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.
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