We landed in Quito, Ecuador on June 20, 2007 along with 45 other trainees of Omnibus 98. Along with our ridiculously overloaded suitcases, we arrived filled with high expectations, hope, fear and dreams of making a difference. We were ready to leave the American lifestyle behind and embrace a new country and culture as Rural Public Health Volunteers.
This blog is merely a glimpse of our Peace Corps experience in an incredibly beautiful country and culture. The posts are filled with stories of Ecuadoreans who unknowingly challenged us to open our hearts and minds and see the world from a different point of view. We are forever changed by our Peace Corps service. The time was filled with incredible challenges and accomplishments as we learned to live and work in another country and cross the cultural divide to form friendships. We joined the Peace Corps to give of ourselves, but we received so much more than we ever dreamed. Saying good-bye to our friends and leaving our home in El Chaco was one of the hardest things we’ve ever done. The good-bye parties started nearly a month before we left and continued until we caught our final bus to Quito. Our friends in El Chaco are some of the most generous and humble people we’ve ever known and they will never be forgotten. We flew out of Quito as Returned Peace Corps Volunteers on August 15, 2009, just as the sun was rising over the Andes Mountains. The raw beauty of this small South American country never ceased to amaze us. We choked back tears as we thought about how soon we would be able to return. Life is calling. How far will you go? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0sTWqccxRU 
Please login first to post comments.
A friend suggested this little activity to me to put COS, Close of Service, in perspective and you guys are just lucky enough to read it! Here’s my list of: What I’ll Miss About Life in Ecuador, What I won’t Miss, What I’m Looking Forward to About Life in the U.S., What I’m Not Looking Forward to About Life in the U.S. of A.
What I’ll Miss About My Life in Ecuador: (in no particular order) - My soccer team/playing soccer - Having an entire day with nothing to do - Walking everywhere - Español - Grilled corn with cheese from street vendor lady - Lunches/dinners for $2 or less - The beautiful scenery - The tranquility - Our precious wooden house - Life without stress - All our friends, The Ashqui Family, Rosa, and Rebeca’s family - Public transportation - Really fresh milk and cheese - Wearing sweats and t-shirts more than I should - Not worrying about fashion - Living very GREEN - Nearly perfect temperatures year-round - The “kiss” greeting - Evening walks to get street food - Really cheap fruits and veggies - Fresh shrimp at $3.50 a pound - Our PCV friends - Not driving - Sleeping in buses - Drinking warm milk in the evenings - Sunny, gorgeous days in El Chaco- few and far between, but wonderful - Rafting with the Ashquis - Green trees and plants year-round - Juan 23, our church group and the music - Women openly breastfeeding in public What I Won’t Miss About My Life In Ecuador: - Sweeping - Hand washing clothes - Always sticking out - Turkeys’ squawking/roosters crowing waking me up - Cold, rainy days where I can’t ever get warm - Making meals from scratch when I’m hungry - Missing all family events - Missing American holidays - Always looking for new projects - Really slow internet - Mold - Mice, spiders and abnormally large insects in our house - No personal bubble in public places - People butting in lines - Washing the milk bucket - Having the milk boil over and kill the flame and then having to clean up the spilled milk and start over again - Peeling potatoes with Ecuadorian women - Cooking with Ecuadorians and having to cut up vegetables without a cutting board with giant, dull knives - No public bathrooms - Really nasty bathrooms with no toilet paper - Hand washing dishes in cold water - Always being worried about getting robbed outside of El Chaco - Night buses and not being able to sleep - Crazy, unsafe drivers and not having a seatbelt What I’m Looking Forward to in the U.S. - Washing machine and dryer - Vacuuming instead of sweeping - Dishwasher - Microwave - Having a separate life from Gregg’s - Being with our family and friends- number one, but I already wrote in no particular order - Holidays - Season changes - Always being able to talk without being embarrassed - Weekend trips - Getting my Masters - Having regular work - Getting a dog - Meeting my niece Alexis - Buying a house - Being able to make quick, easy meals What I’m Not Looking to About Life in the U.S. - Stress, stress, stress - Driving everywhere - Ridiculously hot and cold weather - Pointless spending - Fashion- it’ll make me buy new clothes and then I run into pointless spending - Traffic - No free time - All English - Lots of Gringos - Not living as greenly - Canned and frozen fruits and veggies - Expensive everything 
Why all the blog posts all of a sudden? Reason Number 1, this blog will soon come to an end. Number 2, I often start writing blogs when I get an idea, but never finish them. Now I’m finishing partially started entries. Number 3, I have time now, so I’m making up for the months without blogs.
We did work these last few months even though we rarely wrote about it here. Gregg has been working for the last six months on a community bank. Peace Corps really pushes the community banks as income generation projects. Gregg started the bank in the neighboring town of Santa Rosa with our friend Jose, who lives there. There are about 30 members and each member has to put $2 each week in the bank. Members can take out loans and pay them back with 10 percent interest. At the end of each year the bank is liquidated and the members split the money equally. Then the bank starts over again from scratch. Pretty cool concept. Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Prize back in 1996 for his work in Bangladesh with community banks, microfinancing and “helping the poor help themselves.” Peace Corps pushes the same sort of bank model as Yunus’ Grameen Bank. Members usually take out loans ranging from $20 to $100 and it is amazing what a relatively small amount of money allows people to do. They are now able to buy more seeds and have bigger harvests or buy an extra cow and produce more milk. The bank members are going to be diving into their extra money this weekend to throw us a good-bye party… or maybe they’ll have to take out a loan! I’ve been done with my work at the high school now for a while. Although I really dislike the whole school system here, it seems the students enjoyed my English classes. Even though I didn’t have any official health classes this last semester, I still tried to incorporate a lot of health/self-esteem type topics in my classes and do lots of activities. More than anything, the students just seemed happy to pass an hour of their day not copying from the board! Overall, it was a really good experience for me working in the high school. I’ve learned a lot about crossing the cultural divide and connecting with kids. I decided I truly hate grading. I also decided that I’m going to keep with this teaching thing for a while.
We’ve become quite environmentally conscious since we arrived here. Even before we joined PC we acted a lot “greener” than your average American. But now, we are glowing… or stinking green. I even did one of the surveys online to see your environmental impact and ours is nearly non-existent!
- The average temperature in El Chaco is around 65 degrees, which means no heating, no air-conditioning and no fans. - The electricity regularly goes off during the day and it usually takes us awhile to realize it. Year-round the sun rises at 6 a.m. and sets at 6 p.m., so we only really need electricity at night. - We reuse everything! We’ve had the same 15 Ziplock bags, since we arrived. Just wash and reuse. Butter containers, yogurt jars, etc. are our Tupperware. - Everything is cooked from scratch. This means barely any trash- no boxes, cans or cartons. All of our organic scraps are buried in the ground to make fertilizer. Unfortunately, we can’t flush our toilet paper, so we still have to take out the trash every week. - Only high efficient light bulbs in our house. If you don’t have them, get them! - Our only electric appliances in the kitchen are our fridge and blender. Everything is cooked on our little gas stove. Wait… I guess those are the only appliances in our entire house! No washer or dryer… just the good old washboard and wringer. - If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down. An easy water-saving tip… not gross, just environmentally friendly. When we enter a water crisis, nobody will be making fun of me! - We shower every other day. Saves water, soap, shower gel, shampoo and conditioner! Only Americans are crazy enough to think you have to shower everyday. - Our milk bucket has been washed, filled, boiled, emptied and reused every week for two years. - No lawn mower here. Just pull out the machete and start chopping. - No cars for us. We walk everywhere and take a public bus to Quito once a month to do our shopping and visit the Peace Corps office. When in Quito, we hardly ever get a taxi. We hop on the electric Trolley for .25 cents. Now obviously, this green lifestyle is much more difficult in the U.S., especially Missouri. This is something I’m really going to miss though- especially never having to use the heat or air-conditioning and not driving has been a huge plus! With no Target around, I’ve learned to live without many things that I used to think were “essentials.” Reduce is one of the 3Rs that I think Americans often overlook, because we are such a consumer-driven nation. Although I’ll have to give up many of my green Ecuadorian ways, my motto Stateside will continue to be Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. And don’t call me cheap… I’m just being Green… and frugal. Health Survey We are finding some pretty interesting stuff, as we’ve started the whole packing up process. There is tons of stuff from our work as health educators that I had completely forgotten about- stories we had written about washing your hands, games we made, scary pictures Gregg drew of bad children that don’t brush their teeth and only eat sweets and our health survey results. As we headed out of training, Peace Corps assigned us homework. We had to do a survey on the health situation/needs of our communities and present our results to PC after 3 months. With our counterparts, we administered the survey to 45 families in and around El Chaco. Based on our findings, we designed a work plan with our counterparts. Here’s some of the results that I found interesting back in the day and still do compared with the U.S.: -Average family size: 5.9 -Biggest problem in the community according to residents: 1. Water quality 2. Sewage system 3. Roads -Families that have gardens: 66% -Mothers that breastfeed: 100% -How long on average did moms breastfeed their babies: 49% between 13 months and 2 years, 42% 7-12 months, 6% more than 2 years, 3% less than 6 months -Children that are vaccinated: 100% -Average number of pregnancy per mother: 4.6 -Average age of first pregnancy: 19 years-old -Women of childbearing age that use birth control: 71% -Women that have had a pap smear: 47% If only I could post Gregg’s beautiful storybooks and his cavity-filled characters.
We received some really sad, scary news last week. Our comadre Rebecca (our goddaughter’s mom) went to the local hospital after having sharp pain in the stomach, diarrhea and vomiting. She was there for three days and the doctor diagnosed her sharp abdominal pain as a “stomach infection.” Her daughter Natalia finally decided something just wasn’t right and called a doctor in Quito. The doctor told Natalie to get a taxi and get her mom to Quito as quick as possible. Unfortunately, we didn’t find out about this all until she was already in a taxi on the way to Quito.
Apparently by the time they arrived in Quito, Rebecca was unconscious. It turns out that her appendix had ruptured and she went into an emergency surgery. The doctor said her “insides were rotting” after he took a liter of pus out and said she’s very lucky to be alive. Rebecca has no health insurance and the surgery alone cost $6,000. She is going to have at least 5 months of “treatments” which are going to be very expensive. To put it all in perspective- Natalia, a school counselor with a college degree, makes $3,000 a year. It is hard to believe that no one- doctor, nurses or her family- caught onto the “sharp abdominal pain.” The most frustrating part is that the doctor won’t receive any sort of reprimand! Almost all of the “doctors” here in the local hospital are very young, inexperienced and have almost no supervision. Medical school is a total of 5 years after graduating from high school and then they are sent to rural communities to do their residency- with no supervision! Rebecca has some land in El Chaco and is selling it all to pay her medical expenses. There are some people that have medical insurance, but she’s not one of them. She also has a small grocery store in the front of her house, which she’s now going to have to rent out too. Really sad situation, but at least she’s alive. She’ll have to stay in Quito for sometime, while she receives her treatments. We’re going to visit her next week. The good-byes The good-bye get-togethers and “last times” are beginning. Thankfully, we’ve had very little work lately, so we’ve had lots of time to spend with friends and time to take everything in! My soccer team threw us a good-bye party last weekend. The morning started by butchering a pig and the rest of the day was filled with cleaning, cutting, preparing and cooking ALL the parts of the pig! The pig was butchered at 9 a.m. and we ate 12 hours later. To say the least, I had a lot of hands-on-learning that day. After stuffing the intestines to make sausages, I never thought I get the smell of blood and guts off my hands! My favorite part of the day was when all the women decided to take a break to go play soccer and volleyball. It was about 6:30 p.m. and I really thought we were just about done and ready to eat, but I know well never to assume anything here! Since there is no sense of time, nobody seemed concerned about serving the meal quickly, so that we could return to our houses. We left everything where it was and left to play some very intense games. Some of the women played barefoot, because they were working heals or sandals. It got to the point were we couldn’t see the ball and we were falling all over the place and I kept on waiting for someone says its time to stop. It didn’t occur for a long time. It was one of those moments were I couldn’t help but think, this would NEVER happen in the U.S! After the meal, we got to dive into the formal speeches. An extremely informal day, but Ecua-style is to turn every event into a formal speech contest. My soccer coach started off by saying how much they were going to miss us, what good friends we’ve become, that we have to come back to visit, etc., ect. Then came our turn to talk, and though I’m still not good at the “flowery speech” I did shed a few tears, which got all the women crying. A really long, but nice good-bye party. Other happenings: -Gregg’s team won El Chaco’s championship- super exciting. Mine team lost our last game and we ended up in third place- really big bummer. - Telephone job interviews have started, for Gregg, at least. Seems like a Spanish-speaking RN is a big deal in KC. - Jeff, the other PCV in El Chaco, finished up his service and left a couple of weeks ago. It was really sad, almost unreal to seem him go, but a good preview of what we will have to go through. - Mice are officially taking over our house. I will not miss the daily battles of Gregg and Maggie vs. Mice and Maggie vs. spiders and abnormally large insects. Gregg thinks we should only kill the mice.
40 days to go and counting. It is getting sadder and sadder to see the days slip away. I’m already starting to feel the stress of the U.S. and I don’t like it one bit! I’ve lived 2 years nearly stress-free, so this is going to be a real adjustment.
Once were back in Missouri…. I’ve been spending a great deal of my time making plans for life after the Corps. After LOTS of debating, I will start classes this fall at the University of Missouri- Kansas City. I’m going to be getting a Masters in Curriculum and Instruction with secondary certification to be a Spanish teacher. We’ll see how this works out- hopefully better than my major in Journalism! I’ll just have night classes and hopefully I’ll be able to find a job, so Gregg doesn’t have to be my sugar daddy. Gregg is doing lots of job searching right now. He will go back to nursing, while he applies to nurse practitioner programs. I think due to pure boredom, Gregorio returns to make a blog appearance. Here’s his rundown of June: Food Poisoning Fun: With only a month and a half left in PC, I ended up getting sicker than I ever had in the entire two years. Ironically, we were in Quito at the time for our end of service medical check-up. We went to eat with a group of volunteers for a good-bye dinner at one of the nicest restaurants I’ve been to in Ecuador. I always thought I would get food poising from some sort of street food, like grilled chicken gizzards, cow intestines or fried pig skin, but no, it came from a $10 plate of salmon at a fancy Thai restaurant. I spent the entire night in the hotel bathroom and even kept up one of friends in the next room. Last night after getting back to Chaco, we headed over to the Ashqui’s house. They served us a traditional meal of ceso or boiled cow brains. Of course, it didn’t even faze me! Host family Visit: After Quito we went up to Pesillo to see our host family one last time. It was really good to see our Ecua-brothers. The oldest Ivan is going to be 16 and heis really trying to join a student exchange program to study in the U.S. They were all very happy to see us and we spent the afternoon doing what we mainly did in our three months living there, we played cards. Confirmation Weekend: Two weeks ago, we celebrated the confirmation of our landlord’s son, Darwin. The day got started with a 4-hour Mass, which of course started one hour late. 92 Chaqueños were confirmed, so El Chaco was one giant fiesta that day. Our neighbor’s party was still going strong at 3 a.m. Fútbol: On Saturday, Maggie’s team had a game with a team from the neighboring town. Her team was fully uniformed and on the field right at game time. The opponents didn’t show up until 45 minutes after the scheduled time, so Maggie’s team automatically won. Even though it is in the rule that there is only a thirty-minute wait time, the other team could not believe that they had the game called on time. I really thought some women were going to start a fight. It is serious now that they’re in the semi-finals. If Maggie’s team wins next week they finish in first place, however if they lose or tie, they don’t qualify for the next round. My team won a hard fought 3-2 battle to my old soccer team. We are currently in a three-way tie for first place with two games to go. This has been a much better soccer season than last year!
40 days to go and counting. It is getting sadder and sadder to see the days slip away. I’m already starting to feel the stress of the U.S. and I don’t like it one bit! I’ve lived 2 years nearly stress-free, so this is going to be a real adjustment.
Once were back in Missouri…. I’ve been spending a great deal of my time making plans for life after the Corps. After LOTS of debating, I will start classes this fall at the University of Missouri- Kansas City. I’m going to be getting a Masters in Curriculum and Instruction with secondary certification to be a Spanish teacher. We’ll see how this works out- hopefully better than my major in Journalism! I’ll just have night classes and hopefully I’ll be able to find a job, so Gregg doesn’t have to be my sugar daddy. Gregg is doing lots of job searching right now. He will go back to nursing, while he applies to nurse practitioner programs. I think due to pure boredom, Gregorio returns to make a blog appearance. Here’s his rundown of June: Food Poisoning Fun: With only a month and a half left in PC, I ended up getting sicker than I ever had in the entire two years. Ironically, we were in Quito at the time for our end of service medical check-up. We went to eat with a group of volunteers for a good-bye dinner at one of the nicest restaurants I’ve been to in Ecuador. I always thought I would get food poising from some sort of street food, like grilled chicken gizzards, cow intestines or fried pig skin, but no, it came from a $10 plate of salmon at a fancy Thai restaurant. I spent the entire night in the hotel bathroom and even kept up one of friends in the next room. Last night after getting back to Chaco, we headed over to the Ashqui’s house. They served us a traditional meal of ceso or boiled cow brains. Of course, it didn’t even faze me! Host family Visit: After Quito we went up to Pesillo to see our host family one last time. It was really good to see our Ecua-brothers. The oldest Ivan is going to be 16 and he is really trying to join a student exchange program to study in the U.S. They were all very happy to see us and we spent the afternoon doing what we mainly did in our three months living there, we played cards. Confirmation weekend: Two weeks ago, we celebrated the confirmation of our landlord’s son, Darwin. The day got started with a 4-hour Mass, which of course started one hour late. 92 Chaqueños were confirmed, so El Chaco was one giant fiesta that day. Our neighbor’s party was still going strong at 3 a.m. Fútbol: On Saturday, Maggie’s team had a game with a team from the neighboring town. Her team was fully uniformed and on the field right at game time. The opponents didn’t show up until 45 minutes after the scheduled time, so Maggie’s team automatically won. Even though it is in the rule that there is only a thirty-minute wait time, the other team could not believe that they had the game called on time. I really thought some women were going to start a fight. It is serious now that they’re in the semi-finals. If Maggie’s team wins next week they finish in first place, however if they lose or tie, they don’t qualify for the next round. My team won a hard fought 3-2 battle to my old soccer team. We are currently in a three-way tie for first place with two games to go. This has been a much better soccer season than last year!
The last few weeks have been a blur of fiestas, sightseeing, buses and lots of diarrhea. Gregg’s siblings Cliff, Erica and Geoff came to visit us just in time for Chaco’s annual festival. After the fiestas, we traveled through half of Ecuador, riding approximately 40 different buses and eating at some really sketchy restaurants (if you can call them that). Diarrhea caught up with all of us at some point, but Cliff won hands down on toilet time, losing 12 pounds in his two-week visit.
Fiestas De El Chaco It rained a lot during the fiestas, but we still had a great time. Just like last year, the four-day festival was filled with the running of the bulls, concerts, drinking, dancing and parades. Erica and I took advantage of .75-cent manicures the first day and then the siblings enjoyed a nice lunch of guinea pig. I ate roasted pork- still not a fan of guinea pig. All the concerts were outside and since it was raining a ton, the dancing area was pure mud. Us Nurrenberns danced anyway (with a little pressuring from this Nurrenbern) until 3 a.m. in the rain and mud with about 500 other crazy Chaqueños. Part One of Traveling Part One of traveling includes from May 27 to May 31 when Geoff flew out of Quito with some really stinky shoes. Activities during these days included hot springs in Papallacta, bird watching, repelling down a waterfall and zip lining in Mindo, artisan market in Otavalo, leather market in Cotacachi, Indian restaurant in Quito and chao Geoff. Part Two of Traveling Part Two of traveling includes from May 31 to June 7 when Erica and Cliff flew out of Quito with stinky everything. Activities during these days included hiking around the Quilotoa Crater, night bus to Cuenca, a big colonial city in Southern Ecuador, Cliff vomiting on night bus, orchard garden, museum with real shrunken heads from the Shuar tribe, Incan ruins in Incapirca and then a night bus to Quito. In Quito, Gregg and I had our two-day Close of Service conference, so Cliff and Erica were on their own for sightseeing. Close of Service Conference A very intense two days of “here’s what you need to do to finish up Peace Corps and start your life in the U.S.” and saying good-bye to many of our volunteer friends. This was the last time our whole group was together, because we pick our own dates to leave, between August 5 and August 31. PC staff did treat us to some fancy food, gave us a certificate and thanked us for our service in a closing ceremony. Somehow I’ve become sentimental in these last two years. Now being the sentimental person that I am, I’ll include the Thank You from Peace Corps. “As you close your service… Thank you for staying and struggling when the road was almost too tough. Thank you for all the work you put in to master a new language. Thank you for leaving your family and friends, for what were, at sometimes, two very long years. Thank you for giving up many of the comforts you were used to. Thank you for learning to walk in another’s shoes and learning to walk by their side. Thank you for being open to the beauty of Ecuador and the warmth of its people. Thank you for empowering others to believe in themselves. Thank you for your piece in the puzzle of interconnectedness, be it the child with the shining eyes who started (even if only for a minute) to believe in herself, the woman who learned to stand taller, or the farmer who found the foreigner valued his friendship. You will never be quite the same, nor will Ecuador.” Quito to Kansas City- August 15th Our official Close of Service date has been set for August 15. It is really hard to believe we only have two months left! All though it may sound corny, I’ll say it anyway… my time in Peace Corps has truly been the best two years of my life. It is so hard to see everything come to an end. Right now I’m going through the “really sad to say good-bye and leave the laidback lifestyle stage,” but I know as our COS date grows closer I’ll be ready to head home to see all you family and friends.
GAD/Anti-Trafficking Raffle 2009
On behalf of the Gender and Development (GAD) Committee of Peace Corps Ecuador, we would like your support in our annual raffle, proceeds for which help further educational opportunities for Ecuadorian high school girls and support other GAD activities. ABOUT GAD The Peace Corps Ecuador Gender and Development (GAD) Committee aims to enhance gender equality in all sectors of Ecuadorian society. In 2008, GAD provided over 60 scholarships to financially underprivileged, yet highly motivated Ecuadorian women so that they can finish their high school education. Working in partnership with Club Kiwanis Chuquiragua in Quito, GAD Ecuador's scholarship program is one of only a handful worldwide. The financial assistance that GAD provides for these young women is vitally needed, as a mere 56% of Ecuadorian women receive their high school degree. In addition to the scholarship program, GAD also sponsors popular youth camps and large national leadership conferences for Ecuadorian girls. This year's raffle, scheduled for July 7, 2009, will help to provide scholarships for around 80 young women, as well as funding for our annual leadership conference of scholarship girls and ALMA (Activism and Leadership for Ambitious Women), a three-day leadership workshop giving young women the opportunity to test their potential and gain valuable self-esteem as they take part in rigorous outdoor adventures. Prizes for the raffle include 2 plane tickets good for travel within Ecuador, as well as other prizes such as gift certificates to restaurants and hotels throughout Ecuador. Each ticket costs only $1.50. If you buy 100 tickets, you will automatically sponsor a woman's education for a full year and become a member of the GAD 100-Club, receiving a photograph and information regarding the young woman whom you are sponsoring. Donations are tax deductible!! There are several ways to donate: 1. We encourage you to donate on-line through the Friends of Ecuador website. Log on to friendsofecuador.org and click on Donate to make a donation to the GAD raffle. 2. Checks can be made to: Club Kiwanis Chuquiragua Please write GAD Rifa in the Memo of the check and mail to: Attn: GAD. Casilla 17-08-8624. Cuerpo de Paz/Ecuador. Quito, Ecuador. South America.
For nearly a week, we didn’t have running water, because the water pipes in town are all being changed. Of course, there were no announcements made about this planned water outage. Thankfully our water reserve was nearly full, so we were able to more or less make do- until the stupid turkeys got up on the edge of the tank and pooped in it. There’s nothing like making coffee from turkey poop water.
During this week when I was taking sponge baths from a bucket, I couldn’t help but think how our daily living is quite paradoxical. We hand wash our clothes and then go play on our Macbook Pro. We often don’t have running water, but have high speed Internet in our house. We don’t have an oven or microwave, so we cook everything on a small gas stove, but we do have a Kitchen Aid blender and J.A. Henckels knife set (Gregg’s treasures from MO). We have to carry a milk pail to the dairy to get milk, but we can text message our families in Missouri from our cell phones. We buy all of our fruits and vegetables at the market on Sundays, haul them home and then watch cable TV. I guess these are just some of the joys of being in the Peace Corps in the 21st Century.
We will be finishing our Peace Corps service in August. After going back and forth for the last several months, Gregg and I have decided we will not be applying for an extension. It is going to be so hard to say good-bye, but it is time to move on.
When we went home for Christmas, we told EVERYONE that we definitely planned on staying at least another year. It’s hard to say exactly why we have changed our mind, but I guess there are really a lot of reasons. Since I can’t speak for Gregg (even though I often do!) I’ll just write what I think. I’ve had an incredible two years here in Ecuador. Before leaving I remember being ridiculously nervous and I wasn’t just nervous about having to pack all my things into just two suitcases. There was a part of me that was so scared that I was going to hate my life in the Peace Corps in Ecuador- that I wouldn’t have work, wouldn’t make friends and would be miserable! Now that my service is nearly over, it is hard for me to believe just how much I have come to love Ecuador and especially El Chaco. I can’t say or write enough about how amazing the Peace Corps is and I believe more in its mission that I ever have. Even though I have a very strong love-hate relationship with the high school that I work at, the students I work with are incredible. I had no idea that I would be so successful crossing the cultural divide and connecting with the kids. So why are we heading home? We have done some really great projects in El Chaco, but recently our work with our counterparts has really slowed down. Free time is great, but we have too much! More than anything we realize it is just time to move on. Peace Corps is designed to be 27 months for a reason. After three months of training, two years is a good amount of time to become integrated in a community, make friends, do good work, but then wrap everything up and head home. I (even though I think it is safe to say WE) am really looking forward to being back with our family and friends. Right when we get back we have Geoff (Gregg’s bro) and Jenny’s wedding! For now, we don’t know what date we’ll be back, where we’ll live or what we’ll do, but it’s good to know that we have 3 months and lots of free time to figure it out!
We will be finishing our Peace Corps service in August. After going back and forth for the last several months, Gregg and I have decided we will not be applying for an extension. It is going to be so hard to say good-bye, but it is time to move on.
When we went home for Christmas, we told EVERYONE that we definitely planned on staying at least another year. It’s hard to say exactly why we have changed our mind, but I guess there are really a lot of reasons.
Here are some pics from our camping trip with the high school kids a couple of months ago. The rest are random pictures I've been meaning to post for months!
These are all photos from PCV Jeanette Warner. She came to Chaco a while ago to shoot some photos for a tourism brochure. Check out her website: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeanettewarner/
“Holidays here just don’t feel like holidays.” Jeff and I were sitting in church waiting for Mass to start on Holy Thursday when he said this to me. I couldn’t agree more. Since the priest was already running a half hour late for Mass, we had plenty of time to talk about why there isn’t that “holiday feel” here. No season changes, no commercialization of the holidays, no Easter bunny or Santa Clause, and people don’t get excited about them (maybe because there are no gifts?!) were all among our top reasons.
Why Jeff and I were having our holiday talk, Gregg was getting dressed up as one of the 12 disciples for the Last Supper Mass. Our priest wanted to do a reenactment of the Last Supper with people from El Chaco that really serve the community and have women among the disciples. Pretty cool. Gregg was picked as one of the outstanding Chaqueños. During Mass, each one of the “disciples” was recognized for their service. An elderly mentally-handicapped man that picks up trash around town, an elementary school teacher who has taught for 40 years and a tall gringo who left his country and family to volunteer in El Chaco (direct quote) were among the 12. The strangest thing about Easter is that Easter Sunday really isn’t celebrated. Good Friday is that day families gather and have a big meal. We spent the day with the Ashqui family and had a great meal of trout and potatoes. Saturday night we all went to Mass together, which was held in the Chaco’s gymnasium due to the huge crowd. That night the priest was an hour late for Mass. No worries though. No one seemed to care. When Mass finally started the lights were turned off and everyone was handed a candle. For the first hour and a half of Mass the gym was filled with candlelight from about 500 candles. Really beautiful, really long Mass. Gregg, Jeff and I were sitting with all the Ashquis and we were able to keep ourselves entertained blowing out each other’s candles. Both Gregg and I had given up chocolate for Lent and had been saving the Cadbury eggs and York peppermint patties that my sister Kate had sent us for our Easter feast. They were incredible and greatly appreciated- a little taste of home! Easter Sunday was like any other Sunday in El Chaco. Gregg and I went to the market in the morning to buy our fruits and vegetables and then we both played soccer games like normal. My team played in a neighboring town, so we had some time to talk as we were traveling. Nobody even mentioned that it was Easter Sunday! In the afternoon, we got a call to come to the church to eat lamb. Seems the priest remembered it was Easter and had organized a little get together. We had a nice meal of lamb organ/intestines soup and lamb meat with rice and potatoes. We were asked if we wanted fried lamb’s blood in our soup. I asked for no blood and Gregg asked for a double helping. Of course after eating we had to dance and drink some beer before being able to head home. A different, but pleasant end to Holy Week.
Participating in mingas have been some of our best experiences here. Minga is a Kichwa word and does not have a direct English translation. A minga is when a group of people in the community unite to complete a project. Sometimes it is building a classroom, a sidewalk, an irrigation ditch, or in our case this weekend a roof. Mingas are usually volantary and the only compensation is lunch (and probobaly alcohol).
Maggie already wrote about her job in the minga and now I'll share mine. As soon as I showed up to the minga I realized that I had committed a minga faux pas. Everyone around me had the knee-high rubber boots on and there I was in tennis shoes. I still have not gotten around to buying a pair, so I had to pass an entire day shin deep in concrete. Here's how concrete is usually laid in Chaco: The day starts by blocking off the street to mix the concrete. There is a formula to make the concrete with so many wheel barrels of medium sized rocks, sand, and 100 lb bags of cement that are mixed and then formed into a crater shape. In the center the workers put a certain amount of water according to the formula. The workers' job is to then to shovel like madmen to mix the concrete. The rule of thumb is to completely mix the pile of concrete 3 times. Once the concrete is ready it is transported to the roof by bucket and pulley, powered by 3 or 4 men, or by a wheel barrel and a large ramp. The people on top then distribute and level the concrete. Fortunately a friend of the family who came to this minga is a heavy machine operator. When he got there and found out that we would be carrying the concrete up with the wheel barrel ramp method he decided to call the mayor to see if we could borrow a front-end loader from the city government. Since the elections are only a month away, the mayor was glad to help and within 30 minutes we had a front-end loader. By two p.m. the roof was finished and we sat down to a huge lunch. All the hardwork was worth it as we stuffed ourselves on roasted pork.
It is hard to say how many times my potato peeling skills have embarrassed me. I would venture to say 21 times in the last 21 months of my life. Peace Corps should have really told me to ditch my potato peeler and start practicing peeling potatoes with a knife before coming to Ecuador. Without a doubt potato peeling is a key skill for integrating among Ecuadorian women.
Whenever I am amongst a group of women cooking it is guaranteed that I will be asked two questions. Number one: “Maggie, why don’t you have a baby?” Number two: “Maggie, why can’t you peel potatoes?” On Sunday, our friends the Ashquis, built the roof for their new rafting office and we pitched in along with 20 others. Whenever there is a big event like this the women spend all morning cooking a big lunch while the men do the physical labor. We arrived at 7 a.m. Gregg was handed a shovel to start missing and shoveling cement and I was given a knife. Katie, the Ashquis 12-year-old mentally handicapped cousin, guided me to a giant tub filled with 150 pounds of potatoes. Katie watched me as I started to peel my first potato and politely asked me, “Maggie, why can’t you peel potatoes?” I quickly realized that Katie is quite a talented potato peeler. She tried to teach me too, but realized I was helpless. Three other women arrived and gathered around the massive potato bin. The conversation quickly turned to potato peeling skills as I noted how Maria, the Ashquis’ mom, peeled 8 potatoes to every one I peeled. I tried to explain my poor peeling skills and blame them on using a potato peeler, but nobody seemed to understand, because they’ve never seen a peeler. It really was incredible to see these other women peel potatoes. They have mastered the art of turn and peel in order to make the potato peel come off in one beautiful spiral. Undoubtedly, Maria was the best potato peeler and the other women even commented on her incredible skill and technique. She told us she participated in peeling competitions when she was young. True story. After the women realized there was no hope for me and I was peeling off half the potato with the skin, I was given another task: cutting the bad spots out of the potatoes. After three hours, 150 pounds of potatoes had been washed, peeled and cooked. All the roof-building workers were thanked with a big roasted pig and plates full of potatoes.
It has been interesting to see how people view the oil spill in El Chaco. A lot of people are not angry about the spill, but rather pleased. Due to the spill many people have secured a job for the next 1-2 years. The oil company (OCP) is paying the clean-up workers about $650/month, which is a huge increase from the $10-15/day that most workers make. Many of the people who have farms along the river are also trying to make settlements with OCP.
Now basically all of the oil is gone from the river, however all the rocks and trees along the shorelines are stained with oil. All or most of the trout have died in the river and many ducks and river otters have also died. The farmers along the river have had to lead their cows to other pastures, since the water remains contaminated. The spill happened below us, so our water was not affected, but many towns downstream have really been impacted by the spill. OCP has been working hard to clean up, however the damage has been done. Other happenings: April 26th is Election Day in Ecuador. With the new constitution, basically every position, from city council to president, is up for election. According to Ecuador’s law, campaigning cannot start until 45 days before the election- no political signs, commercials, nothing! It seems likes President Rafael Correa has a good chance of being re-elected. Soccer season has started back up again. Here it is practically year round. I decided to play with a different team, Aucas, this year. I have more friends on this team and am hoping to get a little more playing time. In our first game we tied 2-2 after losing a 2-point lead. Maggie has stayed with New Star this year, and her team is actually practicing during the week. A couple of weeks ago, we helped chaperon a camping trip with Jeff, another PCV in Chaco, for about 20 high school students. For many of the kids it was their first time camping and they loved it. For us, it was a camping experience without any of the camping “amenities,” but we had a really good time. For dinner, we grilled chicken, boiled potatoes, and shared a little bit of US culture by teaching them to make smores.
Carnaval in Ecuador is four days of complete craziness. Its equivalent in the States would be Mardi Gras, but Carnaval is celebrated by everyone and is one of the most popular holidays. We headed to Ambato, 2 hours South of Quito, with our friend Marta from Chaco and her two kids to spend the four-day weekend.
Ambato is famous for its festival of flowers and fruits and it is one of the country’s biggest attractions for Carnaval. Marta is from Ambato and most of her family still lives there, so we stayed with her brother’s family. There were about 10 others PCVs that spent Carnaval in Ambato, so we all got to experience the craziness together. Highlights: - The area around Ambato is the biggest farming region of the country. Along time ago the farmers from the countryside started to gather annually to thank God for their harvests and ask him to bless them in the coming year. This tradition has continued and now coincides with the wild festival of Carnaval. - There are two major parades, one in the morning and one at night. Before the parade the cops cleared the roads by threatening to run people over with cars or motorcycles. - The floats are all made out of local crops and flowers. They are nicely topped of with beauty queens! Some of the customs were really incredible- almost as good as Brazil. - Playing Carnaval means dousing everyone around you with water and covering them in flower. Thankfully Ambato has outlawed this, because it didn’t seem to be too popular amongst the tourists! Now everyone “plays” with spray foam. If you are in the streets you are fair game to be sprayed. Some Polish tourists didn’t seem to understand this and decided to punch anyone that sprayed them! - I now have a new #1 least favorite food in Ecuador: Caldo de 31 or 31 Soup. It didn’t take too long to figure out what the 31 stood for … 31 different cow organs and intestines. Gregg somehow managed to eat it all without vomiting. - Marta has to be one of the most outgoing people I have ever met. She can’t get enough of gringos and decided to rent a small bus to take all of our friends sightseeing around Ambato. We definitely saw some sites that were not in our tourist book- meat markets, shoes markets and lots of relatives’ houses.
Last Tuesday, another major oil spill filled El Chaco County’s streams and rivers with crude oil. Last year a landslide caused a big oil spill about an hour from us. The cause of this one is not yet known.
This oil spill is about 10-minutes from us in the town of Santa Rosa. Unfortunately, the main leak was right next to a stream that flows into the Quijos River, where rafting and kayak are practiced. Since this spill happened below us, our water is not affected, but others down river now have their water completely contaminated. The most frustrating part of all this is that the oil companies always try to cover up that damage that these spills cause. After “extensive studies” were completed after the last spill, the oil company announced that there was no environmental impact. I guess they were blind to the dead fish, ducks and other wildlife in the river and along the shores. One of our friends decided to kayak down the river to take pictures of the damage done. When he got out of the river, he ran into some of the cleanup workers. As he was collecting his gear to leave, they managed to rob his camera. So much for collecting incriminating evidence! Although the river above the oil spill is safe for rafting, the rest of the river will take 6 months to a year to clean up.
The rainy season has officially begun here in El Chaco, which means everything in our house is permanently moist. On the rainiest of days, like today, our water gets shut off, because it becomes super dirty from all the erosion.
My family left last week after a very moist visit. My mom, my sister Emily, my brother-in-law Chris and my cousin Matt came to Ecualand for 10 days and seemed to really enjoy the rain. In addition to doing touristy stuff the main focus of the visit was a course for indigenous midwives, which went surprisingly well. For some reason Matt and Chris weren’t interested in attending and went hiking instead, but Gregg R.N. really loved it. When my parents came back in April, we went to a lodge in the jungle and met a super cool Ecuadorian named Miguel. He led us on a medicinal plant tour through the rain forest. My mom expressed interested in doing something “medical” down here. She is a family physician and my sister is in her second year of residency. After working with several medical brigades from the States I strongly discouraged just seeing patients and giving out free medicines. After my mom explained about how she teaches Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics, Miguel came up with the idea of doing a course for the midwives and 9 months later it happened. Gregg and I worked with Miguel, another PCV Yvonne and an association of indigenous midwives to plan the course in Archidona, about 4 hours from El Chaco. Without getting into any crazy medical mumble jumble, the course was about what to do when there are problems during a birth. I talked to the family doctors about only teaching practical stuff that midwives can do without any fancy U.S. hospital medicine or equipment and they did just that. I’ve really learned during this whole Peace Corps experience that it is important to make every “project” an exchange of ideas. I get so frustrated when other NGOs, Europeans, U.S. doctors come in and act like their way is the only way and that the Ecuadorians don’t do anything right. This course was a success, because we made it a true exchange of ideas and practices. For example, Dr. Mom would talk about shoulder dystocia and how you can repositioned the mom and/or baby to get the baby out and then the midwives would talk about how they get the shoulder unstuck and get the baby out. I think both parties seemed to really enjoying learning about other practices and sharing their own. The midwives all speak Kichwa, which is the second biggest language here in Ecuador and speak Spanish as their second language. Some of the oldest women in the group understood very little Spanish, so everything had to be translated from English to Spanish to Kichwa. Luckily Miguel dominates all three languages and helped us with the translation. The course was four hours a day for three days. 20 midwives attended daily between the ages of 30 and 75. Some of the older women had assisted in more than 2000 births! They taught us a lot about their birthing rituals and the medicinal plants they use. Women give birth standing up, holding onto a rope and then squat and push out the baby. On the last day, we had a closing ceremony and the women danced and sang to us. We presented them with Peace Corps certificates for completing the course and gave them some little gifts. I’m not sure if they were more excited about the certificates or the free t-shirts that my sister had donated to them through the March of Dimes. We were thrilled with the necklaces they gave us- especially the one made with a toucan’s beak. Trip highlights: -My sister Emily hates the word “moist.” Since it rained A LOT during their trip we got to be moist and talk about moisture a great deal. -After picking the fam up in Quito, we made our way back to El Chaco and arrived about 2 a.m. I was giving them the grand tour of our house and we stepped down from our living room into the second part of the house. As I was showing them the kitchen, laundry room and bathroom, Chris wisely noted, “Wow. We’re outside.”
It wasn't easy or fun but we did make it to the United States for Christmas and then back to Ecuador. By that, I am not refering to our time in the US, but the actual traveling their and back . The 5 hour flight delay on the way back was a little easier to accept after having the 9 hour flight delay while going to the USA. To be back in the USA was very nice and refreshing and also very cold. Getting back to Ecuador was also very calm refreshing, but also a little boring. The turkey count has now made it down to 3, but with any luck it will be shooting right back up in the near future.
Fortunately, the priest in El Chaco wanted a couple things from the US and said he would take us to the airport and bring us back to Chaco if we buy the things for him. So we got to Quito on Dec. 14 and slept at the church that is the head of his mission in Ecuador, we then woke up early and went to the airport. After saying our good byes Maggie and I immediately went to check in. Unfortunately, the first thing we heard was that we would have a 8-9 hour flight delay. Fortunately, they sent us to a very nice hotel in Quito where we got an amazing breakfast and room. That was a lot of fun for the first 2 to 3 hours but after that I was ready to go. We finally ended up getting to KC the morning of Dec. 16. Upon getting off the plane the first thing I noticed was how cold it is at winter time. We were greeted by Maggie's parents, Abby (sister), and Geoff (my brother). That afternoon I went to Fulton driving for the first time in over a year and a half in 6" of snow. The rest of the vacation mainly consisted of eating lots of food; that mainly consisted of butter, sugar, and chocolate; and visiting family and friends. Some of the greatest conveniences that I enjoyed were the washing and drying machines, dishwashers, comfortable beds, and hot water heaters. There were some ecuadorian habits that were hard to break while on the trip, like having a spoon as the only utensil, talking in spanish, and throwing toilet paper in the trash can instead of the toilet. It was difficult to leave, but on Dec 2 it was time and we were also ready to get back. The priest said he would pick us up in Quito, and we told him to wait at the church and we will call him when we land in Quito so that he would not be waiting a long time in the airport if there is a delay. We left KC at 12:50 pm. We boarded the plane in Atl at 4:30 and were ready to go, however a small luggage problem ended up taking us about 2 hours longer to take off then scheduled. When we arrived to Quito at midnight we were very excited to land and finally be on the ground. However, the pilot said that it was too cloudy so we made circles around Quito for about an hour. Next we ran out of gas so we had to go to Guayaquil (38 minutes) to fill back up. In Guayaquil I called the priest at about 1am to tell him what is going on, I also asked where he was at, and he said he was in the airport waiting. He then asked me if we would still be getting in tonight, I had to tell him that I think so, but I'm still not sure. Things got a little more tense after that conversation. After filling up we waited for 1 hour for authorization from the Delta's headquarters in Atl. At about 2:30-3:00 we took off towards Quito however there still were lots of clouds and we continued to do circles. One time we attempted to land and we couldn't have been more then 100 meters from the ground and the pilot decided it wasn't possible and started to climb. Finally at 4:20 am we landed in Quito. We thought that only the priest would be there waiting for us, however there ended up being a group of 13 people a bus that went with the priest to Quito for a weekend trip. It was nice to see the people but we both felt very bad since they arrived at the airport at 10:00 pm. In Chaco we did our rounds, visiting all of the friends and getting caught up on what is all happening. We then went to visit our landlords who were also taking care of the baby turkeys. It appears that they just couldn't live without me and they had gone from 10 baby turkeys to 3. Two days later we brought them back to the house. After bringing them back to the house we went to a meal with a group of friends and didn't get back until 10. When I went behind the house I saw our neighbours black dog leaving with something black in it's mouth. I quickly went to the back yard and saw the gate open and didn't see one turkey. After examining the yard for about 30 minutes I found many feathers and eventually found the hen. She had lost about a third of her feathers, had a cut on her back, and wouldn't hardly move. Knowing the backyard was not safe she got to sleep in our shower that night. Early the next morning I heard a baby turkey chirping and found two of them walking around outside of the pen. That has been our excitement of the week. Next week Maggie's mom, sister, brother-in-law, and cousin will be coming down to visit and do a conference for indigenous mid-wives that live about 3 hours from here. We are now preparing for that and trying to get used to the sometimes eternal rain pour that we have here. Other big news that we have here is that we have a computer and internet in our house. If anyone would like to talk computer to computer through the program Skype just send us and email and let us know when you want to talk.
Monday morning we will be catching a flight from Quito to Kansas City, Missouri. We are incredibly excited! We left KC on June 18, 2007 and have not been back since.
So what exactly am I looking forward to most? - Seeing our families, friends and pets of course - Not being the only gringos! It will be nice being able to blend in with the crowd for 18 days! - Speaking English - Eating good home-cooked food - Hopefully seeing snow - Eating in Mexican, Chinese and pizza restaurants - All the fun Christmas traditions and food - Going to Christmas Mass - Celebrating New Year’s with college friends - Driving a car- at least riding around in them. I may be too nervous! - All sorts of U.S. luxuries: washers and dryers, dishwashers, kitchen appliances, couches, carpet and hot water - Not having to go outside to use the bathroom I’ve been talking about all these things with Gregg that last few weeks and he is sick of hearing me say, “Things are so different in the States!” But honestly, I think we are going to be overwhelmed by all the “stuff”. We have been out of the loop on everything for a year and a half and it will be great to catch up with everyone and meet new additions to the family- Gregg’s brother Geoff just recently got engaged and we will meet his fiancée Jenny for the first time! It will be neat to get into the Christmas Spirit when we get home, because it doesn’t really exist here. We are going to have a packed schedule, but are ready for it! Three days to go! Sorry about all the exclamation points! I just can’t help myself!!!
World AIDS Day was celebrated on December 1 around the world, but in El Chaco we celebrated it on December 3. Students were taking end of the semester exams, so we had to postpone the celebration. Maggie helped me with some ideas and logistics, but I basically did all the coordinating for the event. For several weeks, I gave lessons on HIV-AIDS to 60 high school freshmen. After these lessons the science teacher, the freshmen and I planned a school-wide assembly for World AIDS Day.
The main part of the assembly was a skit about a student that contacted HIV. I worked with the kids everyday after school to write and rehearse the skit. They were really excited about it and wrote it almost entirely by themselves. They wanted it to be funny, but realistic and educational. In the skit, after the student finds out she had contacted HIV, her classmates started discriminating against her. They thought they could be infected by shaking her hand or when she coughed. With the help of her teacher and friends, they invited a local doctor and nurse to come to the school and give a presentation about HIV-AIDS, how it is transmitted and how it can be prevented. The day of the event the schedule went like this: In the morning, the freshmen students and I handed out red paper hearts to the whole student body. The hearts said “Protect yourself: World AIDS Day 2008.” On the back of each heart we had a number that we used for a t-shirt raffle. . Many students in the freshmen class made shirts for World AIDS Day and wore the shirts the day of the assembly. In the routine morning assembly the teacher in charge of discipline started by saying that all of the students that came with t-shirts had to go home and change into their uniforms. I had to go in front of the entire school to talk with the disciplinary officer and convince him to change his mind. Thankfully, he did. The Patronato agreed to donate 20 red t-shirts for the event with the “Protect yourself: World AIDS Day 2008”message. The t-shirts were for the presenters, school authorities and for the student raffle. Unfortunately, the doctors at the Patronato didn’t show up until 11:10 a.m., for the assembly that started at 11, which made it difficult to hand out the shirts. After the doctors arrived, the students put on the skit. Next the medical doctor gave a talk on HIV-AIDS and reinforced the points that the students made in their play. Then, the psychologist gave a talk on the emotional aspects of HIV-AIDS (acceptance, discrimination, etc.). Finally, the other freshmen students who did not participate in the skit made posters and handouts to exhibit to the students as they were leaving. One of PC’s main health goals is HIV-AIDS prevention. It is estimated that there are over 50,000 cases of HIV in Ecuador- in a country of only 12 million. In El Chaco’s hospital the doctors have told us they have had confirmed cases of HIV. Hopefully this small effort has increased awareness and will prevent future cases.
Rosa, one of our best friends in El Chaco, has just received the exciting news that she got a job as a language facilitator for Peace Corps.
If you look in past blogs, you will find tons about Rosa, but just to sum everything up: Rosa turns 20 in January and has a son, Sebastian, who just turned 3 yesterday. Rosa got pregnant at 16 by a guy named Franklin, seven years older, from a neighboring town. They got married right away and had a very rocky marriage from the start. Rosa currently works in the pharmacy at the Patronato, our official counterpart organization. We met Rosa our first day in town and went to lunch with her. We spent a lot of our first week talking with her and she introduced us to many of people in town. I was impressed at how nice she was and how mature she seemed. The first weekend in town she invited us to go with her and her husband to play pool. It was then I asked her how old she was and she told me 18. I was shocked! As Rosa and I became better friends, she told me lots about the problems her and Franklin were having. He was extremely controlling of her both emotionally and physically. They had been living in a small apartment behind her parents’ house and decided to buy their own house two blocks from ours. I went with Rosa to check out the new house and I could tell she didn’t want to live there. A couple days later she told me she was really scared to move into the house with just Franklin and the baby. During this time, Rosa and the doctor at the health clinic were helping us get started giving health classes at the high school and elementary schools. They both found our Peace Corps manuals very interesting and asked to borrow them. One was about domestic violence. After reading it, Rosa came to me and broke down. She said, “I’m in the cycle of violence and don’t know what to do.” I couldn’t help but cry. I told her that she couldn’t move in with Franklin and that she should consider separating. After some time convincing her parents, Rosa separated from Franklin and filled for a divorce. She has since been much happier. Her parents are now very supportive and help her take care of Sebastian. She currently earns $250 a month before taxes at the pharmacy and works really long hours and absolutely hates her job. She is also in her third year of college, studying at a distance to be an English teacher. Back in September, we invited Rosa to come to a PC workshop with us about project planning. Rosa was a star at the conference! She got along great with other volunteers and had incredible ideas for projects. Rosa is constantly helping us with our Spanish and we help her with her English. Gregg and I started talking about what a great training facilitator she would make. We picked her up an application, gave her a great recommendation and after what she told as was a very rigorous interview, she got the job. In February, she starts as a training facilitator with Peace Corps. She will be making over $900 a month! During the week she will live in Quito and in Cayambe when the PC trainees arrive, but will come back to Chaco on the weekends. Her parents and brothers are going to take care of Sebastian during the week, so she can get her life back together. Rosa is extremely excited and realizes what an incredible opportunity this is for her. Gregg and I are just sad that she won’t be around as much! Thanksgiving 2008 Along with Gregg, Jeff and I, 7 other PCVs joined us for Thanksgiving at our house. Jeff went to Quito to buy a big, delicious, hormone-filled, 23-pound turkey. Our natural ones just don’t have that same Thanksgiving taste. The American Ambassador and other embassy employees always invite PCVs to spend the holiday with their families. We turned the invitation down last year and did it again this year. Thanksgiving, ghetto-PC style seems like more fun than a fancy, have to dress-up for, dinner. As the other volunteers arrived, they pitched in with the food and cooking. Before eating, we did a nice, corny, tell-what-your-thankful-for circle. I also get stuck thinking about how blessed we Peace Corps Volunteers are for all these amazing experiences we are daily living. It was great talking with some of the volunteers from Jeff’s group, who have been in the country four-months longer than us. I finally got to meet Roger, who is one of Ecuador’s most popular volunteers. Roger is a 53, divorced father of three. He owned and ran the first certified organic farm in Ohio. We talked a lot about his PC projects and it is amazing how much real life experience he brings with him. He says he ranks PC as one of the greatest times of his life. He just proves you are never too old to join Peace Corps!
Last weekend along with the Fiestas of the Virgin of Quinche came some very sad news. A friend of mine had a very serious traffic accident.
Jeff came to our house on Sunday morning and shared with us a very strange story. He said he was riding his bike home from the fiestas at 2 a.m. when he saw something in the middle of the road. As he got closer he started thinking, “I hope it isn’t a body.” As he got closer he saw several police officers and two people lying on the road unconscious. The police officers were just standing off to the side. They weren’t even blocking the victims from oncoming traffic. Jeff asked them what was going on and why they weren’t doing anything. They told him that the firefighters were on their way and they know first aid. At the time I thought it was just another crazy Ecuadorian happening that makes absolutely no sense. I didn’t think anything of the incident and assumed it was only two drunks on a motorcycle. Shortly afterwards, I found out the person driving the motorcycle was Urbina, a friend of mine. About 2-3 times a week he came to play soccer on the field in front of our house. He comes from a very poor family and was a junior in high school. For some reason I seemed to talk to him more then the other players and I got to know him pretty well over the last year. It is hard to know for sure how the accident happened. From what I have heard, he took his brother-in-law’s motorcycle after he fell asleep to return to the fiestas. I don’t think he had much experience driving a motorcycle. On his way home, he had to make a sharp turn to dodge a drunk that was walking in the road, and ran into a cement wall. He had a helmet on at the time of the accident, but it was cracked from the impact. He is currently in a hospital in Quito in a coma with his spinal cord broken in two spots. One of Maggie’s students, Vicky, is Urbina’s older sister. Maggie recently wrote about her favorite Peace Corps moment. In that entry she wrote about one of her exceptional students, Vicky, a 22-year-old, mother of two who is studying in the 10th grade. It was pretty hard to believe the news knowing that he was playing soccer at 6 p.m. and then in a serious and possibly fatal accident two blocks from there at 2 a.m. I hope that everyone reading this keeps Urbina in their thoughts and prayers.
Maria, our landlord, and Jeff, the other PCV in Chaco, both celebrated their birthdays last week. The annual fiesta of The Virgin of Quinche was celebrated last weekend too. All of Maria’s sons (who are the rafting guides) came to town for the birthday party. Macho, our male turkey, that we had had for a year was getting to the weight for a good-sized meal. Seeing that all the stars were lined up perfectly for a birthday party, we decided to sacrifice our tom for the feast.
It was a little difficult preparing the tom since he has been the closest thing to a pet and the one survivor of the pair of turkeys I bought a year ago. However, he now has 10 kids to live on his legacy, so we decided it was time for him to go. The sons, Maggie and I worked all day Saturday to prepare the traditional “party dinner.” We had empanadas of yuca, potatoes, turkey, chicken, a little bit of salad, and our famous banana chocolate nut cake. I felt very Ecuadorian because we even remembered to buy champagne and cookies to do a toast before the meal. We tried to do everything on our own, however it was difficult, because Maria wanted to help and knows how to do everything much better than us. The dinner turned out very well, and everyone was stuffed. After dinner we continued the birthday celebration by hitting Jeff with a belt 25 times. It is a great, painful Ecuadorian tradition for men’s birthdays. These were not little pats. Each hit was all out from Maggie’s to the youngest son’s. After a full day of preparing the dinner, we decided not to go to fiesta and participate in the drunkenness in honor of the Virgin Mary. Seeing how everyone looked as they stumbled in the street the next morning, we were sure we made the right decision. This Thursday the festivities will continue with a Thanksgiving Dinner at Jeff’s house. Other PCVs that live in the area (in a 4-hour radius) will be coming to celebrate turkey day. Jeff went to Quito and bought a 23 pound, which makes my 12-15 pounder look like a chicken. Now that Thanksgiving is here, I am thinking more and more about Christmas and spending it in the States with family and friends. We are both very excited and counting down the days! Now in sporting news: Maggie’s soccer team lost last weekend and will need a miracle this weekend to place second. On the other hand, my team has managed to lose our fourth straight game in the off-season, and we have no hope. I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving!
After 28 days in their eggs, 11 baby turkeys hatched around midnight on November 13th. Only one died shortly afterwards. We think the one that died was the same one that fell out of the four-feet-high nest twice.
That first night we hardly slept. The male turkey was going nuts all night long! It is pretty incredible how loud he can gobble. Gregg got up and it turned out that a couple of the babies had fallen out of the nest. The next day we rebuilt the nest on the ground. Things have since settled down and we have been able to sleep peacefully. This whole turkey thing has always been Gregg’s project and I’ve never really helped, but watching the whole reproduction process was extremely interesting. I’ve only seen mammals born- I’ve never really understand how birds reproduce. After the male turkey “stepped on and danced on top of” the female turkey, she started to lay eggs. The female turkey laid 13 eggs, one each day. After she laid the 13th, she began to sit on the eggs and literally never left the nest. Everyone told us it would take 28 days for the eggs to hatch and just like magic 11 of the 13 hatched on the 28th day. It turned out the two that didn’t hatch weren’t fertilized, so I made scrambled eggs out of them. If the neighborhood dogs don’t eat the babies, we plan on giving most of them away to our friends when they are a couple of months old and we will keep a couple. Reventador We have this volcano here close to us that doesn’t seem to want to calm down. There was a major explosion back in 2002 and about 3 months ago it started blowing steam, ash and lava again. Last weekend, I was walking back to my house and looked up in the sky and saw what I swear looked like a tornado. It turns out Reventador was blowing ash several kilometers into the sky. The ash is blown up so high that it gets stuck in the jet stream, so we never have ash fall here. Ash has fallen in Quito and as far away as the coast. The airport in Quito had to be shutdown last week for four hours due to Reventador’s activity. We are 55 km from Reventador, but we have an incredible view of it from our house. We live at one of the highest points in El Chaco. When there is lava flow, we can see it from our kitchen. It’s like seeing a distant firework show- with only red fireworks! My Ecuatoriano I’m not sure quite how it happened, but Gregg now speaks and knows more Spanish than me. I arrived in Ecuador with an intermediate high level, level 6 with 10 being fluent. Gregg arrived with a high beginner level or level 3. I finished training at level 8 and Gregg ended up at level 5. When we arrived in Chaco, I did the talking for both of us. We would be having a conversation with someone and Gregg would talk slow and make lots of mistakes. I would get frustrated and finish all of his lines and thoughts! Gregg would get furious at me and tell me I had to give him the opportunity to talk- so I did. Now that we have been in Ecuador for nearly a year and a half, I have met the harsh reality that Gregg now knows more than me. Gregg is constantly studying Spanish grammar, reading Spanish books and looking up new words in the dictionary. He has finished reading all 7 Harry Potters in Spanish- I’ve only read the first four. Now I’m the one that has to ask him the meaning of new words and pronunciation. Awhile ago our friend Rosa called my cell phone and Gregg answered. She asked to talk to me and Gregg said yea, I’ll pass her the phone. When I answered Rosa asked me, “Maggie, where are you at and who are you with?!” I said with Gregg at the house. She didn’t believe me- she swore I was with an Ecuadorian! Soccer Finals - Gregg’s team and my team both made it to the final four in the county soccer league. In the Men’s League A there are 20 teams and in the Women’s League there are 11 teams. In the final four, we play each of the other three teams twice and then based on points (3 pts. for a win, 1 pts. for a tie, 0 pts. for a loss) the top two teams go on to play in a championship with a neighboring county. - On my team, New Star, I have made some really great friends. There are a total of 16 players between 15 and 40-years-old. Most of the other women come to the games with the kids and some even with grandkids. We only play one game a week on the weekend. We tried to organize practices during the week, but with everyone working, hardly anybody showed up. - At the beginning of the season, I realized I was pretty rusty with my soccer skills. I hadn’t played since my senior year of high school. During my second game, I scored an own goal. Oops. After a few games, I improved and earned a starting spot on the team. - Just like in high school, I still don’t have good soccer skills. My teammates and my coach started to realize, though, that I make up for my lack of skills with my endurance. By the second half, I usually am the only one still sprinting to win the ball. In the final game of the regular season, my coach decided to put me up as a forward. Within the first 10 minutes of the game, I beat the defenders to a loose ball and scored a goal. I finally made up for my own goal at the beginning of the season! Going State Side - We are super duper excited about our trip to the U.S. in a month. Both of our parents have come to visit us here, but it has been nearly a year and a half since we have seen our siblings and the rest of our families, friends and dogs. I’m especially excited that we’ll be there at Christmas and be able to share in all the Christmas festivities. Without a doubt, we will be in for some real culture shock!
As we started planning for the competition, I told Jeff it would be great to get high school students involved, so they can actually start learning about tourism. Jeff is a habitat conservation volunteers in El Chaco and he worked with his counterparts to plan several workshops for the high school students. 10 of my Sophomore English students attended the workshops and then later worked at the rafting competition (helping with registrations, taking times, etc.)
My first classes after the competition I told my students that we weren’t going to be doing anything with English today. I asked the 10 students who helped out at the rafting competition to stand up and asked the rest of the students to give them a round of applause. These 10 students had just done community service for the first time in their lives. I asked each of these 10 students to share their experiences one by one: what they think of rafting, what they liked, what they didn’t like, what they thought of all the gringos and if they think Chaco has a future in tourism. I honestly had no idea of what their reactions were going to be. Seven of the ten said they had a wonderful time, rafting is great, the gringos are loud and talk really fast English and they would like to help out again next year. But there were three students that couldn’t stop talking. One, Érika (one of our five scholarship winners) was on the team that truly won second place. She said she still couldn’t believe the volunteers returned the money to her team. She said no Ecuadorian team would have ever done that, but the gringos did the right thing. Kelly, who always loves to talk, said she had an incredible experience. For the first time in her life she used the English I have taught them and she was able to communicate with an American. Ann, a 22-year old sophomore mother of two, talked about how nice all the PCVs were. She said we picked up trash off the beach, we talked to the Ecuadorians, we drank beer, but nobody got drunk, we don’t care what we look like or what people think of us, we just like having fun. She then asked me how it was possible that there were 80 gringos all older than her, but that we didn’t have any babies with us. I wanted to cry. She said you guys can all have these amazing experiences, have a great education, live in another country, and help the neediest, because you don’t have babies at 15. I chocked back the tears. I tried to explain the best I could about my personal philosophy. I have a lot I want to accomplish in my life before I have children, so I can be a better mom and a better citizen. I told Ann in front of her 30 classmates that what she is doing, being a single mother of two and receiving her high school education, is greater than anything I have ever accomplished in my life. The bell rang and I asked Érica, Kelly and Ann to come to my next class with me and share exactly what they had just told their classmates. My next class was also a sophomore class, but no students had helped with the competition and only two went to watch. Érika, Kelly and Ann shared their experiences once again, but their thoughts were better organized and better spoken. It was my greatest Peace Corps experience. My eyes filled with tears and I tried to act like I was yawning. After these three amazing students went back to their own class, my students bombarded me with questions. “Maggie, how can we be part of this next year?” they asked me. “How can we learn more about tourism and environmental education? How can we start a tourism youth group?” that asked me. I told them we can and we will. For these reasons, Gregg and I are staying another year. We can’t turn our backs on these amazing youth that have so much potential, but simply lack direction and leadership. We will stay and we will start some amazing projects. Yes we can.
By 10 a.m. on Saturday we were all down by the river registering our rafting teams. In total there were 9 teams of volunteers. Our team was a mix, with two of our best friends from El Chaco, Rosa and Gustavo. Our name, Los Tramposos (The Cheaters), was chosen because Gustavo is training to be a rafting guide and with the strength of Gregg and the other guy volunteers, we were certain we were going to win and everyone would call us cheaters. We lost.
In total there were 22 teams. The first day was two short sprints to classify the best 15 teams for the down river competition. At the end of the first day 8 of the 9 PC teams had qualified. At the end of the day, El Chaco’s Education and Cultural department organized a serious of field-day like competitions. Volunteers participated in every activity, as 500 Chaqueños took pictures and laughed at the crazy gringos. I’m proud to say I killed the Ecuadorian women in the sack race by a good 10 meters and am now the proud owner of real glass glasses. On Sunday, there were 3 heats of 5 boats for the down river competition. We were in the last heat and were in great position to get 2nd place in our heat, but going into the final stretch we got caught on a rock and ended up in 3rd. Awards Ceremony: In the ceremony, the mayor and organizers thanked all of us Peace Corps volunteers and said that with our enthusiasm we were the soul of the competition and we made it a huge success. As they awarded the prizes ($300 for 1st, $200 for 2nd and $100 for 3rd), other PCVS explained to me that the judges had mixed up two teams names and the team the really came in 2nd (an El Chaco team) was listed as 5th (the place a volunteer team won) and vice versa. During the awards ceremony, the volunteers said they wouldn’t accept the money because they had actually come in 5th. The event coordinator was embarrassed about the mistake and didn’t want to draw more attention, so he told them take it. He said that this is the judge’s official time and it says you all won 2nd. After the awards ceremony, this team went and found the rightful winners (a team from Chaco) and gave them the $200. The Chaco team told the volunteers to keep the t-shirts and medals as keepsakes and thanked them for their honesty. This story of “doing the right thing” ended up being broadcasted on the local radio station.
After having the best weekend of our PC experience, Gregg and I have decided we will be applying for a third year extension in El Chaco. The Galapagos may still be a possibility, but that would be in our fourth year extension. Our country director thinks we are crazy for turning down the opportunity to live in the Galapagos, but we just have too many friends and too much work still to do here in El Chaco!
Now all about Halloween/Rafting El Chaco 2008: Every year Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) unofficially organize a Halloween party. I say unofficially, because the PC office does not support all us gringos getting together to drink and celebrate an American holiday. The party has traditionally been in Cuenca, a gorgeous colonial city in the south of Ecuador. Last year, Gregg and I didn’t even go to Cuenca. We didn’t want to take the time off work here to sit on a bus for 15 hours to arrive at what is a typical frat Halloween party. Together with Jeff (our site mate) we decided we were going to shake the PC tradition bring the event to El Chaco. A novice rafting competition has been held annually here in El Chaco the first weekend in November for the last 4 years. We decided we were going to turn this one night of drunkenness in Cuenca into a healthy, fun Ecotourism weekend for all PCVs. Jeff worked a ton with the rafting guides planning the rafting competition and I planned the Halloween party. Gregg kind of helped with the two. There is a beautiful eco-friendly hotel, Guarida del Coyote, about a 20-minute walk from our house. It is actually one of the neatest hotels I have seen in Ecuador. The maximum capacity is 65 and after 80 PCVs and their guests replied to our invitation, I got a little worried. The rest ended up staying with us and Jeff. Since El Chaco is not well developed in tourism, many of our friends were nervous about coming here. It isn’t even listed in Lonely Planet, the PC Bible when traveling to another Ecuacity. As everyone started arriving October 31, they couldn’t stop talking about how Chaco is so beautiful. The party got underway about 8 p.m. Our closest Chaco friends were invited to their first Halloween party ever. They were very anxious about dressing up, but ended up loving it. The customs were pretty incredible. Living in such a Catholic country about 8 of us ended up dressing as religious people. The Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Jesus, the priest and the nun had a great night together. The blue, green, black and pink crayons also got along great. The Spice Girls made a grand entrance to “I’ll tell you want I want, what I really, really want.” Where’s Waldo can be found in nearly all my pictures. The four WWF wrestlers thought everyone wanted to participate in “Smackdown.” Gregg and one of our counterparts José spent last week in a costal city at a PC conference on community banking. It was strategically planned so volunteers would come to the conference instead of El Chaco. Gregg didn’t seem to care that 80 volunteers were coming to our site. He really wants to start a community bank and went to the conference. It got over at noon on the 31st and he hoped on the bus with José for the 12-hour ride back to El Chaco (the last four hours from Quito they had to stand). They got to the party at midnight, just as everyone was changing out of their customs. Gregg unfortunately never had to put on a costume. The hotel owners (Coyote and Isabel) were just as excited as we were for this Halloween party and built a giant bonfire. At midnight, we left the Ipod music and dance floor, lit the bonfire and moved the dance outside. Coyote and his friends have a band and they sang and played traditional music around the fire. Gregg and I got home with our friends that were staying with us at 4 a.m. Everyone kept telling me it was the best Halloween party ever. I will be planning it again next year!
I’ve just had the happiest week of my life. My hero won the presidential election. After Halloween/Rafting in Chaco 2008, we have come to realize we’ve never had so many amazing friends in our lives. Gregg and I have projects brewing up and some underway with our Ecuadorians counterparts and fellow Peace Corps volunteers that are truly incredible. I have dreams, so big they hurt… I don’t have long-term expectations. But I do and always will have the audacity to hope!
What the heck am I talking about? I plan on spending the next several blog entries explaining all this. Barack Obama. I was one of the first to jump on the hope band wagon. When I worked at Winnetonka High School during the 2006-2007 school year, a group of us started a teachers’ book club. We started by reading some sappy novel. It was a nice start, but I felt we needed to challenge ourselves a little more. Book number two: The Audacity of Hope. I couldn’t put it down. I guess most of the other teachers didn’t find it too interesting, because they weren’t keeping up with the required readings- except Vicki Barmann. Vicki is the equivalent of my favorite high school teacher, Mr. Johnson, but she has been teaching French for 40-plus years. They are those amazing teachers that inspire their students to do great things, while they just do their jobs. During our lunch breaks, Vicki and I talked all about the book, while most of the other teachers listen. We both new Barack Obama had something extraordinarily special and he would be our next president- because we had the audacity to hope and the audacity to believe. My fellow PCVS have also been behind Barack since we arrived here in Ecuador. When we were all in Quito for a workshop, we watched one of the Barack-Hillary debates. While Hillary is great, we knew Barack is 100 times better and we cheered him on, like we do for all of our heroes. My sisters Kate and Abby kept me informed through text messages as the election returns came in. I knew Obama was winning in the early returns. Not knowing which states were reporting, I hoped that they weren’t only the traditional blue states. We rarely receive phone calls on our cell phones from our families, because we communicate through email and Skype. When I receive an unexpected call from the States, my heart beats faster and I think it could be a call with some awful news. When my phone rang at 11:10 p.m., my heart started beating out of my chess and I feared they were going to tell me that John McCain won. Kate gave me the news I’ve been waiting two years to hear, “Obama won.” At the same time, I received text messages from other PCVS with those two magical words. I didn’t cry that night. I was too tired. I still hadn’t seen any pictures or heard the world-changing acceptance speech. After lots of PC work on Wed. (including spending my English classes discussing the election with my students) I headed to the Internet café Wed. night. I talked with Abby through Skype, as she read me the acceptance speech and I read and saw everything about the election on CNN.com. It was in that Internet café that I tears came to my eyes, seeing the proof that our country, our world is about to change. Reactions here: Just as the rest of the world, Ecuadorians are shocked and excited that Obama is our president-elect. In Ecuador, where there is lots of racism, my students are asking me how it is possible that we elected a black president. I proudly tell them for the majority of us Americans, race is no longer an issue. I tell them after 8 years of Ecuadorians, the rest of world, and me disagreeing with our president that we will once again be seen as a great country. I wrote this quote on the board for my class and my students worked together to translate it into English. “Esperanza. Esperanza frente a la dificultad. Esperanza frente a la incertidumbre. La audacia de la esperanza. En definitiva, ese es el mayor regalo que Dios puede darnos, el cimiento de está nación. Creer en aquello que no se ve. Creer que nos espera un futuro mejor.” My favorite excerpt from “The Audacity of Hope.” I have never talked to our priest about the election or about Barack Obama. At the beginning of Mass last night, in front of 200 Ecuadorians and two Americans, he said, ¨We have come here to celebrate the Mass tonight. And we have reason to celebrate. Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States of America and the United States will soon be seen a country of peace; not as a country that divides the world, but as a country that unites the world.¨
In less than a month, we will hopefully have 13 baby turkeys. Gregg’s is ridiculously excited. It has been his plan all along to try to raise turkeys, but we had a string of bad luck with the female turkeys. The first was stolen, and then the second one turned out to be too old. The third was indeed the lucky one.
There seem to be an immediate attraction between the female turkey and the male turkey. Less than a month after buying this female, we are now the proud owners of 13 turkey eggs. Turkeys are pretty much like chickens and put eggs every day or every other day. Since putting the 13th egg, the turkey has continually been in the nest, except to eat for about 5 minutes every day. We’ve been told that the eggs take 28 days to hatch. The male turkey has become really aggressive with us and is protecting the nest. He even gets mad when we go out to put clothes out on the line and has been jumping up and pecking at the clothes to pull them off the line. La Despedida (Good-bye Party) - Our counterpart Dr. Cely has resigned from the health center. Last week we had about 20 people over for the good-bye party. Since I’m still not a pro at cooking Ecuadorian food, everyone brought a dish. We had a great meal of rice, potatoes, salad and chicken. - It was our first time hosting an Ecua-party and I was a little nervous about how it would turn out. Our friends pretty much took over and acted as the hosts. We didn’t even have to the toast. - I had table and chairs set up (like us American do) for the meal. At Ecua parties, there aren’t tables. You simply put all the chairs along the walls and make a big circle. The guests quickly put the tables to the side and spread out the chairs. When it was time to eat, we sat the plates on our laps- just like normal. I couldn’t help but laugh at the vacant tables. What was I thinking! - So why aren’t there tables? To have a bigger dance floor of course. It doesn’t matter what the occasion is, if there is some sort of get together, there will be a dance. And everyone dances- it’s not an option! - There is always a cake at the get-togethers, but it is never served on plates. Cake is served on napkins and is a finger food. Really tricky when there is icing. - Also, the only silverware used at parties is spoons. Rice falls through the forks, so spoons are much easier. We’ve become pros at eating chicken with a spoon. Other happenings: - We’ve mailed in our absentee ballots. We’ve started getting more campaign coverage here on the local news. If I hear Obama or McCain’s names, I drop whatever I’m doing to hear the latest news. What I would do for more election coverage! I’ve yet to hear of a Peace Corps volunteer vote for McCain. I guess we’re just too peaceful. - In my English classes, I’ve been talking some about the election and the students really find it interesting. They seem excited about the fact that a minority can get elected president in the U.S. - After more than a year of living in our house, the owners have finished the living room. We even have glass in the windows and curtains! - In non-official Peace Corps work… We’ve been busy organizing the unofficial annual PC Halloween party that will take place this year in El Chaco. We have more than 70 volunteers from all over the country coming. We decided to plan the party in El Chaco, because on Nov. 1 and 2 there is a big novice rafting competition here. My social life is busier than ever!
One of our good friends Natalia had her first child last week, a baby girl named Anai. Natalia is the counselor at the high school and has become a great friend and counterpart. After her and the baby arrived to Chaco, Gregg and I headed over to her mom’s house to visit. Since I doubt I will ever have the giving birth experience here, I’ll share a little bit of Natalia’s.
- Natalia’s water broke Friday afternoon at the high school. She headed over to the public hospital 45-minues away, where there is practically free health care. - After 24-hours of “ugly labor,” she gave birth to Anai. Anesthetics are NEVER used here during births. - After giving birth, she and the baby were placed in a small room with two other patients: a woman with pregnancy complications and a young boy with a leg infection. - Visitors are allowed in the room only for a couple of minutes. The hospital is full enough with all the patients, let alone visitors. - The doctors and nurses in the rural hospitals are usually very young and doing their equivalent of residency. According to Natalia, they didn’t seem to know what they were doing and had very little patience. - The day after giving birth, Natalia was informed that the entire placenta had not come out during the birth. The doctors opened her back up and did a “cleaning.” - After the “cleaning” the nurse made her walk around and yelled at her if she didn’t clean up the blood fast enough that was running down her leg. Then after all this pain, the nurse took her blood pressure on the same arm as where she had an IV. As blood was running up the tube, she yelled at the nurse to stop. - During the night as her newborn cried, the other patients in the room yelled at her to get the baby to shut up. - Of course, she was very happy to get back to El Chaco, where her mom and husband can now be with her and the baby. - I asked Natalia why she didn’t go to the Catholic hospital in El Chaco. She said because it is too expensive. A normal birth costs $80, plus $40 each day of hospitalization. Maternity Leave - It doesn’t really exist! Natalia now has 4-weeks of paid maternity leave-literally paid. During her four weeks off, Natalia has to pay for a substitute in the high school. She is just happy to have four weeks off. With many other jobs, women only get two weeks.
Last weekend our comprades Doña Rebeca and Don Coque (parents of our godchild, Morelia) invited us to go to the fiestas of their hometown, Salcedo, with them. Salcedo is located in the mountainous region (Sierra) of Ecuador about 2 hours south of Quito.
We got a warm welcome as soon as we arrived to Salcedo from Rebeca’s mom and we stayed with her for the weekend. Her house was much nicer than most of the houses in the area, but lacked running water in the bathroom. Nobody seemed too concerned about bathing or brushing their teeth. Saturday morning Morelia competed in 3-hour bike race through the country side. Rebeca borrowed a jeep from her brother and we drove along behind Morelia the whole time cheering her on. The Sierra is the poorest region of Ecuador and from what we saw during the bike race it is hard to imagine how people manage to survive in such conditions. The whole region is very dry and windy. People cultivate crops in every lot of land possible, including the steep mountainsides. There is no gas or electric powered machinery- all the farming is done by manual labor. Many of the houses are made of mud with thatch roofs and don’t have electricity. In this area, the only water people may have is the rain water they collect. Also, there are hardly any trees. Most have been cut down to build houses, cook food, or clear land to farm. It was interesting to see another side of Ecuador and realize just how different it is from the Oriente (where we live). Part of every town’s fiestas are the running of the bulls. In Salcedo, this consisted of a large arena full of 100 people (torreros) and 1 bull. The people in the center would tempt the bull to chase them and the spectators waited for the people in the center to mess up and get trampled by the bull. When one of the torreros would fall, everybody would crack up. If a torrero got trampled hard enough and long enough by a bull, they won a prize. Each bull was in the ring about 5-10 minutes or until it got tired. It was interesting but I can’t say I enjoyed it as much as everyone else. Other happenings: - We visited Salcedo’s cementery, where many relatives of Dona Rebeca and Don Coque are buried. It was set up like a little town complete with street names. - The Sunday market in Salcedo is much different from Chaco’s. There you can buy cuys, roasted pig heads and lots of produce. After killing and eating the last female turkey, I bought a new one at the market. My goal is to raise turkey babies. Dona Rebeca and Don Coque must be jealous of my turkeys, because they ended up buying one too. - Close to Salcedo is the famous town of Baños, which is next to the very active Volcano Tunguragua. Amazingly, with the many eruptions of Tunguragua, Baños has never been affected. They legend there is that the Virgin Mary has always protected the town from the violent eruptions. A church and many monuments have been built there to thank her. - Sunday is the election that will decide if the Ecuadorians approve the new constitution. On every corner, car and sign there are advertisements that say Sí or No. From what we have heard it seems like the Sí is winning. We’ll keep you updated. - Starting two days before Ecuadorian elections, there is a national ban on the selling and consumption of alcohol. If you are seen drinking alcohol, you are taken straight to jail.
One of the goals of Peace Corps is to share our experiences and cultural observations here in our host country with the American people. This blog allows us to do just that and we also participate in the World Wise School Program. With this program we are paired up with an elementary school class and write letters back and forth.
We were able to pair up with my friend Stacy Ansel’s 4th grade class. Stacy (then Dolinger) and I became friends when we were in the 4th grade together and have been great friends ever since. Here is a sample of one of the response letters to me. I crack up every time I read it. Dear Maggie, You accidentally messed up my name. It’s A-L-E-K not A-L-E-X. I know it is weird, but it’s my name. Thanks for telling about the cow hooves. I will never eat that. My mom’s birthday was June 11th. Don’t ask how old is she because the answer is I don’t know. My birthday is June 30th. Don’t ask that either because the answer is 10. By the time you get this letter, I will be out of school. I hope you have a fun summer vacation too. Sincerely, Alek Humphries
I have now be an official English teacher in the high school for 3 weeks. I say official because all of my other classes haven’t been for grades. I have two different classes of 10th graders with 30 students each. I teach 5 hours to each class each week.
Being an official teacher has been harder than I thought. All of our health classes aren’t for grades, so we don’t assign homework or have tests and I don’t have to submit lesson plans. Now it is tough, because I have to do all these things and don’t really understand the system here. For starters, education here is SUPER formal. Students are accustomed to spending all day copying from their texts books or from the board. When a teacher enters the classroom, all the students have to stand up and greet the teacher and cannot sit until they are told to. As far as homework goes, teachers grade as much on the handwriting as the actual homework (I never would have graduated from high school here). Also, a perfect score here isn’t 100 it is 20. Overall the students know very little English. They do have three phrases they love to say: Hello teacher, Oh my God and Bye bye. These three phrases have been outlawed in my class. So it has been a challenging start, but I do really like it. More than anything my goal is to get students to start thinking out of the lines of their notebook paper! In other news: - We recently went to Quito for our Mid-Service Conference. On September 1, we completed one year of service in El Chaco. Time has been flying by and crawling by at the same! Now less than a year left… maybe! - For the last couple of months, Gregg and I have been talking about extending our PC service for a third year. This decision is still WAY UP in the air. We absolutely love it here and don’t know if we are ready yet for life back in the States. - A very possible site for our third year is the Galapagos. You might have heard of them. They are some islands with some finches and turtles. I’ve heard they’re not too shabby. Down side… lots of tourists, very expensive living and starting work again from scratch. - The female turkey is dead. I came home from the high school and Gregg informed me that she was in the refrigerator. Very strange, but very good turkey fajitas.
We just got back from a little vacation on the coast. It was actually our first vacation by ourselves since we got to Ecuador. Over the past few months we have heard so much about the humpback whales on the coast that we decided we had to go check them out.
We jumped on a bus on Sunday night for a pleasant 14-hour bus ride to Puerto Lopez. When we arrived, we scheduled a tour for whale watching and a trip to Isla de la Plata (Silver Island), which is often called the Poor Man’s Galapagos. The humpback whales come up every year from Antarctica to South America to mate and have their babies. When the 1.5 ton babies are born, they don’t have enough fat to survive in the icy waters of Antarctica, so they are born in warmer waters. From June to October there are an estimated 400 humpback whales off the coast of Puerto Lopez. The water along Ecuador is the perfect temperature for the whales- not too hot and not too cold. The males show off for the females, so there is lot of tail and fin slapping and breeching. After the whales mate and the babies get strong enough, they head back to Antarctica. I was still skeptical that we were going to see whales when we headed out on our tour. After about 30 minutes in the boat, we started seeing the whales slapping their tails in the water and blowing mist from a distance. After passing these whales, 30 minutes later we arrived at Isla de la Plata. The island didn’t receive its name for buried treasures, but from bird crap. Fishermen say that when the sun sets, the island looks silver. It actually shines silver from all the bird droppings. We walked around the island for 3-4 hours watching all the different bird species that live there, like blue footed boobies and albatross. We even saw a sea lion. We then did a little snorkeling off a small reef and somehow Maggie and I are the only ones that didn’t see the passing sea turtles. On our way back to the mainland, we got about 30 meters from a male, female and baby whale. The baby was jumping out of the water the whole time and the parents would come to the surface where we could see their whole body (about the size of a semi truck). Finally, when we were about to leave the male whale jumped almost completely out of the water right beside our boat- twice! It was an incredible sight and a great finale. Unfortunately, he didn’t stop to pose for a picture. Besides the whales, my favorite part about the coast was seafood, seafood and more seafood. I think we spent more money in one meal than we spend on food for a week in El Chaco. Did you know? -Blue-footy boobies always live in pairs. They change mates every year during mating season and then live the remainder of the year with their new companion. They live for 30 years. -We’ll be flying into Kansas City on Dec. 15 and we’ll be there until Jan. 2. Can’t wait to see everyone!
Ivan and Andrés, our two host brothers from Pesillo, came to visit us in El Chaco for four days. Ivan just turned 15 and Andrés is 11 and they are still the coolest kids that I have met in Ecuador. Ivan is the one of the only students I have met that likes reading and he has read all 7 of the Harry Potter books. Andrés has a great sense of humor and would spend all day playing cards with us, if he could. Speed is now his favorite game.
We invited them to come to Chaco over their vacation break when we last went to visit them in February. We were shocked when the called us up a couple of weeks ago to tell us they were actually going to come. Gregg went to meet them in Quito and brought them to Chaco, their very first trip to the Oriente. They loved seeing the rivers and waterfalls. They were really excited about all the bugs here, since they hardly have any in freezing Pesillo. As we walked around Chaco, they would stop and point out the butterflies. We pretended to be excited. I was working with the summer camp at the time and we had a field trip planned to go to the hot springs in Papallacta. I took them with me and they loved them! When we lived with them, we found out they really like NASA. My uncle works for NASA and I had him send some NASA stuff for them. They were so excited when I gave them the flight patches and pictures. Ivan is working hard to learn English and really want to study abroad in the States after he graduates next year. We are going to try to help him find a program. Other happenings: One of our landlords´ sons has two turtles and wanted to separate them because they were fighting a lot. I told him he could put one of them behind our house, because it is all fenced in and I wanted to try my hand at turtle raising. After they dropped the turtle off at the house, I feed him a banana and then put him in the pen. The next day, I couldn´t find him to feed him, but wasn´t too worried because they told me it always hides really well. The following day I continued my turtle search in the backyard and after I couldn´t find him, I decided to tell the owner. We concluded that the turtle had dug his way out. He was pretty upset, because he had had the turtle for 6 years. On the fourth day of the turtle´s disappearance, Gregg was talking with some friends in front of our house on the soccer field. The neighbor asked Gregg, ¨Is that your turtle?¨ The turtle was eating a pile of dog poop, less than 2 meters from Gregg. We returned the turtle back to his owner and decided I wasn´t fit for turtle raising.
We went to our first Ecuadorian wedding recently- that is as invited guests. Normally the weddings take place during the normal masses, just like how we do baptisms in the States. The priest gives the normal mass and then administers that sacrament of marriage- pretty anti-climatic.
Doris and Marcos, the bride and groom, are good friends of ours, and Doris´ family is super involved in the church. She is the youngest of 18 kids and 12 of them still live in El Chaco. The majority of the kids make up the band for the masses and Doris always cantors. Because they help out the church so much, the priest decided to give a private mass for their wedding. Observations: - Doris and Marcos hand-delivered the invitations to all the guests one week before the wedding. I´m not sure why we didn´t do the same for our wedding! - Since the invitation said the wedding started at 4 p.m., Gregg and I arrived at the church exactly at 4 p.m. and were surprised to find the church empty. I guess we thought people would be more punctual for a wedding. - Guests starting arriving about 4:45 and the bride arrived at 5 p.m. - The bows on the pews were made out of toilet paper. - There are godparents even for weddings. The rest of the wedding party was made up of several flower girls and ring bearers. - Even though it was a private mass, it seemed like the wedding was treated just like any of the other sacraments we have seen. The reception afterwards was just as big as the reception for Doris´ nephew´s baptism that we went to a couple of months ago. - Toasts here a very important and very formal- jokes are defiantly out. No one even smiled during the two fathers´ toasts nor the godfather´s. - Since there are no wedding registries, guests just buy the couple whatever they want to, which means LOTS of duplicate gifts that can´t be returned. Since one of my goals in PC is to put an end to instant coffee, I bought them a coffee pot.
We recently received the bitter sweet news that one of our good friends, Rocío is going to work in Spain. It will be a great opportunity for her to live in another country and make a little money. However, it is sad to see her leaving, because she is a good friend and is the first in her family to leave the country- and the first to fly on an airplane!
The good news is that she is going legally, has a job and will live in Madrid with her cousin. A supermarket chain (like Wal-Mart) came to Ecuador looking for people to work as cashiers. It was a very selective process and Rocío was very lucky to win a spot. She has committed to work for one year and then may renew the contract or work for another company in Spain. We celebrated last weekend by cooking a lot of seafood and eating a little ice cream (it’s real expensive here). Nearly every family we know has some family member (uncles, cousins, etc.) living in the U.S., Spain or Italy. The majority have gone illegally and now can´t return to Ecuador to visit their families. We have even heard stories of family member dying trying to cross across Mexico and others that were simply never heard from again. The population of Ecuador is 13 million and approximately 2 million Ecuadorians live in the States. The money sent from the immigrants to their families is the second largest source of income in the country. New Constitution? The Constitutional Assembly recently finished the new constitution in Ecuador. It was completed about 3 months after the deadline, which, in Ecuador, is pretty good. In September, the Ecuadorians will vote to approve or reject the new constitution. The Catholic Church has launched a huge campaign, the NO campaign, against approving the constitution- it seems it is too progressive for them. Since 90% of the population is Catholic, it will be interesting to see if they listen to the Church or not.
Sorry about the lack of blog writing. The busier we are, the more stuff we have to write about, but little time to write!
Lately we have been busy with summer camps, lots of English classes, first aid classes, putting first aid knowledge to use and watching the volcano erupting. Volcano Reventador is 60 km from us and two weeks ago it became very active. It was shooting up a great deal of ash and for two nights we could really see the lava flowing. We were in Quito the first day the volcano was really active and we got back to Chaco about 8 p.m. We were walking up to our house from the bus and a kid told us that we should go to the volcano to see the lava closer. I was really confused and he pointed in the direction of the volcano and sure enough we could see red explosions that seem to be floating up in the air. There have been several big explosions in the last 30 years, but El Chaco is far enough that it has never been affected by the lava flow. And interesting enough, we haven´t even had ash fall. The volcano blows the ash up several kilometers in the air, so it doesn´t start falling until Quito. The summer camp finally ended last Friday after four crazy weeks with lots of crazy kids. Every Thursday we took the 40 kids to the pool in town (built by the biggest oil company in the area). Hardly anybody in El Chaco can swim, being that just recently pools were built here and the river´s strong current makes it impossible to swim in the river. All the kids, though, love splashing around in the shallow end and the few kids that can swim show off to the others. The last pool day of the camp turned out to be pretty interesting. I was talking with two other teachers by the pool, when we heard a couple of the boys yelling in the deep end. All of us initially thought they were just playing, but as we got closer, I realized that one of the boys (Luís) was actually drowning. The other boy (Paulo) was trying to pull Luís to the side, but being that he could hardly swim, Luís was just pulling him under too. Without thinking (already knowing the other teachers couldn´t swim), I kicked off my shoes and jumped into the pool. Luckily, Luís didn´t struggle with me as I pulled him to the side of the pool and the teachers pulled him out. He coughed up lots of water and was very startled, but was fine. After the whole incident had passed, the kids loved retelling how Señorita Maggie jumped fully clothed into the pool and saved Luís life. The kept on calling me the life saver, which seems a little exaggerated, but who knows what would have happened if I hadn´t been there. P.S. Sorry no pics of these two exciting events. P.S.S. We have decided to come home from Christmas. After more than a year of saying we aren´t going to return to the States during our PC service, we have had a change of heart. Sorry if this screws up anybody´s plans! Can´t wait to see everyone in December! I just can´t stop singing, ¨I´ll be home for Christmas. You can count on me.¨ Also, I can´t wait to practice my English. As you can tell from my blog writing, it is going to crap. P.S.S.S. We`ll see who is the most faithful blog-checker by who reads the big news first!
We went on a REALLY long walk last week, but for a REALLY good cause. We walked from Chaco to San Carlos, a distance of 45 to 55 km, depending on which signs and maps you believe. The main purpose of the walk was to raise awareness of the destruction of the Amazon Basin, caused by the oil companies and deforestation.
The name of the walk is Caminamos con Alejandro e Ines or We Walk with Alejandro and Ines. 21 years ago, Bishop Alejandro and Sister Ines were murdered by an indigenous tribe, while they were working to fight against the big oil companies. When the oil companies first came into Ecuador, they ran right over the tribes and destroyed their land. Alejandro and Ines were big environmentalist and they worked to protect the forests and the land of the tribes. They began spending lots of time with the tribes and dressing like them. One day a neighboring tribe invaded their camp and mistaking them for oil workers, murdered them both. The first walk was organized in 2007 for the 20th Anniversary of their deaths and we walked a very small part of the second annual walk. The group of 30 walked from Quito to Coca, a distance of 365 km, in 12 days. The group that did the whole hike mainly consisted of religious men and women and then in each town a small group (like us) tagged along for a stretch. Other blog-worthy happenings: - I (Maggie) will be working as the 10th grade English teacher next year. The principal had asked me tons of times to teach and I got tired of saying no! I will have two different sections and have a total of 10 teaching hours each week. In addition to English, Gregg and I are going to continue working with the school counsellor giving sex ed, self-esteem and leadership classes. We also hope to start some youth groups. - Abut 3 months ago, the vice-principal of the high school helped organize a group of students to start a radio show about environmental awareness, habitat conservation, tourism, etc. As part of the radio show, they also wanted to do a radio novel and asked Gregg and I to help. The title is Gotas del Futuro, Drops of the Future. In the novel, we pretty much play ourselves, except we are biologists. Each week, we go to record a chapter of the novel and then it runs on the local radio station. We are really getting famous.
Super duper exciting news- all five of our girls from El Chaco were approved for scholarships! These students will receive $125 each year for their Sophomore, Junior and Senior years of high school to pay for their school fees, books and uniforms. Several of the girls will be the first in their families to graduate from high school! Thanks so much for buying raffle tickets.
Also, in case you weren´t aware, exactly one week ago La Liga Universatario Deportivo won the prestigious Copa de Libertadores. La Liga is a professional soccer team that plays out of Quito, Ecuador. Copa de Libertadores is the South American (and Mexico) championship of all the professional soccer teams. Since we live about 4 hours from Quito, all of El Chaco went crazy when they won. We have been watching La Liga for about 2 months now, as they have played through the tournament. It was the first time a team from Ecuador has won the championship. Now La Liga will go to Japan to play the champions of the other continents. I know that they will be playing Manchester United who will represent Europe. We will keep you updated. Inflation Problems One big problem that we have been experiencing down here (as well as the whole world) is inflation. I no longer notice inflation with gas prices (since we don´t have a car), but rather in the food prices. Everything has risen and continues to rise. Eggs have gone from .$.10 to $.12, rice $.25 to $.35 a lb., milk $.30 to.$.40 a liter, chicken from $1.00 to $1.25 a pound, and worst of all shrimp has gone from $3.00 to $3.50 a lb. The construction boom in Chaco may be coming to an end as rebar to lay concrete has gone up from $40 for 100lbs to $80. We are always talking about the rising food prices in our daily conversations. It seems like small numbers, but when your grocery bill is 25% higher it starts to add up. Unfortunately, here it seems like the poorest people here have the most kids. As the prices continue to rise, the poorest people simply stop buying milk, meat, fruits and vegetables and just eat rice. There are several reasons for the rising prices here. Of course, gas prices are a big part. There is also the constitutional assembly that is currently writing a new constitution in Ecuador and it has caused a lot of uncertainty in the market, because nobody knows how the new constitution will turn out. The last reason is there has been a lot of flooding in the coast and a volcano eruption in the mountain region. Only time will tell if the inflation will get under control. A funny story from last weekend: Maggie and I went to a nearby city (Tena) for a church retreat. It turned out that the president of Ecuador was in Tena the same day to inaugurate a new highway. We were excited to see the president or even his caravan of cars. Unfortunately, the highway was not finished. The president showed up said he refused to inaugurate the highway and left within 30 minutes.
For all you package senders, please take note of the new customs´ guidelines, so we don´t have to pay $5,000,000 or wait 500 hours to get the package out of customs.
- The package must be less than 2 kilograms - Write `Regalos´ (gifts) on the label. Do not list what is actually in the package - Write $0.00 for the value of the package. If the post office complains that you have to write a value, explain that you can´t, because it will have to pass through customs in Ecuador and we will have to pay a fine. Thanks so much to all of you who have been generous in sending packages. Some people have been asking what we would like in packages and really more than anything we love seeing pictures of you guys! Also, chocolate never hurts (Hershey´s and Dove). Thanks to some generous donators, we now have a year´s supply of contact lens solution and hand wipes. Another reminder: BUY YOUR GAD (Gender and Development) RAFFLE TICKETS!!! Check the May 27th entry for all the information about the raffle. The raffle takes place July 8, and ALL proceeds go straight to scholarships for poor, but really bright, motivated Ecuadorian women who want complete their high school education. The easist way to buy your tickets is online: http://www.friendsofecuador.org/
On June 20, 2007 we arrived here in Ecuador as nervous, excited Peace Corps trainees. After a great first year, we have come to absolutely love this country, our new friends and our work.
Wednesday night we excitedly greeted the new PC trainees at the airport. It was really hard to believe that an entire year has passed since we crossed through that same airport with our 250 lbs. of mostly unnecessary luggage. So just exactly does one year in Ecuador mean? Let me break it down for you. One year (366 days with Leap Day) means: - We have not driven a car in a year - We have not seen any siblings, relatives or any friends from the States for one year - We speak pretty darn good Español - We still don´t understand lots of jokes - It means I (Maggie) have gained 14 pounds and Gregg has gained 4 pounds. I´ve been telling you all we eat lots of rice and potatoes here! - Gregg and I only speak Spanish together. If I say something in English, he pretends to not understand. Books, music, movies, etc. only in Spanish. - We have not used a washing machine or dryer for one year - We have worn out every pair of jeans we brought here on our washing board. - We have been godparents … twice! - We have not had any season changes (except between lots of rain and quite a bit of rain) - We have given tons of health charlas (talks, presentations) - I have had a fun case of amoebas, but somehow Gregg has stayed amoeba-free. - Our only big fights have been over the toilet - We have not had an 8-5 job for a year! - We have had LOTS of free time - Anything that seems different to us we now describe it as Ecua. For example, Ecuatime is being an hour or two hours late for a meeting and being right on time. - We have come to live in harmony with all bugs - We have been living in a fish bowl for a year. We are absolute stars in our community and we cannot walk down the streets without someone screaming our names. - Gregg has been viewed as a giant and I have been average height for a year. - We become even more frugal, if that is possible to imagine - We have missed Stacy and Brock´s, Beth and Chris´ and Marley and Bryce´s weddings. - We go to the bank and post office once a month - We have made tons of friends in Chaco that we will deeply miss when we return - We often go several weeks without riding in a car - We have not eaten lots of our favorite foods from the States. Examples: Good Chinese, bacon, E.L. Fudge Cookies, Schmeka´s sausage, Mom´s Spaghetti sauce, Mary´s holiday meals, Grandma Ahern´s tacos and green beans, Grandma Wolcott´s Thanksgiving and Christmas meals and Vickie´s fudge. - We have boiled hundreds of pots of water for drinking water - We have not used an oven for a year - I now eat seafood - We are two of the few Peace Corps volunteers that have been able to save money on our living allowance of $250 a month. - We have not had to buy $3+ gallon gasoline - We have not seen a movie in a movie theatre - We think joining Peace Corps is one of the best decisions we´ve ever made (right behind marrying each other)!
I was really overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of our friends here in Chaco on my birthday.
I had a soccer game in the morning and afterwards our good friend Marta invited us over for lunch. We came straight from the game and I was covered in mud. She had literally cooked a leg of a pig and we ate a very traditional meal called fritada. After lunch, she opened a bottle of wine and with her kids made a beautiful toast. We left there and went up to the house. As I was showering, our landlords called to invite us over for dinner. The Ashqui family has really become like a second family to us. They had planned a little birthday celebration for me and the five sons (the rafting guides) went all out. After another beautiful toast (really big deal here) and we had a great meal of fresh trout. After dinner one of the sons gave me a hat from the oil company he works for and another gave me a rafting t-shirt. Also during the day some neighbors and our godchild stopped by to bring me gifts. I really couldn’t believe how so many people went out of their ways to make the day special for me. Toasts: At every celebration there is a toast. The host first passes out wine or champaign and a cookie to all the guests and then everyone stands up. The host then makes a very long, eloquent toast and everyone says ¨Salud,¨ which means ¨to your health.¨ On Sunday, I went to a birthday party for a 10-year-old and 25 of his classmates were invited. The mom passed out a little cup of wine to all the 10-year-olds and made the toast! 
How many entries are we showing above?
For now, we are showing up to 50 entries on each page. Entries that
are too short are filtered out. For more entries, please use
archives.
|
Connect to Peace Corps Journals
About the Journal
Contact Us
Disclaimer:
| |
| Copyright (c) 2010 |
