I'm Baaaaack, Remember Me???

9.15.11

Believe it or not I’m still alive and kickin’ it. Did you miss me? I missed me. Haha. It’s been stone ages since I’ve written… I apologize, but things just got really crazy, really fast, for 5 or 6 weeks. But I’m done traveling and my schedule has calmed down so I will be updating regularly again.

 A quick overview of what I’ve been up to: 6 weeks ago I moved into an apartment, the week after that I went to a weeklong community tourism conference in Quito, then came back to Cuenca for a week and bought everything I needed for my apartment; the week after that my boyfriend came to visit for 2 weeks. The day he left I went to Quito for a week long Reconnect conference with my training group and the weekend after that I went to Quilotoa. And the last 2 weeks I’ve just been getting back into the swing of things, catching up with family and friends, my Ecuafriends/coworkers, going out of town for work meetings, doing PC work, etc. Crazy, busy schedule, right? Yeah, I’m glad to be done traveling for a while.

I really don’t even know where to begin, this is going to be the longest post ever. So the whole moving into my apartment thing was crazy. My apartment came furnished, but didn’t come with ANY kitchen appliances. So I bought a fridge, a gas stove with a small oven, and all kitchen supplies including pots and pans. I absolutely LOVE the location of my apartment. I live in downtown Cuenca and can walk almost everywhere. It’s amazing. The apartment itself is really small and pretty old, but whatever, I’m in Peace Corps it’s not supposed to be magnificent. I even have a descent sized balcony overlooking the street. It’s great. And it is REALLY nice having more independence. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed my host family, but after living with 2 host families for a total of 6 months, I was ready to be on my own, cook my own food, and not have anyone to report to J

Okay, let’s see, what’s next? Oh right, the tourism conference. There were 15 PCVs and their counterparts that attended the conference. It was actually put on very nicely by a professional company. We learned a lot. It’s always different for my organization though because we are so developed with tons of projects going on. Other Volunteers just work with a person in the community without a structured organization. When the presenters were giving examples they would always refer to my organization, it was pretty cool. I will save you all the borrowing details of ALL the activities I did, but just know that it was really interesting and Angie and I both enjoyed it.

The week I came back from that conference was when I bought everything for my apartment. It came furnished, but the bedding was so old and nasty looking I refused to even sit on it. Haha. So I bought new sheets and a nice, thick thick blanket to go with it. Along with bedding I bought a refrigerator, a small stove, pots, pans, seasonings for cooking, plates, cups, Tupperware, silverware, and a little bit of food to last me the week. Among running around like a chicken with my head cut off I was going to work every day and attending meeting almost every night. Crazy week.

Then my boyfriend came for 2 weeks J It was so nice to have someone close to home come down to visit. We had a great relaxing time. Right when he got here we headed to the coast to relax, chill out, and enjoy each other’s company. We went whale watching one day…. O.M.G. was that awesome. We had whales jumping and swimming RIGHT next to our boat. It was incredible… besides the whole semi-sea sickness thing. Neither of us threw up, but at times it sure felt like breakfast was gonna come back up. Too much information? Sorry, I’m not apologizing. We also went to “Isla de la Plata” or known in English as ‘The poor man’s Galapagos’.  We took a walking tour of the island and saw tons of birds along with the blue footed boobies. It’s mating season so they were all in pairs doing this awesome romantic traditional dance that they do. Such a cool experience. After that we just relaxed and took it easy on the beach. OH GOODNESS, I almost forgot. We ran into large bottles of Budweiser for $1.25 so we drank that one night. Tasted a-maz-ing! Nothing like a nice taste of home.

 While we were on the beach we ate some amazingly delicious seafood. I’m pretty sure I gained 10 pounds in just one week. We ate very well J

After the beach we came back to Cuenca and did touristy things. We took a tour of Cuenca one day, walked around the outdoor and indoor markets. The rest of the time we just hung out and went out a couple nights.

You can find more pics from our vacation on my Facebook page.

So he left and the same day I had to travel to Quito for Reconnect with my training group. It was sooo nice being reunited with my group after being apart for 4 months. The whole point of Reconnect was to learn how to better work with your counterpart. All in all it was a great time. All of us volunteers went out every day after “training” to have a beer and catch up on everyone’s PC lives. Ohhh good times, good times.

Playing a game a Reconnect: we had to pick up peanuts with

a spoon that was attached to the end of the

bamboo stick.

My friends clearly wanted their picture taken. haha

Reconnect ended this past Friday and Saturday morning everyone went their separate ways, either back to site or on to their vacation spots. As for me, I headed to my vacation stop, the Quilotoa Loop. It’s a HUGE crater created from an erupted volcano years and years ago. In time the crater has filled up with water and the lagoon is blue and green. HERMOSA! (beautiful) So pretty.

Standing on the edge of the crater

 The lagoon

You can view more Quilotoas pics on my Facebook page.

So this past week I’ve finally gotten back into my normal Cuenca routine. Go to work in the morning and afternoon, and in the evenings I normally attend meetings or hang out with my Ecuafriends. I really missed my coworkers/Ecuafriends… so it feels great to being back and see them on a daily basis. When I walked into the office for the first time in 3 weeks they were all clapping and cheering! “Heather, it’s been years since we’ve seen you! How are you? Tell us about your vacation! We missed you.” And of course all that was accompanied by hugs and kisses! Love my friends J

So that’s it. That’s what I’ve been up to the past weeks. So what am I up to now? Well, let me tell you.

I’m finally going to start a project, wooohooo! Should be starting it on Monday. We are going to develop an English program for the communities we work with and somehow incorporate computers… I’m still not totally sure how the computer thing is going to work.  We are on Ecuatime here, folks, so this project isn’t going to go down for quite some time; therefore, I have plenty of time to figure it out. I’m not too worried about it.

We also want to create souvenir like things to sell in the communities we work with.

What else have I been up to? OHHHHH, I joined a gym. I’m finally going to shrink this rice belly and get back into the shape I was when I arrived in Ecuador. I already feel a hundred times better since I’ve moved out of my host family’s house. Don’t get me wrong, the food was delicious, but it’s time to get down to business.

My apartment is doing well. I still love it. The location is great and I LOVE being able to open my balcony doors and soak up the fresh air. Pics of my apartment coming soon.

I believe that is it for now. I’m excited to get down to business and start a project!

Just a little random story I’m proud of:

So within the past few weeks I’ve been getting comments on my Spanish. Many people have told me how good my Spanish is and that I even speak like a Cuencana (girl from Cuenca) which makes me feel great. I guess I should tell you now that people from Cuenca have a different “accent” then the rest of Ecuador. Everyone says people from Cuenca sing when they talk. I don’t really hear it too much anymore because I’m used to it. But they say it because many people have semi-high pitched voices and elongate their words when they talk.

When I was staying with a host family for my PC Reconnect this past week my host mother and sister kept commenting on how much I talk like a Cuencana and then giggle. So language is definitely getting better. I am by no means perfectly fluent, but I would say I’m mostly fluent.. about 70%. I still struggle with vocab words on a daily basis and struggle with tenses (past, present, future, subjunctive) when I’m telling a story, but I always seem to get my point across. Where are my high school Spanish teachers when I need them? Also, I’ve picked up a lot of Cuenca slang words and my Ecuafriends think it is cute and hilarious when I say it, so they are always laughing at me. There are always reasons to laugh at the gringuita!

Corny story, but it is always nice to hear people tell me my Spanish is so much better! :-)

Until next week

Heather

Conference, Olympics, and a Depressing USA loss

7.18.11

This past week was pretty laid back. Not much happened during the week. I just worked and that’s about it. “Work” is still considered going to the organization and sit on my computer all morning and most afternoons. Nothing is really poppin yet.

Friday I went to Loja, Ecuador with 3 coworkers for a conference. Doc had to speak at it so he took some of us with him. The drive is a little over 3 hours. We left at 6am in the morning. 6am is super early for me considering I sleep in until about 8 most mornings. Doc was the first one to speak at the conference. We got there a little late because there was some rain on the way down. To my surprise they were tapping their feet waiting for him. The conference actually started on time! Couldn’t believe it! The conference ended up being the same Organic Economic Law conference I went to a couple weeks ago in Cuenca, but on a smaller scale. It was only in the morning this time around. My coworkers talked and giggled through the whole thing. The conference ended with a perfomance by a mentally handicapped youth band. It was so amazing to see these kids sing, dance, and play instruments. Absolutely indredible!!

When the conference was over lunch was provided. It was delicious! Then everyone wanted to buy bocadillas, which is a traditional candy from Loja, so we walked to the market and bought some. On the way there Angie pointed out a sign hanging at a tienda that said chocobananas. Of course I couldn’t pass it up so we got all one! This time around they were 25₵ instead of 10₵, but were bigger AND had sprinkles on them, definitely worth it! As I was about halfway through my frozen chocolate covered banana I felt what was something similar to a hair on my tongue… I take a look at my chocobanana and there it was, a hair stuck in it under the frozen chocolate. G-R-O-S-S! But what did I do? Eat around it until I could pull the hair out and continue eating it. There was no way I was going to let a long, random, nasty, black hair get in the way of me and my chocolate covered frozen banana, folks. Not a chance. The ride back was fun; I snuck a quick 15 minute snoozer in and then chatted and laughed with everyone the whole way back.

Showing off my delicious (and hairy) chocobanana with sprinkles :)

One of the women with us brought her 10 month old son. He was the cutest thing ever! He loved blowing little bubbles. And for a while every time he did it, I did it back at him… With 95% less spit than him. Haha. He thought it was really funny. And then every time I would hold him as soon as he got in my arms he would blow bubbles. Or if he was in someone else’s arms and we made eye contact he would start to blow bubbles. It was so cute! And everyone got a charge out of it… and so did he. Oh, and his name is Tupac.

Tupac and I

 Isn't he adorable????

Here's the little munchkin with slobber all over his face

after blowing bubbles at me! Don't worry, I was

way less slobbery than he was! :)

Here are some pics from the conference:

Beautiful view on the way to Loja

Doc talking at the conference

Me at the conference. My coworkers love taking pics of me. 

Angie and I

Youth band. The girl that is kinda blurry was dancing her butt

off. She was having herself a grand ol time on stage. The other

2 girl dancers kept looking at her and following what

she was doing. It was so cute!

This was the commentator (sp?). His job was to

get the crowd pumped up. He was really funny. At one

point he said, "We are going to play ______ song. If you

don't like it, well, that sucks for you!" It was really funny!

Buying some bocadillas. They are delicious by the way!

Oh, and they snuck a pic of me while I was sleeping on the ride back.

Actually,more like 3 or 4, but I'm only going to share 1 with you.

When we got back to Cuenca some friends and I went to Angie’s house to make dinner and watch movies. We made grilled ham and cheese sandwichs, popcorn, and hot chocolate. Then we watched the movie/documentary called Earthlings… very appalling movie. Makes me never want to eat meat again.

Saturday was a big day. Some PCV friends and I were planning on having a Beer Olympics party. Cuenca vs. Santo Domingo cluster. To start it off we had a jaba (case) race. Here in Ecuador “cases” of beer are 12 beers in a crate so it wasn’t too bad considering there were 6 people to a team. After that we played team beer pong and then some flip cup. It was an all-around fun night full of delicious food and speaking English and meeting new PCVs from other omnibuses. At 1am I was ready to go home so I called a cab. In the cab I was dreaming of how comfy my bed was going to be and how excited I was to lay down and get a good night’s rest before the big game the next day. But when I got home there was a party at my house. WHAT??? Not once since I’ve been here has anyone in my family had people over. And the one night I’m exhausted and ready for bed there is a party at my house?? Of course I didn’t get to go to bed. Even if I wanted to my room is 2 steps away from the kitchen and it would have been impossible. So I stayed up chatting with my host brothers and their cousins that are in town. The party was a birthday party for a guy friend of my host mother. I finally got to bed around 4:15am.

Team Cuenca!

The enemies... grrr! ha

Sunday I got out of bed at Noon and met my PCV friends at a bar called Inca, which is owned by an American, to watch the Women’s World Cup finals. It was a good time, the whole bar was filled with nothing but Americans chatting and rooting on the good ol US of A!

At one point these two women and their dog sat behind the couch my friend and I were sitting on and started talking to us. The owner of the dog even found a seat for her tiny dog to sit on. It was really funny. We got to talking and this woman was completely in love with her dog. So much so that it was the only thing we talked about. Towards the end of our conversation she asked my friend and I if we liked dogs and then handed her dog over to sit with us. The dog ended up falling asleep on my lap and the woman thought it was the cutest thing. The dog’s name was ‘Khaki, like khaki pants.’ <-- that is what the woman said every time someone asked her the name of the dog. It got old really fast.

Anyhoo, after the depressing loss we went over to this guy’s house for a BBQ. We ate grilled veggies and some hamburgers. It was sooooo good!

And that was my weekend.

Finally, a little bit about work. Today at work Angie and David were telling me that in a couple minutes these two women were going to come to the office for a meeting and that we were going to start a program teaching English to the members of the 32 communities we work with. Basically, what Angie meant when she was telling me about it, was that I was going to be the one setting it all up and working with this woman from the States who teaches English here in Cuenca.

First of all, nothing like springing this on me 5 minutes before it happens. Second of all, I really do not have a desire to teach English, but whatever, it will give me something else to do besides sit on the computer all day. Nothing is planned yet, this all just came up today. We have to talk to community members and form classes first. Then figure out if we will be traveling to their communities to teach classes or if they will be coming to Cuenca. It will be a long process. There are lots of people from the communities that are interested, so hopefully this turns out to be successful J

Until next week,

Heather

WE WON, WE WON, WE WON!!!

7.12.11

Dang, was it a long weekend. All day Friday and Saturday I was at the FEPTCE community tourism(CT) conference of Ecuador. FEPTCE is the main community tourism org in Ecuador and all other CT organizations are part of FEPTCE. 200 people were confirmed to attend.  74 communities in total were to be present. The conference was here in Cuenca, and since La Red is the community tourism organization in Cuenca, we were in charge of organizing everything: projectors, agenda, hotels for the out-of-towners, food, entertainment, the whole works. So early in the week we were running all around getting everything together and finalizing the last few things.

Friday, the conference was supposed to start at 9am. That, of course, didn’t happen. People didn’t even start arriving until 9:30. Gotta love the punctuality of this culture J My coworkers didn’t even show up until 10 so I sat there reading and chatting to people I knew until they arrived. Friday morning was the most interesting part of the conference for me. A couple people got up and talked about the direction they wanted to go with community tourism, as well as things everyone needed to do better in order to be more successful. After that, the rest of the morning was basically about politics…. Borrrriiinngggg, mostly because I didn’t understand. Finally, it was lunch time around 2. My coworkers and I waited until everyone else went through the line before we ate. By the time everyone had went through the line it was 3:30 and I was starving. Well, they ran out of food…. But I did get a little bit to eat.  I shared a small plate of food with Angie around 4. We were all sooo hungry since we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Oh well, the food was enough to coat my stomach and last me until dinner time.

After lunch a handful of representatives from a few communities stood up and explained some community tourism activities they were doing in their towns. That part was definitely interesting, but hard to concentrate since I had been drilling my brain with Spanish since 10am that morning. It was finally time for dinner and some entertainment. No worries folks, I didn’t go hungry at dinner. There was plenty of food to go around. Woo hoo! When everyone was done eating the entertainment began. The people of the jungle sang and danced. It was soooo cool! I’ve been in the mountains since I arrived here, so I hadn’t seen these dances! It a great time. They did about 10 dances altogether. The young girls and boys, teenagers, and adults from the Amazon all danced. OH MY GOODNESS, the little girls were so adorable in their little beaded outfits!!!!  So adorable!!! The day was finally over at 10pm.

Pics of the Amazonian dances!

 Traditional head gear for the men in the Amazon

and the bead across their chests

In one of their dances they picked people out of the crowd

to dance. OF COURSE, they immediately picked out the

Gringa! I was someone in that crowd :)

Saturday, the conference was scheduled to start at 8am… do you think it started on time??? Absolutely not! It started at 10:30. Only 2 ½ hours late, not too shabby. Haha. Saturday, in all honesty I’m not really sure what they talked about. A bunch of different people got up to talk, but I didn’t understand much. It didn’t help that I was burning 100 CDs of information from the conference that we were going to hand out to everyone present. I finished right at lunch time.

***Side story: When I got home from the conference Friday evening I got to talking to my host mother because she was in the kitchen. I was telling her all about the day and then I told her how we ran out of food during lunch time so I didn’t eat much until dinner. So Saturday morning when she was dropping me off at the conference she stopped at a bakery and bought me 2 wheat rolls and a yogurt drink and told me that she didn’t want me to go hungry today. And if they ran out of food I would have something to eat. It was so cute***

Hannah helping me burn CDs

Celebrating that I'm done burning the CDs! haha

After lunch it was time to elect a new board of representatives for FEPTCE. Now this is a huge deal because FEPTCE is basically the “Department of Community Tourism” of Ecuador and a great honor to the people who are elected. First they selected four people who are not already part of the board to run the elections. Oh man, it was so unorganized. People were standing up giving their opinions on how the elections should be run. Some yelling and very unhappy with how things were being ran. Then they voted to see if everyone wanted to do a secret vote for all the positions or a communal vote where everyone just raises their hands and someone counts. Well, we must have voted for that like 3 times because people weren’t happy with the way they were being counted. Only one person from every community present was supposed to be voting, but everyone at the conference was raising their hands, and some people were getting mad. So someone finally had the bright idea to read the name of the communities one by one and have a representative of that community come sit in the middle where they had reorganized the chairs so the voters would be in the middle of the room and everyone else would be on the outskirts.

Then the voting began. They voted for president first, then vice president, and then for the five secretaries. Nominations were put out for president. One of the members of La Red (the organization I work for) from Saraguro, Loja, Ecuador was nominated. And HE WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wow, what a day it was for La Red! We were all clapping, cheering, and whistling! It was SO COOL to be a part of it! He will be the President for the next 2 years. Then we nominated and voted in the rest of the new board members. The board members were sworn in to their new positions, the new president said a few words, then the conference was over and a group from Esmeraldas, Ecuador performed songs and dances to end the day!

Pics of the group from Esmeraldas. We went out

dancing with them later that night!

Most everyone left, but about 30 people stuck around to have dinner. After dinner we went out to celebrate La Red winning presidency with all my coworkers and the dancing group from Esmeraldas. The President had to get back to Saraguro, unfortunately, but we danced and had ourselves a great time celebrating! Viva La Red!!! J

Ximena, Diego, and Angie

Celebratory drink for winning Presidency!!!

So that was my weekend. Didn’t do much on Sunday besides sleep in, Skype my family for a couple hours, and relax. I got to talk to my mom AND dad on Skype, so that was nice! I hadn’t talked to my dad in almost a month because he has been working out of town during the week and I don’t normally use the internet on the weekends.

Ximena and Maxhyx (Magix) at the conference

 Diego being Diego

Angie and I taking a break from the conference

You can find this grub in the Amazon of Ecuador.

People in the Amazon eat these things.... shiver. Mom,

how would you like to find one of these in your garden?!?!

Angie worked up the nerve to hold the grub. Then she

freaked out because the pincher things on its head pinched her!

Now on to Monday… So Monday I’m sitting at work and Diego comes down and asks Angie and I if we wanted to go to dinner to celebrate with Miguel. I was like, “What? Why are we celebrating for Miguel?” and then Diego proceeds to tell me that Miguel was leaving Tuesday morning to go live and work with his aunt in Quito for a couple years. Nothing like dropping the ball on us less than 24 hours before he leaves! Anyways, we all went to dinner and had a celebratory toast for Miguel! It was a good time! Te vaya bien, Migue! Le vamos a extrañar! (Have a good trip, Migue (his nickname)! We are going to miss you!)

Miguel's farewell dinner!!

All of us in front of the restaurant

Today (Tuesday) I was walking to work at 9:20am like any other day. Every morning I get to walk along River Tomebamba, my favorite part of Cuenca, to get to work. But this morning it was different. As I was approaching the point where I normally cross the street to walk along the river I could see a sea of people on both sides of the river, a fire truck with its lights on, and tons of cars parked along the street illegally. I finally get to where the action was. Everyone is looking towards the river. I see firefighters with a volleyball net type thing tied to a pole on each side of the river and hanging just above the water. It was barely touching the water and bouncing up and down from the crazy current. I finally find a spot to stand and worked up the courage to ask the guy next to me what was going on. He told me that there was a car accident in Cajas National Park (about 30 minutes away from Cuenca by bus) at 8am this morning and people were ejected from the car and into the water/river in Cajas. And the firefighters were waiting for the bodies to come down river so they could catch them… I was like what??? Did I just hear that correctly? I had to ask him to tell me again just to confirm that, in fact, I did understand correctly.

It’s been raining for 3 days straight, so what normally is a calm, shallow, beautiful river with large, smooth boulders, has been a nasty, muddy one with a super strong current the past few days. All I could think were bad thoughts, obviously…. There is no way these people are alive… the current is way too strong… one boulder to the head going through this current and they will be knocked out or dead… how the hell are they going to have the strength to grab on to the net when they come through?

Even with all the terrible thoughts going through my head I couldn’t help but stand there like an curious Ecuadorian and look up river hoping to see some alive people come barreling through the current. After a couple minutes I remembered I had my camera so I took some pictures. I wasn’t the only one taking pictures so I didn’t feel bad. I HAD to capture this moment. After a while I had to get myself to work so I moved on. I told my coworkers about it and that I wanted to go back to watch the rescue. There was only 3 of us there and we couldn’t leave the office unattended so I never did go back to check it out. When I went home for lunch at 1pm everyone was gone and the net was taken down. I have no idea if they found the bodies or if the bodies never came. The curiosity is killing me.

Blue net in the water

Looking up river

Just some of the people that were crowded around the river

Nothing is ever boring around here, that’s for sure. Something is always going on!

For example…. Mom and Dad you are going to kill me for forgetting to tell you this, sorry! So last week sometime I was walking back to work in the afternoon... I was CAREFULLY crossing the street near a round-about. There were tons of cars in the round about so the cars were stopped waiting for the round-about to clear so they could go. Since they were stopped, I crossed behind the 2 front cars. Well, as I was crossing the second car put his foot on the gas to rev his engine and inch up a little bit… I guess because he was mad I was crossing in front of him, I don’t know. I immediately looked to it with a glare thinking ‘you idiot, you see me crossing and you have no where the go. What the heck are you doing?’ He then hits the gas a little harder, and HITS ME!!!!!!! (It was not hard and I’m totally fine) I took my fist and smashed it into the hood of his car out of sheer automatic reaction. I was sooooo pissed! What an, excuse my language, ASSHOLE!!!!! He then raised his hands like it was MY fault that he hit me. I could have punched the old man! And there was NO WHERE for this man to go as I was crossing because the 2 cars in front of him were stopped!

When I got to work my heart was still racing and I told all my coworkers what had just happened. They were all concerned for me and asking me a million questions. They told me to sit down and got me some water J They are so great. And like I said, I’m totally fine. He barely tapped me, but it’s the point. I wish my Spanish was up to par so I could have cussed him out!!!!!!! Haha.

Until next week, much love from Ecuador!

Heather

P.S.- My mom pointed out to me that in my last blog I wrote ‘flower’ when it was supposed to be ‘flour’ like the cooking ingredient. I even proofread that entry like twice. haha, oops. She asked my sister if she caught the mistake and my sister giggled and said yes. So I’m sure all of you caught it, as well. I hope you laughed just like they did. I guess that’s what happens when you have been speaking Spanish for 5 months straight… Your English starts going down the drain J