Cuenca Music Festival

6.27.11

These past few weeks I’ve gone to write I want to start by saying ‘where to start…’ These past few weeks and weekends have been pretty eventful and fun.

My weekend started on Thursday, basically. This past Thursday and Friday was the Cuenca Music Festival. Thursday, starting at 4, different Ecuadorian bands were playing at outdoor locations around or near downtown Cuenca. There were 42 bands that played all different types of music between the 2 days. Corpus Christy also started this past week so near central park there are tables and TABLES of vendors selling sweets… cakes, candy, cookies, you name it and it was there. I need to take a picture to really prove the amount of sweets there are. I have yet to visit these tables, I’m a little disappointed in myself.

After work Thursday my friends and I went to listen to some bands playing in the park. Every band played 3 or 4 songs then the next band would come on stage. The band of the night finally came on about 11:30. I don’t remember the name of the band, but everyone was pumped when they came on stage. I have to admit, they were really good. All bands around town finished up around the same time and the after party was electronica, aka techno, at an outdoor venue along the river. Here at electronica everyone faces the DJ and does a little two step dance thingy by themself. You couldn’t even really chat with your friends because the music was so darn loud. I did the two step until 2am when everyone was finally ready to leave. Mind you I am not a huge fan of techno, actually not a fan AT ALL, and I danced the two step non-stop to BLASTING techno music for over an hour without a single drop of alcohol in me. Job well done by me! Nonetheless I had a great time and am already looking forward to June 25^th, 2012. I can’t even explain how many people were out listening to bands. There were THOUSANDS of people out celebrating this day. It was really cool to see.

Friday, bands played but at private indoor venues throughout the afternoon and early evening. I didn’t want to miss out so I went with my work friends to a couple venues. Friday was way more tranquilo (calm) then Thursday. We actually had seats, relaxed, and listened to acoustic music. Way more my style than electronica, I must say. Later in the evening we went out and celebrated a friend’s aunt’s going away party. She lives in Spain and was here visiting for a few weeks. They call her Bruja(witch) because she looks like one. She has the pointy upper lip, wears lip liner and dark lipstick, and has red tinted, short hair. She is really pretty, very nice, and has a cool nickname. Can’t beat it. We all had a great time! Here are some pics from the going away party. I forgot my camera in my room Thursday night so I, unfortunately, don’t have any pics from the music festival. So frustrating!!!!!

Angie and I

Bruja is the 2nd from the right

Saturday my friend Hannah came in town, we ate lunch with my host family then headed to the Cuenca rugby game. One of our fellow PCVs coaches the team. He has coached them for almost a year. When he first started coaching they were terrible and practicing with a soccer ball. Now they are sponsored, have rugby balls and some pretty sweet uniforms. This past December he and his team participated in the Ecuador Rugby tournament and won the whole thing. They are now the team to beat in Ecuador. Now if that isn’t some awesome personal and rewarding success I don’t know what is. During the game one of our guys broke his ankle. And even worse news was that after the game I found out it was the guys first game back after being out with a back injury for 8 months. Poor guy L Despite the injury they won 82-0. Yes, you read that correctly… 82-0. We had a victory drink afterwards.

Sunday Marcia’s friend and her family came over and we cooked lunch together. The plan was to cook pizza, but that didn’t happen because they didn’t know how to make the dough. I told them I had a recipe for dough, but they didn’t seem to care. Why they had intentions of cooking pizza I will never know. So we ended up making a beef stew type thingy, rice, and some soup with yucca and bow tie pasta. It was really good, but it wasn’t pizza. Marcia and Carmen decided they wanted to karaoke so they hooked up the microphone to the big screen and started singing away….. for the next TWO AND A HALF HOURS!!! I never sang, but I had fun listening and trying to sing along. At the end they were singing together and even sang some English songs. The first English song they sang they got their highest score of the day yet. Hahaha this was rather hysterical and we all got a good laugh out of it. They tried to get me to sing “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus, but respectfully declined.

That was my weekend. It was way better in person than in writing. I wish I was a more clever (or cleverer?) writer and could spice up my stories somehow, but I’m not, so you’re just going to have to imagine how awesome it was. Or come visit me, either one works.

Funny story:

So I live in the 3^rd largest city in Ecuador. I have electricity and running water 24/7, a dryer for my clothes, and a housekeeper who cooks and cleans for us and is a good friend of mine. Well, Tuesday night I was out with some PCV friends and got in late.  I didn’t shower Wednesday morning because I wanted to sleep during my normal ‘shower time’. So I got up, went to work and was planning on showering in the afternoon. Well……. Wednesday at Noon the water got turned off!!! I live in the city this shouldn’t happen to me!!! Everyone said it would come back on in the evening, but it never did. I shrugged it off and thought for sure it would be back on in the morning. How wrong I was… we STILL didn’t have running water. So I got ready and went to work hoping it would be on after lunch so I could shower. It was… it came on at 9:30am. I leave for work at 9:15. Why do I have the worst luck? I showered immediately when I got home, even before I ate lunch. 2 ½ days without a shower… not too shabby for a PCV, right?

You think that is the end?? HA, WRONG! Friday morning I didn’t shower because I had showered at 2pm the day before. Well, I should have showered at my normal time of 8:15am because the water went out again at 9am! UGH! The water was out all day… we were doing lunch dishes with bottled water. Friday evening I was going out with some friends so I definitely wanted to shower. I was meeting up with them at 6pm. I thought to myself, “for sure the water has to come back on in the early evening because it is the weekend…” Well, I waited and waited as long as I could to see if the water would come back on. It got to be 4:45 and hadn’t come back on yet. So I showered with bottled water :-/ Dang, was it difficult to get the conditioner out of my hair. I’m all lotioned up after the shower about to brush and dry my hair when Mary, the housekeeper, peeks her head in my room and says, “Heather, we have running water now.” I look at her with the ‘you’ve got to be kidding me look’ and say, “I just got done showering with bottled water!” She sees my wet and unbrushed hair and starts giggling. We both got a good chuckle out of this. Just my luck, of course. Whatever, no pasa nada, I finish getting ready and head out.

Turns out they were apparently working on some street?? Who knows if that is actually true or not.

Laugh it up everyone, laugh it up, because I sure did. I couldn’t even get frustrated because, afterall, it could always be worse… it could ALWAYS be worse than no running water.

Heather

Inti Raymi

6.22.11

Friday I had a conference to go to for work from 8-4:30.  It was a conference informing people of some agricultural law. It didn’t understand a single word; therefore, was super bored the whole time. I wasn’t the only bored one though… there were a TON of people sleeping in their seats. They provided us lunch afterwards. You received an index card at the beginning of the day that had either a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 indicating which tent you should get your food from. Each tent had different traditional foods from all over Ecuador. Pretty cool. I got Tent 1, which was food from Cuenca. Go figure, but it was still delicious. We got back to the office and I was about to leave at 5:30ish and Doc, the lawyer that works at La Red, said they had a meeting to go to at 6:30pm and I could go if I wanted. And I thought to myself “WHAT???? On a FRIDAY??? Are you kidding. This would never fly in the States.” I was so tired because I had been sick all week, but stayed and went with them. It was a presentation on a book about some guys life. Not sure why we had to go to it, but we did. After the book presentation I was like okay, I’m going home bc it was 9pm and I was tired. Then they proceeded to tell me that we were going to another activity. I told them I was really tired and was going to go home since I had to get up early for Saraguro, but they convinced me to go and that they would only be there for like 30 minutes. It ended up being a party at a Women’s Shelter celebrating their anniversary so I was happy I went. I finally got home around midnight. Everyone else stayed and didn’t leave until 2am!! So much for staying for just 30 minutes… haha.

***I did have a video to put here, but it was taking more than 2 hours to upload so I gave up. Maybe I will try it again tomorrow.**

This past weekend I went to Inti Raymi, (not sure what language that is, but it means “Celebration of the Sun”) to an Indigenous community three hours south of Cuenca called Saraguro with my coworkers. We left early Saturday morning and arrived in Saraguro around 11.  Man, was this an awesome cultural experience. So cool. Since I live in a HUGE city I don’t get to experience the Indigenous culture, so it was a great weekend full of a new culture.

Where to start…. We checked into our hostel right when we got there to drop our belongings off. Then headed to Las Lagunas (community within Saraguro) to where the festivities of Inti Raymi were. There wasn’t much going on during the day, they were setting up the stage for the bands that were going to be playing in the evening, the women were cooking two ENORMOUS pots of soup for the community for lunch, and we chatted with some of the locals my coworkers knew through La Red (the organization I work with). Also, the president of La Red is from Saraguro so when we told people that’s where we worked they were interested and yada yada yada.

After we chatted, it was about 1pm and we were starting to get hungry for lunch. Our Saraguro friends invited us to eat the soup… the traditional name escapes me right now, but the soup was basically barly, beef, mote (somewhat like large kernels of corn, but with a different flavor), and lots of liquid. It was delicious! The beef in my bowl had a lot of fat on it so I decided to leave most of the pieces in the bowl. Then my friends told me that in the culture it is really rude to leave food on your plate. I then preceeded to tell them there was no way I was gonna be able to eat the fat… so they helped me feed the pieces to the million dogs that were around. Problem solved J

 2 pots of soup over an open fire. If you look closely you can see

the raw cow hide hanging from the ceiling in the top right hand

corner of the pic. There is a ton of smoke, but look hard, it's there.

They cut the meat off of that hide for the soup. 

With our tummies full we made our way back to the center of town to walk around, see the park, and shop. And we didn’t forget to get an ice cream bar. ALL the jewelry, scarves, hats, purses, etc. are made my hand and they are very pretty. I bought a matching beaded necklace and earrings for $5 and 2 pairs of earrings for $1 each. I also bought a handmade “camera” holder with a string to put around my neck for when I’m doing touristy things and don’t have to pull my camera out of my backpack to take a picture every time.  

It was about 5 o’clock when we made it back to Las Lagunas where the dances were suppose to start at 7. To kill some time we walked down the dirt road further into the community. There was a huge rock standing up on a hill that Angie wanted to go check out so we trudged through the long grass amongst all the cows and up a hill to take a closer look at it. Angie knows a little bit about rocks and she thought this rock was some kind of ancient rock. I can’t remember all the details, but I’m pretty sure they decided it has some kind of historical story behind it.

Saw this mommy cow cleaning her baby as we

were trudging through the field. So cute.

We got back to the area where the activities were about 6 and ate corn on the cob with cheese and watched the guys continue setting up the stage for the evening while we waited another hour. Seven o’clock rolls around and there were still barely any people from the community there and certainly no people dressed up and ready to dance. Then we decided to grab a beer while we waited… and waited… and waited… and waited… and waited… you get the point, we waited until 10:00PM for the dances to start!! Finally, around 9 everyone started trickling in, grabbing their seats, chatting, and watching the little kids run around on the basketball court playing. There were probably like 12 or so traditional dances. They were all so beautiful. The little girls danced, then the youth, the women, and so forth. It was so interesting to watch. They love their culture so much and get really into the dances. Very touching

 The adults entering for their dances. This is the only pic I have of

 the dances bc the other pics didn't turn out, unforunately.

The music and dancing started and everyone had themselves a great time! We heard the party didn’t end until 4am. We left at 2.

Sunday we got up and ate breakfast at the hostel, got ready, then headed back to Las Lagunas for the Sunday festivities for “Celebration of the Sun.” Man, what a site it was when we arrived. Passed out men on benches, one in front of the “beer tienda,” and others were still stumbling around drunk. Oh, and don’t forget the hung over men. There were lots of them. It’s amazing how much many of the Ecuadorian men can drink nonstop for like 48 hours straight. It’s repulsive, actually.

Anyways, back to Sunday. There was a bike and running competition in the late morning and that’s about it. Most of the activities are at night. Angie and another coworker were going to stay until 9pm then catch a bus back to Cuenca, but I left with another coworker around 2:30 because I was done spending money and didn’t want to arrive at the bus terminal at 12am in the morning. I’m glad I left early because they didn’t end up getting back to Cuenca until 4AM!!

As Ximena and I were walking from Las Lagunas to the bus stop I saw this man standing in his field with his hands on his knees starring at his cow… I was curious so I stopped to check it out longer. Turns out we missed the cow giving birth by like 3 minutes, literally! The calf was still on the ground and the placenta cord was still hanging out of the mothers behind. I saw the calf take its first steps. It was soo stinkin’ cute. It was wobbling all over and the man was trying to help support it. After it got its bearings somewhat it walked right over and sniffed his mom’s utters. So cute! I am probably never going to see that again since I live in a city so I was pretty stoked that I saw that. Bummed I missed the actual birth, but at least I saw its first wobbly steps. Take a look:

Baby calf taking it's first steps :-)

 Owner helping the calf walk. Also, if you look closely you can see the placenta cord

 to the left of the tail hanging out of the momma still. 

Baby checking to see if that's his momma :-)

I also ate my first chocobanana, which is a banana on a stick dipped in chocolate and then frozen. It is SOOOOO freaking good. I’ve been wanting to try one for months. And to top of the deliciousness it was only 10₵!

Showing off my frozen chocobanana on a stick. DELICIOUS!

It was a great weekend. Here are some more pics:

Our hostel room

 Trying on a warm hat

  We passed this precious boy taking a nap on

top of his toy horse on the way to Las Lagunas

 Lady making yarn/sting out of sheep wool she just cut off of her sheep

 Kids at the starting line getting ready for a race

 Angie wearing the hat she just bought

 An adorable girl eating an apple

 Girls playing jacks in the park

 Angie and I waiting for the festivities to begin

 Children playing on the sound company's speakers

 Little boy playing with a 'top'

 One of the many murals in Saraguro

 Young girl taking care of her little brother

who just got jacked in the eye

 I was taso amazed by this baby on the motorcyle that I had to take a picture

and the guy on the back of the moto decided to spice up the pic a little.

Could you imagine seeing this scene in the States???

 Where I bought my corn on the cob from

 Women selling their jewelry. Where I bought my beautiful necklace!

 Adorable girl in her traditional clothes ready to dance.

She followed Angie around everywhere, it was so cute.

 My soup in a ceramic bowl with a wooden spoon

 Little boy playing with his dog

Oh, I almost forgot… while we were eating soup for lunch on Sunday my friend Boris (guy) pointed out that these 2 local guys kept starring at Angie and I. They eventually came and sat down at the table (the only table) to eat. And to be funny Boris introduced Angie and I. After I said hola this guy looked at me and said lapo and that was it. I turned to Angie and said in a normal volume, “what does lapo mean (in Spanish, of course)” and she whispered to me, “that’s his name.” I thought I was going to turd my pants I was so embarrassed because I definitely didn’t ask that question quietly, everyone heard. The guy never said anything, but I know exactly what he was thinking… ‘Stupid Gringa.’ That’s still a running joke amongst my friends.

A step in the Right Direction

6.14.11

So compared to my last blog, this one is gonna be a dud, but I’m still going to update you on this past week anyways because there were a couple things that happened worth blogging about…. And I’m trying to make it a point to blog at least once a week.

I’ve been having a difficult time with my counterpart. A counterpart is a person of your village/community/town/organization with whom Peace Corps “assigns” to you to help you integrate into the community and start work. Basiclly, this person is your work partner. Well, my counterpart hasn’t tried contacting me since I’ve gotten to Cuenca. She shows up to La Red (the organization I work with) every once in awhile. And when she does she likes to tell me I’m going to help one of my fellow PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteer) with her Spanish, which is definitely not my job, or I’m going to go on a 5 day trip that will cost me $50, which is a huge chunk out of my monthly living allowance. Those are just a couple of examples.

I’m not trying to bash on my counterpart because she is a very good person at heart, just VERY tough to work with.

So PC assigns you a person to work with, but at any time if it is not working out with this person you are free to find a different counterpart who is more motivated, easier to work with, etc. And that’s exactly what I did on Wednesday. There is this girl, Angie, who is in the office every single day without fail. She runs the organization and is very good at her job. Without her, I’m not sure what my other coworkers would do… or if the place would even run. We even call her “Mama Grande” since she knows the answers to everything.

And on top of her being the “Mama Grande” of the office, she is my age and we get along great. So Wednesday I decided to talk to her about becoming my counterpart and the “job duties” of a counterpart, what I expect of her, what she should expect of me, things like that. She was very interested, which made my day! And now she is my counterpart, woohoo!

During our conversation I asked her if she could explain the structure of the organization and the projects La Red was working on. So I FINALLY know what my organization does and the external projects we are working on. It only took 7 weeks…. But it's a step in the right direction J

One of the awesome projects I’m helping them work on right now is the first national community tourism conference in Ecuador. Up to 750 can come. We are doing marketing right now to the Universities in town. Tourism is a popular subject of study and many of the Universities are even interested in helping us run the 3 day conference. Pretty cool. But I will save my organization and what it does for another post. On to the rest of the week.

Thursday. Thursday was an exciting day. I went to work, ate lunch, then Marcia, Daniel and I went to a town called Gualaceo, about 45 minutes away to buy shoes. This town is known for their cheap shoes, boots, heels, etc. I was soooo excited to be going and buying new shoes. I’m SO TIRED of wearing tennis shoes every day, while the rest of the girls and women dress up.

At first I was disappointed because all the heels were adorable, but too expensive for my PC budget, and the boots I came across were ugly... Until the very last store, go figure. The last store we came too had all kind of sales going on and a super cute pair of boots I liked! So guess what? I bought 2 pairs of heels, 1 pair of casual light yellow tennis shoes, and 1 pair of black boots all for $58. SCORE! I have been such a cheap ass the whole time I’ve been here and have hardly bought anything. It felt so good to spend money! And now I get to look cute, wear heels and not look like a dude when I go to meetings or out on the weekends.

Friday was real low key. I worked, went to the gym, and sat in on a meeting that Marcia had at the house with the Spa girls.

Saturday, Hannah and Kristin from my omnibus (aka-my PC training class, we were omnibus 105) came to Cuenca to celebrate Kristin’s bday. After getting ready Hannah and I met up with Kristin and another girl at a restaurant to have a drink and dinner. Later on, Kristin had some bracelets for us girls to get in free at this one bar/dance club so we used them and went dancing. It was a fun night! I even wore my super cute, new black boots! J

 Us girls at the restaurant :-)

The Bday girl!

Sunday. Hannah left and I went to the store with Marcia to get a plastic container to put all the manicure and pedicure tools in at the Spa. Well….. we ended up buying 44 small aluminum bottles, 2 small plastic containers, 2 medium containers, 2 locks, a role of plastic, 1 laundry basket (for my dirty clothes since I didn’t have one), and masking tape. I should have known that would happen… I should have known.

Later in the evening I started feeling yucky. My stomach hurt, I had a headache, my body ached, the whole works… then came the diarrhea. Fudge. I had diarrhea all day Monday and all day today, Tuesday, I’ve had it. Thank goodness it’s not accompanied by stomach pains, so I don’t feel all that bad, just pretty tired. I ate the tiniest bit of some nata Sunday evening, which is the stuff that hardens at the top of the pot after you boil milk… I think. They eat is by dipping bread in it bc it’s a little watery with cottage cheese like chunks in it. I think that might be the cause of this. My stomach isn’t used to unpasteurized milk. But then again, you never know if that’s it or not.

So the past couple of days I’ve been going to work, coming home and eating lunch, and then laying down and napping on and off in the afternoons. I hope this passes soon, like right now, and my bowels get back to their normal schedule soon.

As always, questions and comments are welcome! As well as updates on everyone's life in the States! My email is Siegmund.Heather@gmail.com.

Heather

AWESOME Friday, Not so good Sunday

This post is soooo long, but you will not regret reading the whole thing, I promise.  Just another weekend in my Ecuadorian life…. Happy reading J

My first couple of weeks/weekends in Cuenca I was so bored. Now they seem to be the total opposite, but I am definitely NOT complaining. The past 2 weekends were busy and I am traveling for work the next 2 weekends. And on top of working starting to move along slowly, I’m starting to feel like a true part of my host family (although they have made me feel right at home from the get-go) and I feel like I am integrating well and getting to know my co-workers. Life is good. Now on to my weekend.

***FYI- as I write this I’m chowing down on a fun size bag of reduced fat cheez-its my sister sent me J They are sooooo yummy and oh how I’ve missed them! And I’m topping it off with a Granola Thin my friend Lauren sent me***

I guess I will just start from the beginning… Friday. Friday, by far, has been the most fun day/night in Ecuador for me thus far. My friend Hannah came into town around 3:30 so she could go to my work party with me in the evening (she is somewhat affiliated with my org). We chatted and caught up with each other’s lives then we started getting ready for the party… American style. I felt like I was back in the States. She straightened her thick head of hair while I showered and blow-dried my hair, all the while jamming out to tunes on the computer, having ourselves a drink, and telling each other funny stories of our Ecuadorian lives. Then we headed to my work party that started at 7.

The party started at 7, but no one showed up until about 9. That’s how Ecuadorians work. At the party were my coworkers, Hannah and I, a group of people from the province of Esmeraldas, and a few other random people. The party started off slow with everyone getting to know each other. An hour or so in I helped Angie and another woman unroll tamales to serve to everyone.

Holding up the wraps from the tamales

Showing off all the nasty tamale gook on our hands

After we ate tamales someone brought out the homemade dark rum. Here in Ecuador it is not normal to have your own drink and sip on it, instead they will mix the liquor with some coke, poor it into shot glasses, pass them around, and then everyone takes it together. And that’s exactly what we did until 11:30 while chatting and dancing. It was so much fun! Of course everyone wanted to dance with the gringas. Dancing here is totally different than the States. Here you do a little 2 step back and forth while never making eye contact with your dance partner. Kinda weird, but its slowing becoming normal to me. You dance the whole song, then sit down, or someone else asks you to dance. We did this the whole evening while taking some breaks every now and then.

With some folks at the party

Doc giving a speech and toast (he's the one in the green sweater with red polo)

Friends!

Oh I should mention that my Ecuadorian friends have been trying to teach me Salsa. And bloody hell is it hysterical. 1. Because I totally suck, and 2. Because I’m a Gringa, and everything a Gringa does is funny. But it is fun none the less. Also, my dance lessons continue at all of our gatherings. Have I mentioned before that dancing is a HUGE part of the Ecuadorian culture?? Well, it is.

11:30pm came and everyone decided they wanted to go do some more dancing. So that’s exactly what we did. We danced until about 2, then finally made our way home.

But not before Hannah and walked around in the pouring rain trying to find some very popular Ecuadorian street food. We were unsuccessful since it was like 2:30am, so home we went with empty stomachs.

When we got to the gate to my house I came to the realization that I forgot my gate key (I live in a gated community and I took that key off of my ring to go to the gym so I didn’t have to carry all my keys). Shit. I had all my keys, but the outside gate key. It’s now like 3am and there is no way in hell I was going to ring my host family and ask them to buzz me in, so I decided I was going to climb the fence. That was successful, but not without a nice scratch down my right calf from the pointy black iron fence. Oh well, no pasa nada. I went to my house, buzzed Hannah in, and we were safe and sound from the rain. Soakin’ wet, but out of the rain and ready for bed with hungry stomachs.

Such a fun night!

Saturday we got up, had lunch at a Colombian restaurant downtown, grabbed some ice cream, and went back to my house and watched a movie. Hannah took off back to her site about 4:30 then I headed up to the Spa. Marcia was there giving one of her friends a manicure so I had coffee and chatted with them while her nails dried. They asked me to help them make a torta mojado de chocolate. Basically it’s a double layered chocolate cake with an awesome chocolate frosting on top and in the middle of the cake. I had no plans for the night so I told them yes. I had to look up a recipe and we went and bought all the ingredients that we needed. The cake took us about 2 hours to make, 1 hour of that time was baking the cake. It turned out soooo freaking delicious. Marcia’s friend Carmen helped me make it. Carmen’s husband and daughter ended up coming over to eat with us. Everyone was raving at how awesome of a job we did J Here is a pic of the cake and us chowing down:

The oh so yummy cake!

 chowing down :-)

So that was Saturday, now onto the hectic hectic Sunday….

Sunday morning, Marcia, my host mother, woke up to a phone call from one of the neighbors who live above the Spa saying there was a lot of smoke coming out of the Spa. She immediately woke up my host brother Daniel and off they went to the Spa, about a 1 ½ minute car ride from our house. Sure enough, smoke was pouring out of the spa.

Turns out a candle on a shelf above one of the massage tables was left lit… it ended up dripping onto the bed, as well as one of the machines used to give massages, which was turned off, but still plugged in. The wax burned a HUGE hole into the bed and melted most of the plastic on the machine, which then dripped onto the curtains that were leaning against the machine.

I had no idea none of this happened until about 9:30am when I came out of my room to eat breakfast and Marcia began to tell me the story. She then showed me the burnt curtains with the melted plastic from the machine on it. We were able to save most of the curtains, we just had to cut the part of the curtain with all the melted wax and plastic on it, then we sent Daniel to take all the curtains to the dry cleaners. After breakfast the whole fam and I went up to the Spa to clean.

We got to the Spa and OHHHH MYYYYY GODDDDDD what a freaking disaster. I have absolutely no idea how that place didn’t burn down from a fire. I mean seriously, how the hell was there NO fire?? Just a TON of smoke that covered EVERY SINGLE little thing in the whole entire place. The Spa was a complete burnt mess. There was black dust on everything, and I mean everything…. Every curtain was black, the lime green walls were grey, the red walls were now burnt red, there was a huge BLACK mark on the red wall where the burnt bed and machine were smoking, the floor was now black, the doors and the opaque glass walls throughout the Spa were grey. And me explaining this to you does this filthy place no justice. Because it was WAY filthier than I am able to describe.

So we began to clean. The girls who work at the Spa came down to help, as well. We moved all the furniture and machines outside and took everything off the shelves. We then began to throw buckets of soapy water all over the walls and scrubbing them with brooms and brushes.  This was kind of doing the trick, but not quick enough so we brought the hose from outside in and started spraying away. Cleaning the walls took FOR-EV-ER(<--- in the “Sandlot voice”)… my girlfriends back home will be proud of me for quoting a movie! But thank goodness the black spot came off of the wall and most of the black came off the other walls, as well. Now it was time to scrub the doors and opaque walls, along with every bottle and container in the whole place. Don’t forget this is a spa, hair salon and nail salon all in one. And that means there were, excuse my language, a SHIT TON of bottles and other small things to wipe down. Along with decorations, pictures, clocks, scales, chairs, shelves, desks, the list goes on. So we got that done and now it was time for the floor. There was so much water on the tile floor from throwing buckets of soapy water and bringing the hose in. So we scrubbed the floors and started squeegeeing the water out the door Ecuadorian style. I then realized that some of the water wasn’t leaving and was trickling back behind the main front desk where all the wires of the phone, computer, credit card machines, and radio were… which were all plugged into the wall, and we were all standing in that water that was touching all those wires. I freaked out, told Marcia and we turned the electricity off to the whole place until we got all the water out and the wires dried.

The floor was clean so we now moved all the furniture back inside, rigged the burnt bed, put the sheets back on the bed the other beds, reorganized, and got the hell out bc we were all so tired.

FINALLY, the 5 of us were done cleaning about 4pm. Finally. None of us had eaten so Marcia bought chicken and we ate back at the house, but not before a prayer thanking God for watching over the Spa that night. For dessert we finished off m fabulous chocolate cake. The Spa girls loved it!

I really wish I had pictures of the Spa, but I thought it would be completely rude to take pictures like an investigator while Marcia was so upset and mad all at the same time. Upset because of what happened; mad because the girls didn’t blow out the candle the night before.

The day is over. I watch TV with Marcia for a bit, then say peace out and head to my room to relax, play some computer games (yes, computer games), and hit the sack.

I left out the part about how absolutely FURIOUS I was by the end of the day, but that’s another whole post in itself and I am not about to write 2 or 3 pages more. I apologize.

I still am so amazed there was no fire… Marcia is one lucky person.

I wonder if next weekend will top this one? Probably not.

Heather

Ziplining??? You better believe it!!!

5.27.11 Ziplining

This is a really long post, but there are pictures to go with it so it’s very much worth your time.

So a couple weekends ago I had a pretty fabulous weekend, it was Memorial Day weekend to be exact!

Friday was the Ecuadorian holiday of the Battle of Pichincha so I didn’t go to work, instead we played. Three of my co-workers and I went ZIPLINING!!!!!!!!! That was my first time ziplining, and oh boy was in an incredible experience! And it was only $8.

We arrived about 10:15am, and of course the guides weren’t there yet. So while waiting for the guides to show up we just horsed around, took pictures, and jumped on a trampoline like teenagers. It was so fun! When the lady who works the lobby got there, we went inside and played ping pong and half a game of pool until the guides finally got there.  So we harnessed up, took pics, and off we went. There were around 10 people in our ziplining group.

Me catching some serious air on the trampoline!

 My friend David worn out from jumping. We were the only 2 who would get on the trampoline.

 Playing some pool waiting for the guides to arrive

 Harnessed up and ready to go!

We got to the first cable (there were 6 cables in total) and my coworkers and I were the last ones to go in the group. It went smooth. As we were starting the second cable it began to rain, no big deal, it was still awesome. I saw the 3^rd cable and wanted to pee my pants… it was longer than the first two and the ground was further away. Cable 3 was the first real adrenaline rush I got. It was fantastic!

Me on Cable 1. Short, but sweet ride!

  Flying on Cable 3

Cable 4, the fastest, and by far, the longest one yet. I swear it felt like I got up to about 100mph. On this cable my friend David and the guide decided to be the last ones to go and do “superman”. Oh, and in case you are wondering we did have a camera and took lots of pictures. I took a video of David and the instructor ziplining like “Superman” with the guide. Prrrrrrretty hilarious.

Cable Fourrrrr. Holy Awesomenesssss!!

So I thought Cable 4 was the greatest thing in the world…. Until I got to Cable 5. Cable 5 was DEFINITELY the cable where I went about 100mph, the fastest and longest of them all. Talk about a serious adrenaline rush through the forest in the middle of nowhere with the ground about 200 yards below me.

Action shot on Cable 5!

  My face while landing after Cable 5!

Up until this point, this post has been awfully boring… so let’s spice it up a little with my Cable 6 adventure. At Cable 6, my friends decided they wanted to do “The Superman”, and just that we did. The guide hooks up Angie and David and off they went. Then its Miguel and I’s turn. It was hysterical from the beginning. In order to the “The Superman” the person in front has to wrap their legs around the person in back and hook their feet. The front person was me, and well, I’m short. I had the most difficult time hooking my feet. Such a difficult time that Miguel and I were laughing so hard we were crying. Okay, so I finally get my legs around him with my feet just barely hooking. 1,2,3 and off we go, and I’m flying through the air head first and arms out, just like I’m flying. It was the most awesome feeling in the world. It seriously felt like I was flying!!! Until…

 "Superwoman"!!!!!!!!!!!

I realize we are slowing down… and then we come to a STOP about 20 feet from the landing board. Now, here we are hanging from the cable approximately 200 yards and 20 feet from the landing spot. Miguel tried to pull us, that definitely wasn’t working. So I start laughing because what else is there to do when you are hanging in the middle of nowhere from a harness? No worries though folks, we were perfectly secure and connected to the cable, the only place we were gonna go was forward, not down. So here I am laughing hysterically, almost uncontrollably. It didn’t help that I could see Angie and David laughing on the landing spot, as well. I couldn’t see Miguel, but I could definitely hear him laughing. By this time my feet came unhooked from around Miguel and I’m hanging from the stomach harness, instead of the comfortable normal sitting position since we were doing the “Superman”. And holy hell was that harness digging into my stomach!! It hurt so bad.

 Pic of us stopped before the landing

After about 2 minutes I get my laughter under control bc the guide was trying to give us instructions on how to start moving again. I had absolutely not a clue what he was saying since it was all in ziplining terms, but Miguel understood and tried explaining to be what to do. I’m pretty sure he was telling me to grab the cable, so I tried to pull myself up a little so I could grab the cable above me, well… I couldn’t do that and start laughing again because I see Angie and David laughing at me while I struggle. And since it was a sudden laugh and the harness was DIGGING into my stomach.................................. Are you ready for it? I peed my pants a little bit. Yes, my dear blog readers, I peed my pants a little. And by little, I mean little bit. Like only 1 or 2 drops, but I still peed my pants. I didn’t even realize I had to pee, but there was so much pressure on my stomach from all my body weight, that I couldn’t feel anything but the pain from the harness in my stomach. So, of course, I start laughing uncontrollably, again. 1. Because I peed my pants, and 2. Because no one else knew what just happened but me. Tears were pouring down my face from laughing. BAHAHAHAHAHA, holy crap, was it funny. Finally, the guide had to come out and get us one by one.

 Guide unhooking our harnesses so he could pull me back to the landing!

Guide helping me back

We then had to do a 20 min steep, uphill hike back to the lodge. Great experience? I think so!

That was Friday.

*Okay, I’m back. My host mom asked me if I wanted a manicure at the Spa…. Of course I said yes. My nails are so pretty right now! Long and painted J* Take a look

Now on to Saturday. This will be quick though because I did absolutely nothing since it was pouring down rain all day. Seriously, I didn’t come out of my room but like twice, to eat. I stayed in my room all day and watched movies. I did do 25 situps and 15 pushups every hour so my day wasn’t completely wasted.

Sunday. Sunday was nice and tranquilo (aka-calm in English. If I have to learn Spanish, then you should have to as well). A family of my host mother came over with 24 live crabs to cook. We had to kill and scrub them clean with a brush before we ate them. That was fun and really simple. You just have to open their “mouth?” and stick a knife in it. The knife punctures their lungs and they die rather quickly. We cooked from 10:30-3. We made soup  out of the water we cooked the crabs in, salsa to put in the soup, shrimp to put in the soup, patacones (traditional food from the coast made from green plantains), rice, and potatos. It was all so delicious. They put a WHOLE crab on my plate and said, “here ya go.” Haha. I actually believe that it was the first time I’ve ever eaten crab legs. I even ate the guts inside the head!!! Don’t worry, there was salsa and lime juice mixed in. Oddly enough, I kind of enjoyed the flavor. I ate 2 crabs. They were so messy and yummy.

The bucket of 24 crabs ready to get boiled and eaten!

 This thing was on my plate and I ate every last bit of it. DE-LIC-IOUS!

  My host mom holding up a crab

 All of the ladies hard at work in the kitchen!

  Host mom and her friend

After lunch I went with the family’s daughter and her father to drop the littlest daughter off at her cousin’s Ben 10 birthday party. Then we went to their house because the dad wanted to show me all his old country CDs his friend brought him from the States. First person in Ecuador that I found that actually likes country music. Man did he have some old CDs.

On the way back to my house he bought his daughter and I an ice cream cone with the chocolate syrup that hardens on top. Scrumptious, obviously.

When we got back to the house we listened to the CDs Josh sent me for my birthday. They loved them and ended up transferring all 350 songs or so to their laptop computer. Then we ate again…. I was soooo freaking full. No wonder I’ve gained so much weight since being here. But it was so good!

Us girls then did manicures and we all drank coffee. The family ended up leaving about 8:30pm. It was a really fun, relaxing day full of cooking, chatting, laughter, English lessons, food, and many many crabs. The family was super nice. They want to take me to go fishing in Cajas National Park and to eat brick oven pizza!!! Can’t wait for those days!

Doesn’t this post make you want to get on a plane right now and come visit me??? Look at all the fun you all are missing out on.