2 months!

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

I found this little guy when i was sweeping under my bed yesterday morning. i´ve been wondering why i´ve been getting such massive spider bites and i guess this goes to show why. I wish you could see the hair on him. its pretty disgusting.
Other than that though things with me are going well. I'm starting to feel more comfortable and Cumanda is becoming more of my home then just the place I’m living for the next few years. People keep seeing me and being like “whoa, you’re still here? I thought you were going to leave.” No sir, I know my Spanish isn’t that great but when I said two years, I meant two years. But when I told Gloria (my neighbor, “host mom”) about Ana last night, she got really scared and basically begged me not to leave and told me how lonely she would be. Ahh it feels good to be loved :)

productivity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

wild fridays

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

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

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

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

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

just another monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love Love.