I can’t believe how fast this week flew by. I spent the entire week consoling myself that its only been the first week, your language will pick up soon, just have patience. But now it’s officially become two weeks and I’m getting frustrated by how little has changed. Poco a poco, little by little things are improving but I guess my expectations were a lot higher.
This past week the four of us in my small group started our garden! We planted beets, carrots, onions, a seed unknown, celery and about 3 different types of lettuce. At the end of training, not only are we required to speak Spanish but also show the ability to grow an organic garden. It was fun to actually have a physical project to work on and feels good to have a responsibility/physical element to care for.
Also this week we were working on a project for our advisors and had to present it to them Friday am. The project is a tool used to get to know your community and to be able to assess their needs/wants in order to create projects that are beneficial. The project required us to draw a map of our neighborhood, the daily schedule of an average family, a calendar of the year to show time frames, weather changes, holidays etc, and then finally an a graph of where the community needs improvement, what they want and what is most important to them. Gathering all the information was fun and a struggle in itself but yet very interesting and made me excited for when the time comes that I will need to create my own.
By time Friday morning came around, we were not fully prepared and we had a rough start but I think that by the end, we did pretty well given our groups ability to speak Spanish. Ha when I introduced myself, I mentioned that I lived with the Arroyo family, which is a hard name for me to pronounce because I rolling my r’s are a difficult feat and it took me 4 tries to get it right. After that I figured I didn’t have much else to loose and was able to relax.
Yesterday we went to Otavalo, which is about an hour from Cayambe and is famous for its huge market. Which was very overwhelming, full of everything from trinkets, jewelry, every type of alpaca product you could imagine, to fresh meats, vegetables and an animal market. It was fun but made me feel like a huge tourist. The best part of the day, actually there’s two, the first was riding in the back of a pick-up truck/taxi as it started to downpour. And the second was eating Caldo de Patas (soup with the foot of a pig) for lunch. You just kinda eat around the bone of the foot and the consistency is not quite meat and but a few steps about fat. I told my mom that I didn’t think it had much flavor and she said that she’ll cook it for me and that when she cooks it, it is always full of flavor. Awesome. Can’t wait.
Last night, one of my friends let me borrow Vicky Christina Barcelona (she bought it for $1), which I really enjoyed. And at 3 am, I awoke to my sister and her husband tapping on my window because they forgot their keys. We then spent the next five minutes yelling in Spanish in between the door, my sister trying to tell me how to unlock the door, me trying to tell her I cant see and my drunk brother-in-law continually asking me in English “how many keys you have”. Looking back the entirety of the conversation is really funny but soo frustrating at the time.
This morning my mom and I went to the Sunday market and bought lots of fresh veggies, fruits and meats. Afterwards, I took my clothes to the laundry mat. Ha I give up on doing them by hand.
Plans for the day: mom and I are going out to lunch, homework, go visit and give our garden some love, pick up my laundry and wash my shoes…what a day!
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