Only In Ecuador

7.5.11

WARNING: longest blog post yet......

I’ve had a million ‘only in Ecuador’ moments, this is just one of them.

I MUST start with Wednesday… this is a great story.  So every day we all come home for lunch around 1 or 1:15pm. Well, I was the first one home Wednesday so I sat in the kitchen talking to Mary, the girl who cooks for us, waiting for everyone to arrive. I hear the car doors outside; my host brother and mom are home. My host brother walks into the kitchen first, then my host mom. I look up to greet them and immediately get goose bumps and an eerie feeling throughout my body when I see my host mom… her head is all bandaged up and her face is swollen. She had an ace bandage from under her chin wrapped around to the top of her head. She had cotton balls taped below her ears, and a dried blood mark running from the left side of her head down to her chest. And not to mention she was totally out of it. I immediately look at my host brother and said “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?” But my host mom answered and said she had surgery on her cheeks. (And I recalled her vaguely telling me that she wanted to get it done a few weeks back, but she didn’t have a date set and was only talking about the procedure.) I said, “oh, you did?” She didn’t answer because she was on her phone, what’s new. But when she was on her phone she almost fell over and ran into the kitchen wall because she was woozy from the anesthesia still. She got out of surgery at 12:30 and was home at 1:10p. I then recommended she go lay down. My host brother agreed, but she started helping Mary finish preparing the food… MY HOST MOM IS CRAZY! The story gets better.

So we finally get my host mom to stop worrying about the food and her phone and get her to bed. 15 minutes later there is a knock on the door and in walks a family from the TV station where she does her advertising. Marcia invited them over for lunch the same day of her surgery!!!!!!!!! Not to mention like an hour after she is off the operating table. She is nuts! She comes back down seeming to be a little more with it and she managed to wipe the dried blood streak on her chest. The doc said she shouldn’t eat, yet she still ate. The family kept saying, “Marcia, I can’t believe you invited us over. You’re so crazy. You should be relaxing.” “Eh, it’s no big deal.” She responds. I couldn’t handle sitting there worrying about her so I changed my clothes and went to go lay out and soak up some rare sun on the patio.

Later that night after she had had a nap I asked her why she didn’t tell me she was getting the surgery and asked her how long she had known about it. She said she had known about it since Friday and had just forgotten to tell me. I also found out she never told anyone. Not even my host brother who took her. She called him at 10:30am the day of the surgery and said, let’s go I’m going to get surgery. Only in Ecuador would someone “forget” to tell everyone about a pretty significant surgery.

So by now I bet you are wondering why Marcia had surgery on her cheeks, aren’t you? Well, let me tell you. She had liposuction on her lower cheeks and under her chin because she thought her face looked to fat when she was on television!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you believeit??? Oh, and she has to wear that ace bandage thing on her face 24/7 for 2 weeks!

And by the way, she loves telling people about the surgery. She is so excited to have gotten it done. And she likes telling people that it was free because the doctor who did the surgery is a good friend of hers. She is a wonderful woman, but she is crazy. I could never in a million years imagine my real mom “forgetting” to tell me she is having surgery or having surgery because her face looks chubby on camera. Mom, don’t go throwing me curve balls now.

My coworkers and I went to get hamburgers the

other night, but we got french fries instead

Thursday was a normal day, except that my lingering cough was getting worse and a cold started kicking in. I had a headache, my nose was starting to get stuffy, my body ached, and I still had that nasty cough. Cool, no biggie, I’m going to go to bed early hoping to feel a little better in the morning since I have to get up early for a big work meeting all day. I crawled under the covers around 10pm with my alarm set for 6:30am. Well, my 14yr old host brother, his 2 friends, and my 27 year old host brother decided that they were going to play computer games against each other in the kitchen starting at 10pm. (Kitchen is literally 3 steps away from my room) You know the war games where you can all be on your own computer but playing against each other at the same time? Yeah, that’s what they were playing. Whatever, I shook it off and rolled over and started sucking on some cough lozenges so I wouldn’t be up the whole night coughing… little did I know that it wasn’t going to be the coughing that kept me up…  THEY kept me up until 4AM playing those stupid games!!!!!!!!!!!! I wanted to strangle them and at the same time cry! They knew I was sick, yet, clearly they didn’t give a rats ass because they were screaming and yelling and fighting the whole time. I wanted to ask them to quiet down, but my 14yr old host brother and his friends would have just laughed at me because that’s how little respect they have for anyone. I’m ready to get out of the house and live on my own… can you tell? Love my host mother, but my host brothers are getting on my last nerve.

So I groggily get out of bed Friday morning and go to our big meeting planned at work. A representative from all 32 communities that we work with were suppose to come to this meeting that started at 8am. We were going to talk about our current projects, especially the bus project we have going. We were also going to nominate some to run for President for the FEPTCE organization. Don’t ask me what it stands for bc I have no idea. But FEPTCE is the main tourism organization in Ecuador. La Red Pakariñan, my organization, is part of FEPTCE. I don’t really feel like explaining it, but this org is big and it would be HUGE for La Red to have one of our team members as president of FEPTCE.

So it’s now like 9am and only ONE person has showed up so far. 10am rolls around and about 7 people are there. We decided that at 10:15 we were going to go ahead and start. Within that 15 minute time period we found out that the president of La Red isn’t coming because he now has other plans, the vice president isn’t coming, but that’s not a surprise (was my old counterpart). The secretary of La Red isn’t coming because he has to give a talk at some school, and the secretary of the communities of Ecuador forgot about the meeting and made other plans…. SO, successful meeting, huh?

But people did manage to show up throughout the morning. All together like 15 communities members showed up. 15 of 30 isn’t bad, right?? Haha. We did talk about everything, everyone gave all their input on the bus project and we did manage to nominate someone to run for president of FEPTCE. A representative from the Saraguro community was finally nominated after much debate. The “last comments” started at 1:10pm and didn’t end until 3:30pm. I wanted to shoot myself. Everyone was standing up and saying the same thing over and over and over. And everyone wanted the last word… 2 ½ hours later all the ‘last words’ were over and we went to lunch.

After lunch the Secretary of the Communities came and gave his presentation. To be honest, I have no idea what he talked about because I was all Spanished out for the day. I was daydreaming by like 1:30. Oops. The meeting was finally over around 6. Everyone left, but my coworkers and I stayed and fiddled around on our computers for a bit. But that turned into having drinks and a dance party J Great end to a hectic morning.

 The guy second from the right is going to

run from President of FEPTCE

And the dance party begins!

Super blurry, but heres some of the group

Saturday Hannah and I had lunch then went to the English/Spanish school that lets Peace Corps Volunteers rent books for free. I finally have some books to read, woohoo!!! When we walked in I asked the guy, in Spanish of course, if I could take out some books. He then started describing to me which sections were English, but in the middle of his sentence I realized he had switched to speaking English. And very good non-Ecuadorian accented English. Well, come to find out he was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the 60s here in Cuenca for 3 ½ years, married an Ecuadorian woman, moved to Ecuador, and eventually started up this English/Spanish school. His PC story is pretty cool. He gives discounts to PCVs for Spanish tutoring, as well. I might take advantage of that offer. Great guy, can’t wait to get to know him throughout my 2 years!

I then had to get to work. We rent tents to tourists. Altogether we have 10 tents of different sizes, but we needed to go through them and make sure everything was in each bag and we were going to mark the bags so we weren’t guessing all the time which tent was which. So from 3-7:30 Diego and I assembled every tent while Angie sewed and took notes of what we needed… come to find out like none of the tents were perfect. Some of the tents didn’t have the correct poles, some didn’t have stakes (before I proofread this I put ‘steaks’, my English is getting sooo bad!), some were still wet (gross!), some poles were broken, almost all were dirty on the inside, the list goes on. And we have been renting these tents to tourists!!!! Can you imagine??  But not a single tourist said anything about them.

So finally by about 7:30 we had all the tents in order. We even sewed the number of the tent on the bag, how many persons the tent could fit and which type of tent it was. We also marked every tent piece so if it ever got unorganized again it would be easy to put it all back together. SOOOOOO much more organized now! J

After that 3 of us went to Angie’s house to make dinner, watch movies, and relax. We had a slumber party! It was really fun!

Sunday was pretty tranquilo. I rode the bus home from Angie’s house! That was a big deal. I had never ridden the bus before. I’ve lived here for 2 ½ months and had yet to ride the bus. I live so close to the center of town that I always just walk everywhere. Go me! I feel a little more integrated now! J When I got home my host mother and a friend were mutilating a cooked turkey that we were going to have for lunch. She had sent the turkey to a store for them to cook it. The turkey had a good flavor, but since they were just pulling and jabbing (I guess you could call it shredding, but it a less organized manner…. Does that even make sense?) all the turkey off the bones I was biting into gristle and bone while I was eating it. It was a huge let down. This was the moment that I wish my dad and Grandma Fern were here to cut it for them! J So we all ate and chatted with the family that was over. Then we went to get ice cream and but a movie to watch. They bought Eat Pray Love and we all watched it upstairs. Well actually I wasn’t in the mood so I showered instead.

After the movie another family came over and they made corn pancakes. No flower involved though. Just corn put in the blender mixed with some milk and cheese then plopped on the pan to back. The consistency was more like a big hash brown. They were pretty tasty. Once done eating Marcia suggested we play a board game, this is when I snuck off to my room because I didn’t want to play. I had basically been gone since work on Thursday morning while being sick with a cold and nasty cough so I was ready for some quiet, relaxing me time. I can just see it in my head right now… my mom is talking under her breath, “no wonder she isn’t getting better.” J Aren’t ya mom???? I know you too well.

Monday , the 4^th, was just a normal day. I went to work, came home for lunch, and went back to work. I did come home and cook some pasta for dinner though. I made a banging homemade pasta sauce. It was delicious. That was how I celebrated the 4^th. It definitely wasn’t the same as burgers, beer, and fireworks.

I was pretty down all day. I hate missing holidays. And to be honest, I’ve been pretty down for the past couple weeks. The intensity comes in waves, but I’ve definitely experienced my first bouts of homesickness these past couple of weeks. I miss home, my family, boyfriend, friends, holidays, not struggling on a daily basis with language, the food, etc. And on top of missing all that I’ve been sick, I always get down around the US holidays, my host brothers are getting on my nerves, and the weather has completely SUCKED! As crazy as this is going to sound, I think it’s the weather that’s bringing me down the most. I’ve been in the mountains of Ecuador for 5 months now and the whole time it’s been cloudy and rainy. It doesn’t rain every single day, but the clouds are out 90% of the time. We get sunny days, but they are far and few in between. It’s now summer in the States and I’m missing out on hot days and laying out in the pool with my sister and friends and listening to music, all the while the weather is staying the same here. I’ve asked a million Ecuadorians when it’s going to stop raining and become dry season… first the answer was May, then it was June, now they don’t know. They really don’t have a clue. I honestly think I have a little bit of seasonal depression. And it’s getting progressively worse as time goes on. I LOVE the sun and it’s never out, ever. Like once every 4 weeks, maybe. There are days when it’s nice and bright out, but the clouds still hide the sun. I MISS THE SUN!!! I think I should have been placed on the coast where it is sunny and extremely hot every single day.

My boyfriend is coming to visit in 44 days (not that I’m counting or anything… haha) and we are going to head to the beach for a few days. Hopefully the sun is shining nice and bright on those days so I can refuel and come back rejuvenated with great amounts of Vitamin D to last me for a while!!

Although I am down in the dumps, I still wouldn’t want to be anywhere but here. This journey wasn’t meant to be easy. And let me tell you, it’s been far from easy! Hopefully this bout of homesickness goes away sooner rather than later and I get back to my normal self. Don’t get me wrong, I miss you all on a daily basis more than you will ever know and it will never go away, but this feeling is so not cool. It needs simmer back down to its normal level. I’m thankful to have such great Ecuadorian friends/coworkers and host mother that make my days pass rather quickly J I’m positive it will go away soon.

It is impossible for me to write short blog entries… impossible. This one only took me 2 hours to write this one, no big deal. This might be a record for longest, most wordy blog post yet. Haha.

And FYI I put way more pictures up on Facebook than my blog, so check them out!

As always comments and updates from you all are always welcome!!! :)

Until next week!

Heather

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