december update

I just got back yesterday from a great weekend (was actually less than 24 hours) at the beach! There’s a volunteer that lives 2 blocks away from the shorefront and she invited a group of us to come for the weekend to celebrate an early Christmas and played secret santa. Most people got in Thursday night but I didn’t get to her site until Saturday afternoon because in the morning we had our 2nd women’s basketball game. Which we won, 48-26! The game was scheduled for 9 am and we had to travel an hour by bus to get there so we agreed to meet at 7:45 am and then all go together in a bus. Well by time we finally got everybody roped up and in the van, it was 8:30 and we set out for the game, arriving at 10 am, which we started shooting around meanwhile, the morning started turning into early afternoon and along came the heat. Its finally by quarter til 11 we started playing and it must’ve been at least 85 degrees by this time (we played outside on a cement court). Halfway through the game, some other women come up to our team and invite us to stay til after the men’s game and the women can against another, better team they said. Sadly I wasn’t able to stay because I had to be on the bus by 11:30 to get to the beach but our team won the second game as well!

The beach was a lot of fun, short lived, but fun. I arrived with Mitch (he waited for me halfway) and everyone had gone for a hike so we enjoyed a nice relaxing walk along the beach. Mitch graduated from Willamette and is my only somewhat Oregonian and we couldn’t help but pretend that we were walking along the Oregon coast, we even declared a far off boat to be Castle Rock. I think we’re both ready for a trip back to the states. He leaves in a week, me in almost two weeks!

On Friday, the parents of Alice (my sitemate) arrived and are staying here for a week and a few days (they’re actually on the same flight home as Mitch to Miami). All of our friends here were super excited to meet her. On Friday night I was working at my friend’s bar (can’t wait to put that on my work report and see what kind of feedback I get from Quito) and one of my friend’s kept telling everyone that his “In-laws” were coming into town and will be at the bar tomorrow (Sat) night. It was a pretty good joke and he asked me how to say in-laws in English and he promised me that on Saturday he was going to introduce himself as their future in-law, but rumor has it, he got too shy and didn’t say it. But I finally got to meet her parents last night on Sunday, they invited me over to dinner (Alice is now living in her own apartment as of last Thursday) and it was sooo nice to have an American mother cooked meal. Alice’s mom apologized that it wasn’t anything special and just food thrown together but to me, it was extravagant.

Last week, what a week it was. Defiantly goes down in history as my busiest week of the entire past year (I’ve recently now realized I’ve been “unemployed” for a year now). I’m trying to get all of my projects wrapped up before I go back to the states as to have a clean start when I return. Mostly last week consisted of working with a bunch of high school students getting them ready for their cultural open house, which was held on Saturday (which sadly I couldn’t go to). But I worked with different groups and we made 2 different types of medicinal drinks, fresh peanut butter (sooo good), a red sauce for cooking (pasta de achoite, which is really popular in Oaxaca, Mexico) and cheese! It was a great learning experience for me but I felt bad because they all expected me to know exactly what I was doing. So I tried to hide my doubts but how am I supposed to know when these leaves of some plant that I don’t even know its name are fermented enough to be for medicinal usage?

Also a big tradition here at Christmas is to buy little goodie baggies and have them delivered to the poorer communities to provide gifts for the little kids. So working with the women’s group of the municipal, we have spent the fast few days bagging up crackers, suckers, candies and tiny plastic toys to donate to a bunch of areas. It’s been a lot of fun and every morning this week, we’re going out to deliver the bags. I get to go Wednesday and Friday and am super excited.

Other than that this week I picked up a few more English classes so I need to get prepared for those. I’ve defiantly started enjoying teaching more and that this is an incredible experience, which has a lot to offer me. And then also I am working on writing a grant to get funds to start making 3 gardens in the high schools for the following school year (they have summer break Jan - April); which I want to get submitted before Christmas. I have decided that I am talking next week off (for the most part, I’ll probably still be working on the grant proposal) and Alice and I are dedicating the week to making Christmas cookies to give to all of our “loved ones” here.

For Christmas, I’m not quite sure what I am going to be doing here. I think we might have a small get together here in Cumanda and have dinner and what not. But Christmas here isn’t a big deal, there’s more celebration for new years. Everyone I ask about Christmas tells me the tradition is to have dinner on Christmas eve with family and then at midnight everyone goes out to the dance club/bar and celebrates…But what about the eggnog???

All right well I hope that all of you are mostly ready for the upcoming holidays! I hope you all have a safe and fun time with all of the family. Take care and hopefully I’ll get another blog up before I go back to the states. LOVE.