Independence

Community minga making fundas to plant cacao trees
Ants... The ants go marching two by two...

Organic pesticide
The garden at the middle school

The kids at the middle school playing cats in the craddle, brings back memories

A successful backyard garden of a neighbor in town

6-25

Today we worked on the elementary school garden in my town. It was really great to see all the kids working hard and getting excited about planting their vegetables. Just in one morning a fence was built to keep out the chickens and animals, we made seed boxes to start the seeds, the kids dug up plots for the gardens and broke up the soil and then finally we planted the seeds! It is very exciting to have this up and going and I hope the garden will be a sustainable community project for the future. I am hoping get a group of students together and maybe have some type of agriculture or gardening club after school.

Other than that my house is now having many repairs done right now. Considering the rent will only be $30 a month the fix up costs are sure hefty! Any how it is very exciting to be getting a place of my own in the next month and I can’t wait to get settled. I must say I really love staying here with my family and am not in too much of a hurry to move out, especially when I know I will have to face the snakes, bats and rats alone in night!! Anyhow, I can’t wait, and I think I am going to paint the outside yellow, so bland…though this is a hard decision since it may be the only time in my life where it will be acceptable to paint my house pink, neon green, purple or orange.

I also finally started teaching English at the elementary school in my community. It ended up going very well though it was quite a challenge since there were 37 students. I hope to figure out a way to focus my lessons on other topics such as health, environmental issues, agriculture or logical thinking while teaching a bit of English in the meanwhile.

It seems like project related things are starting to pick up, and I am just trying to figure out which things to focus my time on. I am also getting better at firing down the many marriage proposals and explaining, that I do not have any children.

Next weekend is the 4^th of July! And ironically the 3^rd is the independence of the three towns around me, including Esmeraldas and Santo Domingo! Apparently they have quite a few festivities for the weeks surrounding this date, yesterday I saw a parade in procession, and I hear next weekend there will be bull fights, the reigning of the queen, parades and a horse parade as well. I will say people sure know how to party here!