Lets call this one “Merry Christmas”

Okay so I know it has been quite a while, almost on the verge of forever, since I last updated my blog; but lets blame it on the good note that I am more involved in projects and life in the mango lush that has become Cumanda.

Ever since overcoming my one-year mark this summer my time remaining here has been diminishing faster than the glaciers of the North Pole. These past few months have been highlighted with numerous memorable trips, studying for the GRE’s (expecting results in January, ugh), graduate school applications, and oh ya trying to maintain projects with the community.

September brought to end the 2nd trimester at the high schools, which concluded our study of “geography” and the painting of our World Map Project.
We’re still working on our gardens with some more successful than others but we have seen a healthy turn out of tomatoes, cabbage and corn. Yum! A handful of us volunteers have taken on the task of creating a Peace Corps wide “seed bank” with an end goal of providing each incoming volunteer a basic packet of seeds in order to aide in transition into sites. AKA something we ALL wish we had been provided in order to obtain community trust and respect. So in attempt to get this project off the ground, I am growing lots of zucchini and radishes with my girls in order to harvest their seeds to help stock our Seed Bank.

September also saw the end of my working relationship with my original counterpart organization, the baby banana growers. After dealing with my counterparts lack of motivation and respect for me I decided enough was enough. So instead I’ve been spending more time helping a recently formed co-op of cacao growers map out their goals for the upcoming year, apply for their own volunteer and teach them the basics of methods of recording finances. They actually need help and value the time I spend with them, which is a complete 180 from the previous group I was working with. What a relief!

In short, the past few months have been some of the best I’ve seen in awhile. Whether that is owed to my distant end nearing or a newfound efficiency, I understand why people say the last 6 months of service are the most rewarding.

These next few months I feel are going to pass in the blink of an eye with many exciting events on the horizon. The end of December brings Christmas break in which classes and work do not exist, the visit of a good friend and a trip to Peru and the welcoming of the New Year! Mid-January is the end of the school year here and I will also spend a week in Quito at our “Swearing Out Conference” in which we pick our final date of service, complete the last stage of medical exams and submit an unimaginable amount of forms that no one will ever read but are required of us. January, February and March are what we call “party months” for between All Kings Day, Carnival and Easter Week there are surprisingly few days in which people actually work. Long live the Catholic Church and your infinite reasons to celebrate! But as always, good things must end and that very April will bring the sobering reality of my 24th and final month of service. Where life will take me from here is as undetermined as the headless chicken from Sunday’s feast. Any and all suggestions are welcome as I continue my personal search for answers at the bottom of Pilsener bottles.

With the end of the year nearing we will see the end of mango season (more glorious than college football if you can believe it) and the onset of obscene amounts of rains. As this will be my final entry for the year 2010, I thank you all for staying updated on my happenings and the continual support. I wish you all a very merry Christmas and hope you enjoy these special moments with your families; for you never know when your adventurous twenty-some-year old child will decide to abandon you for a few of the world’s deepest canyons and remarkable ruins!

I just read this and wanted to remember it so i'll share it with the few that regularly check this thing...

"Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos."
-Charles M. Schulz

hello september!

wow this year is flying by! its weird to hear about friends starting the school year again or about life settling down now that the summer months are over. I say that its "weird" because life here after a year and a half, still seems to feel like the unending summer vacation, which is glorious!

things have continued to be going well since i returned from home, i guess its been over 2 months, almost hitting 3 months! I've been making some ground on the same work projects. My counterpart of the banana company and I have finally submitted our application for a small business grant through Peace Corps and now we are waiting the wait to hear back. One year and a half of working with this man and I finally feel like i have earned his trust and dispelled his belief that i am as useful as a blubbering 5 year old.

things continue with the girls at my school. its been an interesting few weeks for studying maps, learning country names etc. I was shocked, and still am, at how little they understand the concept of a map and telling direction. Even the most basic ideas such as which are continents versus which are countries are abstract ideas. but it makes me glad that i have chosen to teach them maps and to do a World Map project with them at the end of the trimester, so even if they don't ever learn anything at least they'll still have a reminder of what a map is!

weekend have been full of adventures and i've been posting pictures on facebook if you haven't had a chance to see. One weekend included a backpacking trip to a group of beautiful lakes with a friend. However, the lakes were WAAAY up in the mountains, at about 3500 meters (thats higher than the highest point of Mt. Hood) and were very difficult to get to. After taking a 3 hour ricktey rural bus ride filled with indigenous mountain folk returned home after buying their goods in town, we finally got dropped off at the entrance to the lakes greeted by nasty weather which felt like someone was perpetually throwing snow in my face. despite how unprepared we ended up being (no water, little food, limited clothing etc) it ended up being a great trip and the lakes are absolutely breathtaking. i defiantly recommend a visit but make sure you have your own car.

i also just got back from a fun weekend in Quito, the capital city. With two friends, I went and visited a company that makes dehydrated fruit amongst a variety of other products which was a great learning experience and a super fun day. they are growing a fruit called Uvillas, in english its something like Physalis

Later in the evening we ran a 10k race (La Ruta de Las Iglesias/the route of the churches) which goes through the old town and past 11 different churches. We ran this race last year as well and had such a good time we decided to do it again. This time however we were "Team America" with decorated shirts and obnoxiously colored red, white and blue running tights. I finished in 14th place for my division in 53 min, 10 minutes faster than last year! whoo whoo!

next weekend i am headed to the beach with 2 friends from the Municipial to watch the whales migrate. i am super excited and my friend and i have been trying to plan this trip since i got back. we are both very happy that the weekend is finally so close! well this is short but hopefully it means more people will read it and not intimidated by its length! I hope you all have a great labor day weekend!! love love.

ahh home again

well my trip home has come and gone but i am happy to say that those 3 weeks were as glorious and incredible as i was anticipating. my trip was so great that i have decided to forever live abroad and solely vacation in the united states; but hopefully i'll have a job that will allow me to vacation more frequently then my current situation.

i've been back in ecuador for about a week and half now and its almost as if i never left. i have great memories and stash of great american foods to last me a few more weeks but life here has easily returned to its normal flow. i actually did a great job of planning my vacation time because i arrived back just in time to kick off the two weeks festivals of Bucay and i came back during finals week at the high school. My sitemate Alice kindly played substitute teacher in my classes and even wrote up a final exam for me to give the students. so last week and this week there has been limited work with the municipal, which consists of basically attending the festival's events and this week the high schools are all on vacation. two more additional weeks of vacation? yes please and thank you.

The good news is, actually i hate to say this in the case of jinxing ourselves, but i feel that we are finally making headway with the dehydrated banana project. a few weeks before i came home, my boss from peace corps in quito came down to do his annual visit/check up and it proved to be very beneficial. he helped to get my counterpart and i lined up to see eye to eye on things and now my counterpart and i are working on filling out a grant for small business start ups through peace corps. we're hoping to have it completed by friday so that we can get production started asap. i'm excited that maybe this banana project will turn out after all!

lets see, what else do i have on my plate for upcoming events...oh this trimesters theme is going to be geography. one because i love it and two because then we can include peace corps #1 favorite project: World Map! i helped another peace corps volunteer with this project almost a year ago and decided i defiantly wanted to do one in my community but its a simple project of painting a map of the world and labeling the countries which will be great to do with my students.

also some exciting news from cumanda, last week 4 men attacked a women as she was leaving the bank and robbed her. she had withdrawn $4000 and was in the process of transferring the money to another account in a different bank. The police caught 2 of the men and placed them in the local jail and left to go seek out the remaining two. while the police were gone, a gathering of Cumanda-ians went to tantalize the robbers who where just as rude in response and ended up upsetting the people so they decided to punch holes in the wall of the brick building in order to beat them. when they couldn't get the prisoners out they decided what better thing to do then to smoke them out? so through the wholes they managed to make in the walls, the cumandaians threw in gasoline and a tire lit on fire. One of the inmates managed to crawl out of the hole and ran into an abandoned shack down the road while the other inmate ended up suffering 2nd and 3rd degree burns and was in very unstable conditions by time he made it to the medical center (wont even call it a hospital). they ended up removing the other inmate from the shack once the police arrived and he was sent off to jail in another town. hopefully one that had more secure walls. but anyways moral of the story as stated by the local news broadcast is that if you steal in cumanda, you'll probably get burned.

as i mentioned earlier, bucay is having its festivals right now. i'm having a little deja-vu because it was last year at these same fiestas that i had my first "night out" with my neighbors and it was funny/weird to see how much has changed.

welp, its lunch time and i am craving my bowl of soup so its time to get going! thanks for catching up on my blog and i'm sorry for its delay :) love.

mayo mayo mayo

I thought that April was one of the slowest months to ever pass, but now I realized I may have been wrong. I think that May is going to go by even slower…June (and my trip home) just can’t come any faster.

Its not that things are going badly, they’re actually going really well and I am really happy but I feel like as if its 4 pm on a Friday afternoon and I just want my weekend to be here already!

I had a pretty fun experience a few weekends ago that I’ll share with you guys. I had a swollen lymph node (two actually but one giant) growing on my neck for about 2 weeks and it continued to get larger and larger and more painful I decided to call the Peace Corps doctor. He asked me to email a picture of it (which I then shamelessly posted on facebook) and the next day he called me and told me I needed to come up to Quito to get it checked out. So I scheduled an emergency trip up to Quito, spent all day in the medical office getting tests done. The doctors measured my growth and stated that since it was over 2 cm in width they needed to perform all possible tests. I mean you name it and I got tested for it. Had my ears checked, blood drawn, went to another medical office and received a TB test, went to the hospital got an X-ray done, pap smear etc etc. It was a stressful day. And as for the results, well the doctors informed me my white and red blood cells were normal (our biggest concern) and as for the million other tests performed they’ve yet to inform me on the results (more points for peace corps…) but the lump is almost gone and no longer visible. Thank goodness for I was getting to be worried that Rachel would kick me out of her wedding party with a lump like that.

Anyways after spending the entire day in Quito in the office, I went with some friends to a national park where we camped (I had planned ahead, brought along the tent), spent 2 hours trying to make a fire with damp wood and foot tall grass and slept under the stars. In the AM we got up early made some yummy oatmeal and headed out on a hike, which turned out to take us 9 hours up and down. But what an incredible view! The hike was glorious and moderately difficult. The last 40 minutes required scaling rocks with our hands and feet but made for a great picnic spot once we were on top.

This past weekend was a good friend’s birthday here in site. I had made his family an Easter bunny cake which I ended up not giving to him because it got destroyed I told him I’d make him another cake for his birthday instead. Well, with the aide of bad translation, he proceeded to assume that I just offered to provide the cake for his 60+ guests birthday party. Uhh…not what I had in mind. But I did a little cheating, bought 4 boxes of Betty Crocker Double Chocolate cake mix in Guayaquil, baked two boxes together for the bottom layer and the last two individually and made him a 3 layered chocolate cake infused with caramel layers, topped with vanilla frosting and chocolate covered strawberries. Only had a mild heart attack while I was stacking the third layer one and it started to crack. Next time I’ll cut the layers flat before stacking them. But the cake was a hit, I got many questions on how I made such a magnificent thing and the best I could tell them was “it's a baker’s secret” aka Betty’s secret…

This weekend I am planning on doing some more baking. I found a recipe for mango coconut bread so I want to make a loaf for Melita for Mother’s Day. Tomorrow (Friday) for Mother’s Day with the Women’s Group of Cumanda, we are hosting an afternoon potluck type thing for all of the elderly women of the community. Friday night a Peace Corp volunteer is organizing a welcoming potluck for all the new Ag and Natural Resource (What I was one year ago!!) volunteers in Guayaquil. Saturday am there is a 5k for Mother’s day in Guayaquil which I am doing and Saturday afternoon with the Women’s basketball team we’re going to a neighboring town to play a game. The Sports League president of the neighboring has specifically asked that the “Gringa” show up and play on Saturday. Does he think that his team has someone that can challenge my abilities? Please…ok maybe it has been about 4 weeks since I shot a basketball, maybe I should go practice a bit.

We’re now in our 6th week of classes I believe. I am really enjoying teaching. I have about 60 students (in 4 different classes which is perfect) and they’re all females with great attitudes and are very forgiving with my poor Spanish abilities. They laugh at me, I laugh at me, and then we playing an intense round of hangman.

Welp speaking of which I have some classroom plans to fill out (I have to fill out a form EVERYDAY of what we’re going to do in class for that day) and I’m managed to not fill them out for two weeks. Oops.

I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend and that you all send many thanks and love to your mothers. I thank my mom for teaching me to be independent and to constantly challenge myself, which have allowed for me to be here miles away from what I know and love. She says she shot herself in the foot years ago by always taking us on trips and instilling in us the love and adventure of travel; but that's not true ‘cause she knows if I weren’t here, I’d be at home driving her up the wall. So for the sake of both our sanities, thank you Mom.

As always, I wish you all my best and we’ll be seeing you sooooon. Love love.

april showers

homemade carrot cakes :)

They say that here April is the rainiest month of all the year. Its actually pretty incredible how the weather here has its variations. These days I wake up to crisp clear mornings (which are a rarity here) and it will be a beautiful clear hot day until mid afternoon when the clouds roll in and we’ll have thunder, lightening and torrential rains that cause flash floods and force you to stay put where ever you are. Rains that bring the kids outside giggling and cheering, rains that knock out power poles and cell phone towers, rains that cleanse the street of dirt and trash (I’ll just pretend like I don’t know it all goes flowing into the river) and rains that bring me fresh, cloud free mornings.

We just finished the Easter celebrations. Easter is obviously a bring holiday here because of the huge majority of Catholics. Friday morning and evening there was a procession through town for the Stations of the Cross. I went with a neighbor friend Friday am and 3 hours in the blistering sun and 2 water bottles later we went to her house to eat a very traditional soup that they only make during Easter called “Fanesca”. It is a delicious, incredible soup and is made with 12 grains, each grain as a representative of an apostle. Last year at this time I was in Cayambe and with my host family we made Fanesca and they must have ruined me because the Fanesca here in Cumanda is way different and not nearly as good as it was in Cayambe! I was mildly disappointed but it was still delicious. Just goes to show how there are many faces and very distinct characteristics in tiny, little Ecuador.

The Monday after Easter is always the day when classes for the schools start up again. So being as how I recently agreed to teach 12 hours at one of the local high schools here I had to attend the “open ceremony” yesterday where they presented me to all of the students and parents. After introducing me, the director asked if I would like to share a few words. A typical Ecuadorian would’ve said yes, taken the microphone and obnoxiously ranted for about 10 minutes expressing their gratitude, their expectations, their life story etc but me, being me, hating public speaking and unprepared to give a thank you speech in Spanish, I said no and turned down the offer to speak. The director then continued to say that while I speak minimal Spanish, big words and formal greetings was something I lacked and it was for this reason I kindly declined the offer. She speaks the truth that lady.

Easter Sunday I had the opportunity to call home while the whole family was having Easter lunch at my parent’s house. It was great to be able to be able to talk to family members that I haven’t spoken with in over a year!

And as most of you know my family and a few friends recently visited me. We had an incredible trip here and I am so impressed by their dedication and patience. It was truly an honor to have all of them here, to share my daily life with them and also for them to share so much with my community. They left an incredible impact on the people here, I have had so many strangers come up to me on the street and ask me where my giant friends went and when they are coming back. Their presence here is a perfect example of how actions speak louder than words. Endless thank you’s to all of you that made this trip a possibility.

Can you believe that I am at my halfway mark here? I cannot believe how fast time has gone and even though I’m only halfway, that I still have another year, I know that this year is going to fly by. I have spent my first year struggling, learning, giving everything I can climbing up this mountain of nonsense and now its time to enjoy the descent (ha if only it were that easy).

Oh and for more exciting news, you’ll never guess what the Easter Bunny brought me this year. A beautiful new tent!! The camping trips are already in planning. In two weekends my friend and I are going camping to check out a 3 day hiking trail, which we have planned to attack in May. Time flies when you’re having fun…

Welp, that's about it from here. Sorry about the delay of updates. I’ll try and keep you updated between all of my camping trips. Take care and remember, it's a two person tent so there’s always room for one more!!

March march march

Well I am once again lonely, after a great few weeks of Stefanie being here, she has finally returned home. But the good news is she says that she wants to come back and live in Quito so my fingers are crossed!

The past few weeks haven’t really seen much work, just a lot of fun rather. The last weekend in February we celebrated our 1-year mark of arriving here in Ecuador. A good handful of us got together in a little town outside of Quito for the weekend and celebrated our accomplishments thus far. It was a great weekend and a lot of fun to see some faces and catch up others’ experiences and stories. That was Stefanie’s and mine’s last travel for the Wednesday following we packed up and dropped her off in Guayaquil to go home. So sad.

In the time that she was here though, I did manage to continue working with the students and the chickens. It’s been a lot of fun getting to work and “play” with the students. They really are great kids; when they show up that is. It's the same group that we’re hoping to start the beekeeping project with and I finally figured out how I can apply for funds so I am super excited that the project might actually have a chance of making it from our heads into reality. The funds are called partnership funds and I have to apply and if I get approved, they basically open up an account that anybody (NGO’s, USAid, friends, family etc) can donate any amount until I reach the amount that I applied for. I’ll keep ya’ll posted…

The best part about this past week was when my counterpart asked me to type up our business plan for the dehydrated Oritos project and while I was confused as for why he wanted me to re-type this 30 page manual when its obviously been typed and printed before thus easily located on a computer somewhere, I thought I would be nice and please him and do the work anyways. Turns out, I need to clean my ears, because he asked me to TRANSLATE the plan into English (which while typing it in Spanish, I realized having a copy of it in English would be really beneficial). I swear though he never said to translate it or put it in English. Hmm no wonder he thinks I’m incapable of anything….

Well, that's about it from here. These next two weeks I’ll be working on retyping the business plan, in English this time, and anxiously waiting for my parents’ arrival!! Current countdown is 11 days. Guess I better get started on their Spanish-English cheat sheet I promised them.

Hope all is well, wish you all a very merry March!! Love love.

lets see where life has taken me...

Well once again, its been way too long since I’ve updated but I have to say that this time its only partially my fault. I did type up a blog about a week ago with some good stories for ya’ll but I only saved it to my flash and when I went to post it on a computer with internet, it told me that the flash had a virus and was unable to open the documents…thus I have managed to ruin flash #7. Lets hope #8 will have more luck…

So as of recent things have been a party here. The last week of January was a week of fiestas for the city of Cumanda. I was lucky enough to be forced to parade with the group of wives of the Municipal members (because I am my counterpart’s chosen representative) on the final day of the fiestas. It was fun except for the fact that I had to wear a creamy orange blouse/more like suit jacket with shoulder pads with black dress pants that sat embarrassingly high on my hips, we paraded at 9 am, it rained on us (weren’t allowed to use umbrellas), we had to watch 3 more hours of parading from the judges platform, had to sit through 2 hours of “meetings” in a boiling hot, air-condition-less room and didn’t get to eat until 4:30 in the afternoon. So when I say it was fun; well I hope you can catch my sarcasm. It was as if I had a real job and was expected to be a grown up…not fun.

Another reason why I was so irritated about the parade, it happened to take place on the same day that our doctors would be in Guayaquil to give us our required Swine Flu Vaccinations. Obviously I couldn’t miss the parade so I had to travel to Cuenca (6 hours to and 6 hours back) the following Tuesday merely to receive a damn shot. I was not happy. But I have to say it was well worth the trip merely because I finally met my one true love, Maria Jose, my new, precious, smelly, 8-week-old kitten that has a fascination with peeing on my shoes.

Two weekends ago I celebrated my birthday and two days before I received the greatest birthday present ever; a visit from my super great incredible friend Stefanie. We have had a great time reconnecting, catching up, traveling, drinking beers and just hanging out. For my birthday, we have had the fortune to celebrate all weekend long. On Friday night after the ritual service in the Temple with Melita, they surprised me with an ice cream cake and a Melita dedicated a few songs to me. Saturday (actual Birthday) Stef and I went for a hike-jog in the am and then went to the market with friend Jorge to buy meat and veggies for the BBQ on Sunday. Afterwards we went back to the house, relaxed, returned to Jorge’s house for a special birthday dinner that he made for me and 3 other friends. Stef and I then went back to my house where friends Alice and friends were waiting for us with Margaritas and tacos. We then headed to my friends bar to celebrate the night away. On Sunday we all meet up around noon, packed everything into the back of a pickup truck and headed to this awesome local pool that provides a free covered area to BBQ and eat. So we spent the afternoon grilling meat, chicken, sausages, shrimp, potatoes and green bananas while throwing buckets of water (carnaval game) and drinking beer.
All in all, I had a great weekend and couldn’t of imagined a better way to spend it. Although I did wake up Saturday morning craving Mom’s Birthday breakfast…


I spent this the entirety of this past week in Riobamba attending a Beekeeping conference. I went with a professor from the local high school because we’re hoping to start up a beekeeping project with the students this following school year. She’s the same professor that I am helping with the chicken project. Which is a lot of fun but slightly frustrating because I am just supposed to chaperone the students and help them clean, feed, care for the chickens but since they’re in summer vacations they haven’t been doing a very good job of showing up. So it basically turns into Amanda and the chickens project.

This past weekend was Carnaval and it was a weekend of pure craziness. Technically Carnaval starts after Epiphany in January and by “start” I mean it allows people to start “playing carnaval” which is only played by getting people wet with buckets of water and water balloons. So the past few weeks I have had the occasional balloon tossed in my direction which was fun and didn’t bother me but I think that today is the first day that my clothes have remained dry since Saturday. Kids and adults went crazy. It was literally impossible to walk down the street without getting water thrown at you. But Stef and I took it into our hands and used my third storey apartment to our advantage and spent afternoons just throwing water balloons at cars and pedestrians. Sunday afternoon a friend invited us to her family’s pool and the instant we arrived, they covered us in buckets of water and face paint. We spent the day swimming in our clothes, tossing water and dancing. It is crazy here how they go all out and it is a lot of fun, but I am glad that it is over!

These upcoming weeks have in hold for me continuing to take care of the chickens, I’m starting an Tourism based English class in the evenings, working on finding a good week to organize my girls basketball camp and getting ready for my parents visit in March. There have been so many people that have already invited my parents over for dinner, how they want to have a big BBQ or kill a chicken and roast it, it makes me even more excited for them to be here, to see where and how I live!

Well I hope that all of you are doing well, hope you had a great Valentine’s Day and have made your promises for lent! Take care. Love love.

January...

Today as I was sitting on my roof trying to digest the 2 lbs of rice I’d just consumed for lunch, I was looking at all the rooftops lined with clothes and I started to think how I am going to miss seeing them. What I once saw as a chore has now become a game for me, guessing when I get my clothes washed, when will it be sunny enough, how long can I leave them out, can I make it back to the house before the rain starts? Sometimes I win and sometimes I fail miserably but I just have to laugh and try again tomorrow. Work is sort of the same way too…

Two weekends ago a friend invited our women’s basketball team to come and play a game of soccer at his farm because they were hosting their annual party. I realized its been quite a while since I played soccer last but it was a lot of fun playing even if we lost. We drove about 45 minutes outside of town, crossed three rivers and traveled through acres of banana trees to find a well manicured football field, pond and open aired bamboo huts. We played, we lost, we ate, we drank and we danced. A great Saturday in my mind despite the loss and dancing.

One of my new years resolutions (there are many for this year) was to be in better contact with my counterpart. This past week we attended a conference together about how to make successful business plans which was very interesting and I shocked him when I added my personal opinions to the discussions. I know I may speak Spanish like a 3rd grader but I’m not an idiot, I do know some things, like how to do a strengths and weakness analysis.

Also another one of my goals (many of these as well) for starting the year off was to meet with the director of the high school and I finally did that last week. Turns out you do have to have some sort of credentials to teach high school classes but they have a bunch of other projects they have asked me to help out with. Later today I am going with a professor to see where we are going to start an organic garden and worm beds with the students. The professor that I am going with also worked with an Ag. Volunteer that was here 5 years ago so he already has an understanding of how the program functions and in what ways I can help. Tomorrow I am meeting with another professor to learn about their chicken raising process and she has asked me to research what types of value added projects we could do with the chickens and eggs. So if you have any suggestions, ideas, send them my way.

Last weekend I made attempt number one to buy canning jars in Ambato, a city that's 5 hours away. I traveled halfway and stayed the night with a friend and we were going to continue together the next morning to this town but plans got cancelled because the president made a surprise visit to Ambato in order to try and prevent strikes with the indigenous people. So this coming weekend will be attempt number 2.

English classes have now come to an end for the school year. I gave the final exam last weekend. The exam was about 80% of the questions I used on the pre-exam and then gave them bonus points if they could draw and label 5 parts of the human body. I had an average of A-‘s.

So the fiestas from Christmas and new years finally came to an end last week. But this Friday began the fiestas of Cumanda. So once again, no one is working and all the kids are on summer break. The fiestas of Cumanda end the 27th I think and then Carnival starts the 14th for a week. I seriously believe they are “in fiestas” more than they are “out of fiestas”. I tell you, it's a good life here.

Ok that's about it from here. Keep your fingers crossed that attempt #2 at locating canning jars is a better success. Take care. Love. And Happy Martin Luther King Day!

a great vacation

As of yesterday I have officially returned home to a hot and muggy Cumanda; such a treat after spending the week shivering in Florida. The trip was a great trip, full of delicious foods, wine that doesn’t come from a box and wonderful people. The transition back was fairly easy; the hardest part was having a numbered amount of meals and soo many different restaurants and things to eat! Defiantly could’ve used two stomachs for this trip.

The week before I left for Florida (Christmas week) was spent handing out little baggies of goodies to the school children. Since I live in Cumanda and sometimes work in Bucay (two different “towns”) I got to help deliver the bags for each community. Also Alice and I took it upon us to make over 300 Christmas cookies and handed out small boxes to our friends to share some of our Christmas traditions and to show how thankful we are for their help and patience. Why does baking dozens and dozens of cookies seem fun until you actually start doing it and then it just turns into work?

It's a new year and my work calendar is empty. I'm headed to meet my counterpart in a little bit so hopefully he’ll have some suggestions of things I can work on. One can always be hopeful. The school year for the students ends at the end of January so I’ll continue with my English classes and I also have a personal goal to meet with the director of the high school here in Cumanda and ask for an hour time slot to teach a basic geography/social studies class for the upcoming school year. Hmm I wonder if I need any type of credentials to teach a high school class.

I’m also hoping to host a basketball camp for the girls here in February so I should probably start planning activities, funding, locations etc in order to make that a successful week.

This morning I woke up to clear skies (rarely ever happens in the mornings here) and birds chirping in my own bed that is lined with freshly washed and dried American sheets. I can’t help but believe it’s going to be a good year. LOVE.