Sitio!!

Coast :)

Province of Esmeraldas.....I will be visiting Sunday

Every Kids Dream…


So I was lucky enough to have cake for breakfast twice this week…I must be dreaming or something. I admit sometimes it still doesn’t feel real. After a quick chat on the internet with family and friends from home I always have to pinch myself back to reality when I’m finished. “Oh yeah, I’m doing Peace Corps and I’m in Ecuador right now!”

We are officially at the 3 week point. Everything has been wonderful so far and time has flown by, though I feel like I have been here forever. Next week we find out our site locations! NEXT WEEK! Then we head off two days later for a week site visit in which we will be living in our site with our host family. This is very exciting but also nerve wrecking because it will be the first time we are really off on our own. Up until this point Peace Corps has pretty much held our hand each step of the way, but at this point they are letting us go to see how we do on our own. This is the beginning of a two year journey and like any change it is exciting, and intimidating.


Today while we were walking back from town we passed by a chicken handing by a foot off a balcony. I personally thought this was a new quilt free method to killing a chicken instead of actually snapping it’s neck, but really it had wandered off the balcony and was tied so that it couldn’t get away. Just another ordinary day.

Home away from Home

Preparing for the big game

Working on our team banner, this is where we have our language lessons everyday on Don Edwin's farm

Champions

Puru Queen

So yesterday was the big soccer playoff game. Each training group elected a reir (queen) of the team in addition to creating a team chant (may i say rapping and rhyming in spanish is very difficult....). Our team was the Puru Chicas (solely girls) of Puruhantag. Our queen, Inez, was beautiful in her crown of roses and lovely red dress!....and I think our black and pink jerseys with the skorts were a hit too.

All in all, it was a great day, beautiful weather, great games played with the snowtopped Cayambe mountain as the backdrop, and wonderful people. I got to meet my big sister, who is wonderful. She was full of big sisterly advice for me while I was ravously running around packing back in the states and feeling a bit uneasy about the impending future.

After all the great food at the cookout, (which included baked chocolate chip cookies, you don't find those here) we had a surprise. An awsome couple with a daughter doing PC in another county, was in Ecuador visiting on vacation. They were kind enough to fill their suitcases with goodies from the states for those of us serving in Ecuador. They brought peanut butter (can't find that here), candy, books, and other goodies from home. The current volunteers also contributed to the goody stash with movies :) What a treat!

We were all choosen to pick a goody from the pile. When it was finally my turn all the peanut butter and most of the good movies were gone....but even better, there was a book by Garrison Keillor! Garrison Keillor always reminds me of my own dad and we had just been to see his show in DC this summer. I felt like this gift given through another parent, was in away a gift from my own and even though my family is faraway distance doesn't keep the people you love far.

Looking Back

Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World)

Yummy fruit selection we had at lunch, tomatoe de arbol, babaca, large lemons...(once during spanish class I incorrectly called said tomatoe de Abril...these are the daily comedies one goes through while learning another language)

From above a large monument, the city on the equator

Straddling the equator

A lovely meal during our first week of training (I love taking food pics)

Some of us in the dinning hall

In the airport on our way to Quito

Last morning in DC (and the US) for a while

More paperwork, med kit with everything you can think of and a lovely rose given to each of us from the current peace corps volunteers, it says "put your ecua-googles on"

This was a blog I started during training....I will go back and add pictures and more information about our first week in Ecuador in a bit.

February 20th:

^Arrival

Training has begun. I must say I am really excited to get training started and start learning some Spanish! The last few days have been jam packed with traveling, new faces and new places J

Right now I am in Cayambe, which is about an hour and a half north of Quito. We are up in the mountains in a very high altitude. Today we left Quito which is where we have been staying for the last few days and also the location of PC headquarters. In Quito we had a jam packed day full of shots, paperwork, signatures, language skills test, safety….and more! The city of Quito seemed very nice though we were not allowed to leave our hostel, they didn’t want to release the gringo newbies too soon hehe.

So, I am in the agribusiness program and have met about 4 or 5 others with this same job title. Our PC group is made up of 55 in total and about half are agriculture volunteers and the other half are environmental. Within these subsets each person has a more detailed title, which in my case is agribusiness.

This week all of us will be together in “the compound” in Quito. Brings me back to college memories, open door policy is key. Here we will have more information sessions and much more language sessions. We have all been split into language groups of about 5 people and they will evaluate our level after the week. We will then be split into groups of 5 according to our language levels. Each group will be placed into a town surrounding Cayambe and we will all be living with a host family there for training. I was really nervous about having the least Spanish background, but there are a few people who have never studied Spanish before. I’m not really sure where my language level is right now, but either way I am sure I will be learning a ton in the next few weeks/months/years!

Today we went to the Centro del Mundo (Middle of the World), which is where the equator goes through Ecuador. It was really chevere (cool)! We got to see the water swirl clockwise on one side and counter clockwise on the other. Apparently people weigh about 4 lbs less on the equator as well…good to know after these high carb meals! Our guide also did some other really interesting demonstrations and I balanced an egg on a nail and got a certificate! Sweeeet. After that we had a really great meal at the restaurant next door, and got to try some new fruits.

My New Abode

The market in our town

The girls in my group and I before meeting our host families

Home sweet home

This is my home for the next few months. I have already been here for a week and 3 days...hey whos counting? Time really has been flying by though.

I live in a small town (a long dirt road) right outside of Tabacundo, which is a smaller city outside of Cayambe. I am really liking it here so far. The weather is great! The mornings are a bit cold but when the sun comes out it really warms up. We are surrounded by majestic views of mountains and choclo fields (the corn variety grown here). These days I wake up around 5:30 am and get to see the sun rise every morning. Desayuno (breakfast) is at 6am since my host mom has to leave for her job at the flower plant at 6:30. Roses are one of the main industries in this area and there are about 100 rose plants near by. Both my mother and her two daugheters work at rose plants.

So my family is quite large and I am still not really sure how many people are living here. I have a mother (maria), father, two brothers and two sisters. One of the sisters is married with a son Ariel. This family lives on the second floor where my room also is located. I think an uncle also lives upstairs with his family...though I am still not fully sure about this. My room has a seperate enterance which makes it a bit difficult to figure out the family tree.

View outside my window of the family´s corn and potatoes. They also have chickens, a pig, guinea pigs (for eating of course) and a cat. Speaking of chickens tonight is the big day that the big white chicken will be killed...I hope Im not missing the big event!

This is where I wash my clothes, it is not that bad so far but it takes a lot of time and some good muscle.

Mi cama (bed)

Beautiful full moon outside my window. My mother gave me these roses from the plant, they are beautiful!

Link in spanish to the city outside my town:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabacundo

Getting Cultured

Trip to Salinas

Friday and Saturday we took our cultural trip to Salinas which is north of Cayambe in the province of Imbabura.

The day before I had finally gotten my peace corps cell phone and set my alarm for a 4:45am start only to startle awake Friday morning to the calling “Abril, desayuno (breakfast). Aye! Luckily I got myself ready and showered in a whopping 10 minutes and out the door about on time. This was the start of my “cultural weekend.”

We took a bus up to the city of Imbabura and from there took the tourist train up to Salinas. The train ride was beautiful! We weaved in and out of the amazing mountains and could see the Imbabura Mountain for most of the ride.

The city of Imbabura

Beautiful Train Ride

Once in Salinas we were given the cultural background of the community. It is a community of predominantly African decent. The areas main industry had been salt mining (which is where it gets its name) until it gained freedom. Now the main industry of the area is sugar cane. There are beautiful fields of sugar cane grown throughout the area. Sadly though, the farmers themselves still receive little profit from the sugar cane crop.

This is the final salt product once it has been burned and processed.

This mudd filter was used to test the salinity of if water to see if there was salt in the soil.

Mountain created during the mining of salt in the area. Salt is no longer a large industry in the area because the government controls the industry (i think, every was explained in spanish so I may have missed some important details)

Statue symbolizing the towns freedom.

Next culture moment….pig foot soup! Since being here I have been eating meat a lot. It’s definitely a change though I wanted to integrate myself into the Ecuadorian culture and no doubt meat is a large part of this. So I at my pig foot soup!

A group of women in the community came and did beautiful dances while we were at lunch and after eating a huge lunch (lunch here is always the largest meal, usually a soup and then a main course consisting of rice potatoes and meat) we danced the afternoon away as a local bang played for us. It was a ton of fun.

We then were split of to go to the families which were graciously having us stay with them for the evening. The families which we stayed with all lived together in houses connected to each other with a tienda store in the front.

Everyone was beat from a long hot day…

Once we settled into the room the curious children of course followed and proceeded to ask us all kinds of questions. One little girl gave Inez and sweet hair dew while they were enthralled with my camera and had to take tons of pictures. Later the two little girls took me hand in hand while we skipped through the community hand in hand. Hah I am quickly learning a lot about Peace Corps is being able to make a fool out of yourself, and that I think I am pretty good at!

We all had a wonderful large dinner of potatoes with mayo and ketchup (people put mayo on many things here!), rice of course and chicken it was time for the big futbol soccer match. I wouldn’t recommend eating a ton of rice and potatoes right before running around in a soccer game yikes! So it was the Peace Corps team vs. the chicas of Salinas (who I would imagine have played soccer about everyday of their lives, I can’t remember the last time I played soccer, maybe during recess in elementary school?) So we played an awesome game of soccer lead by our all star Lindsay and had a tied game! Surprisingly I did a lot better than I thought though I need to get myself back in shape (I try to balm my tiredness on the high altitude and plethora of ice creams and candies in Ecuador which I have been very much over indulging in!)

We wrap up cultural trip day two with a morning breakfast of chicken, peas, bread, fruit, and I think more rice. I also think I found my new favorite fruit! I had 5 today…hehe, though I forget the name. We headed off to see a women’s group that makes recycled paper and turns it into cards and other little gifts. We all got to take a stab at making that paper and we found it sure wasn’t easy.

Sweet Granadilla (passion fruit)

...Lets just say I had 5 in one day, love them!

We begun the journey back home with all 20 some of us piled in the back of a truck, it was great fun with beautiful views.