I'm back, at least for one post. Some readers might remember that my friend Chuck died last August and I wrote about it in this post. The anniversary of his death is actually August 20th. So, his wife, The Widow Jan Picciuti has devised a way to honor him on this day. Read on:

Monday, July 28, 2008

Hair cuts for everyone! I have finally thought of a way to honor Chuck on the day of his entry to heaven...a hair cut. As many of you know, the man refused to cut his hair until he was home. Thus, he became an adorably scraggly looking fellow. I really wish I had thought to cut his hair upon his arrival to the pearly gates. Eh, what ya gonna do? In any case, I do hereby declare AUGUST 20 as national hair cut day. I will get mine done, and encourage you to schedule your appointment now for August 20. You fellas can even let your facial hair go for a few weeks, then visit a barber for a shave or something cool like that. Just a thought....

(From Jan's blog, if you would like to read more.)

Sorry I didn't let you know earlier! The only rules for participation are to send Jan a before and after picture!

*From Wild Wild West by the Escape Club (a solid 80s hit!)

As I was thinking of writing up my final Peace Corps service blog post, I thought of summing it by the numbers. So here it is...

Months of service 28

Weeks of training 10

Weeks spent out of Ecuador 10

Days spent on medevac 45

Net weight loss in pounds 10

Number of times diagnosed with amoebas 4

Number of communities I worked in regularly 14

Number of books read in 2006 31

Number of books read in 2007 31

Number of books read in 2008 (in service) 10

Cell phone number 093972600

Total time on incoming calls 84:15:43

Total time on dialed calls 78:07:44

Levels of Spanish increased during training 3

Levels of Spanish increased after training 1

Omnibus (my training group) number 95

Number of people in my omnibus at start 35

Number who made it to the end of service 21

Number of times I was robbed 2.5

Monthly stipend $314.00

Rent $ 60.00

Cost of a can of tuna $ .70

Price of one egg $ .08

Price of 1 liter of bottled water $ .25

Bus fare to Quito $2.50

Hours to Quito by bus 2.5

Latitude of Los Bancos 0° 00’ 03” N

Altitude of Los Bancos in meters (in feet) 1100 (3,300)

Number of DVDs I brought home 59

Number of visitors from the US I had 8

Number of blog posts since entering PC 147

*From Vertigo by U2

here are all the rest of the galapagos pictures. these crabs were crawling all over the rocks, they were beautiful and bright red. you can't see their color, but i like how they are in a line.

iguanas were also everywhere! they crack me up the way they hang on to the side of a wall for dear life.

close to my friend eva's house was a lagoon where the flamingos would spend the night. they are supposed to be cool looking when they fly in at evening, but i didn't get to see that.

my favorite "typo" in ecuador.

this is a very common mistake, and i finally got a picture of it. so for your spanish lesson. b and v are pronounced the same for the most part. the verb votar means "to vote." the verb botar means "to throw out." basura is "trash." so while this sign and others like it mean to say, don't throw out trash, it really says don't vote for trash. which i suppose is also important.

here is a sea lion showing us how hard a life he's got.

i may get inspired to post a few more pics, but these are pretty much my best ones from the trip.

Two photos of the famous blue-footed booby.

All of the birds in both photos are of the booby. I think it's famous because it's a funny name, and also because the feet are an amazing blue color. They also have red-footed boobies, but I didn't see any of those.

The day I was leaving Isabela Island, I was whining to Eva and Ross, they are both volunteers who live out on the Galapagos Islands, about how I hadn't seen any yet. They both responded with various themes of, "You've seen them. You just didn't see their feet. They aren't spectacular unless you see their feet." I swore to them I had not seen a single one. But then when we returned to Santa Cruz Island, Melissa and I noticed that the birds we had been watching dive-bomb the ocean had blue feet! Oops! We had watched them on Sunday night from the porch of our hotel room, which had an ocean view. So, I guess Ross and Eva knew best. But, I finally did get some pictures of them. Hope you can see the blue feet good enough!

* I think we all know this song, made popular by Elvis (I don't know who wrote it.)

I'm having trouble uploading pictures, but I do have some more Galapagos pictures coming. I just ran out of patience again trying to get them up. Stay tuned, they will be here sometime. Until then, I have a fun little post to share. One of my PC mentors, Hugh Smeltekop, who is a Returned PCV and encouraged me to do Peace Corps, answered all my questions and even sent me reassuring emails throughout my service has done it once again! He sent me a little guide he had written for a friend on how to successfully interview in the States after returning from Latin America. I thought it was great and might shed some light on why I am a little nervous about being "weird" and re-integrating quickly in my culture so as not to be a freak show for my interview. Thanks, Hugh!

Living in rural Latin America, you develop some skills that are very useful in navigating the culture, little dos and don'ts that help put others at ease with you. Things like greeting everyone when you enter a room shows that you are kind and considerate enough to respect local traditions.

Sadly, you have left Latin America, and I'm afraid that you may have picked up some of these habits that may not serve you well in your job interview. Here's a handy checklist of dos and don'ts for you to help out.

Do greet the interviewer warmly with good eye contact and a pleasant smile. Don't lean in and pat the interviewer on the shoulder when you shake hands. Kissing on the cheek is probably not expected, either.

Do order something modest on the menu, and if the interviewer orders a drink, you may also do so. Whatever the case, don't shake out your cup before you fill it. Certainly don't insist that you drink your drinks together, and finish in one gulp.

Make polite conversation, bringing your intercultural experiences into the conversation, and highlighting how these experiences have shaped your worldview. Don't talk passionately for very long about encebollado de pescado, however, no matter how interesting you think this subject matter is.

Portions may be smaller than you are accustomed to, especially after plates piled high with rice, boiled plantains, potatoes and other starchy vegetables. In any case, don't ask for a yapa -- a little extra -- when the food comes to the table, no matter how small your portion.

Perhaps you will be suffering some intestinal disorder upon your return. If so, do see a doctor and have a test to identify the ailment. However, discussing your malady at the table is not expected. Shouting "Here it comes, amoebas!" when you start to eat is especially bad form. If you can't finish your lunch, you may ask the waitperson to bring you a carry out container. Don't whip out a plastic baggie, then stuff the food into your handbag.

Practically all septic systems in the U.S. are designed to handle toilet paper, so do flush it down. Don't complain that there were no wastepaper baskets in the restroom and you had to throw your toilet paper on the floor of the stall.

Do follow the interviewer's lead when it comes to ordering dessert or coffee after the meal. You may have become accustomed to drinking sweet, hot beverages in Bolivia, so although it may be tempting, don't put five tablespoons of sugar in your coffee.

Some foods, like shrimp and pizza, are considered "finger food," so picking them up to eat them is entirely acceptable. Do use your napkin to wipe your hands after eating finger food, and after the meal. And although perfectly normal in the campo, don't pull out a roll of toilet paper to wipe your hands and mouth in the restaurant -- the waitperson will be happy to bring you additional napkins if you so request. However, don't snap your fingers or hiss to get the attention of the waitperson. A small wave -- and sometimes only eye contact -- is enough to draw attention.

Do thank the interviewer for lunch, and for the opportunity to talk. However, don't say "provecho" to each individual if there are many of you at the table, or to other people in the restaurant.

Hopefully these friendly tips will bring you success in your quest for a position at the institution of your choice. Adelante!

*From "I'm In" by Radney Foster

I have a slow connection, not able to load up many pictures at once. So this post and the one following have some pictures from the Galapagos.

Yep, the Galapagos has penguins! And it's really hot there. Go figure.

* from Penguins by Lyle Lovett

Some pictures from the Galapagos. Me on the left with a giant turtle or tortoise (why don't I know the difference by now? At any rate, it's tortuga in Spanish)on the right.

Both of these pictures were taken at the Charles Darwin Institute on Santa Cruz Island.

This is a close up of a tortuga. Beauty, eh?

pictures from my trip down south to vilcabamba. this is the fartherest south i've ever been! if you are following along at home on your ecuador map, vilcabamba is just a little south of loja the town, but is located in the loja province.

i met up with a few other peace corps volunteers while i was there. on the first full day i was there, i went with my buddy scott on a horseback ride.

i've ridden horses before, but not far as long as this ride was. we rode for three hours, got off and hiked for an hour, then remounted for another three hours. it hurt every part of my body. especially my knees. luckily, vilcabamba is also known for its massages, and we both got one the next day.

the scenery was great:

but it was pretty scary riding a horse up the steep hills. our hike was also VERY scary to me. i had a walking stick made out of a tree by our guide, jaime. and i tried not to panic as we walked up a ridge, with nothing much on either side of us, in the big borrowed rubber boots that kept sliding in the mud. it didn't help that the date was may 12, which is the one year anniversary of The Leg Break.

here's a waterfall that we had lunch near. it was cold down in this area because of all the splashing water and the cooling effect it had.

Just got back from two weeks of tech trips. The first week we spent in Puerto Quito which is my old stomping grounds. Nice and balmy! It’s hotter there than in Los Bancos, but it seemed extremely hot after living in Quito and Tabacundo. It was a much needed change of pace for everyone.

While there, besides playing water polo or lounging in hammocks, we had sessions every day. One day the ag group went to Mindo to do some hands-on learning on animals. This included slaughtering chickens and cleaning them and then eating them later for lunch. Hardcore!

This is Nelson (my boss) going over the basics of using a machete.

We spent two days working on a nearby integrated farm, mostly on soil conservation topics. We also had two days of classroom sessions on conflict resolution and organizational development. The week ended with the trainees having a talent show that included a “Dating Game” skit with impersonations of most of the training staff, me included. It was really funny.

On Sunday, we split up into five groups to go on our region specific tech trips. There was a coastal ag and a costal natural resources group, an IT group, and sierran ag and sierran natural resources. I went on the sierran ag trip and it was sooooooooooo cold! I would talk to the other trainers who were living it up on the beach; while my group was contemplating playing strip poker simply because we all had so many layers on it wasn’t a real threat to ever wind up nude!

I faced one of my greatest challenges yet, walking down a lot of slippery, muddy slopes.

Since I broke my leg on a slightly muddy, slightly slopey area, I am terrified to walk down slopes now. At one point in San Bernardo, as I was on the verge of tears and miles behind everyone else, a woman comes scurrying up behind me. She was wearing sandals and she wanted to take my hand to help me down. I said no way, I knew she'd just drag me down the hill. She asked, are you not going to go? And I said, that's right, I'm not going at all. So she finally gave up on me and I was able to slowly slide my way down the hill on my own.

There were nine trainees on our trip and they were all really great. Positive attitudes the whole time, interested in what we were doing and good senses of humor. I enjoyed hanging out with them. We went to Riobamba and Salinas de Guaranda. Mostly we learned about sierran crops such as blackberries, apples, and tree tomatoes. Salinas de Guaranda is a very interesting little town.

This is a picture of the church and cliff, which makes up the logo for the Salina products.

The community organized itself and has several small businesses which we toured. They make cheeses, chocolate, smoked meats like salami, soccer balls, and essential oils. They harvest and dry mushrooms from the forest and export them. They process wool from sheep, llama and alpaca, dye the wool, knit sweaters, hats, scarves. And the town collects all the organic waste which they make into compost and sell. A lot of their products are exported to Europe, Japan and the U.S. It was fascinating.

Between Riobamba and Salinas de Guaranda, we drove beside Chimborazo, the tallest volcano in Ecuador at 6310 meters (which is 20,565 ft). Since the earth bulges at the equator, Chimorazo is the fartherest point from the center of the Earth. Interesting little fact, eh? There was snow on the ground, so we got out of the car and threw some snowballs. Bet you didn’t expect me to be playing in snow on the equator.

Well to change gears a little, I’ve got some thoughts on closing my service. Omnibus 95 continues to clear out of the country. I’m going to be one of the last three people in our group to remain. I am planning on returning home on May 22nd. I’m going to the jungle on a little trip with my fellow-volunteer, Linds. Then in May, Melissa is coming from Iowa to go to the Galapagos with me. After that, I hope to go to southern Ecuador, where I haven’t been yet and maybe check in on some of the trainees who will be living there.

This tech trip made me a little sentimental about Ecuador. It’s hard not to be impressed with a place like this, it is unbelievably beautiful and so diverse. Seeing the country through the eyes of the trainees has also made me realize how comfortable I’ve become here and how “normal” it has become. This makes me realize that going back to the States and living there might not seem so normal anymore.

I think I’m getting to a good place though, I’m not as eager to leave as I have been. Training has been a chance for me to appreciate Ecuador again. It’s been a change of pace and many of my frustrations (with my site or my work or Ecuador) have subsided. I think this is healthier, I’m making amends with Ecuador and when I leave, we can still be amicable. Not that I ever hated it, I just got a little too focused on getting out of here.

Since I am almost done with Peace Corps, it’s interesting to think about the contrast between being on the outside of “the Peace Corps experience” and how it feels from the inside of it. It’s not as romantic or strange or exotic as I thought it would be. I find myself even listening to fellow volunteers and thinking, “wow, Peace Corps sounds soooo cool!” Then I realize, I am doing it too, it just doesn’t seem as cool from the inside. But I think that’s just the way life goes, other people’s experiences always seem more foreign but naturally your own experiences seem familiar. Could there be any other way?

More than anything, it’s going to be living here for two years that shapes me. In contrast to the idea of “saving the world” or whatever. As I was guiding the trainees to restaurants I know in Riobamba, I thought of how many towns I know. I do this from time to time anyway. Like, I know how to get around Fort Worth, College Station, Abilene, Denver, etc, and now I know how to get around in places in Ecuador, South America. Surreal. I don’t know everything about living in Ecuador, and maybe I only know a fraction of what life is like here, but I lived here for two years. I don’t know how this will effect me in the future, but everywhere I’ve lived has always effected me. And this has been such a different experience than living in other places. This paragraph is getting long and not making much of a point, but this is the kind of conversation I’ve been having with my omnibus. We are all wondering how we will feel about this experience after we leave and what it will mean to us and how much we have changed or if we will revert to our old ways, etc. We just don’t quite know yet how it’s going to be.

Alright, that’s all I got for now.

*from "In the Air" by Phil Collins, this song was a bit of a theme on our trip.

He´s here! My nephew has arrived. He was born Saturday, March 29. Thus making my brother´s family very 29-centric. (They all now have birthday´s on the 29th of different months.) So this is the only picture I have of little Anson David but he´s a real beauty you can see that.

Check their blog (link on the right) if you want to see more pictures...which actually I don´t know if there are more there or not...I´m hoping though!

* From Godspeed (Sweet Dreams) by Radney Foster

it's the end of an era. we had our close of service (COS) conference last week. omnibus 95 is heading out of ecuador. saturday, benito left. monday, yesary left. last night, my pal calvin left. tomorrow morning the other ben leaves. saturday, my good friend ariana leaves. the wheels are coming off the 'bus.

so here is a picture of what was left of us at our conference. out of 35 there were 19 (one more officially COS'd but a little sooner than the conference)that made it to the end. this picture is a "shake your face" picture. i'm not sure who the concept oriented with, but we had a tradition of individual "shake your face" pictures. for one of our mid-service conferences we had a slide show that featured several "shake your face" pictures, one included our director, cisco. he was actually the one who suggested the group "shake your face" picture. without further delay here it is:

looks to me like a hurricane was passing through the room.

naturally, i have been having a lot of conversations with my PCV buddies as they are leaving. we are all trying to process our experience here and what it is going to be like when we return. i may get some of these thoughts down and post them.

*From "Wilder Than Her" by Fred Eaglesmith

the view from my room in tabacundo, some days. it's rare to see the volcano cayambe but when you can, it's beautiful!

this is miles and me, he's the other co-trainer in agriculture. we both have these lime green polo shirts so we look like dorks wearing them the same day (which we plan).

here's the first picture of the bee workshop we did last saturday. it was a cool experience.

more bee workshop. check out the guy working the bees with his bare hands.

me and my bee suit.

well, i tried four times to post some recent photos. but, google was experiencing a problem. i'll try again tomorrow.

i'm in quito today, in the office, starving to death, but not ready to go out in the pouring rain/hail! hopefully i'll get the pictures up tomorrow!

Here are some pictures from training. We are about to begin Week 3, because they arrive on a Wednesday, that is considered Week 0. I had hoped being a trainer would make training seem faster than the eternity it was when I was a trainee. It is a little faster, mostly because we are always running around to get the next session ready before it commences.

We made a garden out in the field by our training center. This is the area I was working in the most, making raised beds.

You can see it starting to come together. It had been a corn field, and wah-lah...raised beds!

This was a less successful project. "Joven" and myself had spent most of the day working on building this rabbit cage and it was still all crooked. Joven (his nickname since he looks like a youth) is on the right, Scott who is one of the co-trainers is on the left(He just came out to make fun of us)and my boss, Nelson is in the back guffawing.

So the past few weeks have felt like I have no time, but then when I say, it’s only Week 3, it seems like it’s going slow. I’m growing accustomed to the routine. Most of all it’s a lot of adjustments at once. The training center is not all that comfortable, so I have been adjusting to not having a warm shower every day (I know, poor baby) and sharing a large kitchen with 20 other housemates and before I even have a cup of coffee in the morning, being bombarded with people and trainees and tasks and who knows what all.

But the trainees are a great group. For the most part, they are fun and funny, positive and have a great attitude. Of course you always have a few that are annoying or for whatever reason bug you. But that’s the exception not the rule. It’s interesting to watch them transform. They arrived here strangers and through training they are forming relationships that will probably be some of the most important ones they have for the rest of their lives. It’s interesting to watch them gel as a group and develop a group personality. It’s fun to see who starts emerging, who has been unnoticed but will become a PC legend before their service is through. It’s interesting to watch and wonder (and try to help prevent) who are going to be the ones who decide it’s too tough or they aren’t cut out for PC.

Tabacundo and Quito both are rainy and cold, which I get annoyed with. But I do like shopping in Tabacundo better, which is strange. I have gotten addicted to the small stores of small towns. They are packed with everything and the vegetables in the small fruit stores are so much better. So in that regard, Tabacundo feels a little more like Los Bancos. Despite Quito “having everything,” it’s not right downstairs from me or a short walk away.

Anyway, I don’t know what to report on my new life. That is probably why I haven’t been blogging as much. But I’m good. Hope you are too.

I’m back! Sort of! This post will be a bit of a rehash of my last post, including similar pictures. The difference will be that I’m included in the pictures thanks to the help of the lovely, brilliant and fellow-blogger Ariana. Here’s her self-portrait:

Here I am with my favorite store ladies! Yolita and Nancy and Yolita's granddaughter (never figured out her name.)

Had to go see Marta one last time since Valentina was napping the other time. Here she is with her big sister Andrea.

Me and Daniel. This is when he got my digits! He actually did call me one morning at 7 am, but I was in the shower.

I moved to Quito on January 12, a Saturday. Since then, my weekdays have been fully packed, working in the office, trying to get organized for the upcoming training of Omnibus 99. Most of the time, I don’t know what needs to be done. So the days are a mix of sitting around trying to figure out what would be helpful interspersed with short bursts of frantic activity. The trainees arrive Wednesday night at 7:20 pm! I can only imagine my life will be even busier once they get here. But, I think in a more meaningful way. Right now, we have the luxury of time, or what appears to be time. But once they are here, we are going to have to react more.

My living situation is different than the sweet life I had in Los Bancos. In Quito, I live with a married couple and another volunteer, Lindsay S, who is a co-trainer for the habitat program. Miles, my co-trainer, lives above us with a different family. We only live three blocks from the PC office. Once we take the trainees up to Tabacundo on Thursday night, we are going to have the pleasure of living in the training center up there. It’s a big building with dorm rooms, meeting rooms, a communal kitchen, and a few bathrooms. The four of us volunteer co-trainers are going to be up there almost all of the time, along with the eleven language facilitators. It’s not exactly cozy. And Tabacundo tends to be pretty chilly and it’s been drizzly when we’ve gone up there. Ewww! However, on weekends, we can return to Quito and live where we have been living. Which, living here at first didn’t seem cozy, it seemed a bit awkward, but our host family is really laid back and easy to live with. Lindsay and I buy our own groceries and cook meals together. We’ve even watched a movie or two on their BIG SCREEN TV!

The other factor about living in Quito is that it is expensive. We get a slight raise for living here. But, my problem is that I tend to be too social. So whenever other volunteers come to Quito for whatever reason, I can easily be convinced to go out and meet them. Lindsay likes to watch me go from, “I’m staying in tonight” to “Ok, I’ll be there in half an hour” in a matter of seconds once I get on the phone with whoever it is. Sometimes I eat before I go, but I always end up paying about five bucks in taxi fares, which when you are only making 300 bucks a month, can really cut into your money. And, not being used to working long days, every day, going out really starts to wear me down. However, I think our social lives will really slow down up in Tabacundo. There are a few karaoke bars around that the training team is talking about hitting up. We had to go on a trip over my birthday to investigate the sites where we are taking the trainees. It ended up we spent the night in Mindo for my actual birthday. So, we all went out to karaoke. This is my birthday tradition, since I went last year to Mindo for my birthday. This year, there was Miles, Lindsay, Scott, and Andrew (the training team), Mateo (who used to live in Mindo, but completed his service and went back to the US for a few months, but had just come back that week) and Ariana (who was visiting Mindo with her mother.) Apparently we had some first timers, but everyone was a great sport, singing whatever it was that we picked out for them! Earlier on our trip, we weren’t really gelling as a team, but after acting like fools together, we all seem to get along much better and appreciate each other more.

Our training is going to be a bit different than it has been before. The trainees are going to come in every day to the training center for classes. Also, the technical sessions (my thing) are going to be more integrated with language class. In other words, I’m going to have to do my sessions in Spanish. Of course, this freaks me out. But, that’s life. Sure, I can speak some Spanish, but it ain’t pretty. However, by this point, it is what it is.

This group is coming in about two years to the day that we arrived in Ecuador. It’s so strange to be on the other side of training. Since we are doing training close to where ours was, it’s easy to have flashbacks to my own training. I do not envy these trainees. Training was hard. I’m very glad my service is almost over!

Which leads me to another HUGE issue: what’s next? And I don’t know exactly. I should be looking for a job, but it’s very time-consuming and it feels overwhelming right now. Maybe once training gets rolling, I will feel more like sitting at the computer to look for a job. Right now, by the time I’m done with work, I’m sick of being at a computer unless I’m playing scrabble on Facebook. 

Also, I had my final visitors from the States arrive the past couple of weeks. My college buddy, Noke, and her husband Keith were here. Since my life had changed, they did a much more self-directed tour of Ecuador. They arrived on my birthday, but I was in Mindo. But the next day, they went to Mitad del Mundo and we met on Friday night. Saturday, we went to Old Town and saw some churches. On Sunday, they headed off to the Oriente (the jungle) for a few days. Came back on Wednesday, and I thought I was going to have to be in Tabacundo that night, but I was here so we ate dinner together. On Thursday, they went to Cuenca. And on Sunday, they returned in time to watch the Superbowl in Quito. However, down here, we were unable to get the official US version of the game. Meaning, the commentators were all speaking Spanish and the commercials were local. BUMMER! We all agreed they saw as much Ecuador that is possible in such a short time. It was just great to see Noke again since we haven’t seen each other in four years.

And I think that just about updates you on the last few weeks of my life. Today I am enjoying the last day of my four day weekend for Carnaval. I stayed in Quito to get organized and do nothing for a change. I wish I was back in Los Bancos for Carnaval since I had such a great time last year, throwing water on people. But, it’s very difficult to travel over this holiday since everyone goes somewhere. Quito is a ghost town! It’s a nice lull before the storm of training begins!

*REO Speedwagon

sorry it's been so long. i moved to quito on january 12th and haven't had a dull moment since, hardly. i work in the office during the week from 8 am until at least 5 pm. this is a huge change for me! (i know i won't get any "poor baby" outta anybody!)

i hope to do a proper blog update soon. but, until then, here's some photos from my leaving los bancos. (wow, that almost sounds like a song, eh?)

the gardeners in los bancos fixed lunch for me and the tecnico i worked with paul. turns out, paul is out of a job the end of january. you gotta love that organization i work for. he's barely been there since october and they are changing everything up again. in other words, it was a good time for me to leave. but i feel especially bad for the gardeners. now there is no one around who knows what's going on (since i was the one with the "institutional knowledge" for so long!) so back to the photos, i shocked the women with this picture while they were preparing the food!

here's a picture of daniel, my date for the day of the dead. he was delighted to have his picture taken.

later that week, i went back by his post with ariana and she got a picture of us both. i haven't gotten it off my camera yet, so i may post it later. but when i took the picture with him, he made sure to get my cell phone number from me. how cute!

speaking of cute, i went down to marta's on this day and hit the jackpot. look at these beautiful girls!

on the far left is andrea, marta's oldest daughter. i don't know who the little girl at the top is, the girl with the hat on is dajota, who is the neighbor's daughter. and at the bottom of the picture is manuela. she is one of the cutest kids on the planet, in my opinion, i had been hoping to get a picture of her sometime.

so that's that for now. i'll post more pictures soon.

*REM

Happy New Year! I came back to LB on New Year’s Eve in the afternoon and it was raining. The bus wouldn’t stop close to my house as it normally does, so I got the pleasure of carrying my bags in the rain (uphill!). The reason the bus wouldn’t stop, I think, was because of a small NYE festivity happening in the street. There was a young man wearing a papier-mâché mask and wearing a dress dancing in the street trying to stop traffic. I’ve been trying to learn the word for what they call these people, but I can’t find it in my dictionary, I think they are called embudas. (This is an update to this post, I finally found out the word and it´s viuda, which means widow. I tried every combination I could think of but forgot the ol´ b sounds like v thang. So there you have it...viudas.) Later on in the day and night, there were more of these. Some were children wearing black robes and masks, and they seemed more like trick-or-treaters. They would dance in front of cars or otherwise try to stop traffic and then ask the driver for money. Most drivers I saw would patiently wait for the performance to end and hand over some change. My bus was a little different, since I was standing up front trying to get it to stop, I saw us almost hit the dancer. It was a weird moment to see us just barely edge past what I thought was a dancing woman, and then to see the papier-mâché mask.

This particular dancer entertained people from the point I got home until at least midnight. Crowds would stand along the sidewalks out of the rain and just watch him. When I was buying some fruit, he had added a baby doll wrapped in a blanket to his act. He was dancing in front of a pick up, set the baby on the hood and sashayed around to the driver for his plata. I laughed so much my eyes were watering.

So let me just show you this dancer. I took two videos from my roof, which was some distance away, it was drizzling and getting close to dark, so the quality may not be perfect but you will get the idea of this guy. The first video is not necessarily better, but I recommend it if you are only going to watch one so that you can see Viejo strapped to the grill of the red pickup in the background.

I think the second video is a funnier video of the dancer but the pickup has disappeared.

Strapped on the pickup is the only example I have of a Viejo, or old person. These are dolls or dummies, sometimes made entirely of papier-mâché, sometimes with only a papier-mâché face and the rest is cloth. The tradition is that you make these to represent people you respect or wish to honor. Then at midnight you burn ‘em up. My pal, Linds, had a Viejo made in her honor complete in her running clothes. And despite knowing it’s an honor, she still asked me, “It IS an honor, right?” It’s counter-intuitive to our cultural paradigm to have your likeness consumed by fire. However, Linds did educate me on part of the tradition; she was told to write down all the things she wished to leave behind from the past year and put it in her Viejo so that after midnight it would be destroyed leaving her free of those things for the New Year. Cool, eh?

Soon after I returned to town, I went to see my friend Marta. All along the way, people had their viejos sitting out front of their stores. And as seen in the video, they are commonly strapped on to car grills, hoods, roofs or bumpers. I saw one that was perched on the hood of the car, sitting casually with its legs crossed. Last year, I was startled by these things strapped onto bumpers and this year, the first one I saw strapped to the grill of a bus gave me a bit of a start. Since I was leaving Quito on NYE, I saw hundreds of these things along the road for sale. Some I even recognized such as Bart Simpson and Shrek. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos of the viejos.

So back in my town, as I strolled down the sidewalk, I saw one Viejo sitting in a chair by the public phone which it had cradled between its shoulder and head. Hilarious. Then I saw one that was sitting in a chair with a cigarette hanging out of its mouth with another Viejo in its lap. Something about that one seemed odd and I was looking intently at it as I was walking by, perhaps the cigarette was lit, something seemed different about it and then it suddenly lurched up at me! It stopped me in my tracks, I screamed and clutched my heart before bursting into laughter, which of course, all the spectators sitting on the benches had already started doing. It was a great prank and I fell right into it.

At Marta’s I received a very animated welcome home. She wasn’t expecting me for New Year’s and was excited. We made plans to go out that night, meeting at 10 pm. It was about 5 pm then, and I thought “what on earth am I going to do until 10?” Marta always wants to meet so late and I always fear I will get too tired to party by the time she’s ready. But, without fail, I busy myself so much during the time in between, that I’m jumping in the shower at 9:30 to get ready for going out. I went to meet her but she wasn’t there. I walked down to her house, but the gate was padlocked so I couldn’t knock on her door. Since it seemed like she must have been out of her house, I walked back up the street to wait. I waited about 15 minutes, then went back to my house to check my phone, but there hadn’t been any calls. Marta had told me earlier that day that her cell phone quit working, so I knew I couldn’t call her. Then I remembered that a few months back she had lost all the keys to her place. One time when we were going to go out, she was worried she would get locked into her apartment, since she didn’t have a new copy of the gate key. It sounded ridiculous, to be looked into your building. So I went back to her place, this time banging the padlock against the gate and yelling at her. I did this for what felt like a long time, definitely longer than I would have knocked on someone’s door in my past life in the States. But in Ecuador, there seems to be no limit for how long you can knock on a door and yell for the entrants to come out. How long do you think is a long time to knock on an apartment door? Well, to people here a half an hour is nothing and if they really need you, they may just sit there anyway for a couple of hours. I had a teenage boy that I worked with who would come to my house really early and he’d knock AND call my cell phone until I would give up and answer the door. I quickly learned to put my phone on silent because if they can hear your phone, they know you are there and you are doomed. But, I am not Ecuadorian, so I gave up after about five minutes.

As I was walking back, one of those guys dressed as women, this one without a mask on, asked me to dance. He followed me for a while, begging. I kept replying politely no thanks. It might have been fun to dance for a bit, but I towered over him, he appeared drunk, and he smelled very bad. So, I kept moving, dodging in and out of the crowd until I lost him and found Doris. Doris has the store beside Marta’s laundry. They used to be good friends, but had a falling out a while back, however now I think while they aren’t buddies, they are at least not hostile to each other anymore. Needless to say, trying to remain friends with the both of them had been awkward. Tonight, Doris tried to help me with the no Marta issue, asking people if they had seen “la Marta.” No one had. Doris was telling me that she was definitely out there somewhere and had just deserted me. Someone else said there was no way she would come out in the rain with her baby. But, I kept telling them, she’s locked in her house, I just know it. So after a while of my loitering near Doris, she told me she was moving on and good bye. I was hoping I could loiter nearby her the rest of the night. I didn’t have anyone else to hang out with but I wasn’t ready to call it a night. I had seen my friend Nancy earlier in the evening and she had told me she was going to mass and then was going to come back out. I didn’t see her again, and oddly, I wasn’t seeing anyone I knew. But right before Doris left, she introduced me to her sister, Holga. In the introduction, Doris pointed out that we were both single. Ah-ha! So, since I was single and Holga was single, we should hang out together while Doris and her husband and her other coupled friends went elsewhere.

Holga and I stood outside a store, protected from the drizzle. It was 10:30. We stood and stood. We talked a little. We looked at people. We checked the time. We saw a guy in a white t-shirt walk by with fresh blood on it in a few places. He didn’t appear to be the one who was bleeding and he was surrounded by some slightly frantic women. Must have been a fight of some kind at the discoteka. While we stood I thought, “C’mon Janet, think! Get this thing going! Do something fun!” I thought of suggesting going to the discoteka (well, this was before the bloody guy) but then remembered that going out dancing here is different. While I envision a night of dancing and being silly with my girlfriends, I remember that here it would mean that Holga and I would be standing in a very crowded, muggy room watching people dance until a man came up to ask one of us to dance. It would be worse than what we were doing. Then I would think, “OK, what else? What else could we do?” Then I would realize….this is not my thing. I don’t know what there is to do. I am not the host here. Holga’s lack of entertainment is not my problem and apparently mine is not her problem and she’s the one who should know of something else to do. But, she did not, apparently, and we continued to stand. We watched little boys shoot off firecrackers. Mostly they were just poppers like Black Cats, but a few had some that would shoot some sparks out a fair distance. Of course I was worried. I was worried that I would lose an eye to a firework. I was worried that I would see a kid blow off his hand or burn his friend’s hair off or dart into the path of a car while avoiding a friend pointing a firecracker at him. Fortunately, I did not see any of these things happen.

It continued to drizzle, the crowd continued to gather. What was really strange was how I only saw about two or three people that I knew. As we stood, I would think of someone and wonder where they were. Angel? Where’s Angel? What about Antonio and his family? Luci? Where is Luci? Or Gladys? Or the other Doris I know? Where are these people!?!? Ernesto…what I wouldn’t give to see Ernesto right now. But I didn’t see people. My friends and acquaintances were staying home or having a party at someone’s house or were crammed into the sweltering discos.

At almost midnight, Holga and I moved down the street a bit to where the loudspeakers where and the dancers. Midnight came. No countdown. I was really looking forward to, “DIEZ, NUEVE, OCHO, SIETE….” But there was no countdown in Los Bancos. They did play the national anthem and set the viejos on fire. Holga started talking a lot right before midnight. She was explaining to me how everyone hopes for a good new year, but really, it depends on God. And that most of the time, the new year isn’t all that different from the old year. You still have the same situations. And sometimes those situations grow worse. But she kept bringing it back to having faith in God, which I felt seemed hopeful. Then she explained to me the proper New Year’s greeting. You hold the person by the shoulders, say “Feliz ano” (happy year) and then maybe even hug them. Ecuadorians don’t hug all that much. So Holga explained that to me and also seemed to give me a bit of a blessing. She was a very nice woman. She then said she was going back up the street to wish her family a feliz ano and would I like to go or stay. So I went up with her, some of her family gave me the greeting, which was nice. Then I headed home.

On the walk home, there were several fires of viejos in the street. They must douse those things in gasoline because it had been raining and drizzling all day and all those things went up in flames fast. They also contain firecrackers I discovered, so I was swerving back and forth along the road, avoiding the bonfires and their hidden firework displays. I felt like I was walking through a town post-war. Almost at my house, I saw someone I knew, so I stopped and gave them my newly learned feliz ano and they seemed very appreciative. I ran upstairs in my house to take a picture of the bonfires. This gives you a bit of an idea of what my town looked like right after midnight.

And that was New Year’s Eve in Los Bancos. Everyone later agreed that no one much had come out, it was because of the rain. And that after midnight was better than before midnight, which figures. And the guys I work with died laughing that I even attempted NYE in Los Bancos. They knew it was boring and one kept saying, “Quito, Janet. Quito was fun.”

* From New Year’s Day by U2

I had troubles again posting alot of photos, so this post and the following post are together.

Back from a great time in the US of A. I was there for a little over two weeks, and it flew by. It’s amazing how much you can change your perceptions in a short amount of time. If you will recall, I was home this summer with a broken leg and very anxious to return to Ecuador. Fast forward to present day and not only was I counting down days to leave Ecuador for Christmas, once back in Texas, I was plagued with dread for my return to Ecuador.

There are probably several reasons for this change. One being that I feel pretty useless in my job. And I think the machismo of this culture is wearing on me. And, the US is familiar and comfortable and there is usually not a language barrier. (Although, sometimes I will admit I can’t think of the right English word.) However, I am looking forward to helping out with training, so that’s why I ultimately did decide to return. Not that I was seriously considering NOT returning. That, and that it would be best to see this thing to its end. And, I have friends in Ecuador that I want to continue the experience with for these last few months. I mean, gee, it’s only until late April. I can hang on that long…surely!

So some highlights from my trip. It is always a little strange to return to the US. Everything is expensive. But, you can use a debit card for anything. And, you can use a 20 dollar bill for a pack of gum and they won’t even give you a whiney voice and beg you for correct change. I found myself constantly having to refrain from addressing all customer service industry personnel in Spanish. Since no one much here speaks English, I have just gotten accustomed to walking into any establishment and yelling out a “Buenas tardes” and making my requests in Spanish. I was pretty embarrassed in a Mexican restaurant when I accidentally talked to a guy in Spanish who was bringing us chips. He looked Latino, and I think that’s what confused me. I have no idea if he noticed, if he could speak Spanish, etc, but I was fairly mortified.

So enough of that, here I will present you with a brief photo highlight reel.

I got to see quite a few of my friends. My dear friend Jan (T.W.J.P.) came in the day after I arrived home and got the “pleasure” of going to my grandmother’s Christmas with me. Here she is making lunacy look good, with my mom smiling along in the background.

I got together with a couple of my local girlfriends. If there could be a theme for my trip home it might be pregnant. NOT ME PERSONALLY, mind you! This is my friend from high school, “Dug” who is preggers. That’s what I’m Vanna-Whiting…her “coming soon” daughter.

And, with the same Christmas tree, my other friend “Jackrabbit” who, like me, is without a bun in the oven.

I got to see my college friend Susie for our traditional Thai lunch and Half Price Books excursion. Here she is with her very cute little boy.

Guess what? Susie is PREGNANT. But you can’t exactly determine that in this picture.

(This post is a continuation of the post preceding it.)

For my family Christmas, I got kinda Martha Stewart with the table.

And here is a family picture that we weren’t quite ready for. I had put it on timer and I had just pounced into my spot, crushing my brother.

And here we are looking more proper. But really, isn’t the other one better?

Also of note, my sister-in-law in the middle there is PREGNANT. Makes you really wonder what’s in the water around there, eh? And they make fun of me for drinking the water here and getting amoebas! Well, what I say to that is…you don’t have to send your amoebas to college.

My last photo is of something that I enjoyed a lot when I was home and that is the sky. Here was an amazing moonrise.

Those are my brother’s cows. (Cows, heifers, calves, etc, for those who are specific.) I saw many nice sunsets and some starry-nights.

So I’m back in Los Bancos today which is New Year’s Eve. As reluctant as I was to come back, I think it’s good to be here again and especially to be here for New Year’s. I’ve already shot some video to post later about the event. Even if it doesn’t turn out to be very exciting here, at least I’m not puking out a bus window and pooing on the side of the road. You gotta dip pretty low to be worse than last New Year’s.

Hope you all have a nice and safe New Year’s!

*From “Merry Christmas from the Family” by Robert Earl Keen

i love taking pictures of cats and they seem to sleep in weird places around here. this one crawled up on a roof.

of course i had to take a picture of this VERY RARE los bancos sunset. not that the sun never sets here, it just is rarely visible. this was a spectacular one yesterday!

spilled milk!

but i think i know why that´s a phrase. you really want to cry after something like this. i had just done all my dishes and was preparing my comfort food staple, kraft mac & cheese that i buy in quito. i was on the ball and had pre-measured by cup of milk when a lid from my stack of dishes fell off and knocked my cup of milk all over the place! oh well. i didn´t cry, mostly because you can´t. maybe if it were spilled coke you could cry since there isn´t a phrase against it. but anyway, i wanted to cry but didn´t, mopped up the mess and hoped my house wouldn´t smell like soured milk the next day. it didn´t.

i´m getting VERY excited about being home in texas in about three days! today i went to puerto quito with my friend, marta, and we did a little swimming in the river. i tried to teach her oldest daughter, andrea, who is about nine, how to swim. i really don´t have the spanish words for this. but we worked on flailing our arms and legs and trying to float. she didn´t drown, so all is good.

I was able to accomplish a little project that I had in mind last night. Of course, I had some big help by some volunteer buddies. In the following video, you will see Linds (on the left) Trent and Ariana demonstrate common gestures used here in Ecuador. So here are what the gestures mean in order of their appearance in the video.

Ojo! Ojo means eye and this gesture is used to tell you to be careful as in...look around!

Coño. (I didn´t know this gesture, but Trent insisted on it and it is quite fun to see..so here it is.) It means you are cheap. So, if you are having lunch with someone and they aren´t going to pay for you, you might give them this gesture.

No. No means no, but the gesture here is the shame shame no, when really it doesn´t ALWAYS mean a shaming no. Some volunteers say that on the coast it´s a bit of a condemning no, but I feel in my community it´s just an easy way to say no. It´s more commonly used than shaking your head no.

Robo. This gesture is used to tell you that there is a robber around, and it´s used to explain what happened to something if it was robbed. A guy was telling me he didn´t have a cell phone anymore and he made this gesture by way of explanation.

A little bit. This is another gesture that I don´t see, but it means I just want to talk to you a little bit. And as Linds is demonstrating...here you will often not hear please or the like, you will get a whine or maybe a whiny face.

A donde va? Where are you going? I see this alot since I ride in trucks and people will often do this gesture to us, wanting to know where we are going. I love this one for some reason.

The Lip Point. This drives a lot of people crazy, but I kinda like it. Especially when I was on crutches, it was helpful. So, people here point with their lips or they sometimes just turn their head towards whatever it is to point.

Venga. Venga means come here. The venga can be confusing to gringos because some people´s venga gesture looks like a shoo! or get away gesture.

The fuerte. I call this the fuerte or the muy, but it has no name that I know of and most volunteers don´t know how to translate it exactly. Trent called it the chuta. Chuta is used here like we would use SHOOT! So this gesture seems to be used when something is extreme. So here are some examples of when you would use this. If something is really funny, especially at someone else´s expense, you would do this. If there is a close call, as in something dangerous, you would do this. But it´s probably mostly used to denote something bad, or hard or difficult. I need to make the gesture just trying to explain it!

No hay. No hay means there is no....or there are no... and you use this phrase and gesture ALL the time. If a bus is full and I´m trying to flag them down and they have no seats available, they will give me the no hay. If you hollar over to a friend to see if someone else is at the house and they aren´t there, they can simply give you the no hay.

Hope you´ve learned something from this educational video!

* From When You Say Nothing At All, written by Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz.

My Thanksgiving week was really nice, if not traditional. It started on Wednesday night in Quito, watching Ecuador defeat Peru five to one. This was my first professional futbol game and it was pretty fun. I felt a bit like a poser buying my Ecuador jersey AFTER the win. I would have bought one before the game, but I got dumped out of my taxi a few blocks away from the stadium, was walking rapidly through the rain to meet my friends with my ticket, and just couldn’t spare the time. People in my community knew I was going to the game, I kept telling everyone I would yell for them. So when I returned here on Monday, wearing my jersey they all commented on how I must have been the reason Ecuador finally won.

I had plans to go south for cuy gumbo and other such delicacies, but I got lazy. It’s at least 13 hours down there, and I was pretty whupped. A better idea seemed to be staying in Quito and splurging a little on a stay at the Marriott. We got our money’s worth for sure, lounging at the pool Thursday and Friday morning. My friend Lindsay and I ate sushi for Thanksgiving dinner, and we got together with some of our guy friends to destroy a few pizzas a little later on that night. I saw a little of the Cowboy’s game on Thursday, and seeing “Thanksgiving” written on the field really jarred me. Even though, I was aware it was Thanksgiving, I would forget. It was also fun to see all the ads for “Black Friday” and knowing that so many of my friends and family back home would be heading out early in the morning, throwing elbows to get the bargains!

Friday night, I headed to Santo Domingo with a fellow volunteer, Trent. We headed to Ariana’s house. On Saturday, Ariana and I had a little moviefest that turned out to only feature movies from 1987. We started with Mannequin, which we both hated although we remember it being a good movie, The Lost Boys (a fave of Ariana’s) and ending with Raising Arizona (quite possibly my favorite movie). Trent was at a meeting all day. Pobrecito.

On Sunday, I met Trent to go visit his former site. He doesn’t live out there anymore with the Tsachilas, but he lives close and continues to work with them. Trent arrived in Ecuador the year before we did, and has extended for an extra year. The transportation out to the site is a ranchero, an open-air bus. We sat on top, which required paying attention since a lot of branches were low enough to hit you pretty good. The ranchero only runs on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and apparently only one way. When we finished, we walked 6 km back to a smallish town where we found a ride. The entire 6 kms, we only saw a couple of motorcycles and a few pedestrians.

I have been fascinated by the Tsachilas since I saw them (and Trent) at a fair in Sto Domingo last summer. (When I saw Trent there, I thought he was either a volunteer or a missionary, but I didn’t speak to him. He thought I was European, so he didn’t speak to me!) The men color their hair red with achiote, a plant that grows all over Ecuador. Here are some of the pods, split open for hair dying.

Trent did a good job “highlighting” my hair with a streak of red. He even removed the seeds that got tangled up in it. We forgot to take a picture of just my hair, but in the group picture below, you might be able to see my streak.

The Tsachilas also have vibrant clothing. They weave their own skirts and belts. This is their traditional clothing. The women only recently started wearing shirts.

Trent told me a little about the history of the Tsachilas. They at first settled Santo Domingo, but forty years ago, were moved out to communes. There are only seven communes. The Tsachilas would go into Santo Domingo in traditional clothing, and finally the city made a law that you couldn’t go topless. I believe Trent said that even as recently as five years ago, the women were topless in the community, but now they really only go au naturale in their houses. It’s kinda sad that they have had to change. Trent said it’s because so many people came out and told them they were wrong to be “nude” so now they are self-conscious about it.

Then men’s skirts are dark blue with white stripes, and the women’s skirts are every color imaginable. They also paint their skin, traditionally with bands around their arms. I forget what they use to do this, but it goes on clear and doesn’t show up until a few hours later and then lasts several days. There are also indigenous groups in the jungle who use this. I have seen volunteers with some pretty elaborate designs on their faces with this stuff. Here are a couple of men; the younger man has a lot of this stuff on him.

You can also see their hair. Trent told me they put some rubber in it to make it more rigid. When I first saw the Tsachilas, I thought they were wearing hats; the hair makes quite a bill. Trent told me the tradition of coloring their hair. Apparently several years ago, a shaman said painting themselves in red with the achiote would keep them safe from smallpox. So they used to cover themselves in red, but that has turned into only the red hair for the men. The older man in the picture always colors his hair, Trent told me. But most of the younger people (like the younger man), wear their hair down and un-colored and wear pants most days.

Also interesting, they have their own language, which many of them still speak exclusively. I didn’t realize until after we left that the reason they weren’t interacting with me much was because they didn’t speak Spanish. Trent’s counterpart is a talkative guy, apparently, but unfortunately, he wasn’t there that day.

Here’s the group photo with me looking like a huge gringa-nerd amongst the Tsachilas.

I was really glad to have gone out there and learned a bit more about the Tsachilas. I still find them fascinating. I can’t fathom what it must be like to be a tourist attraction merely being yourself. How it must feel to have lived in a country all your life and all your ancestors as well and find yourself surrounded by rules against your dress and not able to communicate very well with anyone outside your community. What it must be like to be a young person growing up in that environment, wearing non-traditional clothing most days, but also wearing traditional clothes from time to time. Or having a hairstyle that you are able to wear down and “blend in” when in the city but also able to do up in the traditional fashion.

They are encouraging tourism as a way to supplement their income. I think it’s an excellent idea, and they seem to enjoy sharing their culture. They seem to be embracing who they are, and using that to their advantage.

So that was basically my Thanksgiving. The only other thing of note is that at Ariana’s, I took my first bucket bath. She has a shower, but her water only functions sporadically and it’s only cold water. So she heats water on the stove, pours it into a bucket in the shower, then scoops out the water little by little and douses herself with it. It actually works pretty well. After I took my first one, she commented on how little water I used. On Monday, I opted not to take a bucket bath at Ariana’s, since I was going to have a hot, dirty bus ride and I have such a nice shower at my house. Of course, you know what happened…there was no water here. THIS ALWAYS HAPPENS! But, thanks to what I learned at Ariana’s, I filled up a pot with water from one of the tanks on my roof, knowing I didn’t need much! Heated it and took a nice bucket shower. Ariana and I are now calling my visit “a tech exchange” (PC phrase for going to someone’s site to learn a skill or technique) since she taught me how to bucket bathe and I taught her how to make popcorn without burning it.

* from Merry Christmas from the Family by Robert Earl Keen

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Of course, they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here and it’s called El Dia de Accion de Gracias, which is a bit unwieldy. I have a lot of plans for this holiday. On Wednesday, I’m going to watch a futbol game. You know, it’s Thanksgiving and all…I should try to watch something close to football. It’s supposed to be a big game…Ecuador vs Peru. This will be my first “real” game in Ecuador and I’m excited. After that, I will be traveling way south in the country to a place called Zaruma. One of my fellow volunteers lives there and is hosting a dinner. On the bill is Cuy Gumbo. (Cuy is guinea pig, and it’s very popular here. I have yet to try it!). (And the volunteer is from Louisiana, hence…the gumbo.)

After spending a day or two down there, I’m going to come back up to the Santo Domingo and visit a volunteer who lives with the Tsachilas. They are also known as the Coloradoes…they are an indigenous group who paint their hair red. I’m very excited to go visit them. I also plan to go to Ariana’s site; she has a blog listed on my side bar. She was my first friend in PC; we met in Miami as soon as we arrived at the hotel!

In other news, if you want to know what I’ve been doing…this is it:

I just finished reading A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. It was quite an undertaking. I had it propped up on my table, like a library dictionary, with a two page list of who’s who. It was 1,349 pages long and I just finished reading it on Monday. Whew.

And the highlight of the blog and my day is this. I was standing near a fence with creeping zinnia (I think that’s what it’s called, sorry Plant Nerd, I’m forgetting my plant names!) I was waiting around, as I’m known to do here a lot and I was plucking off flowers, and leaves, etc. Well…I grabbed a twig, but it didn’t seem quite right and it started moving! Here’s some video:

And push-ups:

The guy with me said they call it cabellito, which means little horse. He said it was because it only has four legs and if you were small enough you could ride it. I think that last part was just to be funny. Anyway, it was some sort of a walking stick insect. Very cool. They are apparently pretty rare and the guy with me hadn’t seen one that big before. It was pretty big, which I hope you can tell. Let me tell you, it was well camouflaged, in the videos it’s moving luckily or you might not be able to tell anything was amiss.

* Traditional (at least I think, I couldn´t find a writer!)

I was worried about my eye. (Which is fine, just so you don’t have to worry as you read my story). Even though I didn’t feel overly preoccupied about it, I was on edge about it. One sure sign is that I had loose bowels all day yesterday until after my appointment. I packed up to go to Quito, sure that something was wrong. So I packed clothes for staying in Quito a few days, or maybe for being in Panama a few days, or maybe for being in DC a few days or maybe for being in Texas for a few days. I didn’t want to get caught again on a med evac without anything. I didn’t figure this would take as long as a leg to heal nor have the associated risk of “you may not be going back.” But I still wanted to be prepared, at least a little.

What a lot of people know about me is that I am very queasy about surgery or medical procedures. This is probably fairly normal. Do you remember the TV show “That’s Incredible”? The hosts were Fran Tarkenton, Cathy Lee Crosby, and David something. It was a cool show that would show weird stuff all the time. But, every episode they would show some “amazing” surgery. Ugh! I would always close my eyes throughout the procedures, but sometimes my brother would tell me it was over and I’d open them only to see a grotesque display of blood and guts (good one, Dave!) Later in college, I was in a class called Recreation for Special Populations. We studied various disabilities, it was an interesting class. For our section on vision impairments, we all went to the library to watch a film. It was about eye surgery! I don’t know why my professor chose this film because it didn’t help you understand blindness or visual impairments. I tried to be a trooper and watch it. Then, I realized I couldn’t watch it. So I had my eyes closed and my head down. This didn’t help much. I was breathing hard and my heart was racing. The sounds of surgery were all around me, the beep beep, the suction noises and of course the doctor explaining the play by play. I covered my ears and kept telling myself, this is a movie, this is a movie. Of course, I knew it was still someone’s real life, and I just couldn’t get myself to calm down. Finally, I left the room. I was in the Texas A&M Library, and I still remember very clearly the neon green carpet of that floor. I could see a small portion of the floor, and as I walked, my vision would close in on a small circle of the floor, everything else was black. I was about to pass out. I collapsed in a chair and laid my head on the table. After a little while, it dawned on me that someone might have also been sitting at that table. I could imagine the look they would have given me over their pile of books and papers: a what-in-the-world-is-going-on-here type of look. But when I calmed down and looked up, I was alone. In hindsight, I realized I was having some sort of panic attack. Which has been the only experience like that I have had. Of course this morning, as I was putting on my pants, something was down at the bottom of the pants. At first, I thought it was a sock, makes sense. But then as I continued to try to get my leg in I knew I hadn’t worn socks with those pants, and the something in my pants leg felt a little furry and like it was moving. I screamed and threw the pants off me. Turns out, it was my boxer shorts that I sleep in, not a rodent. That was a minor freak out. I started laughing at myself about that, but my heart was still racing for a little while. Still…not the same as my eye surgery panic attack.

That being in my history, and the fortune of having good eyesight, I don’t visit eye doctors too much. I went when I turned 30, and I wasn’t a great patient. Having my eyes dilated was awful. I couldn’t see for hours. I couldn’t stand to look at myself because my dilated pupils freaked me out, especially when one undilated faster than the other leaving me looking like Marilyn Manson. I went some other time after that, and I remember I told that doctor I was squeamish and he assured me they wouldn’t touch my eye or blow the air into it. Which, he was lying about cause they did. I guess he thought I wouldn’t feel it.

So as I met my doctor yesterday, I told him that I could go to the dentist all day long, but I had real problems with eye doctors. This doctor is the husband of one of our PC nurses. Such a nice, nice man. (He’s Ecuadorian but his English is perfect). He tried to assure me that the drugs they use now work well and don’t last as long. He was right, I didn’t feel anything this time and I only had a little blurriness for maybe an hour after the exam. I think though, I scared off one of the nurses. It started when she was supposed to do some test on me as I just sat in my chair. She was coming at my eye with a needle! I yelled out a little and the doctor said gently, you won’t feel it, but come over and put your chin here and I’ll do it from here. You know, the head gear that they do all the examinations from. I felt much better having my head surrounded by gadgets and such so that I wouldn’t have to notice as much that there was some needle going into my eye. And that I had something to rest my head on so that I wouldn’t jerk around. I seriously jerk around for eye drops. So, this was a good call. I would hate to pop my eye in the doctor’s office.

At one point, I had to stop the exam to take off my sweater. I explained that I was sweating. I think it might have been then that the doctor called me a weenie. And I heartily agreed. My philosophy is to always tell the doctors that I will be a complete nervous wreck about shots, IVs, drawing blood, eye exams, etc. I want them to get the idea that they are dealing with the equivalent of a five-year-old. Usually, they assume I’m acting or exaggerating, that surely I am a composed adult. But soon enough they figure it out: I’m not kidding. I really might thrash about in the chair as they try to stick a needle in my eye.

Later, this same nurse had put the eye dilation drops in my eyes. I guess my eyes weren’t dilating so she came back later and added more drops. These drops really stung my eyes. Not horribly, but enough to make me come unhinged. I was fanning my eyes and beginning to cry. Part of this, I know, is the communication barrier. She spoke Spanish to me, although I think she knew at least some English. My Spanish was shot that day; I had a lot of difficulty understanding all the intake questions she asked me. So, she was putting these stinging drops in my eyes and I was flashing back to the guy who shook my foot around and wouldn’t stop when it was broken. This feeling of out of control, of damaging me in the name of medicine. And…I was just really amped up about what might be wrong with my eye and what it would entail. So I began to cry and the doctor came in then and called me a weenie again before he realized that I was having a real crisis. So he wiped my eyes and said they’d give me a few more minutes. I cried alone a little and finally pulled it together.

He came back, but that nurse never came back (sorry! It’s not you…it’s me!) He finished the exam and found no holes in my retina, which is what we had been worried about. He even took the time to pull out the demonstration eyeball and show me the inside of a retina and explained it all to me. This didn’t gross me out, luckily, but it was all a little blurry, literally, due to the eye dilation. Apparently, I do have some places along my retina where holes could develop (lattice, I think is the right word for that), but right now, these places seem to be filling in (pigmenting). He says this is more common in people who are myopic, which I am not, so that is a little strange. And he explained to me what was going on with the flashes. That seems to be something about where part of the eye that used to be gel and then becomes liquid keeps hitting the retina. Or something like that. If there are any eye experts out there, feel free to chime in and reinform me of what is happening.

Also, I learned that my eyesight is still really good. He did a regular eye exam and on one eye he said he could correct it a little, but the other one he couldn’t. And on the one he could correct he said he usually doesn’t prescribe for that small of a correction. So that is really great news, but unfortunately, he also said I needed to go see an ophthalmologist again in about six months to make sure all my pigmenting is progressing and the other thing is ok.

After everything was finished, the doctor gave me a hug. Which was very sweet. I told him I was sorry that I was such a basket case and that he was very kind. And maybe since this eye doctor experience actually turned out to be easier and less freaky than I expected, I can calm down for my next appointment. It was really only me that was freaky.

I rode a bus home that night, that kept its interior lights on for over an hour. They felt really bright to me, so I donned my sunglasses. I felt a little ridiculous, but I could see much better with them on. I told myself that if Bono could pull it off all the time, I could do it for one night.

*The Who