Week 2 Stories

***These 2 updates are for you, Mandi...... smarty pants!***

5.5.11

                Let’s see… I actually have things to talk about this time…they aren’t that exciting, but I’m still going to tell you about them anyways…. Ha.ha.

So when I was packing up all my stuff and moving to Cuenca I didn’t have any room in my suitcases for the 2349293479237 books I acquired during training…. Not to mention they weigh like over 20lbs, no joke. So a PCVL (Peace Corps Volunteer Leader) offered to bring them to me when her and her mother came to visit Cuenca within the first couple weeks of me being here. How sweet, right?!? She sent me a Facebook message saying she was in Cuenca and would leave my books at the front desk on Tuesday as she was leaving to do touristy things early in the morning. So Tuesday I left work to go pick them up…. My books were 10 blocks down and a couple blocks over at a hotel, and all downhill. I finally found the hotel, grab my books, and put some in my book bag and the rest I left in the bag to carry. At this point the rain clouds are coming in, I have like a billion pounds of books I’m carrying, and the way back is ALL up hill… awesome… it starts to sprinkling so I start hauling ass because I don’t want all my books ruined. I get about 7 blocks away from work and the sprinkle turns into a decent drizzle…. Greaaaatttt, start walking even faster.

Now I’m about 3 blocks away from work and I hear someone say my name. At first I don’t look around because who the hell knows me in this city? No one. Then I hear it again, so I look around. It’s my host brother, in the car, stuck at a traffic light!! PERFEECCCTTTT, I say hello and immediately throw, and by throw I mean hastily give them to him, all the books in my hand at him and say, “take these!” (In English, oops, but I was in a hurry and not thinking) He was like “what are all these books?” (in Spanish) ***ha, he thought those were a lot??? Haha, sucka!*** I then take off my book bag and give him the other 10 that were in there. His eyes were as big as quarters, but he didn’t say anything, he just took them and put them in the passenger seat. Oh and I also gave him the head of lettuce I had bought at the market on the way to pick up my books. Then light turned green, he wanted to go but was sitting there waiting for me to throw more stuff at him, I told him that was all and off he went. As he was driving away I yelled thank you! BTW(by the way)- this all happened in a matter of about 15 seconds.

                Oh man, did I mention that the look on his face was priceless as he drove off??? Hahaha. He totally had the “’What the hell just happened’ look on his face”, it was great! How lucky was that encounter??? Now I didn’t have to haul all of those books on the walk back to the house for lunch, SCORE!

                When I returned for lunch he was at the table telling Marcia (my host mother) this story. They were laughing pretty hard… as was I. And that’s that story. Next.

                My host mother had a plastic surgeon over for lunch yesterday for a marketing thing. She is hoping he will refer patients to her after they get surgery (She does something along the lines of “after plastic surgery” massages). She went berserk over him coming over… both with food and cleaning the house. Actually, it was more like she barked orders (in a nice way, of course!) to the lady that cooks and cleans for us to do all these things… put this away, take that to her room, put more cucumbers on the salad, sweep the floor 5 minutes before he arrives, is the dressing ready?, did you put ONLY salt on the meat and nothing else?, how do the beans look?, is the fire pit ready?... the list goes on. Oh and she did all of this while in her cute little outfit and heels. She’s so cute! (**Sidenote** the other day we went walking after lunch because we were so full and she wore her heels then too. Too funny**) She goes to pick him up at 2, they return, we all eat, chat, and be merry. Lunch turned out great. All the food was delicious!! Except the chicken stuffed artichokes that we forgot about in the oven. The oven was off, no worries, we just forgot to put them on the table. We had them with our lunch today, they were sooo good. I actually think they were jalapeños, but I could be wrong.

                Hmmm…. What next? Oh, I can tell you about the 80-100 person meeting that we didn’t go to today. Haha. Sooo for the last week everyone in the org was talking about this meeting we had in a community about 2 hours away on this upcoming Thursday. Well, we didn’t go to this “important” meeting. I was totally bummed. End of story. I will spare you the details. But I did get to lay out in the sun since we didn’t go to the meeting J Next story.

                Yesterday evening, my host mom gets home around 7:30pm, yells “Heeeeettthhhheerrrrreeee” from the kitchen like she always does when she gets home from somewhere and see that I’m in my room. But this time she actually comes into my room and starts talking so freaking fast!! I have no idea what she is saying, but I can tell she wants me to come into the kitchen, so I put some shoes on and into the kitchen I go. There is an edible arrangement sitting on the table made of fruit and chocolate covered strawberries.

                Turns out there was a “Mother’s Day” party at the TV station where she advertises her juices every week. They threw a party for all the mothers. There was cake, wine, and coffee at the party. And they all got edible arrangements as a thank you for coming. So we all sat around the table eating it, taking pictures, and laughing. She was soo excited about this gift, it was so cute! I asked her if edible arrangements were common here and she said no. That explains her excitement. And before we ate, she took a picture of me pretending to eat the fruit bouquet, she thought it was hilarious that I was pretending to eat it. After we were all done eating it, she spread all the empty sticks on the kitchen table and one of her sons took a picture of us acting like we were so tired and full. Pretty funny. I’m so mad I didn’t break my camera out, oh well, I have 2 years to snap memories J

                Then we went walking like we do most evenings, but this evening she was walking way faster than her normal turtle speed of a pace, haha. After we’ve been talking for awhile I mention how much faster she is walking tonight compared to every other night. She comes back with, “I think it’s the 4 glasses of wine I drank today.” Hahaha. I then told her she should drink wine every day before we go walking. Haha.

Until next time,

Heather