is the director of a high school that has a project helping the youth start small businesses. He invited me to help and I was able to meet with the heads of the program on Sunday. They also asked me to teach English at the high school (which I really don’t want to do but I’m starting to think it would at least give me something to do) and I told them I’d rather teach basic business classes or a geography-political science class. But the unfortunate thing is the high school only has classes on Saturday and Sundays, which are days I don’t really want to give up. So I guess we’ll see where this goes…

Today I finally planted my first seeds in my garden. I planted carrots, lettuce and a seed that I forgot what it was. And tomatoes as well but those are in my kitchen and I don’t really have much hope for them. Keep your fingers crossed. Melita had some flowerbeds made cuz that's really about the only way to grow things here and she very kindly let me have two of them. But as I was planting my seeds I noticed the giant ants crawling about and am worried that they are going to be a future nuisance. I have been searching all over Guayaquil and Riobamba to buy worms to start my worm beds but haven’t had any luck. Yesterday Melita told me there’s a place right outside of town that does worm beds and I can just buy some from them. So I guess my project for tomorrow is to find me some worms.

And enough about work, it bores me. This past Wednesday I went to Riobamba to spend time with my friend Ashley. She had found a spa in a little town outside of Riobamba and we set a mission to go and check it out, hoping to receive a nice massage. Turns out, its closed on Wednesday for cleaning and only offered a warm pool for swimming. Minor let down but instead of the spa, Ashley and I treated ourselves to some homemade, fresh fruit ice cream. Delicioooous. On Thursday Ashley went to work and I met up with some other volunteers who live in Riobamba for breakfast. We ate fish soup. I never would’ve thought that I would like to eat a soup with chunks of potato and albacore at 8 in the morning but it is oddly delectable and something that I am starting to crave. Afterwards we went shopping for worms and seeds and sadly didn’t have much luck. Now I know why no one grows their own gardens, its cuz seeds are expensive and lack in variety. But I ended up buying carrots, my friend lettuce and we swapped half for half so I guess it worked out well.

On Thursday Alice, the new volunteer to replace Brooke, arrived. I am slightly jealous that she has such a better work situation than me but I am not jealous that she is just starting. I’m taking my three months advantage and holding it over her head for as long as I can!

Saturday I went and played basketball with a friend of mine and of course I was the only female. I didn’t think it would be a problem until they started fighting over whose team I would play on. Apparently everybody wanted to be on my team because they were afraid to push or touch me. I was actually pretty offended by it but then I was better than about ¾’s of them (this is even after not playing since forever) so I got over it pretty quickly. That evening I took Fernanda and her two cousins to the circus that was in town for the weekend. And by circus they really mean two hours of clowns doing silly jokes and dancing and about 15 minutes of acrobatics, stunts and a hypnotist. It was really good, except for the clowns. Fernanda and her cousins wanted me to go up and get hypnotized but one, I was a little critical of the quality of the hypnotist, two, I was critical as to whether I could really be hypnotized in Spanish and three, I’m glad I didn’t because the last event that the hypnotist made his victims do was “dance sexy” which lead them to dancing and stripping.

On Sunday the family of Alice invited me to come to the pool with them so we spent the afternoon playing soccer, volleyball, swimming, playing cards and eating bbq-ed pig. Now that is what I like to call a Sunday!

This weekend I am heading up to Quito on Friday to go to the main office and get some stuff figured out and then on Saturday I am running another 10k. This one starts at 10pm and goes through the Old Town of Quito and passes by all of the churches. I am pretty excited about it cuz its going to be an incredible view but I am really worried about whether or not I’ll be able to breathe because its about an 6,000 ft change in elevation. I told my friend that I was doing it and that I was afraid of the elevation change and his response was “don’t worry, there’s always medics around”. Thank you Jorge…

Well that's about it from me, I wish I had more exciting news or projects but I am glad to be able to report that it was another good week in Cumanda!

You know that life is good when you walk outside and are perplexed as to whether you should pull a fresh mandarin, grapefruit or chirimoya off the tree for your breakfast. I’m in the land of bananas and so much more.

I was just beginning to be proud of myself for keeping a weekly update on my blog and I guess it went to my head because as of late, it seems impossible. Things have been going well which I am happy to report; despite the general sadness that Brooke (the other volunteer) has officially moved out and left. She is now traveling through Peru, Chile and Argentina until the end of September. But I am now the proud owner of a beautiful refrigerator, a full sized bed and a well-stocked kitchen. I am still lacking a table though but the few times I actually eat in my home, I don’t mind eating on the floor.

Brooke left last Saturday which was a day packed full of moving, dread, sadness and a delicious shrimp lunch provided by Brooke for all of our help. On Sunday I made it to Guayaquil on little sleep in order to meet up with some friends and run a 10k. It went well, I finished the race needless to say. Afterwards my friends and I decided to reward ourselves with a quick trip to the beach to visit another volunteer whose site is actually on the beach (jealous). We spent the afternoon lying on the glorious sand, playing in the water, enjoying the plentiful beers that were being brought to us (waiters, on the beach, incredible) and I even came home with a sand dollar! I asked about 7 other beachcombers what they call a sand dollar in Spanish and no one knew.

This past week has been a little different because my counterpart has recently been voted into a local governmental position of Cumanda so now he spends most of his days working in the Government building. Ha which basically means the one thing that I actually did on a daily basis (walking to his house for “work”) is now no longer existent. So I’ve found other ways to fill my time, like working in Melita’s store or spending an afternoon in customs trying to get out a package sent to me. I’ve been dying to start up a garden because right now is the perfect growing season but you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find seeds here. I went to three different stores here and all of them only had seeds for cilantro and peppers, which obviously grow in surplus here because that's all you can buy. Is it really that hard to grow some carrots??

I just recently finished reading the book Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver which I’m sure most have heard about as it is a very popular book. Despite its slow start, I felt obligated to read it, it defiantly picked up and now I can’t get the characters out of my mind. Anyways, it's a fiction book about a Southern Baptist family that moves to the Congo in the ‘60s as missionaries. One of the main premises discusses how the family is viewed merely because of there white skin and how it effects their potential capabilities. A quote I really enjoyed: “The children who hounded us daily for money and food weren’t dim-witted beggars; they were accustomed to the distribution of excess, and couldn’t fathom why we held ourselves apart.” Not that I am at all comparing Ecuador to the 50-year-old indigenous tribes of the Congo for there are inarguable differences; but with all of the Ecuadorians I have met, they have all left in awe of how willing they are to share. And with my own personal things, I have acted just as the quote says and held what I have apart because it is mine. I have mentally critiqued the culture here for not taking pride and care for their things but maybe that’s where I’m in the wrong for coveting the few things that I do have. However, it also does stretch to other extremes where as it breaks my heart to hear them talk about how incredible, rare and beautiful their Ecuador is but yet don’t think twice about throwing diapers in the rivers, burning everything plastic and not caring for their earth. How do you find a balance of having pride for the things you don’t own without sacrificing the ability to share the things that you do own?

Melita and I made our bi-weekly trip to Guayaquil on Friday to re-stock her store (which is still full, she’s addicted to shopping). I actually gave her some input this trip; I can’t remember what she was buying but it was something I felt that was unnecessary so I asked, “Do you really need these in the store?” She looked at me and said, “Yes.” And then I said no more. Maybe I’ll try again next trip.

I spent this following weekend in Cumanda. It was the festival weekend of another little town close by so I went to the bull fighting and dancing on Saturday evening. Like all the others, these festivals failed to leave me intrigued and in shock that certain events are actually acceptable. Sunday I was invited by a neighbor who raises pigs to go view the pigs in the market and then treated me to roasted pig afterwards. I’ve eaten the roasted pig before and it’s pretty delicious, but I guess after viewing all the other pigs still alive it’s hard to eat roasted pig (with its head still intact) at 8:30 in the morning.

This morning I amazed my boss with my abilities to create a powerpoint presentation. I think I am going to be disappointed in two years and I lose all of these special powers, so I try not to think about it. Today (August 10th) is also Ecuador’s Independence Day so it's a national holiday where no one works. I’m shocked that my boss was working this morning. And also all the schools have vacation for a week. I’m pretty sure they had vacation for a week two weeks ago.

On Thursday of this upcoming week, I’m going to another friend’s site who is a natural resources volunteer and he does a lot with a local natural reserve forest. One of his jobs is training tour guides in English so he needs English-speaking people to come test them out. I gladly signed up for a free tour in a canoe through the mangroves.

Welp, that's about it from here. I hope all is well and I hope you all enjoyed your Ecuadorian Independence Day!!

Here is the link to my album on facebook, it has some new photos towards the end!

How easy it is to lose track of time!

Yesterday, Saturday, was my official 5 month mark of arriving in Ecuador. Crazy to think that I have been here for this much time already. I think I feel the same way every time I think about how much time has gone by and its always an odd, bittersweet feeling.

I wish I could say I have lots to say about what I have been doing with my time, but really I think I’ve kinda spoiled myself while my counterpart has been gone. I’ve made quite a few trips into Guayaquil, watched quite a few movies, cooked a lot for Melita and me, READ a lot.

The best part of these past few weeks is that I found a beautiful new apartment and I got the keys to it this past Wednesday. I can’t move in until my program director comes and approves it (I think, really hope, that he’s coming sometime this upcoming week but who really knows). It broke my heart to tell Melita that I would be moving out but I’ll be so much more comfortable in my new place. Its on the top floor of a building, has incredible windows that overlook the whole 6 blocks of Cumanda, has a skylight, an ELECTRIC SHOWER (no more cold showers for this kid) and a bathroom I could do cartwheels in. I like to refer to it as my one bedroom, studio apartment; all its missing is a grand piano and then I’d be content and live here forever. I’ll try and get photos up soon. Its seriously, really pretty. I’ve spent two solid days just cleaning it and then sitting and admiring its glory.

Oh, one thing productive I did do this past weekend was I started meeting with my “tutor”. She’s originally from Cumanda but her family won the “visa lottery” (didn’t even know it existed) but I guess they randomly select people’s social security numbers and if you get chosen, you get a visa for life. Anyways, her family moved to the states when she was 14 and she’s now going to be a sophomore at the University of Vermont and is just home for summer break. Why nobody thought I’d like to be introduced to her earlier I’m not sure. I’m her first student so she’s really not very experienced and we have class in her house and her mom, grandmother, two aunts and 12 year old cousin also looooove to help me out and add their own personal comments.

For any of you that know Spanish, we were discussing the difference in the past tenses, like when to use estaba versus estuvo and she told me that you use estaba when referring to a feminie object like la escuela estaba cerrado y el banco estuvo cerrado. Riiiiiiight….okay guess we’ll just focus on my pronunciation then. The sad part is, her entire peanut gallery agreed with her.

So last weekend was the final weekend of the festivals in Bucay. It was topped off by a parade on Saturday, rodeo on Sunday and then bullfighting on Monday. The parade was interesting to say the least. All the schools, groups and neighborhoods have a dance and costumes and parade through the town following their car that is blasting chosen songs. Some were really good, others not so much. Like the group of transsexuals doing the Macarena. Maybe if the community were actually gay-friendly it’d be okay, but they actually just think that cross-dressing is one of the funniest things possible.

I know something else I during my past two weeks of freedom. I went to another volunteers site that is about an hour from me and helped him with his “world map project”. It's a general project that peace corps encourages us to do, which is just painting a giant map on the side of a wall of a school or wherever. I really hope to do one before I leave because the only geography they know is if things are in la costa, sierra or oriente (the 3 regions of Ecuador). Maps, the united states, macchu pichu are all figments of their imagination, they’ve heard people talk about them but I’m convinced Ecuadorians are a little skeptical as to their actual existences. I’m hoping that the next school year I can teach a geography class and then include the map as a project. I’ll share with them my love for maps. Anyways, Mitch and I met up at this other guy, Jakob, site and we spent the day painting countries and we had a lot of fun.

I’ve started making it a ritual to make myself dinner and then pack it and take it the old train track bridge which has a nice breeze and an incredible view of the sunset. Its nice to have some quiet, alone time. A few nights ago, there were two ladies that came walking along the train track with a plastic bag. I thought they had been admiring my new habits and were coming to join me or at least check out what this crazy gringa does every day walking here. But no, instead they walked a few steps on to the bridge, waved and grined at me, and then threw their plastic bag into the water, which exploded upon impact and sent dirty diapers racing down the river. On the better days, I’ve been entertained by two little boys doing micheal Jackson dance moves on the sand bed and the crazy giant iguanas that have made the sandbags their home.

Welp, I think that's about it from here. I’m mildly dreading having to go to the office tomorrow but I guess I can’t do nothing forever….or could I?

Love love.

Well, there are two things that I thought were impossible and this past week has gone and proved me wrong. The first and most shocking is that after two months of saying he was going to Brazil, my counterpart finally, finally left today!! I spent all morning with him today sending emails, confirming his arrival, that people will be there to pick him up, etc. I tried to leave 3 times this morning but he kept asking me to wait until he was leaving too. You could also smell the fear in him. I tried to tell him that for me, traveling is one of the most beautiful treasures and opportunities that we can embark on in this life but my Spanish isn’t that good so I just told him “I like to travel. Just relax.”

Second thing I got proved wrong about, Cumanda can be fun on the weekends!! After blowing all my money in Quito for the month, I have subjected myself to remaining in Cumanda for the rest of the month but I think I chose a good month because the “festivals of bucay” started last weekend and they last til the end of the month. This basically signifies minimal school for the children, no work for the adults, and way too much drinking for all. Plus an abundance of parades and concerts and fairs. On Friday, the other volunteer invited me to her friends birthday party which took place at a bar but yet they still had a table set up for presents and adorned with a cake; and they proceeded to share the cake with everyone in the bar. It was a really fun night and I got to meet a lot of Brooke’s friends. I also met some guy who used to live in Germany for 7 years and we shared an ugly mix of a Spanish/German conversation. Its disgusting how much of my German I’ve forgotten. But the the highlight of the night was when one of brooke’s good friends (42 year old man) dedicated a song to her leaving but broke down in tears before he could finish the song. If I have a grown man cry about my leaving in two years, then I’ll know my service here has been complete!

On Saturday night, this was a big night, which Gloria has been preparing me for for the past three weeks. There was a special concert in order to kickoff the festivals by Angel Guaraca, “The King of National Music”. Honestly, Gloria acted like a 13 year old at a Justin Timberlake concert. She went crazy, screaming, cheering, dancing etc. But before Angel came on stage (which wasn’t until 1:30 am mind you) Gloria and Maria insisted that I take pictures of them with Angel, which can be viewed by clicking on this link. Once Angel came on stage, he welcomed the entire people of Bucay and then somehow turned straight toward me (I guess I stand out in a crowd of 400 plus people being white and a foot above the rest) and then called me out by name and gave me my own very special welcome. Embarrassed out of my mind as 400 sets of eyes turn to look at me, I just gave a little wave and said gracias. Apparently he had asked Gloria who I was while taking her photo. Thank you Gloria. The concert ended up lasting until 4 am and which I proceeded to dance for the entire time because to my humiliation, Angel gave me a second personal shout out saying “what a beautiful dancer our new American friend is (which is absolutely not true and I think a mean trick he was playing on me)!” Then once again, not only did the 400 sets of eyes turn to me again but I also had enough dancing partners to last me until the end of time. Thank you, Gloria.

A few Sundays ago, a little boy asked me if I could teach him English so I said sure and him and his sister later came over to my house. Apparently they now think it's a Sunday tradition because 4 times this weekend they came to my house pounding on the door until I came out (personal space/time doesn’t exist). So finally, we agreed for them to come back at 5:30 in order to give me some time to prepare (mentally) and they took it as more time to build a bigger army because when 5:30 rolled around I know had 8 kids pounding on my door shouting “goot afturnoon”. Needless to say by the end, I had 13 kids that knew their colors and how to sing “head and shoulders knees and toes” which left me smiling and singing for the rest of the day too. If anybody knows of any other great songs, please do share. I’m currently doing research for next Sunday’s class.

My other big highlight occurred yesterday at work when my boss asked the accounting intern to type up a speech for him (completely not the work of the intern but rather me). I then told my counterpart that I can type it up and in shock said “really? But its in Spanish?” well sir, I know I don’t speak a lot but I do know how to read and type. Within 5 minutes, I had three people standing behind me at the computer amazed that I could type without looking at my fingers or the screen. I think it was the highlight of their day. Today, I typed up a letter my counterpart received that was in Portuguese and it was the same thing over with them in awe that I learned Portuguese so quickly. Apparently, they think you have to be able to understand what it says in order to be able to type it. These people blow my mind but I’m glad I can help!

Ah, what an exhausting but great weekend! Quito literally wiped me out, out of energy and out of money. I decided to take the night bus to Quito because its 7 hours non stop and it would allow me to have an extra day in Quito but it was quite an adventure. First, I was lucky enough to buy the last ticket for the 11 o’clock bus but little did I know that it was going to be in between the bathroom (not going to describe it, I think you can imagine) and a drunken man. I didn’t know he was drunk until after I greeted him and his response was ever so friendly and reeked of alcohol. He then proceeded to be the chattiest man in all of Ecuador and I had to turn down his offer for a breakfast date and personal tour guide numerous telling him I didn’t think my “awaiting boyfriend” would approve. Shucks…maybe next time. Also, I never knew that the same bus that serves as a sauna during the day turns into an icebox at night. I boarded the bus in a sweater and jeans and took off my sweater because of the humidity and woke up after an hour and shivered for the remaining 6. Nonetheless, I arrived safely in Quito and only had to wait 10 minutes (I had expected a 2 hour wait) for my friend Ethan to show up.

Ethan and I spent the day site seeing around Quito as neither one of us had been there before. And by site seeing, we actually planned our sites around food places that we wanted to try. We went to breakfast where we shared a bagel with cream cheese and banana nut pancakes. Because it was only 7 am, we were able to sit for an hour and half and chat and catch up. We then planned to walk around the old town, view some churches (ended up hiking to the top of a bell tour, across a rickety bridge and three sets of ladders at probably about an 83 degree incline, not the safest and Ethan made me go first, see photo below) and then went and enjoyed a delicious lunch at an Indian restaurant.

Ah the glories of Quito. After lunch we headed to Cayambe to help prepare for the BBQ in the morning, which was shockingly a fairly nostalgic trip for the both us. I’m not going to lie, when I say we went to help “prepare” the BBQ, I mean we went and cooked the entire BBQ. But it was a lot of fun to meet a bunch of volunteers, new and old. I ended up meeting my “little brother” and he was as inquisitive as his emails suggested. It was good to hear that he was doing well. The new kids have only been here for two weeks and its odd to think that was I two months ago. I felt so much superior and experienced then them!

After the bbq, Ethan and I headed back to Quito where we met up with two other girls from our group and we ended going out to Mexican food (delicious!) and getting drinks and taking them back to our friends house (she was one of our co-trainers during training, she completed her two years and is spending one more working in the office). It was fun to catch up and hear each other’s horror/crazy stories of being in site.

For the 4th, we went over to another one of our co-trainers house for a mini-bbq (really can’t get enough of the bbq’s) where there was a wide variety of people, a few including some of our language facilitators which was so much fun to catch up with them after two months and to hear them practice their English!

The next morning Ethan and I went to church that his brother recommended for us; we went for the first 45 minutes and sang a bunch of songs and then they had somewhat of a half time and we decided that we’d had enough so we left. After we went and met up with more friends for lunch (all you can eat mangolian bbq, delicious!) and after I jumped on a bus to come home. Which actually turned into the longest bus ride of my life. Four hours to Riobamba, 2 hours in the Riobamba bus station, then 4 hours more to Cumanda. But the best part is this little town that you go through on the way to Riobamba that is famous for its ice cream cones (Salcedos) which had I had the opportunity, I would’ve bought two. The second vender to get on the bus ran out before he got to my seat. Sad.

I had a great weekend but yet I was still anxious to get back to Cumanda. I missed my neighbors and Melita a lot after being gone. Ha they actually called me everyday that I was gone just to make sure everything was alright. That's saying a lot because with the way that cell phone plans work around here, people never call unless its really important. So I guess that means I’m really important…I did bring Gloria back some bread (she swears that the bread is better in Riobamba) and so she offered to wash my clothes for me. All of them. It took her two days, I can’t even begin to imagine how long it would’ve taken me. That reminds me, I should go take them off the line before it starts to rain again.

I hope you all had a great 4th of July. Mom I really missed your typical flag fruit pie, the 4th just isn’t the same without fresh blueberries and cherries. Actually I take that back, July isn’t the same without fresh blueberries and cherries!

Today is June 30th. Two months ago, I was struggling to walk through the main bus station in Quito with my obnoxious amounts of luggage on my way to Cumanda. Wow, two months seems like a long time but then also nothing at all.

On other notes, This past weekend I did my very first official Peace Corps requirement and I feel like they would be proud of me. What I mean to say is that during our first three months in site, we are required to do these surveys of 50 families in our community, compile all the information into a presentation and then present it in September (with our counterparts) in Quito. The purpose of the project is to create my projects for the next two years, assess the needs in the community and also use as a method of explaining why I am here and that I am here as a resource to the community. But anyways on Sunday I did my first survey! So now, with a bunch of corrections made to my survey, only 49 more left to do. I have been dreaded doing the surveys because I feel like it's a little bit of an invasion of personal space/information but its not like that at all. My first one was with Maria (she has lived and worked for Melita for the past 15 years) and she loved the survey. Loved it and took it very seriously. The second questions (the first asking for your full name) is do you have a nickname. She put a name that I have never once heard her been called and she explained to me for about 5 minutes why and how she got this nickname. It was really interesting to talk with her and it made me happy because it probably took us about an hour and afterwards we shared a plate of cooked beans and cheese.

Friday was Gloria’s birthday and since I have become the baking master of Cumanda, Melita asked me to make two cakes for her. I took it as two separate cakes that if you didn’t like one, you could eat the other or eat a little bit of both. So I made a normal chocolate cake so the children could decorate it and what not and then an upside down apple cake (there weren’t any pineapples at the time). Turns out, they put the two cakes together a frosted and decorated the whole thing as one. They covered it with vanilla and raspberry frostings, gumballs and fresh strawberries. And when I say they, I mean me and my 35 year old friend, Maria. Nonetheless it turned out delicious (and beautiful as you can tell from the picture).

Friday after the birthday fiesta I jumped on a bus and headed to Guayaquil. There was a convention for HIV/AIDS prevention hosted by the US embassy, which I didn’t go to but a bunch of other volunteers did, so I took advantage of having them so close and went and visited them for the evening. There were two girls from my group, Colleen and Carolina, and then about 20 of us in total. I got in around 5 and met them at their hotel, then we left for dinner, drinks and a loooong fun night out of dancing. Saturday am Colleen left really early and Carolina and I spent the morning walking around Guayaquil until we came upon this Iguana/turtle/squirrel park where they just let all the animals roam around freely. I don’t know how or why they don’t escape but they all seemed pretty content just hanging out on the lawns. Afterwards we went to a mall and walked around for two hours where I had a Baskin Robbins ice cream cone (no chocolate peanut butter sadly, just mint choc chip) and sushi!!

I got back to Cumanda around 3 on Saturday afternoon and took a nap because it was absolutely too hot to do anything. Afterwards I got up, did a very Ecuadorian stroll (slow, slow, slow walking) through the market, the boardwalk, the main streets and sampled a little bit of everything the weekend vendors had to offer. Bbq-ed plantain, chicken on a stick and corn on the cob with garlic butter and grated cheese. Delicious.

So the bad news that I have to share is that yesterday (Monday) I found out that my good friend Ana has decided to return back to the states. She’d been struggling with her site (its very secluded and its an indigenous site so few people actually speak Spanish and majority speak the native tongue, Kuichwa) and she just decided it wasn’t her thing. It makes very sad as she was my first peace corps friend (when I got dropped off a the hotel in DC her mom got into my cab to leave and Ana saw my bags and we’ve been besties ever since) but also she is now the fourth person to leave in the past week. People are dropping like flies and it’s sad that we don’t get a chance to say goodbye. I’m hoping that Ana will be able to stay in Quito until Friday at least so that I can see. When you leave early, peace corps books the ticket for you and they usually try to do it asap.

But the good news is, this weekend I am going to Quito/Cayambe to meet my “little brother”! There is a new omnibus (group of volunteers) that came in two weeks ago and I got assigned a little brother (he’s actually 29) to help with questions, calm the nerves and what not. I have been looking forward to this weekend for the past few weeks now. But also there are a bunch of other volunteers who will be in town that I haven’t seen since we swore in so it will be fun weekend all in all.

This is a photo of where my company is building their new building. My CP told me that it would be completed in 3 months but then I asked another member of the Co-op and he told me 6 months so if its anything less than 9 months I’ll be shocked. But I’m going to try and take a monthly picture to measure the progress. I am excited because they’re building an office just for me in the new building! Whoo whoo! I think that my CP is leaving for Brasil on Thursday to go visit a company that makes dehydrated bananas (the project that I am supposed to start/help with) and hopefully he’ll be buying the machines and getting them shipped back. I say I think he’s leaving because I also thought he was leaving May 22nd and then June 26th but every time I ask him why he hasn’t left he just chuckles and changes the subject. Sometimes I really don’t understand how anything functions in this town. I found this little guy when i was sweeping under my bed yesterday morning. i´ve been wondering why i´ve been getting such massive spider bites and i guess this goes to show why. I wish you could see the hair on him. its pretty disgusting.

Other than that though things with me are going well. I'm starting to feel more comfortable and Cumanda is becoming more of my home then just the place I’m living for the next few years. People keep seeing me and being like “whoa, you’re still here? I thought you were going to leave.” No sir, I know my Spanish isn’t that great but when I said two years, I meant two years. But when I told Gloria (my neighbor, “host mom”) about Ana last night, she got really scared and basically begged me not to leave and told me how lonely she would be. Ahh it feels good to be loved :)

I think that this past week has been the most productive week I’ve had since I’ve been here. Ha not really, I did nothing but I always managed to be busy. I actually feel pretty comfortable with saying that I handled this past week as well as an Ecuadorian. And I don’t mean that in a negative way. Anyways this week I managed to squeeze in a trip to Riobamba with my counterpart, went to Guayaquil one day with Melita to re-stock her store, washed my clothes (seriously took me more than 4 hours and that's with out drying them), went to my “uncle’s” birthday party, was verbally told how to prepare a chicken over a glass of juice, finished two books and went to a dinner party with friends. I don’t know how Peace Corps feels about it but I feel like I’ve had a pretty accomplished week.

Every Friday night Melita holds some type of worship service in the temple below my house. She says that she’s Taoist and so I would assume the service is as well but well I’m not going to lie, I don’t understand any of it but yet its still mildly interesting. After the service, Melita read all of us (there’s 6 of us every week) our zodiac signs and our horoscopes for the month. Mine was interesting but I got really bored by the last one. The services are always interesting, sometimes Melita will read from a special book that is only about the life of Jesus for 20 minutes to 2 hours so you never really know what to expect.

This morning, I had the intentions of going to Guayaquil to meet up with my friend Mitch for the day but it was uncertain of whether or no he was going to go on some bike ride with kids from the school that he teaches at. While I was waiting to hear back from Mitch, I received a text from someone that asked if wanted to go out and see more of Cumanda this morning and I ignored it because I had no idea who it was. 10 minutes later the same number calls me so I answer and I thought it was my friend from two weeks ago who is my age and studies in Guayaquil during the week and that she wanted to show me around. So I say yes, and leave to go meet up with her. Turns out wasn’t the girl I thought it was, instead it was a girl that is doing surveys for the local government going around house to house asking about the conditions of living and utilities and what not. I had given my number to her boss because I need to gather similar information and I guess he had passed it along. The survey is really interesting and even though she was supposed to work from 8-11 this morning, we surveyed TWO houses and then walked around Bucay, visited her friend and did a little bit of shopping until it was finally 11. She did invite me to come over next weekend to see where she lives so I guess its safe to say that I now have 2 friends in Cumanda. Whoo Whoo!

After surveying, I walked to the bakery with my 3 year old neighbor where the baker first, asked if the Gabby (the 3 year old) was my baby and second, literally came around from behind the counter, grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into his face (me on the verge of freaking out) and just stares into my eyes claiming “What beautiful eyes you have!!” Thanks. You could’ve asked to look at them closely, but really what’s personal space anyways?

Next weekend in Riobamba there is a 21k race that starts at the base of the Mt. Chimborazo and goes into the city of Riobamba. I really want to do it because I think it would be a beautiful, beautiful run but well I really don’t know what kind of shape I am to do 21km at about 4800m of elevation (basically the same as Mt. Hood) when I live at maybe 300m elevation. Yesterday in attempt to start training I went on a run for a little over an hour and I can’t barely walk today. I told myself that if I can run for an hour and half tomorrow then I could do the run next weekend. So we’ll see how that goes…

Tomorrow is Father’s Day, Happy Father’s day Dad!! My counterpart invited me to come eat lunch with him and his family, which I though was very kind of him and am grateful for his invitation. Yesterday evening I was talking with one of my counterpart’s friends and he told me that him and my counterpart are buying a pig and basically having a giant feast for their families. We bought one pig to feed all of the families that hosted us in Cayambe (fed about 200 people) and they want to get a pig for two families, probably about 50 people. So, if anybody doesn’t have any plans for tomorrow, feel free on coming down to Cumanda for some pig and cooked corn. J

This coming weekend, my neighbors have invited me to come to Quito with them. I really want to go and my neighbor really wants me to come with her. But the following weekend is the 4th of July and there’s a BBQ in Quito where I get to meet my “little brother”. Peace Corps started a big brother/sister program where I have been emailing back and forth with a kid that is in the group following us and they just arrived in Quito on this Thursday and I get to meet him at the BBQ. He’s from Portland and it has been nice to obsess about Portland with someone that understands its glory. So anyways, my problem is that I don’t want to go to travel to Quito two weekends in a row. Plus I’m not really sure I’ll be able to afford it. I only have $38 left for the week and for just the bus its $6 each way. Oh the decisions I face…

Anyways, Gabby just came clomping into my house (once again, she’s 3 and only wears shows that have heels) to inform me that its time to go watch the volleyball games. We’ll go and watch volleyball for about 3 hours every Saturday that I am here…even my neighbor (Gabby’s mom) says that Cumanda is boring on the weekends.

And good story to end on for the day: Today I went out to lunch with Gabby, Fernanda (my 13 yr old best friend) and Gloria (their mom) and on the way to lunch we crossed a street and this bus driver thought it would be hilarious to swerve and act like he was going to hit me. All four of us screamed, and Gloria yelled and cursed at the driver for being an idiot. But apparently he’s more than an idiot because he then proceeded to slowly drive down the street next to me harassing me. “Gringita, come home with me, Gringita lets go to the beach, Gringita…” on and on until I finally ducked into a store. All this while he has a bus load full of people!! I was annoyed and a little embarrassed because by that point everyone in the street was watching, but Gloria was furious which I found hilarious. I think she was more upset that the driver would say such things in front of her daughters but also she was upset for me J

I love the unexpected, hence why I am here. Love love!

So its Friday night at 8:45 and I’m already in my pajamas. I made banana bread for my people today and they liked it a lot so that's probably my highlight from this past week. Afterwards we had our weekly Taoist ceremony in the temple below my house. Usually they’re incredibly boring where Melita reads out of two different bibles for at least an hour and half, usually more like 2. But this week was good, we had a guest speaker and for some odd reason I understood about 94% of what she said and it was really interesting cuz she explained little parts of the Taoist foundations and background. I’m going to Wikipedia it more tomorrow. Should be exciting, I’m looking forward to it.

This past week was pretty boring. One of the grants I’m working on has to be submitted within the first ten days of every month and so I spent all day Monday and Tuesday working on this grant trying to get it finished and all the people I’m working on it with have been so irresponsible and it was super frustrating. But then on Wednesday afternoon, after I spent all day Tuesday and Wednesday morning getting it finished, I met with my boss to check things over and he’s like oh yeah, I was talking about the other grant, we’ll just finish the one I was working on in July instead. Augh!! He also said he’d call me today to figure out a time to get together sat am to finish the other grant and he’s yet to call…so I don’t know what that's supposed to mean.

Ha on Wednesday Ecuador played Argentina and they won. It was really exciting to watch and be a part; everyone was very happy and very drunk. This weekend, there are elections so there’s a law that alcohol can’t be sold 48 hours before and 12 hours after the election. It’s interesting and I’m surprised that it works but I’m impressed it does. If you get caught being drunk (which occurs A LOT in public here) your punishment is jail. Ouch.

Oh and let me tell you about yesterday when I was on the verge of tears because melita said she would help me with my Spanish and I got really excited until she started to teach me how to conjugate ser and estar (the verbs of to be, the very basics and what you use everyday).  I know that my spanish isn’t good, but please don’t tell me that you think i don’t even know the most basic of the basics. 

I had lunch with Melita and her cousin and his son on Thursday and before I even had a chance to introduce myself, her cousin announced that both his son and I are single and live alone. Well shoot, let’s just forget lunch and head to the Church and get hitched. Then we’ll have lunch. Ha Ecuadorians are crazy but they do start to grow on you. 

Where to begin…how about with the previous weekend. So last weekend I stayed in Cumand· for the weekend and it was a nice, slow weekend. I’ve found that weekends have a tendency to be the hardest part because you have a lot of time on your hands to do nothing. I passed last weekend by doing a little yard work with my neighbors on Saturday and then after a delicious fish fry for lunch, which I helped cook by roasting bananas in the fire, I went for a walk and ended up in the market. Peace Corps gave us a cookbook that includes recipes from all the other volunteers and I found a recipe for a beet and pineapple salad so I was determined to make it for myself for dinner. Which I did, and then Melita came over while I was preparing it and defiantly did not approve of me eating beets in the evening. Apparently they’re only appropriate to eat for lunch. Nonetheless, I thought the salad was delicious and so did my 13 year old best friend.

On Sunday I treated myself to sleeping in until 9 am after my neighbor had come over twice to wake me up. I love my privacy here. But the best part about Sunday morning was the chocolate chip banana pancakes that I made myself. Soo good. Anyways I later ended up meeting Brooke, the volunteer that lives across the river at the market and we walked around and did a little shopping but by that point I had started to not feel well and was pretty unsure why. I ended up spending the rest of Sunday and all of Monday lying in bed watching movies and reading. I’m still not sure what was wrong but the thought of food and walking around made me overly nauseous. I think it was the fish I ate on Saturday, Melita is certain it was because I ate beets for dinner. But now it’s a week later and I am healthy and feeling fine, well not really because now I have a cold, but I’m not nauseous so that’s great.

This week I’ve spent most of my ‘work’ time working on the computer project and also developing the co-op’s webpage. I thought this computer project was going to be uber simple but the more I research it the bigger and more intimidating it gets. And my counterpart who is a very typical, idealistic Ecuadorian is full of great ideas and dreams but its difficult to bring him down to a realistic level. Like for example, the elementary school in Cumand· has 600 students and he wants an average of 10 kids per computer so naturally he wants to put 60 computers into this school that 1. Doesn’t have extra classrooms or space for the computers 2. Most likely doesn’t have a budget to pay an increased electricity bill 3. Have teachers that know how to use computers let alone extra teachers that can teach computer classes 4. Have appropriate security to keep the computers safe. But when I brought up these points, he looked at me and waved his hand in disgust and changed the topic. Ha guess I’m going to have to learn how to be demanding in Spanish.

This weekend I was planning on just doing a small trip, like maybe Guayaquil for the day but on Friday my boss told me that we were going to Riobamba Saturday morning for a event fair that the company had been invited to. So guess that was a minor change in plans. He told me he’d be at my house at 4 am to pick me up, so being the good American that I am, I was up, showered, packed and ready by 3:45 merely to wait outside on my curb until 4:45 when he finally showed up in a pickup truck with five seats all of which are already full. So I squeezed into the back seat with three other grown men for the 3.5-hour car ride. An hour of which was on back roads full of potholes and turns and with an idiot that doesn’t know how to drive. Needless to say even with only my 3 hours of sleep before, I didn’t sleep for a second in the car ride.

The event fair was really interesting. It was held by the government of Chimborazo, which is the province, I live in and they invited a few representatives of each county to come and represent their local products. So we took oritos, red bananas and a chocolate fountain to dip the fruits in. Also, of course they brought a milk jug of Puro (alcohol made from sugar cane which has a value of about $2 for a gallon) and made some sort of punch with lemons and thus we had the most popular booth in the entire fair. I was thankful to not be riding back to Cumand· with them.

I ended up meeting up with Ana and the other volunteers that live near Riobamba. It was one of the girl’s birthdays so we went out Saturday night to celebrate. On Sunday I took the 12 o’clock bus home (I learned my lesson about taking the later buses last time) and there was a group of American’s that were studying in Guayaquil for the summer and they were just returning from BaÒos (natural springs outside of Riobamba, very popular with tourists, I’m banned from going because its at the base of a mildly active volcano that has been deemed “dangerous” by Peace Corp Headquarters). I sat next to a kid, Ben, and it was fun to chat with him and he just asked me question after question about Ecuador and Peace Corps and it gave me a sense of pride in what I was doing and reminded me how much I used to admire Peace Corps volunteers. So it was a good motivational booster.

Yesterday after I got into town, I went to my neighbor’s bar and sat across the street on the curb and watched the Ecuador-Peru soccer game. Incase you didn’t watch, we won, 2-1, it was a good game. And we play Argentina on Wednesday. It is crazy how big of a deal the games are here. Stores will close down during the games, people move their chairs and TV’s and couches out into the streets and the entire town is just full of this crazy energy, but I am a little nervous if there’s a loss…

Melita gave me permission today to buy a dog and there’s a lady that has two German shepherd pups that are absolutely adorable. Big dogs and somewhat purebred dogs are very rare here but I’m also nervous that if I got a big dog it will eat me out of house and home and I don’t think my $7 a day can feed me and him. But oh what I would give to have a companion to come home to…and to be able to give hugs to! Decisions, decisions.

Well, now its Monday, I went to work for a little this morning and I have to go back again at 4 for a meeting about the computers. Hah this is a postponement from last week because after telling me 5 times to be at the office at 4:00 pronto last Thursday my counterpart some how managed to get stuck in Guayaquil and never made it back until 7 pm. Right….4 o’clock on the dot….i’ll be there.

Quick note to Gretchen and Natalie, Congratulations on graduating!!! And also to miss Stefanie Guerrero, Happy 23rd Birthday (just dance)!!!!

Love Love.

wow so i realized that with all the free time that i have on my hands i really shouldn´t be falling behind so much on my blog, but lazyiness is some what contagious and when i get to be a little bit lazy, it seems to turn into a lot bit lazy. so i´m going to break that trend and fill you in...

Last weekend, i took a few of my ´mental health days´(we get to take 6 mental health days and travel to bigger cities or visit friends) and went to Riobamba to stay with Ana for the weekend. my day started at 5:30 am when my counterpart calls me to tell me that he´s leaving, right now, for riobamba to go to some meeting for the co-op and wants to know if i want to go. some how, in my state of delirousness, i said yes, i want to go cuz i´d already been planning on going to Rio and in a car is always so much easier than a bus. but after i hung up the phone, realized it was 5:30 and i had nothing packed, needed to shower and really didn´t feel like rushing around (or riding in a car with him and his amigos for 3 hours) i called him back and declined his generous offer. Needless to say, i made it to riobamba with the bus around 1 and first things first, i went straight to a laundry mat and dropped off my clothes. yes, i hauled a potatoe sack full of clothes on a 4.5 hour bus ride merely so i could have them washed and DRIED. plus its really intimidating to see and trash can full of clothes and to actually find the drive to wash all of them by hand...as i said before, the laziness is spreading...

the weekend was a lot of fun and defiantly well needed. ha it made me realize how sarcasticly bitter i have become :) there´s about 5 other volunteers that live around rio and they usually come into town for the weekends and one volunteer lives downtown Rio so we hung out at her house on friday and saturday night and went out to the bars and had somewhat of a normal weekend. i spent WAY too much money. but when you´re deprived of variety of foods, its like being a kid in a candy shop and having way too many choices. needless to say, i spent $5 on a chicken burrito, with guacamole and it was incredible delicious.

Ana lives in an indigienous village about 20 minutes above riobamba and the king of her village was in town from quito for the weekend so i got to meet him which was awesome and he invited us to come stay with him in quito anytime we like, or to visit his mother who is a little crazy and has a giant house on the beach. but ana lives in the king´s house which is empty unless he´s around and it is defiantly one of the nicest houses i´ve been in in Ecuador. i´m a little jealous, but i´m really starting to appreciate the gaps between my walls and ceiling because it just means that all the giant bugs that get in and get out just as easily.

so the weekend was good. i left rio about 3 in the afternoon on sunday and bought the last ticket for the bus that left at 3 which is good because the buses wait until they fill up or they´ll stop continusouly to pick up ppl on the road, so if you have a full bus you´ll get to where you´re going a lot faster. but anyways, i bought the last ticket, the bus is packed, i walk to the back cuz i have seat number 43 and of course, there´s only 42 seats. awesome. i get to stand for this 5 hour bus ride. but much to my dismay, after an obnoxious amount of flattering words and wistles from a rowdy group of somewhat drunk men in the back, one of them offers to let me sit on his lap. literally about to loose all of my patients, i went up and talked to the driver and asked him where my seat was, and he looks over and is like, íts right here in front with me´. GOLDEN. ha i´ve always wanted to ride in the front seat. but then some jerk from the back comes up to the front, is complaining about something, squeezes into the space between the driver and i (which isn´t a seat at all) and just makes himself all comfy and pisses off the driver so that he pulls over and starts yelling at the man in between us. i thought there was going to be a fight but instead, the bus driver calmly looks over at me and says ´there´s a seat in the back, would you mind sitting there?´ of course, i said ´sure´ which sucks, i told should´ve said no, this is my seat but being the passivist that i am and just being happy that i understood what he said to me and not wanting to be a problem, i went and sat in this other guys seat. which, of course, was in the second to last row, right in front of the drunk man who wanted me to sit on his lap. needless to say, i arrived safely in Cumandá after about 4 hours of pretending to be asleep.

this week i´ve been somewhat working, mostly just spending time online. i realize i spend a lot of time online. way too much. but i´m working on a project of putting computers in all the schools of the county of Cumandá and i´m really excited because i found a company in seattle that is going to work with me and they sell refurbished computers for $25 a piece. so now i just need to figure out to get the funds for that. i´m working on a couple of local grant programs and then there´s also a bunch through peace corp that i can do so i´m pretty excited cuz what seemed impossible is looking somewhat possible.

but of course, my counterpart has ditched me for the past two days and i haven´t had a chance to tell him of the computer offers. yesterday, after waiting at the office for 20 min and him not answering my call, i walked to an internet cafe and saw him in the street and we just greeted each other and went on our ways. lol i really don´t understand sometimes.

this weekend i am staying in Cumandá. i´m not quite sure what i am going to do with all my time but i´m sure i´ll find something. yesterday i made chocolate chip cookies which turned out okay. the little kids loved them. my 3 year old neighbor girl ate four of them and her mom didn´t care but today she didn´t go to school because she was sick and not feeling well. hmm...odd. oh wow, also, this is the same little girl that had a 104 temp last week and all that her mom and Melita would do was rub an egg over her which is supposed to remove the demon thats making her ill. they did it three times and her fever would not go down. i was basically begging them to just give her some non-aspirin. instead they wrapped her stomach with lettuce leaves, put a mashed up potatoe on her neck and put fried onions on her feet and wrapped them in newspaper. i know i don´t understand the purposes of these remedies but really, just give her the aspirin and let her rest!

but yes...thats the last of my rants. anyways once again this is long, but before i go, i posted a photo album that my friend mitch put up on facebook on my profile. its got some good pictures of our swear in ceremony and our last week together in Quito when we were locked in our hotel because of the elections.

welp, its 9:45 friday morning and i´m not quite sure what i am going to do with my day. maybe i´ll call my counterpart again. maybe i´ll help Melita make lunch. maybe i´ll escape to Guayaquil. oohh the possibilites are endless. hope you all had a great memorial day weekend!!! my friends Ali and Eileen called me on skype and sang me America the beautiful and it has been stuck in my head all week. thank you for that. I hope that all is well!!

Ok Grandma, here´s a new link to the photos, i hope that this one works.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2044777&id=29300584&l=dfcd1dfd31

also, i saw two of the best screen printed shirts today:

1. Its not easy being green. (cant even begin to explain the irony when the earth is your trash can)

2. Homing from work. (Worn by the man who has a mechanic shop in his front living room)

This past week I spent most of my time ‘work’ time going out to a bunch of banana growers farms (2 that were new). I have this little survey for the landowner and his workers as well and really the most important part is to get the workers id numbers and signatures incase of emergency/accident we would have their information. However none of the workers ever know their numbers so it makes my trip essentially pointless. Its fun meeting the people but we drive like 30-40 min for like a 15-minute session and then come home.

But this week has been better because on Monday my counterpart introduced to me Julio who is working on two projects, one of getting computers and internet to all the schools in Cumanda and the second of reforestation. Ha and actually both of these projects are frustrating in their own way. Everything is frustrating because I can’t help but think about how efficiently I could do this in the states or if I could just do it on my own but its silly to think that way because here it’s the Ecuadorian way. I do a lot of waiting. I am glad to be working with Julio though and am glad to be apart of other projects.

On Friday evening, my 13-year-old friend and I made pizzas for our families. A lot of them had never even tried pizza before, it blew my mind that these kids didn’t know how to make a pizza or even how to eat it really. I was really never making them but fortunately they turned out great. For toppings we had ham, pineapple, hot dog chunks, pepper and onion. Hot dog and pineapple was the favorite. We ended up having tons of left-overs and the little kids wanted to take them to the main corner in town next to the volleyball courts and sell the rest because on weekend evenings there is a guy on that corner that sells pizza there (only pizza in town) and they wanted to do it too. We decided to save them for ourselves instead.

On Saturday we had a “Minga” at my house to clean up the yard and the temple that’s below my house. A minga is basically like a church clean up day where if there’s one hosted in your area or you get asked you obliged to join BUT if you host a minga you have to provide lunch for all of the workers. Melita hosted the minga so she made lunch for all of us, but once again, it was supposed to start at 8am and the first to show up arrived at 11. It was fun to work with everyone and I got to meet some more neighbors and we got a lot accomplished. Afterwards a group of us went over and played volleyball. Which they call equa-volley and rightfully so because the only rules in common to the volleyball I know, is three touches and then get it over the net. Other than that you can push, shove or catch the ball in anyway you please. Their method is defiantly a lot easier. Saturday evenings they have an indoor soccer league that plays games at the high school so I went with my neighbors to watch the games. They play 5 on 5 and with a miniature ball on a covered basketball court, I was in absolute awe at how well they played. And by they, I mean the men’s teams. They had one girls team and it was hilarious to watch.

Sunday was my day to relax and there’s always a big produce market in the town across the river and I was looking forward to making a big list and then having a nice lunch to myself. Instead I spent the morning chatting with my neighbor’s cousin who decided to wait two hours until her cousin came back just so that she could see their new baby chick. Besides changing my plans, I really didn’t mind because she told me what all the fruit trees in my yard were, when to harvest them and then we picked some lemons/limes. After she left, I went to the market where I ended up meeting up with the other volunteer who lives in the town across the river and hung out with her for the rest of the day. Her two years will be completed in August and she made my day by telling me she’d sell me all of her stuff aka fridge for super cheap! Sooo happy.

This morning at 4 am I had the pleasant surprise of waking up to a creature crawling across my neck, which I instantly grabbed and threw off (this is underneath my mosquito net by the way) and being the hopeful person that I am, convinced myself that it was a harmless moth or spider. But no, I couldn’t see anything but I could just hear this obnoxious fluttering as my creature buzzed around the inside of my net. So I lean over, turn on my light and it’s a giant flying cockroach. Literally, I put my sheet over me like a cape and dove on to my floor where I sat for about 5 minutes contemplating how to get him out of my net while he crawled all across my bed, my pillow, even my bear. I don’t remember what I did but somehow managed to knock him onto the floor and he crawled underneath my bed. Not wanting to move my bed for the sake of waking of the teenage boy who shares my plywood wall, I decided to let the cockroach be until I hear this wretched scratching noise as he scurries across my floor and some how he finds ANOTHER one of his friends. So now I am chasing two cockroaches around my “kitchen” still with my cape on, Raid in one hand and my dustpan in the other. I managed to slice the head off of one of the roaches with my dustpan but the other one I sprayed and sprayed and he would not die. It did slow him down so I was able to beat him a few times with the dustpan until he ran out under my door. This morning I was happy to see that he was upside down on my front porch but by time I got home from work today his legs and whiskers were twitching so I smooshed him with rocks. Talk about an incredible determination to survive.

Also, apparently it’s okay to put dead cats out to be picked up by the garbage truck. Today was the completion of my third jog in Cumanda and every taxi/car that passes me still slows down, honks and motions for me to get in. Nope, I’m not in an emergency and no I do not want a ride. Its called exercise. Not all of us can eat a balanced meal of rice, yuca and plantains and stay thin. My highlight of today was running down the sidewalk while my 6 yr old friend (who can now count to ten in English) chased me and was screaming with laughter. It really is the little moments like that that keep me going. For every frustrating thing, I’m glad there’s something unexpectedly pleasant that happens. Just like on Sunday when I found the bag of Easter candy that I bought in DC right before I left. Such a smart buy!!

Welp, this is really long and unorganized so if you’ve made it this far, I’m impressed and thank you, hope it was somewhat interesting. One of my friends just sent me this quote and its what I will end with because its been the first and last thought on my mind these days…

Be present. Its not the past or the future that matters, its being in the now.

I made this album on Facebook but anybody should be able to view it on this link:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31428381&l=3193f070fe&id=29300584

enjoy! and let me know if it doesn´t work...

Augh so frustrating. i just typed up a whole blog and then it got deleted. so here we go on a quick, concise second version...

this week was interesting. for as little as i did i am a little shocked at how quickly it went by. my boss has a really hard time of actually calling when he says that he´s going to call so i didn´t end up meeting up with him until on wednesday where we talked for about an hour and then he sent me off to work on my own in my house. i am excited though because i created a survey to ask to each member of the co-op, after looking at the final draft though, my boss did tell me that i couldn´t ask about half of the quesitions i wanted to ask. apparently, you don´t need to know the problems, needs or changes that the people want in order to improve the company. but anyways the survey and creating a web page are my first projects for these next few weeks. ha who knows what i´ll do after that.

in my other free time that i haven´t been ´working´ i´ve been moving into my apartment. for some reason Melita decided that since i had so much free time it would be a good time to move out on my own. i wouldn´t exactly say that i was ready to move in on my own but i didn´t really have much of an option. but its good, i enjoy being on my own and have a lot less awkward moments of just hanging around Melita´s house. plus my neighbor has a daughter of 13 yrs old who has taken to me and i really enjoy having her around. i talk to her like crazy (reminds me a lot of my cousin Natalie) and i´m certain she cant understand about 70% of what i say but none the less she still hangs out with me. all the time. my first night in my apartment i had two peeping toms and a lady that came and banged on my front door asking for sugar because she thought my house was a store...no lady i do not have sugar to sell you. its 5:30 in the morning.

yesterday i ate two ice creams by 11 in the morning. it is soo hot here. its think its like 29-30 degrees celcius if that means anything to anyone. i haven´t got a clue, i just know its hot and i don´t like it. the mornings are defiantly the best time of day. its cool and calm and no one is out. its just you and the roosters. and its completely unfair because the roosters start crowing at 11 at night. the sun doesn´t come up until6!! what are you guys doing?

today is mother´s day here as well and its a pretty big deal. everyone goes to their mom´s or grandmother´s house so i am basically free for the day because all of my ´friends´are with their families. there´s a teenage boy in the internet cafe and he´s been listening to allison kraus´s songs for about the last 20 minutes. sometimes i forget where i am.

but yes, other than that i am doing pretty well. i´m a little frustrated with my boss and confused about what i´ll actually be doing but that will come with time. its defiantly going to take a completely different mind set. we´re taught that if we actually want something, we need to get up and work to achieve it. here, they patiently wait it out and wait for it to come to them. ya mismo is a phrase that is used all too often. basically means its coming...like you can ask how long til the bus is coming, how long til the main street in Cumandá is completed, are we eating soon, when will i be able to speak this silly language? Ya mismo. its coming...just gotta wait for it.

anyways i hope that you all have had a nice weekend and have a wonderful mother´s day. please give my mom an extra hug for me if you see her :)

Well I would like to officially report that I have become a “Peace Corps Volunteer” which means that I have survived my training and that PC now believes that I am capable of serving two years and making an impact for the better. However, their recent increase in confidence has managed to weaken my confidence as I realize this two yearlong adventure is about to begin. It was all fun and games when I was able to take comfort in the other 43 volunteers that were around but now that I’m on my own it’s a little more serious.

I have arrived in Cumanda with my obnoxious amount of stuff without any problems, much thanks to the endless hours of safe bus traveling that I sat through in training. Fortunately my counter-part/boss that I will be working with for picked me up from the bus stop so that I didn’t have to walk the half-mile to my house with all my stuff. The biggest problem that I had was receiving a call from my supervisor telling me that I couldn’t travel to Quito or Guayaquil and that I needed to have my medicine and face mask with me at all times due to the Swine Flu outbreak. Awesome. But I did read today that the Health Department of Ecuador proudly reports 0 cases of the flu here.

I have spent this whole weekend shopping and buying stuff for my apartment. I bought a bed and cooking unit today and some how I managed to forget that I didn’t have any money. The store vendor then drove me to the atm with all my stuff in his truck and I proceeded to mess up so many times with my pin number that atm refused to give me money. The vendor then continued to drive me to my house, help me unload my stuff and told me to come pay him tomorrow. I like this life style. However I did spend more than half of my ‘move-in allowance’ that Peace Corps allotted me, so I guess a refrigerator isn’t going to be a necessity. I mean who wants anything cold when its 100 degrees all day everyday? Yesterday I picked out the paint for my apartment; it’s going to be Amazonita green. I think it’s going to be a little obnoxious but I think it’ll be good for boosting my energy level on those days when I just don’t want to get out of bed.

Tomorrow is supposed to be my first official day of ‘work’. But I’ve yet to talk to my counterpart since he picked me up and dropped me off on the first day I was here so I’m a little curious to see what tomorrow will bring.

Saturday night I went to the evening mass with my neighbor and I am fully convinced that it gave me a migraine so we’ll see if I ever go back. There are a couple other churches in town so I hope for sake’s sake that they are better.

Today I went with the lady I live with to the river and it was the first time that I’ve been cold since I’ve been here. It really reminded me of being at silver creek falls so not only was it incredible to have goose bumps, it was also a little nostalgic. Melita, the lady I live with, is Taoist and knows everything about natural remedies and medicines. Today she asked me what my sign was, and I told her Aquarius and the first thing she said was “oh, you cry a lot don’t you?” Maybe…how’d you know? Ha but then I think about it and my friend Cora is an Aquarius and that girl couldn’t cry for the life of her, so I’d like to think of it as a lucky, but very accurate, guess. She is defiantly going to be one of the highlights of my time here.

Its odd to think that a year ago today I was graduating from U of P. It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago. My how a year can fly by. I can’t believe that some of my friends have had a real job for almost a year now…what crazies they must be. But they can probably afford more than a bed and cooking unit for their apartments as well.

Now that I am almost done rambling on, I just want to express how hot it really is here. I can’t tell you the actual temperature because its in centigrade and that means nothing to me. But its 10:30 at night and I am in my bed under my one sheet, solely to protect me from the deadly mosquitoes, in shorts and tank top and I am sweating. I have an argument every morning and night with Melita because she thinks its cold out and insists that I keep the windows and doors closed, when I think that life would actually be somewhat bearable if they were open. Naturally she wins every time but give me a year of this Spanish thing and I think I might be able to develop a pretty good argument. However I am lucky because we’re in winter right now and winter is hot and wet and summer is dry and cool and summer starts in June. I just have to survive the month without melting…

well today is my last full day in Cayambe. tomorrow we leave for quito where we will spend the rest of the week. on wednesday we have our ´swear in´ceremony and on thursday after i have officially become a volunteer, i will travel to my new site!!! i´m nervous because i don´t know how i´m going to carry all of my stuff to my site by myself.

today we had a big party for all of the volunteers and our host families. it was alot of fun to meet and see peoples families. we got a huge roasted pig for everyone and it was awesome. but i had a lot of fun because i spent a lot of time talking with my cousin (in spanish) and i was actually able to hold a conversation with him. so it was huge for me to be able to see the improvement!

anyways this is a short one but i this week has been crazy trying to get ready for the party today and i still haven´t packed. eck. packing is so over-rated. i´ll probably wait until later to do it anyways. maybe tomorrow morning. but yes thats it from here...tomorrow is the national elections in sunday so stay tuned for the results! take care...

Well, what a week! Ha it really wasn’t that exciting but it was really nice to have a change of scenery and activities. Although now I only have one week left here with my family and in Cayambe and I am getting really sad. I don’t want to have to say goodbye…

Anyways about this week, we left Cayambe early Sunday morning and arrived to our resort/hotel in Puertoquito in the early afternoon and had the day free. The resort was nice and had a pool, river, vball court and was basically like summer camp all over again. All of the girls slept in a cabin together with like 40 bunk beds. We stayed in Puerto Quito until Wed morning and had training/visited a local organic farm in the mornings and mostly free afternoons which we filled with more exciting things like playing in the pool, soccer, vball, basketball and dancing. You would not believe how much people dance here. It’s like a pastime. Instead of playing cards or reading a book, they dance. But anyways it was a lot of fun being with everyone and being able to hang out and relax. We had a talent show on Tuesday evening; we have quite a few talented singers and guitarists so it was really entertaining. One of the better talents was when one of the guys got up and snapped his fingers.

Wednesday morning we all split up into different groups and headed our separate ways. My group went to the armpit of Ecuador where two of the girls have their sites. It was hot, muggy, full of insects and no breeze. I took two showers everyday, it was so intense. On Thursday we visited an agricultural university where they showed us around and told us how to raise animals, make feed and what not. Friday we went to a government funded agricultural/crop research center. The facility itself was almost 2000 hectares so probably around 4500 acres, it was huge and they had everything. But we focused mainly on coffee beans and cacao. On Saturday we went to another farm (really tired of farms by this point) and it was a farm where a volunteer had been before and so we admired his previous projects that were a success, such as animal pens, hatching chickens/quail and how to make and package yogurt! After the farm, we jumped on a bus that took us to Santo Domingo de los Colorados where we were supposed to spend Saturday and Sunday night but we there was a change in plans due to an outbreak of Dengue in the area that we were supposed to visit. The outbreak happened in an indigenous region which is supposed to have a really unique culture and we were going to have a tour, lunch, and have a fun day in the community with the current volunteer there but we were banned from the region so our trip was cut a day short. But the highlight was that in Santo Domingo, there’s a huge mall so we got to spend Saturday evening at the mall (still dressed in the same dirty clothes from the farm and which I’d been wearing all week) and were treated to multiple fast food options. I had burger king, pizza and real scooped ice cream. And I’m shocked as to why I’ve gained weight… but after dinner, a group of us went and saw the movie shop-alcoholic. Not a great movie but I loved every second of it.

And then today we spent the entire day in a bus traveling back to cayambe, it was so nice to return to the Sierra to a temperature that is actually enjoyable and doesn’t make me angry. Ha my site is going to be difficult because it has about the same climate as what we were just in this past week.

Last Saturday, I had a chance to video chat with my mom (Debbie, actual mom) and at the end, she asked me if I’d had any problems with the food and diarrhea and what not. I said no and made some joke about how I eat everything and nothing has affected me. Well silly me, I forgot to knock on wood because I have no had diarrhea three times during this past week. I got really sick last Saturday night, sweating, fever chills and what not and had diarrhea all the next day. Then on Wednesday night we ate seafood and I guess I had some kinda of allergic reaction because that gave me a diarrhea and made my eyes swollen the next day. And now as I write this lovely re-cap of my week, I have had to take a bathroom break/sprint three times! Thanks DJ.

But that’s about it from me. Tomorrow my group has a free day because all the other groups are still traveling so I’m excited to just relax in Cayambe. Use the Internet, wash my clothes, and hang out with my mom. She was really sick while I was gone and told me she was really lonely without me. I can’t believe I have to leave in a week! Sunday is Election Day in Ecuador, which is a big thing, and I can’t wait for it to be over because the amount of propaganda here is ridiculous. This week I also have my final language test, which I have to reach intermediate middle and at the last test I was one under that level so I hope I’ve learned enough to move up a notch. But having a week off of classes has not helped any…so keep your fingers crossed for me!

This week has been a weird week and a lot of my friends have been agreeing with me. I think that we've kinda reached the feeling of being close to the end and are just ready to be done with training. This week was also a little bit different because there was a lot more activity going on in the town. Easter Weekend is a big ordeal here. nothing is open thursday thru monday and families celebrate all weekend. We spent the first three days having technical classes which was draining and annoying and then on thursday we just had a half day of spanish class and the afternoon free. it was nice to have a break but i really didn't have much to do because my whole family left for another town for the weekend. my mom was raised in a town about 45 minutes away from cayambe and so their whole family was gathering there for the weekend. So thursday i was home, completely alone, for the first time and it was actually kinda weird and a little scary. but i watched a movie and received some calls from friends in the states which was awesome and i survived the loneliness.

on friday i took a bus to meet up with the rest of my family and spent the day celebrating with them. i had a lot of fun and it was really interesting to experience the difference in traditions. they make a soup called Fanesca, which contains every type of grain that is grown in the area, they only make it during semana santa and its a huge ordeal. they made it on both thursday and friday and eat it for lunch and dinner. i'm surprised they don't serve it for breakfast actually. but its absolutly delicious and about the heartiest thing you'll eat. its also served with mashed potatoes, a hard boiled egg and cheese. and then followed with a delicious drink of milk, rice and cinnamon. needless to say, i ate really well this weekend and could defiantly go 3 days without eating anything more. 

after lunch, there was a church service at 3 which started by proceeding through the town and different houses had a set up the stations of the cross outside of their homes. so we walked to each one and listened to the reading and prayed. after the stations, we went to the church were mass was held. it was a pretty normal service i think, it was all in spanish but from what i interpreted, it seemed normal. the only new thing was when everyone got up to kiss the knees of Christ on the cross. never done that before but it was interesting!  after the service, which lasted til nearly 7, we had dinner of fanesca again, soo good. afterwards, i rode back with some of my family because there weren't enough beds for everyone where we were. there were probably about 30, 35 people there for lunch and more.

on saturday, my family left before me and i took the bus again because a big group of us met up to play basketball! it was so much fun. we had about 14 people so played an actual 5 on 5 game. i feel like absolute crap right now and I'm pretty sure its a result of being so out of shape, from the sun and the attitude. but it was a lot of fun!! after basketball, i went and had lunch with my family, today they eat meat so we had chicken. i wish that i would be around tomorrow to see what they eat. i'm sure its a feast like no other. 

i ended up catching the bus back to cayambe ahead of my family because i need to back my bags for this upcoming week. Tomorrow we leave for a 9 day trip. the first 3 days all 45 of us spend together and then we split off into groups depending on what region we'll be moving to and what program we're in (Ag or natural resources). i'm excited for a change but hope that this crappy feeling of being sick that is starting to set in goes away by tomorrow. not likely, but i sure hope so.

anyways, i hope that everyone has a great Easter weekend! i wish i could be there to celebrate and see everyone but i guess i'll just have to wait :) love!