my weekend

so a quick recap of my official first weekend here...and i apologize now for the spelling and grammar mistakes...

on friday as a group we went to one of the homestays of our volunteers who live on an all organic farm. it was our first day of actual hands on training and it was pretty interesting. we learned how to make seed boxes for our begining plants, how to compost, the use of worms, how to transplant plants, how to graft and many other things. it was really interesting. the farm consists of fruits, vegetables, chickens, guinea pigs, ducks, pigs and cows. and they´re actually in the processing of building a restuarant on their property which they will use solely their own products. it was an awesome visit and really inspiring to get an insight at to what our future goals are.

Saturday was a great day. my mom taught me how to wash my clothes on a stone table. i wish now that i would have just taken them to the laundry mat because i did not know how much work it was! ha but it was actually really fun and really good experience for my mom and i because she just watched me and laughed. but really, it took me a good two hours just to wash my clothes. i´m going to be a lot more careful about getting my clothes dirty this time around. anyways after washing clothes, my sister (she´s 45) had just purchased a bus to transport workers from town to the flower factories so we admired and hung out in the bus for a little bit. once the excitement of the bus died down, i helped my mom chop vegetables for our lunch, which was the first time shes let me help in the kitchen. ha i am making big progress with her :) one of my friends who lives in another community, Ana, came over and had lunch with us which was really nice becasue she is in the advanced spanish group so it made communicating with my mom a lot easier.

after lunch, ana and i headed over to another friends house where a bunch of other volunteers were meeting up to get together. i think there was about 20 of us that showed up for our afternoon fiesta since all of us have a 7 pm curfew. I ended up staying the night in ana´s community which was about an hour bus ride from cayambe and it was a lot of fun being at her house because her town consists of about 20 houses, one store and a main street. when we got there, we helped make empanadas for dinner. her mom kept calling ours ugly because you fold the edges somewhat similar to a pie crust and we could not get the technic down. but we ate all the ugly ones too so it was okay in the end.

the reason why i wanted to spend the night at ana´s house is because her family has 14 cows and they milk them twice a day. so this morning ana and i got up around 5 and went with her mom, sister and cousin to milk the cows. i got about three squirts out of my cow before her cousin took over and told me to go to sit by the buckets. i´m guessing i need a little more practce. after milking the cows and more empanadas for breakfast, we took a short nap before walking 45 min to another community to meet up with more volunteers for a hike. we hiked up this gorgeous hill that looked over all the little communities in the area. and of course i forgot my camera. sorry.

after the hike, we had lunch at one of our volunteers family´s restuarant and then walked to another larger community where they were hosting a health fair and also a fair for international women´s day. but of course, the fair ended at 2 and we got there at 2:30 so we didn´t get to see much. so i just hoped on a bus to return to cayambe and everyone else that i was with walked home. on friday when we were working in the farm, my arms and head got really burnt. so today i wore sunscreen, a hat and long sleeve shirt but now that i watch my fingers typing, i notice that the backs of my hands are toasty red. this sun is a jerk.

but anways, i was walking home from the bus station and decided to stop by and send a quick update but i am for once looking forward to the cold shower that i have waiting for me at home!!