Want to know how glorious my life is?

Last Friday I was sitting eating lunch with Melita and the normal crowd at the Tienda and my friend Jorge calls me. I answer and he says “its suuuuper sunny outside, lets go to the pool.” I tell him, “Jorge I can’t its Friday and I have work to do lets go tomorrow” and he says “come on, its sunny and warm, lets go.” Needless to say an hour later a group of four of us and a bag of mangoes were headed to a beautiful afternoon at the pool.

For thanksgiving, a small group of us go together at my friend Abbie’s house. She lives in a tiny po-dunk town of maybe 200 people so we were literally out in the middle of nowhere. Her site made Cumanda feel like a metropolis. But the small town was a great atmosphere for us to get together and have a good time. On Thursday we woke up at 11 and were cooking by noon and eating by 8 pm. A day full of cooking but a day well spent. We feasted on turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, zucchini bread, whole wheat bread, walnut/blue cheese salad, cranberries, berry cobbler and fresh delicious pumpkin pie. The best part, everything we ate was made from SCRATCH. Except for the cranberries, we luckily found a can of those. I was actually pretty impressed that we found all of the ingredients and it turned out to be an incredible, beyond words, meal.

Before I allowed myself to leave for Abbie’s house, I had a list of things I had to accomplish here in Cumanda. One of them was to teach my first, official English class. I was dreading it and nervous as all get out but it was actually really easy and slightly enjoyable. The most frustrating part is having to deal with the teacher. Before I began teaching, she told all the students to pay extra attention to my pronunciation because it's a rare chance for them to learn from a native speaker. But yet anytime I asked a question, she was ALWAYS the first one to respond with the answer in her crazy spanglish which all of the students mimicked what she said. Guess I’ll need to teach the teacher first and then maybe we’ll make progress on the kids. On Tuesday I have class number 2 and at the request of the teacher, we’re going to learn Christmas songs. This I can handle…

I’ve been thinking for a while about starting a project of teaching how to can fruits and vegetables because its super easy and I know that it would be really popular here. So last Sunday I set out on an adventure to find jars suitable for canning and as I went on my search, I ran into one of my friends who decided to accompany and help me. We searched for 2 hours and found nothing with a metal or sealable top. Guess that’s why nobody cans their own food. So instead of spending my Sunday afternoon canning as I had hoped, my friend invited me to his nephew’s 5th birthday party where we listened to the entire N’sync album and had platters of cheese, bologna and candy passed around.

Yesterday I worked with the women’s group from the municipal selling food at a memorial service for the kid that just recently passed away. I returned from traveling at 2 in the afternoon, showered and changed and went to the memorial service at 3 which is where I stayed until 11 pm that night. I thought it was only going to last one or two hours but like always, Ecuador fooled me and took way longer than had expected (and necessary if I may add). But it was really impressive that this kid of 22 years old was so well known and respected in the community that there was a special memorial service with at least 500 people in his honor. After the service ended (at 11) I went back to my house, changed once again, and went to a dance fundraiser that my friend was hosting, unwillingly danced for an hour and then went to another friend’s bar. Hmm what a weekend.

I took a break from writing and just got back from picking my first crop of green beans from my garden. I finally ripped up all of my lettuce because I got so frustrated with my neighbors rabbits and chickens eating them before I even had a chance. If I can’t eat them, nobody can eat them damnit. But now I have fresh basil and green beans to make for my dinner. I don’t think I’ve ever had a pesto green bean salad mixture before but welp, tonight’s going to be the night.



Also, I added a few photos to the blog. The other day my friend Jorge got asked my a local school to paint a mural on one of the school’s walls so I decided to help him out. The last line says “to love is to teach” which I is how I feel, I may not be doing tons of work here but at least I have my love to give!

Anyways I hope all of you had a great thanksgiving. These past few weeks and months have defiantly improved for me and that is what I feel the most thankful for. I am thankful for the people here in Cumanda that have opened so much of their lives for me and are willing to share them with me. I am thankful for each of you that continue to stay updated on my sporadic adventures and for all of your encouragement and prayers.

I hope that all of you had a great thanksgiving with friends and family. Love love.

i told you it´d be soon...

So I’m sitting here snacking on carrots and mustard (two of my favorite things which are absolutely delicious together) and I have an hour until the service in the temple with Melita starts so I decided what better way to pass my time than to update you all! I am still uncertain as to what “type” or “religion” the service that I go to every Friday is but last week I discovered that the guy who occasionally leads the service is “Lutheran”. It felt great to finally be included and to be a part of the club. But remind you, he’s also different than any other Lutheran pastor I’ve ever met, for example he’s strictly vegetarian, incorporates yoga positions into his messages and manages to tie in the proper, religious way to breathe during sex, every week.

The festivals of Bucay have ended and they went out with a bang and a weight gain on my part. A weeks worth of beer drinking will do that to you, but hey, it's the fiestas, they only happen once a year…but its nice to have life back to normal, it means that it will actually be possible to get some work done, I’ll go back to having a normal schedule and there won’t be band practice at 5 am anymore.

Right now we’re in the dry season weather wise and because this year is an “el nino” year, it means its super dry. And when its super dry, there’s not enough water for the damns to function and thus not enough energy to supply electricity for Ecuador. So we are now experience daily blackouts from 4-7 pm, which means all of the area loses power for the 3 hours. During the fiestas it was really fun because everybody would say “welp, there’s no light, guess we should drink the beers before they get warm” but now it's a huge inconvenience and causes a lot of businesses to lose money. But I actually look forward to those hours, I think life by candlelight is fun.

Alright, well I wrote all of that last week Friday and now another week has passed without an update so here comes the rest…

We still have power outages, but now they’re no longer from 4-7 but instead we lose power for 3 hours whenever the power plant decides to turn off the power. For a few days, it was only 10 am-12am which was nice but lately its been 6-9 pm but its always a great conversation starter with my neighbors, discussing when we’re going to lose power, when we prefer to lose power and them telling me about their horrible government system.

As for projects, I’ve got a little bit going on everywhere. Because my counterpart just recently got elected to a position in the municipal of Cumanda (which is why I don’t work much with him anymore) he elected me to be his “representative” for the women’s group that consists of most of the wives of the men in the municipal. With this group, we’re working on organizing the fiestas for Christmas so the next few weekends are full of fundraisers. I have sat through 8 hours worth of meetings and still have a VERY vague idea about what is actually going on, all I know is that I signed up to make 200 empanadas…

I’m still working with a high school helping them prepare for their open house the first weekend in December. They’re focusing on making a bunch of new products like wine, pickled fruits and veggies, breads etc out of all the same products that they have here in the area. It's a great idea and there’s a bunch of alternatives and will be great to teach the community. There’s about 5 different groups that I am working with and they all think that I am an expert at how to prepare each of these new products when most of the fruits, veggies, cultivation that they use I’ve never even heard of! Good thing I know how to follow a recipe.

Alice and I started going for jogs every other day around 5:30 and now we have 2 other neighbor ladies that come with us and I’ve started walking with a few ladies from the women’s group on the other afternoons. It’s pretty funny walking and chatting with them. They cannot get over the fact that I am single and I enjoy being single. Every walking session they ask me if I have a boyfriend yet, who I would want to date and make every attempt to set me up with their son, nephew, cousin, friend…anyone.

I’ve finally broken down and decided to teach an English class at a rural school outside of Bucay. It’s about the poorest school in the area and it's a K-7 and there’s no one that teaches English. The 7th graders are required to know a basic level of English before entering High school so I’ve decided that they could really use my help.

Next week is thanksgiving and I am going to my friend’s site to have a small dinner. There’s a few big peace corps gatherings going on but I’m not really ready for another big pc gathering, I just saw everybody in September and October…I need sometime away in order to miss people.

Our next basketball game is Dec 12th and I am super excited. Plenty of time to practice and prepare ourselves.

I think I’ve mentioned this before but my neighbors that live below me, have a pet monkey who is not the nicest nor quietest. The way that our apartments were constructed was fairly poorly and there’s about a 6in x 2ft gap in my kitchen that leads to the stairwell and my neighbors have the same (but they’ve placed a wooden slat propped up by a broom in the stairwell to block there’s off, slightly inconvenient for me cuz I’m the one that passes it everyday, not them). Anyways one morning I woke up and there was a handful of papaya seeds that were dug out of my compost bowl and a half eaten tomato on my table and last night I came home to find half of my banana that I had left on the table eaten. Either I have some giant crazy bugs in my house and thankfully I’ve never seen them or this damn monkey is coming into my house and eating my food!! I can’t decided if I should set up a booby trap for the thing or just block of the gap in the wall…booby trap, defiantly is a better idea. Teach the monkey a lesson.

But well that's about it from here, I’ve got a little more than a month until I’m stateside for Christmas. I’m getting excited but I am also sad to leave here because I’ve been invited by a few families to share the holidays with them. Here, Christmas isn’t a big deal but New Years Eve. They have a huge parade, all of the family gets together on New Years and they make life-sized dolls and fill them with secrets and then set them on fire. Guess I’ll just have to wait until next year to experience it!

Well I hope that all of you have a great Thanksgiving and enjoy all of things we have to be thankful for!! Love love.

new photos

i added new photos to my album on facebook from halloween and just recent times :)

PHOTOS

new blog coming soon...keep your eyes peeled.

this ones for you grandma...

My life has taken a turn for the best, it has now turned into mango season, which means that the streets, stores and hands of every Ecuadorian are jammed full of ripe delicious mangos! What a sweet treat after 6 months of bananas but dont get me wrong, I still love bananas and eat at least 2 a day. But the mangos here are eaten like apples and they are deliciously messy. So that's the best part of my life right now! But with the other things…

Work: Ive basically stopped working with my original boss and the baby banana company. I do a little bit of work for them when theres something I can help with me Im tired of being told to have patience and there will be work. I now call my boss every Monday morning and he always tells me that he wants me to help him out or attend some meeting with him later in the week but as always, I fail to hear from him. So instead Ive been filling my time with other projects. Alice (the other peace corp volunteer) and I gave our first trash charla, which is like an informal presentation about properly disposing of trash and protecting the earth, at one of the local schools to over 100 kids. It was suuuuper nerve-racking and Im not sure if any of the kids could understand our Spanish but they sure loved the games and candy we handed out. Our goal is to give this charla to majority of the schools by the following june because june 5th is the worldwide clean water day and we want to host a river clean up with all of the kids. There´s about 30 schools we want to do so that's about 3-4 a month or one a week so its defiantly do able. The other main project IÕm working on is helping one of the high schools plan an open house about the variety of opportunities that our region has to offer. Im super excited about this because my group is focusing on how to prepare a variety of foods so I am going to take advantage of this and create fliers about nutrition and proportion sizes and also new recipes and meal plans that include more fresh vegetables.

Life: a few weeks went by where Alice and I were spending a lot of time together (mostly because I went through an angry spell with Ecuador itself and turned to her for support) but we both decided that we cant hang out so much and we need to make new friends. So we are currently having a fun competition about who can make the most friends which has actually been really beneficial for the both of us. I joined-created a womens basketball team and we had our first game the other night because bucay is in the middle of their annual fiestas. We won by like 15 points I think and I have now become famous for being an incredible basketball player but in my defense, for the advantage that I have, I really did not play well. I know I had at least 6 fouls but my friend was in charge of the books so he helped me out. The game was a lot of fun and since we won, we got invited to play another game in December and now that I have seen us play, I have a lot of things I want to teach them. Like how to catch a basketball to playing defense. Ha, one of my teammates had the ball and the girl guarding her grabbed her arm and fouled her but instead of walking away, my teammate backhanded the girl in the face. I could not believe it. She got kicked out of the game which sucked cuz she was defiantly the best one of them all. So I guess we´ll also work on controlling our tempers. A downer in my life here is that last week one of my friends from Cumanda died in a car accident. It was very sad and he was very popular here in the community. He was the son of one of Melitas very good friends so it was a hard week with everything that was going on.

Traveling: a few weekends back we had a big party here in Cumanda for a housewarming and birthday party. It was a lot of fun and was a good success. We ate a lot of good, delicious American food and spent both evenings at my friends bar. The night life here is so different, we stayed out one night until 9 am the next day just sitting around chatting, singing and listening to people pass the guitar around. For Halloween, we had a big peace corps party in a town called El Chaco and its in the eastern-jungle-amazon part of Ecuador and was my first time in this area. It was an incredible weekend and we all went rafting on Saturday and then had a typical Halloween party in the evening. I dressed up as a crab. I´ll try and get photos up soon.

I cant believe its already November. That means I have less than two months until the end of the year. Wow wow wow! I need to stop saying how fast time is flying by and actually grasp my time here. Anyways forgive me for horrible efforts at keeping you updated, November will be better, I promise!! Love you all and take care!