¡Feliz Navidad!

A couple of days before December, all the PCVs got an e-amil from our boss telling us that we wern´t able to travel to Quito for the month of December due to increased danger during the holiday season. I wasn´t too happy about that because I had things to do in Quito, but what can ya do? Luckily the President of the Community Bank asked me to make an appointment in Quito for December 17th at two offices in Quito we are working with. Because ut was work related, I got permission to go. The meetings were busts, but I got to pick up my mail (Thanks Mom and Dad for the cookies, Aunt Char for the card, and Megan for the care package and an update on all the travel nurse gosip!!). I also got presents for the neighbor kids and food for Christmas dinner wih the family.

The next day I hiked about 40 minutes to the next town over, El Chaupi. This is a kickoff point for climbers and hikers who are going up the Ilinizas. I was hesatent to visit here because I thought that there´d be a lot of stuff to do, and I was right. I had to go to one of the hostals in town to get some info on hiking (I think some friends and I are goin gto climb a Mtn. next year). The hostal was like a Colorado ski lodge, and there were tourists sitting around the huge fireplace sipping coffee and reading. I got the info I needed and then we ate a nice, but expensive lunch. The american tourists said that there was a big group of 20-somethings there the night before drinking beer and playing cards. Less than an hour away, but what a difference! I donñt think I´ll be heading back anytime soon, because it would be too big a temptation to hang-out with other Americans all the time.

Friday was a busy day. In the early morning the teachers at the high school and I had "Secret Santa" (I got a t-shirt and candy) and then their Christmas program. Next, I went to the day care center for their program and lunch. Then I went to the grade school to watch the older kids doing a traditional Christmas game. They had sunk a de-barked and greased tree trunk near the school with presents tied to the top (the picture ot the top of the post is of this. Sorry for the sideways view, but it comes out bigger this way.). The kids had to climb up the 25 foot pole to get the presents. The whole time I was watching, I was afraid a kid was going to fall, but the teachers and parents watching were unconcerned. Then I grabbed a bus and headed to the jungle town of Puyo for a Christmas party with soem other PCVs.

The ride out there is beautiful and takes you right under the active volcano Tungurahua. It was a little more than disconcerting to look out the window of the bus and see a gigantic ash cloud spurting out of the top of a mountain only a couple of miles away.

On Saturday night we had a nice dinner and a gift exchange at some friends house and played poker. Sunday we got up early and went for a mountain bike ride down a trail with waterfalls all over. Although Puyo is only about 50 miles away from La Libertad, it is a different world. Hot, tropical, and full of bugs.

I headed home on Christmas Eve and noticed that the Pan-American Highway by L.L. was lined with families. I´d heard before Christmas that people from Quito will drive down and throw candy from their cars to the kids, but also that the Government was stopping this because too many kids were getting hit by cars. They made an announcement at the grade school, but I guess nobody paid attention. There were cars slowly giving out candy and almost causing accidents.

We didn´t do anything for Christmas Eve (for dinner instead of the fancy dinner I´d usually have with my family in the States, I had a plate of rice and a banana), so I took the time to make some eggnog for Christmas Day. The nog turned out well and was even better because it would be illegal in the States (I used Cuban rum. Havana Club, very tasty).

Christmas Day I relaxed, read, ate Christmas cookies, drank eggnog, and listened to Christmas music. That evening the whole family got together and we grilled some chicken and I made a cream cheese and corn side dish. It was all delicious and the kids opened the presents I got fot them. Not a white Christmas, but not horrible.

I hope you all had a great Christmas where ever you were. I miss you all!!!

The most wonderful time of the year (as long as you don´t get gored)!

My debut on Ecuadorian radio was a bit anticlamactic. I went on Saturday morning (December 8th) with some kids from the high school I teach at to "Radio Latacunga" AM 1280 for the kids show. The kids just read news from Friday´s paper and some jokes and a story from the paper´s "Kids" section. They picked and played a lot of music too. Halfway through, they interviewed me. Here is a rough transcript...
Kid - We´re here today with Jay. Where do you live?
Me - In La Libertad.
Kid - Do you have any siblings?
Me - Yes, two.
Kid - What are your parent´s names?
Me - Richard and Mary.
Kid - OK. Now for some more music.
Not exactly Charlie Rose, but still, I can always say that I was interviewed on Spanish radio.

The next night I went to a Wedding in town. I was actually excited to go because this is the first Wedding where I was friends with the couple. The bride is part of the woman´s group in town and the groom works at the grade school. Also, I teach their eight year old daughter English. Yeah, kind of strange getting married with an eight year old, but down here that is pretty common. Weddings are expensive, so a lot of times people will live together as a married couple until they can save enough for a blowout (this can take some time).

The other Weddings I have been to have all been Catholic and were pretty much the same; a lot of booze and dancing, but this one was very different. The couple is Protestant and they don´t drink. Instead of toasts and drunks walking around forcing shots on everyone, they played games and asked trivia questions about the Bible. It seemed everyone in their church stood up at some point and said a prayer for the couple too. One guy explained why they don´t drink and said that 60% of Ecuadorians are alcoholics and also that 30% of American are. I´m not sure about that, but why let facts get in the way of faith. Anyway, the Protestants started dancing later in the night (I say dancing, but the really were just bouncing around). The did this to religious music for almost an hour, and then when everyone was exhausted, the band slowed the music down and started talking about Jesus´ love for us. All the people stopped dancing and immediately started hugging each other and crying. Even the little kids started to. Some of the people even fell to the floor and were almost in convulsions. One more step and they would have brought out the snakes.

Between the two types of Weddings, I don´t know which I prefer. It´s like if I had to vote in a Democratic Primary. I´d have to go with the candidate I disklike the least.

On Friday the grade school had their Christmas Pagent. Other than a sign the said "Feliz Navidad", the program had nothing to do with Christmas. It was a beauty pagent for girls from all the grades. One event was a traditional dance. The picture from the top of the post is the neighbor girl in her outfit. (Note: I finally changed the picture from the "Mama Negra" post to one that I took) She finished third and I said that maybe she´d win next year, but apparently this is the last year for these pagents. The Government is banning them because in other towns the parents will get into fights if they don´t like the results.

Saturday and Sunday were big party days in town. We had bullfights in an arena that was constructed in the center of town. (If you want to see what this looks like, go to YouTube and search under "torros del pueblo Ecuador") These weren´t bullfights like Hemmingway wrote about, but instead just a bunch of drunks from town with blankets trying to mess with the bulls. I went to watch on Sunday and was kind of disgusted. The first bull got it´s ear and a horn ripped off chasing a guy into a fence. Also, most of the guys in the ring would just stand 50 feet away from the bull, yell, throw bottles at it, and then run away if the bull moved toward them. I saw two drunk guys get gored (one pretty bad) and found out later that a 20 year old on Saturday was in the ring and fell off his horse. He must have hit his head pretty badly, because he died a couple of days later in the hospital. Sometimes I don´t understand this place.

Notes:
- I want to give a plug for my college buddy Mike´s blog that he and his wife are doing from their new home in China. You can check it out at http://smithsinshanghai.blogspot.com/ or follow the link from my blog homepage. Nice title, eh!

- Jimmy Ballgame, I´m sad to see you go. I just read the the Cards traded Edmonds to San Diego. It´s going to be strange not seeing Hollywood out there "Cadillacin´ It" (Mario P´s words), but like I said Rasmus, Ankiel, and Duncan are the future.

Its beginning to look a lot like Navidad

Things are really starting o get busy around here. Since I didn´t give an update last week, I´ll try to fit it all in. Another Volunteer came to visit a couple of days last week. She was in Quito for some meetings and had some time between them to kill, so she stayed here to save money on Hotels. There wasn´t a lot going on here, but we had a good time hiking around. The weather was clear her last day here, so she got to see all the mountains and was blown away by the view. Her site is one of the cold ones too, but she said it wasn´t nearly as cold as in La Libertad.

The rest of last week wasn´t too hectic, but we were planning a lot of stuff for this week and the time up to Christmas (Navidad). On Thursday we moved the Community Bank to a new building in the center of town. Hopefully this will increase the bank´s profile, but it also means that we will be keeping the bank open a lot more during the week so people can use the computers and copier. I´ve already been there a couple of days waiting for people to come, but I´ve used that time to give some impromptu computer classes to some of the ladies.

On Saturday last week I went to Latacunga with some of the kids from the High School for World AIDS Day to give out red ribbons. The Latacunga PCV had set it all up, so all I really had to do was watch. It was a good chance for the kids to get to hang out with some kids from the city, and they all had a good time. This week I´m going back to Latacunga with some other kids to talk on the local AM radio station. I´ll let you know how my first Spanish radio interview goes.

This week had the first (I believe) celebration of St. Nick´s Day in La Libertad. I had the neighbor kids put their shoes out the night before so that San Nicholas could put some candy in them while they were sleeping (This is a December 5th tradition for those Non Saint Louis Catholics out there). Unfortunately the kids weren´t sleeping while St. Nick was working, so they called me out the next day. I told them it wasn´t me and that if they didn´t believe then San Nicholas wouldn´t come next year. This got them to change their tune. I´ll have to work on my sneaking skills before the next time.

Next week is Finals at the High School and Grade School and the bank is having their charge day and the town is having the pageant and election of the "Star of Christmas", so I will be running around a lot.

Since the weather is pretty much the same as it was when I first got here, it doesn´t seem like Christmas. I did put up some lights in my room and a star on my door, so there is a little festiveness. The High School teachers and I exchanged names for Secret Santa this week. It was funny, because right after we switched names, one of the teachers came up to ma and asked what I wanted. It´not going to be much of a surprise what I get. They also had the kids switch names (during one of my classes of course). It took 45 minutes and the teachers were constantly yelling at the kids to be quiet and pay attention. It felt good to see that they were having as much problems as I do.

ECUADOR NOTES:
- The national Congress just passed two laws creating the 23rd and 24th provinces in Ecuador. I don´t know why they think they need more bureaucracy, but things work so smoothly right now, why not add some more?

- The assembly for writing the new Constitution just convened. I was watching the opening ceremony with the teachers and asked one how long she thought it would take to finish. She told me, "One or two weeks". Later I asked another teacher the same question and she said, "Six months". I guess we´ll see.

FUNNY STUFF (KIND OF):
- I ate dinner at the little stand in the center of town the other day (French Fries and Chicken). When I came home, my neighbor asked where I was. After I told her , she said that I shouldn´t eat there because the food was "dirty". This is the same woman who loves sucking on boiled Cuy heads and uses water to make soup from the tank outside her house that has rotting potatoes on the bottom. If she says the food is dirty, I have to re-think eating there.

- I was listening to a radio morning show the other day and they asked a trivia question like they do in the States. The question was, "Which finger on the hand is longest and which is shortest?". The people I was with started arguing about it. I said hat it was too easy and mus be a trick question, but later they announced the answer was," The pinkie and the index finger". God I wish there was Ecuadorian Jeopardy. I´d be a millionaire.

Cheating on my posts

Not a lot to report this week, so I´m going to cheat a bit and just use an article that I wrote for the "Kapers", the Pi Kappa Alpha - Alpha Kappa Chapter alumni lewsletter.

Life at 0° (And Two Miles High!)

La Libertad, Ecuador - I knew this moment was coming. The travel books I had read after receiving my invitation to Peace Corps Ecuador had all mentioned the popularity of Cuy, but one week after arriving, when a steaming pile of potatoes was put in front of me by my host "Mother" with an entire fried Guinea Pig spread eagle on top (The head pointed at me seemed to be smiling), I had to pause and ask, "What did I get myself into?".

Rewind a little over a year and I was a successful engineer working in operations management at a Chicago area steel manufacturer. I needed a change though, so after a lot of soul searching, I decided to quit and take advantage of my skills and lack of attachments to follow Jared Adams´ advice, "Carpe Diem", and apply to the United States Peace Corps. After an intense nine month application process I was offered a position in the Sustainable Agriculture program in the South American country of Ecuador from February 2007 to April 2009. I have to admit that the first thing I did after I read my invitation was to look on a map to see exactly where I´d be living for the next 27 months.

Ecuador is a small country (about the size of Wyoming) located between Columbia and Peru on the northern Pacific coast of South America. The country consists of four distinct geographic zones; Coast, Sierra, Oriente (Amazon Rainforest), and the Galapagos Islands of Charles Darwin fame. Due to it´s position straddling the Equator and it´s high Andean mountains, Ecuador has some of the most diverse ecosystems in the World. There are more bird species in tiny Ecuador than in the entire continent of North America. Ecuador has always been the source of all authentic Panama Hats and is the world´s leading exporter of bananas. Also, Ecuador is home to some of the finest coffee and cacao growing regions in the world. Unfortunately these resources and the countries petroleum production have traditionally been held in the hands of the privileged few and depending on the source, between 40 and 60% of the population is considered below the poverty line.

To help improve the lives of the average Ecuadorian, the Peace Corps has been working in Ecuador since 1962 performing the three objectives assigned to it in the 1961 establishing legislation; 1) To provide technical assistance to countries that request it 2) To promote better understanding of Americans by the citizens of these countries 3)To promote better understanding of foreign cultures on the part of Americans. By living in my pueblo, La Libertad, for two years and integrating and interacting with the community, I am for better or worse taking care of goal number two (Most people in my site think that all American are 6´2" like me, about 8" taller than the tallest guy in town). By writing articles like this and posting weekly in my blog http://jayinecuador.blogspot.com/ , I´m fulfilling goal number three. For the technical assistance aspect, I am working with the local community bank that was founded with funds from the US Government. I help with computer issues, data processing, and we are currently looking for additional funds to expand the amount and number of loans that can be given to local farmers. I also help out with classes at the town´s agricultural high school and we are planning on building a Cuyeria or Guinea Pig house for teaching the kids small animal production. To fill up the rest of my time, I teach English at the local grade school four days a week and have computer, cooking, etc. classes. Also, I am experimenting with Lithic Mulch practices in my garden to see if crop yields can be improved in our poor soil. I´ve had to use the problem solving skills that I learned at Rolla in ways that I never would have imagined, and the experience of moving to Rolla´s small town lifestyle has helped me in my transition here. Although having to live with buying everything at Wal-Mart is a little different than learning to enjoy boiled rodent for breakfast.

The results of my work so far have been minimal, but with Peace Corps having been working here for 45 years, I didn't expect overnight success. That has to be the most frustrating part of being here. Part of the job is frustration, lonliness, and a nightly helping of boredom. After dark everyone in town is usually home watching bad TV. Since I don´t have a TV myself, I spend most nights reading (34 books and counting!). Thanks to the support and encouragement of family and friends, I´ve been able to adjust to life so far from home.

What I haven´t been able to adjust to is living at the top of the longest mountain range in the World. La Libertad is located two hours south of Ecuador´s capital, Quito, on the Pan-American Highway. The elevation is over 11,200 feet, so breathing even when walking can be difficult. My front door is higher than the peak of Mt. Hood, but because of the the intense sun, the climate is like a constant crisp fall day. This climate prohibits the growth of plants that flourish at slightly lower elevations, so the local crops are restricted mostly to potatoes and onions. The view though is amazing. From my backyard I can see around ten peaks that are higher than any in the Continental US.

I have another 17 months to enjoy that view and see how much help I can provide the community that has welcomed me with so graciously. After my service is over, I plan to head back to the States with a greater understanding of the world outside our borders, the ability to spek fantastic gringo Spanish, and most likely the desire never to see another Guinea Pig again.

Turkey Day Courtesy of Uncle Sam

This week has gone by very fast with Thanksgiving right in the middle. It seems like yesterday that I was writing the last post. Sunday, I went down to Latacunga to play basketball with the guys I met at Mamá Negra. They play every Sunday at a local park and are very good. I didn´t think I´d go there and dominate, but I did think the Ecuadorians wouldn´t have been as good as they were. The courts were in pretty bad shape (bent rims without nets that were about 5 or 6 inches too tall), but it was fun to get out there and play. I`m not used to jumping around, so for the next couple of days, my calves were killing me. I´m planning on trying to get down there once a month to get some exercise.

Things were pretty standard in La Libertad this week. Class, a little work at the community bank, and trying to get the teachers at the high school to start working on our Guinea Pig project. One project that I did get finished this week was another book (well, actually three) that I´ve been with for a while. I finally ended Shelby Foote´s "The Civil War: A Narrative". I started this three volume history when I was in college and read the second volume after graduation. Each book is around 1000 pages, so it took some time. It is an interesting historical account, and I have to admit that I didn´t see the ending coming.

Also, I found out this week that 4 more PCVs from my group ended their service early (Two for health reasons, one for personal reasons, and one had issues with PC upper management). That takes us down to 32 of the original 46 after only 7 months in site.

I hope had a fantastic Thanksgiving! Mine was great. Thirteen other PCVs and myself had dinner at the Ambassador´s house with her family. We all got there at 1:00 for appetizers, wine, and Dr. Pepper (not a big deal to you guys, but you can´t get Dr. Pepper down here, so the Ambassador had it sent especially for us. I actually took the last one as we were leaving and am keeping it in my house for a special occasion.) After talking for a while, we piled on the food (Turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, salads, vegetable casseroles, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and gravy) buffet style and sat in the dinning room around the biggest table I´ve ever been at. I sat across from the Ambassador and her husband. The conversation was very interesting because they have been all over the world. I also got to see the Ambassador´s husband´s Stan Musial signed baseball that he got while working in Poland (The Man was dedicating a ball field). After dinner we had coffee and pie. I barely got the last bite down because this was about twice as much food as I´ve ever eaten in Ecuador.

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving, but I wish I could have been back home with friends and family (Including my Uncle Sam), but it was neat to have Thanksgiving dinner served plates with the National Coat of Arms on it (I forgot to take a napkin with the Coat of Arms on it) and know that it was all on my other Uncle Sam´s tab.

Some of my other friends had dinner at the USAID Director´s house, the Peace Corps Director´s house, and other PCV´s houses. One of my good friends had people over (I think I´ll be there next year). He bought a Turkey for $40 (that was a good deal for Ecuador, but almost a week´s pay for us). Now I know why Ecuadorians only have Turkey on Christmas. Maybe some Turkey farmers I know should start exporting down here.

While in Quito I picked up some packages (thanks for the candy and book Mom/Dad). I also got two envelopes from my Sister and Brother-In-Law with old Post Dispatches. I just finished reading the Pro and College Football previews. Quote, "How can the Rams NOT make the playoffs in 2007?". Um, let´s see...not winning any games for the first half of the season would be one way. Also, here is a quote from their game by game preview of the Mizzou schedule, "The Jayhawks will be average, so a win could make their season". Now I´ll admit that a win versus Mizzou would have made Kansas´season, but I wouldn´t call the Jayhawks "average".

Odyssey Completed !

After two months of nightly work and a lot of confusion, I can finally cross another item off my “To do before you die” list. Last week I finished reading James Joyce´s “Ulysses”. I´ve been working on and off since freshmen year at Rolla on a list of the top 100 novels of all time. I read one off the list every so often, and I think I´m about half done. “Ulysses” is number one on the list and many years ago I tried to start reading it. I literally couldn´t get through the first page. So I decided to leave that one off until I had a bit of time on my hands (I was thinking retirement, or rehabbing from major surgery), but I think Peace Corps service is an even better opportunity.

I had to do some research work first by re-reading Joyce´s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and reading Homer´s “Iliad” and “Odyssey”. All together with “Ulysses” and the annotations that I had to read in order to understand the novel, I ended up reading 2,427 pages in order to semi-understand a 782 page book. I say semi-understand because that was about all I could do. Here are two examples from the book to show what I´m talking about and an explanation in my words. (Note: These excerpts are being disseminated without the expressed written consent of the Author or Major League Baseball)…

Excerpt #1 – This is from the second part of the first episode

INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT IF NO more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro de color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you put five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut you eyes and see.

Excerpt #2 – This is from the first page of the eleventh episode

BRONZE BY GOLD HEARD THE HOOFIRONS, STEELYRINING imperthn thnthnthn.
Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips. Horrid!
And gold flushing more.
A husky fifenote blew.
Blew. Blue bloom is on the
Gold pinnacled hair.
A jumping rose on satiny breasts of satin, rose of Castille.
Trilling, trilling: Idolores
Peep! Who´s in the . . . . peepofgold?
Tink cried to bronze in pity.
And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.
Decoy. Soft word. But look! The bright stars fade. O rose!

Explanation??

OK, so the whole book is written about one day and it is the stream of consciousness style. Excerpt #1 is one of the main characters (also the main character in “A Portrait..”) on the beach near Dublin. He is thinking about Aristotle´s views on the lack of interaction between what is seen and the seer (as opposed to hearing, taste, touch). He then contrasts that in his flow of thought to the views of Jakob Boehme and George Berkeley. He then performs a thought exercise on how Aristotle would refute the other´s views in a manor similar to Samuel Johnson. Then he quotes a line from Dante that refers to Aristotle and finishes with a comic saying similar to one of Dr. Johnson´s definitions to act as a counterbalance to the high thought.

Excerpt #2 is from a chapter that was written to parody the scene in “The Odyssey” where Ulysses/Odysseus and his crew encounter the Sirens. Since the Sirens lure the crew with singing, the whole chapter is written as a fugue, a type of music perfected by Bach and most popularly know in the repetition of the chorus of “Row Row Row Your Boat” by several people starting at separate times. Therefore, Joyce must write or “play” all the notes and themes of his chapter at the beginning and then gradually elaborate and combine them into the desired harmony. The excerpt is the “notes” that will be elaborated on. For example Bronze and Gold are the colors of the hair of the bartenders where this chapter takes place, the hoof irons are from a carriage that passes in the middle of the chapter, “imperthn thnthnthn” mocks the lisp of the bar back, and “Chips, picking…” is the sound of another main character cleaning his fingernails as he later enters the bar.

Joyce uses eighteen different writing styles for the episodes in “Ulysses” and references everything from the lives of the Saints to modern song. Obviously I couldn´t get all of this myself, which is why the annotations and pre-reading was necessary. I also have to thank Conor Magee for his help while he was visiting (and from discussions in college and while we were living together in Chicago) on Irish history and the independence movement of the nineteenth century.

As you can see from two paragraphs, getting through 782 pages was a chore. I´m glad I did it, and highly recommend it to someone with a bit of time. It was an enjoyable book to say the least and I learned a ton of useless facts (some of my favorite things). One example to end this subject with. Did You Know? That the term “Hocus Pocus” comes from a modification of the Latin Hoc es Corpus, which means “This is the body”. This modification of the language of the Catholic mass was done by some Protestants to invalidate the Catholic belief in the transubstantiation, or the changing of host and wine into the body and blood of Christ by referring to it as “Magic” or “Hocus Pocus”.

So for some actual work I´m supposed to be doing. I had an extremely busy week because it was time for the monthly “Cobro” or “Charge” at the community bank. I spent 9, 10, and 8 hours respectively on Wednesday through Friday. I´m learning a lot about the system, so on Thursday morning I pretty much ran things while my counterpart was at work. It feels good to help out, but the system they have could be improved. I´ve offered my suggestions, but they want to stick with what they have.

I also was asked to help in an interesting agricultural problem (that is what I´m supposed to be doing full-time, right?). One of the ladies I know asked me to look at her sheep the other day. I had a little training on animal care, but I really don’t want to spend much time with animals, so usually I tell people that I can´t help them with that. Since this lady is always nice to me, I said I´d take a look. Unfortunately our training didn´t cover this particular problem. She showed me the sheep she bought for breeding and pointed out it´s “huevos”. I said OK, and then she pulled up it´s tail and showed me the sheep´s vagina too. I don´t know how to say hermaphrodite in Spanish and it isn´t in my dictionary, but that is what she had. She wanted to know what to do with it: sell it or try to breed it. I thought a second and said that we should eat it. She didn´t like that answer and is currently trying to sell it. So buyer beware!

I also saw that my neighbor had planted the radish seeds that I gave her. She had just thrown them in a row in an empty space in her field. They were all coming up on top of each other. I explained that they needed space, so we had to transplant them (even though you shouldn´t do this with root vegetables). She didn´t agree, so I did most of it myself. She did a little, but still didn´t give them enough space. I left some planted the original way, so we can see the difference with the three groups in a couple of weeks. The people in my site have been growing crops their entire lives, but only onions and potatoes. I have about as much gardening experience as Eva Gabor in “Green Acres”, but a little common sense goes a long way.
Got some bad news from the garden at the High School this week. We had a bad hail storm the other day (The worst I´ve ever seen), and it killed pretty much everything in the garden. We ripped it all out and put it in the worm bed, but it was disheartening. Luckily, my cabbage wasn´t hurt too bad.

Finally, happy Turkey Day to everyone! I´ll be spending mine at the residence of the United States Ambassador to Ecuador. I guess she was impressed by the visit to my site, or I just replied to the invitation first. Either way, I´ll be enjoying and fancy dinner with a couple other PCVs in Quito. Afterword we are planning on watching some football together, so It´ll be just like home (minus family and both my Grandma´s pecan pies).
One Note: The stores down here all have had Christmas decorations on sale for a week now. Christmas in November, that´s one American custom I could do without.

Mama Negra

I guess I can´t have a title like "Mama Negra" (Black Mama) without explaining it right off the bat. Last Saturday I went down to Latacunga for the Festival de la Madonna de la Merced or Mama Negra as it is more commonly called. Latacunga is a town one hour south of me and directly below the volcano Cotopaxi. Apparently in the 18th century Latacunga was destroyed by eruptions of Cotopaxi several times (Why the kept rebuilding there? I don´t know, but you have to admire their spunk.) Eventually in the late 17 hundreds, all the citizens went up on a hill overlooking the town and prayed to the Virgin for protection. Since then the volcano has been dormant. To celebrate this miracle, the town throws a huge party every year. The culmination being a massive parade that leads a fat man in blackface dressed up like a woman through town. How this is relevant, I don´t know, but it was still a great time.

I met up with another PCV who lives in Latacunga and we walked from his apartment through town and met a bunch of his friends. The guys were all 20 something Ecuadorians and very nice. It was a fun change to hang-out with people my age. We had a couple beers and joked around while waiting for the parade to start. I don´t get to do this in my town because most of the people my age are either too busy with their kids to hang-out or have gotten the hell out of town ASAP. Most of my "friends" are 10 years old.

Anyway, finally the parade started and we moved to the street to watch. One big difference between this parade and others I´ve been to was that instead of throwing out candy, they were giving out shots of booze. Since John and I were the only "gringos" around, we got more than our share of scotch, cane liquor, wine, and chicha, a homemade corn drink that tastes like a cross between hard apple cider and pumpkin pie filling. They had the chicha in buckets and were serving it from ladles that you had to drink out of. Not very sanitary, but when at Mama Negra... There were a lot of bands, kids doing traditional dances, and groups doing "purifications". The "purifications" were a lot like the one I had when the family thought I was sick. A group of 4 dressed up in white would pull you out of the crowd, rub leaves and deer antlers on you while chanting, "Cotopaxi, Chimborazo" (Mtn. names), and then spit liquor on you. Again, the "gringos" stuck out, so John and I got dragged into the parade a couple of times. Not a big deal, but you had to pay a buck each time for the privilege of getting spit on. They used the money for buying the booze, so I figured I drank my couple of bucks worth.

Finally, Mama Negra came buy. I know that customs are different down here, and this was all in good fun, but there was something a little disturbing in seeing a man in black face as the center of the party. Ironically, I saw this article http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/education/story/AE94276F66A2D5E8862573880016C17C?OpenDocument on some students at UofI who are getting in trouble for going to a Halloween party dressed as characters from "Cool Runnings". Right there pretty much sums up a lot of differences between our countries.

While I was in Latacunga I met some tourists (another thing I didn´t get in La Libertad). Two were from the Czech Republic and were in the middle of a two year round-the-world trip. That made me think of my own two year adventure. I guess they´ll get to see more of the world, but I´ll get to...um, you´ll have to give me a moment on that one. Also, I met a couple from Scotland who were on week four of six weeks in Ecuador. They were having a great time, but when I asked the girl what she thought of guinea pig, she made a disgusted face and said that she couldn´t eat anything that you could give a name to. Understandable.

So that was Mama Negra, the best parade I´ve ever been to. Which leads me to the worst parade I´ve ever been to. Why so bad? Because I was in it! The teachers at the high school I work at told me about it last week and asked if I wanted to march with them. It was a pretty big deal at the High School. So big in fact that they spent two days practicing marching with the kids. At one point they asked me if the marching style they were practicing (high knee kicks, swinging arms) was the same as I marched in High School. I explained that marching wasn´t important back home, we usually just had classes in High School. They were amazed and evidently unaware of my sarcasm.

The parade was Friday at 11:00 in Latacunga, so we met early in town and took a charter bus with the kids. It took a while to get organized, so I was able to look around at all the other schools. There had to be 30-40 other schools there. Al the kids were in nice uniforms and most of the schools had drum corps with them. Right as we were starting, it started to rain. This along with me being the only white guy in the whole parade made it a little uncomfortable. The streets were lined with thousands of people, and I could see in all their faces the question, "What is he doing here?". At the end of the parade we stopped in front of the review stand and they announced the High School, the teachers, and the "Foreign English Teacher". I don´t teach English at the High School, but I think they put that in to make them look better. After the parade we went back to the bus and loaded up he kids. The teachers weren´t paying attention to the kids, so it took about an hour for all of them to stop goofing around in town and make it back. Finally the bus left and the teachers and I grabbed lunch and then went to a bar for beer and karaoke. I was able to bow out after two hours and get home right before the last bus.

NOTES:

- Since Daylight Savings Time is over, I am now on Eastern Time.

- Can someone please explain to me what is going on in College Football. Notre Dame looses to Navy for the first time in my life (43 years to be exact) and Mizzou and KU are in the top 10. I leave the country and everything goes mental!

- Those who haven´t figured out what was missing in the picture I sent out...it was my shadow. At noon on the Equinox, the sun is directly overhead here.

- I got this from Tim Hogan, a college friend, the other day. I figured that if anyone is thinking about heading down, they could use it to brush up on the Spanish. Unfortunately, I haven´t had much opportunity to use these phrases.

1. Excuse me; may I buy you a drink? - Con permiso, puedo comprarle una bebida?
2. You look amazing - Se ve maravillosa
3. Would you like to dance - Le gustaria bailar?
4. You have nice eyes - Tu tienes ojos lindos
5. Would you like a massage? - Te gustaria un masaje?
6. Would you like to come inside? - Te gustaria entrar?
7. Let me help you out of that - Dejame ayudarte a quitarte eso
8. Are you on birth control? - Estas usando anticonceptivos?
9. Would you like to stay here? - Te gustaria quedarte aqui?
10. I'm sorry, I have to go now. - Losiento. Me tengo que ir ahora.
11. I think this was a mistake. - Creo que esto fue un error.

El Día De Los Defuntos

Sunday:

Woke up and went to the community bank for a meeting to go over the by-laws that I had typed up. Afterwords I went to the soccer fields to watch 2 games. The season is almost over, and the guys from my town´s team asked me to play with the next year. I´ll see if they follow up.

Monday:

Got up at 6:00AM to head to Quito to catch the bus to Cuenca. I met up with 3 friends and we started the 10 hour trip (about 180 miles as the crow flies). The tip went well and it was nice to hang-out with friends. WE got to Cuenca around 8:30, checked into the hotel, grabbed a delicious Colombian dinner, went to a cool bar, and then to bed.

Tuesday:

Had a great breakfast at a Swiss restaurant and walked around town until a bunch of our other friends showed up. We switched hotels to the one where the Halloween party was, hung-out taking turns complaining about our sites, and then went to a Mexican place for dinner.

Wednesday:

Spent the morning and afternoon relaxing and visiting with friends I hadn´t seen in a while. Then we got ready for the party. The foul of us in my training group went as characters from the Mexican TV show "Chavo del 8". The show is from the 70´s, but is on TV here every night. You can see pictures and a description of the show here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Chavo_del_Ocho

As you can see, our costumes were good.

Thursday:

After breakfast I caught a bus with some fiends back to Quito. The ride up was a little rougher after a night of partying. Unfortunately I got dropped off at the entrance to my site after the last bus in had passed. I had to walk a hour in the rain. This was the first time that I was really nervous in Ecuador. There are a lot of mean dogs on the road, and people have been robbed there too. I guess since it was raining the crooks and the dogs didn´t want to go out, so I didn´t have any problems.

Friday:

The big celebration for the day of the dead is on November 2nd. What is called the Día de los Defunctos is very important down here. It is a national holiday. I was beat from not getting any sleep on the bus, so I slept in. When I got up, we BBQ´d pork steaks and chicken and then had that with rice and potatoes (grilled and not boiled for a change). WE also had a tasty blueberry drink called "Colada Morada" or "Purple Punch" (my translation). We drank that with "Pan de Guaguas" which are small loaves of bread with a human form. Both of these are very traditional in Ecuador, and I´d guess that they have pre-christian roots. Then we went to the cemetery to visit the graves. I did go to my neighbor´s grandparent´s graves with her for a minute to say a prayer. There were a lot of people cleaning the grave sites, but more were outside the cemetery selling foo, beer, and junk to put on the graves. After hanging-out for a bit, everybody went to the center of town to drink and dance. I left right away because I wanted to write this blog post and get some rest. Tomorrow I´m leaving early to go to Latacunga for the festival of "Mamá Negra" or "Black Mama". With a name like that how can I not go.

Put another what on the barbie!?

It has been a fun and interesting week to say the least. Tuesday I had gym class with the "brats" again and we went for a run. We only ran about 3/4 of a mile, but the kids acted like it was a double marathon. Most stopped and walked about 2 minutes after starting. It took almost 20 minutes to finish and they complained the rest of the week about sore legs, feet, hearts, etc.

Thursday I went into Quito to run some errands and watch the World Series. It was nice to see a live game and I watched most of it at a friend´s house who got the feed in English.

On Friday I met up with two friends who live in the jungle.. It was interesting to hear what they have to deal with (poor water supply, bugs, poisonous snakes, a different language). It made me appreciate how easy I have it compared to them.

While in Quito I picked up some stuff for hamburgers. I cooked out on Saturday night, and everyone loved it. Of course, before I grilled, they BBQ´d 2 rabbits and 11 or 13 (depending on your political views) guinea pigs that they had killed. I knew that they wouldn´t be satisfied with just burgers, so I wasn´t surprised to see them cleaning the animals. I was surprised when I saw them put on the second batch of guinea pigs. (The picture is of the first batch, because it was too dark to take a picture of the second batch) There was five big guinea pigs on the grill and two little thing by them. I looked closer and saw that they were tiny guinea pigs that looked just like mice. I asked if one of the guinea pigs was pregnant, and they said yes. Grilled rodent fetus...delicious! I don´t know where all my readers stand on the argument about whether guinea pig life beings at conception o birth, so I´ll say that they killed 11 or 13. I didn´t get to eat any of the fetus, but I didn´t have guinea pig intestine soup for the first time.

I had class at the grade school all week, but nothing really exciting happened there. At the bank I had two more computer classes, but no one showed up, so I watched to DVDs of Cardinals games instead. On Saturday I spent a couple of hours putting the community bank´s hard copy by-laws in the computer. It was boring work, but good Spanish practice (I even had to correct their spelling mistakes). While I was there, one of my counter-parts sisters came in and asked for a favor. She needed a reference letter for another sister who is looking for work in the South of Ecuador. She wrote it out on paper and asked me to type it up. It started, "I __________ have had Maria Rosa Iza Sánchez in my employment for 4 years and she has been...". The first name was blank, so I asked her whose name I needed to put in. She said, "Su nombre" which means his/her name. I asked again, and she repeated. After four times, I realized that she meant my name (Su also means your in the formal tense). I was confused because to the best of my recollection I haven´t had anyone in my employment, ever. I explained that I couldn´t put all my information down her because it would be a lie. She said it wouldn´t be a problem because they wouldn´t call me. I then asked why she wanted my information instead of another persons. She then said that she didn´t know anyone else with a phone and the people may call. This was turning rapidly into a Abbott and Costello act. Finally I convinced her that I wouldn´t be a good person to explain on the phone her sister´s work habits, so she blurted out another name to put down.

Then she asked me if I could get someone from the USA to write her a work contract so she could show it to the Embassy and move to the US. I explained that I didn´t think my family had any work, but she said that it didn´t matter. She just needed the contract and then when she got to the US she´d find something else. I told her I´d think about it. So if any of you would like to add to the illegal alien problem, let me know.

Now, we´re cooking!

This week I got some of the best news I´ve received since being in La Libertad. Voted best PCV in Ecuador...no; My work down here actually showing results...not even close; Central heating being installed in my apartment...wishful thinking. No, the great news is that my family now has a BBQ pit. Carlos, my landlord/neighbor and I built it last week out of scrap metal and we cooked some chicken on it already. I had some spicy BBQ sauce that we put on it, and it was delicious. We can get some charcoal in town (the fancy "real" kind) cheap, so I plan to use the grill a lot. Next Saturday I´m going to grill some burgers for everybody (Saturday burgers is a Verhoff family tradition).

It was funny after we finished cooking, Carlos brought the grill into his kitchen to warm the room where we were eating. Not surprisingly, the house filled with smoke. The room was warm though, so I didn´t have to wear a jacket (nice because all my other clothes smelled like an ashtray afterwords).

Speaking of jackets, I got my Colegio (high school) teacher´s uniform this week. It consists of warm-up jacket and pants, shorts, a polo shirt and socks. Everything has the school crest or name on it. I actually really like the jacket, but I had to send it back to be altered. Now, the boys in the colegio are ag students, and the girls all have seamstress classes. One of the sewing teachers took my measurements, but the jacket came back HUGE. It was past my crotch! I showed them where I wanted it o go, and they have to cut off 8 inches. I wonder what it would have looked like if an ag teacher took my measurements.

Class at the Colegio was interesting this week. On Tuesdays I have three classes there (1 ag class and 2 gym classes). The kids goofed off the whole time we were working in the garden, and then when I was stretching before class with the older kids, the weren´t paying attention. I just turned around and walked home. That probably wasn´t the most professional thing to do, but I was frustrated with people (not just the kids) asking for help and then not putting any effort into whatever we were trying to do. Also, the "If you guys don´t work harder, I´m quitting" approach has worked well in the grade school. Anyway, I came back the next day and all the kids apologized and I had a talk with the teachers. They said that the next time I should just, "Pick up a stick and...". Well, I told them that I wasn't going to hit the kids (no matter how much I want to), so I´ll just have to be more forceful from now on.

NOTES:

- Went for a six mile run yesterday. Had over a 10 min/mile pace and almost coughed up a lung halfway through. I don´t think I´ll ever get used to running at this elevation.

- Happy B-Day Steph!

- Happy Wedding Chacho!

When it rains...

Here in La Libertad, we are no longer in "Summer". Since Sunday around 2:00PM, we have been in "Winter" full-blast. I use quotes around the seasons because they are nothing like seasons back home, Instead of temperature differences being the main change with the seasons, down here it is just changes in precipitation. That´s why I can point to an exact time for the change in seasons. It started raining on my way back from town, and has rained every afternoon since then. This is a big change because it hadn´t rained here for a couple of weeks. Apparently, the dry season this year was pretty short, so I´m hoping for a light rainy season, but if this first week is an indication, I´m not going to get my wish. Every morning has been clear and sunny, but around 1-2 o´clock, the clouds roll over the Eastern ridge of the Andes (Mts. Rumiñahui and Cotopaxi). It is pretty interesting to watch because those peaks are about 7-10 miles away and I can watch the rains move towards L.L. trough the valley between us. It has rained every afternoon for about 3 hours and then let up to cool and damp evenings. The good thing is that the rain has killed the dust bowl that was forming around here. Without rain for those weeks, everything dried up and since the soil is basically all fine volcanic dust and it has been windy as well, it was horrible to walk around. Some of the roads had 2-3 inches of dust on them, so when the wind picked up, you couldn´t keep your eyes open.

Enough of the weather report. Nothing really exciting to say, I had another computer class with the ladies at the bank, and this time some of them actually showed up. We spent 2 hours going over the basics, and I think they learned a lot. Hopefully they will be back next week for round two. My biggest challenge will be getting them to type with more than one finger.

The only thing out of the ordinary this week was that I went to my first Ecuadorian wake. A 24 year old from outside of town committed suicide on Monday and the wake was the next night. It was held at his family´s house about 15 minutes from where I live. They set up a tent outside for people to sit and had the body in the "Family Room". I went with some people I knew to pay our respects (even though I didn´t know the kid). It was obviously very sad.

On a lighter note, I made pickles this week (worst segue ever!). When I was home, I picked up a package of "Bread and Butter Pickle Mix". I just had to add vinegar, sugar, and of course cucumbers. I´ve tried some store bought pickles down here, and they are so bad that I threw them out after one bite, so I was glad that these turned out well. I was also pumped that when I gave some to the family members, they didn´t like them. Since I have to keep the pickles in their fridge, I was going to let them take what they wanted. Now, I get to keep them all to myself (selfish yes, but we´re talking good pickles here).

The only funny story of this week is from yesterday when I was helping my landlord do some metal work. He is a smart guy (although after this story you may doubt that) and makes all sorts of metal objects (window frames, truck bed rail, etc.)for people in town. We were working on a set of decorative window bars when it started to rain. He kept on welding, but I thought that maybe that wasn´t a good idea, so I went under an overhang by the welding machine. I was standing there waiting to have to shut if off when he dropped the stick and started cursing. He was fine, just a little shocked. He went right back working and got shocked 3-4 more times. I just shook my head. High Current + Water = Bad Idea, but he didn´t care.

P.S. - This is the same guy that blew up my septic tank!

Kissed by a man (Not what you think)

I have to apologize in advance for the sloppiness of this post. I didn´t have time to write it out before going to the Internet Café, so it is a little rougher than normal...

So, things picked up a bit this week. I had classes as usual, but on Wednesday had a visitor. The US Ambassador to Ecuador, Linda Jewell, came to see the Community bank that I help out at. I knew about the visit a couple of weeks ago, but I didn´t want to post it because I wasn´t sure that it would happen, and I wanted to give the blog a bigger sense of importance by not declaring the future plans of an important US official. I mean, there are so many people who read the blog, I didn´t want to be seen as a source of a security leak. Anyway, the visit was pretty short. She came with a bunch of body guards and some other Embassy staff. I made a Power Point presentation on the basic functions and history of the bank that was given by the bank president. After that the Ambassador and the ladies exchanged gifts and took pictures. Pretty basic, but a big deal for La Libertad. I think everything went well.

I finally know a little more info on the results of last week´s election. So, the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, is not a fan of the US. He was elected last year on a socialist/anti-America platform. He is buddy buddy with Hugo Chavez as well. The thing that was hampering him is that his party has no representation in the congress. Congress is run by more conservative and business friendly parties. So they had the election to select members for the assembly that will write the new constitution. Out of the 150 parties that were on the ballot, Correa´s party, "Lista 35", ended up winning 71 of the 130 assembly seats. They basically will be able to write the new constitution on their own. The only thing holding them back from giving Correa total power (which is what I think he wants) is that there will be another election to ratify the new constitution. The way that people voted last week though, I wouldn´t be surprised if whatever constitution they come up with will get the people´s OK.

Also this week I had computer classes with some women from the bank. I talked about it last week and 10 women singed up for classes on Tuesday and Thursday. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, only one lady showed up. We went over a couple of things, but it pretty much was a waste of time. The good thing was that while I was waiting, I watched a DVD of a Cardinals game that I got from Andy B. on one of the bank´s computers. Cardinals won! (Side note: Way to go Cubs. $400 million sure did a lot for ya!)

I was in Quito on Friday to pick up the shirts (53 of them) that I ordered for my training group. They turned out well and the trip gave me an opportunity to go to the nice grocery store. My impulse purchase for this trip was a can of Old El Paso refried beans.

Last night I went to a wedding and then a reception in my town afterwords. It was a good time (the food was great and I lucked out and got served a chicken breast) and we stayed out ´til 3:00AM. One funny thing was that I was talking to a guy who helps out at the High School. He was pretty drunk and kept telling me how nice I was for helping at the high school too. He shook my hand and said that we were great friends, and then he kissed the back of my hand. I asked why he did that and he said that it meant that were were like brothers. I explained that a man kissing another man´s hand in the US meant something else. He was surprised and for the rest of the night when he saw me he would shake my hand, kiss it, and then wave his index finger and say, "No gay, no gay!".

Ecuadorian News... Found out this week that another member of my training group is engaged to an Ecuadorian. This time it is a guy, so I feel even worse for my integration skills.

I also found out that the "Niña Santa" that I went to see and wrote about a while ago is now being banned by the Ecuadorian government. Apparently a few weeks ago there was a big mass like the one I saw and during the ceremony there was a rush to touch the niña and four people were trampled to death. When I went, I stayed far away from the stage, but still pretty scary. I don´t know what is going to happen because a lot of people are pissed that they can´t get cured now. I´ll keep you posted.

Stinky Jay

This has been a pretty dead week. I had all my classes at the schools and also a 5 hr meeting at the community bank (After 3 hours I "zoned out" because they were just arguing about the same things over and over). I did go down to Latacunga (1 1/2 hours south of La Libertad) to hang out with two PC friends and one of the guys´buddies from the States. We met up and went out to dinner. By the time we were done, it was too late for me to get back to L.L. I decided to spend the night at the same hotel the rest of the group was at. We went to the hotel to check in. Roger´s friends were married, so they wanted a room to themselves. Roger then said that we needed two more rooms. I said that I didn´t mind sharing a room with two beds if it was cheaper. Roger just looked at me and in front of everybody he said, "We had to share rooms twice during training, and I´m sorry Jay, but, you stink!". Wow! I guess I really can´t argue with that because Ecuadorian food, although it hasn´t gotten me really sick, doesn´t agree with me all the time. Anyway, it was good to see some friends, we had a good time, and I did´´t keep anyone up with my nocturnal funk.

When I was talking to Roger, I got some PC gossip that I missed during the days I was gone from our meetings the other week. Apparently, one of the girls in our training group is engaged to an Ecuadorian guy that she just met. I really don´t know (or care about) the details, but man, I can´t even get the people in my town to remember my name, and she´s getting life time commitments. Speaking of marriage, the big news in my family is that the 15 year old daughter of one of the Sisters wants to get married to an 18 year old guy. I don´t know the guy, but he has been hanging around trying to get the Mom to agree. Kids under 18 cant get married without parental approval, but I don´t think the Mom is keen to the idea. I´m staying out of it, but I think that no matter what happens, it is going to be messy.

Like I said, it was a dull week. The most interesting thing I saw was a huge brush fire in the hills over the town. It must have been 10-15 acres and with the re3d/purple sunset over the mountains and this massive ball of orange flames hovering in the distance, it actually was kind of beautiful. Luckily it burned out after about an hour and no farms or houses were destroyed.

It looks like things went OK with the election yesterday. The final results aren´t in, but the presidents party seems to have kicked major butt. I´ll give my thoughts on everything next week.

Note: I heard from a friend in St. Louis that the Discovery Channel series "Man vs. Wild" has a new episode based out of Ecuador. Check it out!

Since I don´t have a lot of stuff to write this week, I thought it would be a good idea to let you guys know what my normal diet is. So here (I know you are all excited) is what I´ve had to eat since my last post...

Sunday
Breakfast
- Nothing
Lunch
- Roast Pork with potato pancakes and salad at a restaurant in Machachi
Dinner
- 1/4 of a guinea pig with rice and boiled potatoes

Monday
Breakfast
- Nothing
Lunch
- 1/2 of a guinea pig with boiled potatoes
Dinner
- Minestrone (from a mix) with Rice, noodles, and boiled potatoes

Tuesday
Breakfast
- Nothing
Lunch
- Tuna salad sandwiches with sour cream and onion chips
Snack
- Chocolate chip muffins from a mix I brought from the States
Dinner
- Poached Tilapia with rice, sauteed vegetables, and tereyaki sauce

Wednesday
Breakfast
- Bread with blackberry jelly that I made
Lunch
- Leftover tuna
Snack
- Chocolate chip muffins from a mix I brought from the States
Dinner
- Pizza and lasagna in Latacunga

Thursday
Breakfast
- Rolls and a bottle of water in Latacunga
Lunch
- PBJ sandwiches (homemade jelly and Jiff PB from Quito)
Dinner
- Chunky Potato Soup(from scratch)

Friday
Breakfast
- An Apple
Lunch
- Leftover potato soup
Dinner
- Pasta with Vodka Sauce (from scratch)

Saturday
Breakfast
- Coffee and bread
Lunch
- Leftover pasta
Dinner
- Mushroom soup (from a mix)

Sunday
Breakfast
- Nothing
Lunch
- Salad (lettuce I grew, tomato, onion, carrot, hard-boiled egg, ranch dressing from Quito)
Diner
- Lentils, rice, and boiled potatoes

Note: Anything in italics is something I got from someone in my town or food the had at a meeting

Trip Home

Sorry it has been so long since I last updated the blog, but it has been a hectic couple of weeks. Conor Magee was down for 9 days and we had a great time (Thanks for the blog post Conor. Now everyone can see that Irish wit at it´s best!)

Sadly, on the second to last day of Conor´s visit while we were in Quito, I got a call from my Sister. She told me that my Grandfather had passed away that morning. Gramps had been sick for a while and although I was prepared for the news, it still hit pretty hard. Before I came down here, I spent over a week visiting my Grandparents out in the Country. The day I left Loose Creek, he was having a "Good Day" and was pretty lucid. As I hugged him for the last time we had tears in our eyes and I think we both knew that we would never see each other again. I´m grateful for those last days with the man who had such an influence over my life (and the lives of so many others). We miss you Gramps!


After putting Conor on the bus to Guayaquil to catch his flight, I headed back to La Libertad. I spent a day getting stuff ready and then headed to the States for the funeral. It took over twenty hours to get home even thought the flights were only 7 1/2 hours. The trip back was pretty uneventful, but if anyone is thinking about flying to South America, I recommend flying "LAN". Good food, good movies, and free whiskey. What more can you ask for? After spending the night at the Miami Airport, I got into St. Louis on Sunday the 9th and after changing clothes and putting away my first Ted Drewes concrete in months (famous frozen custard for you non-Saint Louisans), we headed out to my Grandparent´s town for the visitation. I don't really want to go into all the details of the weekend here. It was great to see all my family even under the circumstances, but with the funeral of my Grandfather and this being the first time I´d been home since my Cousin Dale´s passing, it was very emotional.

I didn´t have a lot of time back home before I had to head back to Ecuador. My training group was having an important meeting that started the day after the funeral, so I had to get back. The meeting was over funding procurement for our projects, so it was imperative the I be there because this was going to be the majority of my work for the rest of my time in-country.

I only had a couple of hours free time in St. Louis before I had to catch my flight. I went to the grocery store to get some things that you can´t find down here. Most of the stuff was for me, but I also picked up some stuff for a friend of mine. I had called a bunch of my friends to see if they wanted anything while I was home, but since another friend had just been home, nobody really needed anything. The one thing that I had to get was a box of tampons for a girl I know. Apparently you can´t find them in Ecuador, so I had to pick some out. Mom went to the store with me and I think she got a kick out of seeing me try to decide what brand, size, etc. I needed to get. I didn´t think it was very funny, and of course when I got to Ecuador I found out that I got the wrong type. Oh well, beggars can´t be choosers.

I got to the Airport with plenty of time, but my flight was delayed. I grabbed a beer at the bar by my gate, but I didn´t realize until after I got it that it was $8. Holy Sh#%! That´s more than I make in a day. Anyway, because my flight was delayed, I missed my connection in Atlanta. Instead of waiting all night in Atlanta and then having t spend a whole day waiting in Miami, I flew to Ft Lauderdale and then took a Town Car to the Miami Airport. I made my flight to Quito OK, but without my bags. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but I had to go right to the meeting without a change of clothes. I ended up wearing the same clothes all week, and even with showers, I stunk bad! A couple of my friends didn´t know about my bag situation and told me, "Man, you really are going Peace Corps!". Other than my stench the meetings were good and informative. A couple of days later I was able to get my bags in Quito (with the most important contents: canned chili, hot sauce, and curry past intact). Also in the bag was a pair of old shoes (I can´t find shoes in my size down here), a portable CD player and a bunch of CDs.

Since I got back, I´ve been trying to get in the swing of things. I have English, agriculture, and gym class every day. Yeah, I said gym class. Apparently the old gym teacher was a little on the heavy side, so the wanted me to help out. The kids aren´t used to doing much during class, so they are going to be in for a shock when I make them run everyday. That is the reason I said that I´d teach that class. I´m getting out of shape, and this will be motivation to exercise more. Also, I want to teach the kids baseball. I got one of my Chicago friends working on getting me some 16" softballs to play with so the kids won´t need gloves. I´m counting on you Tubbs!

Other than that things are OK down here. The election for the new Constitutional Assembly is next Sunday, so my normal routine will be disrupted because we are on "Lock Down" for the weekend. I won´t be able to leave L.L. for those days in case there are any problems with the election. It will be interesting to see how things go with the new Constitution they are going to write. I´m sure you guys will here about it in the States if anything crazy happens, but hopefully it will be calm and the news can focus on crazy OJ Simpson.

Donde Esta Frankie Maguire?

Well, I think I get the privilege of being the first person other than Jay to write an entry on here, I feel kind of like Bono being asked to guest edit the Independent for a day................sort of.

I met up with Jay in Guayaquill on Tuesday and the next morning we travelled up to Cuenca which is about 2500m /8000 ft above sea level. The journey itself was pretty impressive, lots of hairpin bends and shear drops at the side of the road. We went to a soccer game that night and sampled some of the local beverages. Pilsener and Club are your 2 options in most places in Ecuador, I couldn't tell much of a difference between them to be honest, sort of like Budweiser and MGD........

After we left Cuenca we travelled north to Riobamba and organised a couple of mountain bikes for descending down from Mount Chimborazoo which is the highest mountain in Ecuador, and higher than anywhere north of it in the Americas. We got as high as 5000m / 17,000 ft, up there you can really feel how thin the air is and walking up even 20 metres really takes it out of you. The descent down on the bikes was great, I'd reccommend it for anyone taking a trip down there.

After Riobamba We headed further north, Jay headed up to his village and I took a bus out to a place called Quilotoa to hike around a lake. I have exactly 14 words of Spanish so I was interested to see how easy it would be to get around (I was surprised during the trip that more people didn't speak English) . You can actually communicate pretty well with a few phrases and a lot of hand gestures. Anyway, the hike was great, but it took about 3 hours and there were some pretty decent climbs so by the end of it I was a bit wrecked. By the time I got back on the bus, where as pretty much always I was the only Gringo, for the return trip I was ready for a snooze. Just as I was falling asleep I heard some Irish music playing, I looked up and saw they were playing "The Devil's Own" on the TV. Now, listening to Brad Pitt playing an IRA fugitive (Frankey Maguire) is a pretty painful expereince. However, listening to Brad Pitt playing an IRA fugitive (Frankey Maguire) while dubbed in Ecuadorian Spanish is actually very entertaining. Sadly it wasn't appreciated by the locals and they soon switched it off to listen to the local Sierra Music.

Next day I met up with Jay again at his village, it's small, very small, but Jay seems to be a hit among the people who live there. We spent a night there and travelled up to Quito the next day. Quito was my favourite place in Ecuador, spectacular setting and a great place to spend a couple of days I thought.

All in all I enjoyed the trip a lot, knowing a few words of Spanish goes a long way. I found Ecuadorians pretty friendly in general (with one or two exceptions) especially if you make the effort to say hello (in Spanish).

Never got around to tasting Guinea Pig unfortunately, still it's something to look forward to for the next time...

Thanks for a great trip Jay!



Conor

The JayPole

To keep you updated w/ my hectic travel schedule, the day after I wrote my last blog post, I went into Quito to do some errands. While we were still in training, I thought it would be nice to make t-shirts for everyone. I made a design that everyone liked, but we didn't have time to order them. Once we got to our sites, I started looking for a place to get them made, but had no luck. Finally I found a place in the North part of Quito that could make them. It took a long time to find the place (even the taxi driver didn't recognize the address). I was pretty happy with myself that I could get around a strange part of town, find the shop, and order the t-shirts w/0 much problem. The shirts only cost $5 and will be ready in time for our big group meeting in the middle of September.

I had a free day before my town's big festival started, so I spent the day doing laundry and working in my garden. I had to weed and fertilize the whole thing and I also tried an experiment. I was reading "Collapse" by Jared Diamond (the follow up to "Guns, Germs, and Steel"). It was an interesting book, and briefly mentioned a thing called "Lithic Mulch". This is where you sow small rocks around your plants and put a layer of rocks on top of the soil. Supposedly it helps in dry/cold areas with water retention and frost prevention. We'll see how it works, and if I get good results, I'll try it with my next round of plants and teaching it to the locals.

I found out right before the town's festival was to begin that the old PCV from my site couldn't make it, but a girl from my training group was going to visit with a friend. They weren't coming until Saturday, so I had Friday night at the party to myself. first, I went to the Ladie's house who was hosting the party. There were a bunch of people coking a ton of food in the addition to her house that they built especially for the fiesta. I helped moving the bathtub sized pots of food around. Apparently, I have the reputation in town for being strong, because whenever anyone has something heavy to move, they always ask for me to help. Anyway, they fed me before and after helping out. Around sunset, there was a procession from the house to the church. They had 12 kids in traditional outfits dancing, music, and they carried a statue of John the Baptist along and threw rose petals on it. My job was to carry a feed sack full of rose petals for them to throw. Not a hard task, except they kept hitting my in the face with the roses.

At the church, we had a long prayer service and the went outside to watch the kids do some traditional dances. Everybody was drinking and starting to get drunk, so I decided to call it a night.

The next day my friend showed up around 8:00AM w/ her friend from home. We walked around and then had lunch at the hosts house. After lunch we went to mass and then to the town's soccer field. There they had "Juegos de Gallinas" or "Hen Games". [For more info on this, see my post, "Hen Games, Exploding Toilets, and Pork Roulette] It was pretty much the same thing as when I saw it before, but smaller. After all the chickens had been caught, the kids did another dance and then asked me to come out in the middle of the field with them. They had a 24 oz. bottle of beer with a bunch of long colored ribbons tied to the top. They explained that they were going to o a dance and needed me to hold the bottle over my head. They were doing a Maypole dance, except I was the pole! It was pretty funny and they danced until I was wrapped to the shoulders in ribbon. Then the undid me and I got to spray the beer all over them. After that we all went to the center of town to eat, drink, and dance. We could only take about 10 hours of this, so we went back to my house at around 11:30, but I could hear people up until 6:00Am.

One funny thing happened at the party while we were eating. We just had bowls of potatoes to eat with a little meat. I was talking to a guy who was three sheets to the wind. He told me that he loved potatoes and I said that if that was so, then he should be able to eat one in one bite. He tried, but couldn't. I said that it was easy, and popped one in. His friends were impressed and to to do it, but couldn't. We ended up getting more people involved and jokingly yelled at each other. I just kept thinking how ridiculous this was and that I spent 4 1/2 years in a fraternity, but had to come to Ecuador to haze people(and with potatoes no less).

Sunday night they were at it again, but I had had enough.

Welcome to the Jungle

For those of you who are addicted to hearing the latest from Ecuador every Sunday (I´m sure there are a ton of you), I have to apologize. My normal Sunday trip to the market and Internet Café was thrown out in favor of an impromptu trip to the jungle. I went into Quito on Friday to pick up mail and get supplies (Thanks Steph and Matt for the Post Dispatch issues). They finally had Peanut Butter at the store, so I was content. When I met up with one of my friends, she told me that she was planning on heading out to the jungle to hangout with another of our friends. I didn´t have anything going on, so Saturday we left.

It was only a three hour trip, but very beautiful. My friend lives in a town called El Chaco, which really isn´t in the rain forest, but still very cool. The first night there, they had a big festival with a tower covered in fireworks that they shot off. We were pretty close, and the roof of the pavilion we were under kept getting hit with rockets. After that, they had a bunch of dancing acts. We drank some beers with the local friends of my friend. They were all very nice, and it ended up being a late night.

Before we went out, they were explaining what food and acts were going to be there. They also said that there would be a lot of "Peladas" there. I then jokingly asked if there were going to be a girls there. My buddy looked at me like I was an idiot and explained that "Peladas" were hot girls. I had to explain that in my site I didn´t get a chance to use that word, so I never learned it. They all got a laugh out of that, but I wasn´t amused.

Because we were up so late, we didn´t get an early start the next day. We had planned on going to see San Rafael Falls and some caves by my friend´s site. I was planning on coming right home after the caves, so I brought all my bags along (which were packed for a weekend in the city). The bus ride took longer than normal to the Falls, but it was worth it. After a 20 minute hike, the trail opened on a view of the biggest waterfall in Ecuador and the biggest waterfall I´ve ever seen. It is over 520 feet tall and the flow is enormous. Even the hike there and back was interesting and full of plants I´d not seen before. (For pics go to http://www.uct.edu.ec/napo/san_rafael.htm )

After the falls we waited for another bus to take us to the caves. I should have asked, but I just assumed that it would be like all the caves I´ve been to in the past, walk up on the trail, go in with some lights, and avoid the bats. I was about as far off as you can be. First off, the trail was just a muddy clearing through the forest (and this really was the rain forest: hot, cloudy, and constantly drizzling). Thankfully, my friend brought some shoes and shorts for me to wear. We hiked about 25 minutes; up, down, under fallen trees, slipping and sliding, and generally getting covered in mud. Now remember, I´m hauling all my luggage, so this was no treat. Finally, we got to a river and had to cross over. The water was freezing cold run-off from the mountain snow. I crossed with my bags held high, thinking the whole way that one misstep in the fast current would ruin my phone, camera, and iPod. Luckily we made it across and hiked up the river to a gorge. It was unlike anything I´d ever seen before. 100 foot vertical walls with small waterfalls all over the place and dense tree and vine growth. It was like something out of a movie. Finally we reached the "cave". It was actually a giant hole in the side of a cliff where the river passes through. we took off all our gear, set it under my umbrella, and walked through sometimes armpit deep water through the maybe 200 foot cave. As we walked, the words "Flash Flood" kept running through my head.

At the other end was more beautiful scenery. Then we hiked all the way back and waited again for a bus. By the time we got on a bus, it was to late for me to head back to L.L., so I ended up spending the night at my friend´s house. It wasn't a big deal except I had carried all my luggage on a difficult rain forest hike for no reason. Oh well, at least I can say that I´m one a very few people to hike that trail with dental floss, a book by Marcel Poust, and a grocery list.

This weekend will be fun too. It is the annual Fiesta de San Juan in my town. I really don´t know what is going to happen, but three other American will be there, so it will be good. On the 28th of August my friend from Rolla a Chicago, Conor Magee, is going to visit. That will be a blast and I´m really looking foreward to seeing a friend from home and hitting some parts of the country that I haven´t seen before. Because of this stuff, the blog posts may be infrequent for a bit, but I´ll try to keep it up to date.

SHORT NOTES:
While in Quito I finally found a soccer jersey I´d been looking for. It is for a Paraguayan team called Libertad. Not only does it say "Club Libertad" on front, but they are sponsored by...Budweiser. No I have a jersey with my site and a little bit of St. Louis on the front.

I assume you all heard about the big earthquake in Peru. I saw the first reports on the news one night, and got a call from my PC Emergency Coordinator and hour or so later. He said that we were in Tsunami warning and couldn´t go to the beach. Then he said that we might have to go into standby mode and not leave our sites. I thought the reaction time was good on PC´s part, but your not going to out run a Tsunami going 500 miles an hour. Also, my site is over 2 miles high, so I don´t think that going to the next town over was going to put me in great danger of getting hit by a wave.

Tortillas and Circuses

I hate to admit it, but I was extremely disappointed with the circus. I ended up going 2 times (it was in town for 10 days) and both times were pretty much the same. The had a big tent set up in the middle of town with lights strung up all over and loud music playing, so I thought it would be a little better than it was. The tickets were only $1 ($.50 the second visit), so I didn´t lose much.

The show started with a girl of maybe 16 years coming out to hip-hop music (they call it Raggeaton down here) in short shorts and a bra and "dancing". I say dancing, but it looked more like she was having a seizure. There were a lot of whoops and cat-calls from the crowd, but I wasn´t that impressed. Next, a clown and a guy in a suit came out and did a 15 minute routine. It was basically a vulgar (a lot of penis and homosexual jokes) version of Abbott and Costello. I understood a lot of it, but I didn´t think it was close to funny. The rest of the crowd was laughing hysterically. Especially when the clown would grab the other guy´s butt. They are very sophisticated, comically speaking, down here. This first part was the same both times I went to the show. The middle was different though.

The first time they had a juggler and the second time they had a fire swallower. At least that was something that I couldn´t do, but definitely no Cirque du Soleil. Both times after these acts they had a knife thrower. He brought out the girsl from the beginning of the show. She didn´t look confident and I was nervous that he was going to hit her. He got close and it wasn´t the, "Wow, that guy is good!" close, it was the, "Holy shit, this girl is going to die!" close. After her, they brought up someone from the crowd to get thrown at. I was hopping they´d pick me. I imagined the phone call I´d have to make to the PC office to explain that I had a steel throwing star lodged in my leg. That would have been a good blog post!

After this, both nights they then two guys come out and balance sticks, knives, and other junk on their chins/foreheads. This was OK, but it got a little boring after 10 minutes. Then the clowns came out and did some more ass-grabbin´ to the delight of the audience.

There was then an intermission both nights and the clowns came out selling food. A clown really looses some of his gravitas when he starts haggling with the person next to you about trying to buy a $.50 candied apple with a five dollar bill. (Note: "No tengo sueltos" or "I don´t have change" should be the Ecuadorian national motto)

After intermission, it was crowd participation time. The first night they picked 6 guys from the crowd and had them act out a scene where one guy sold a real live duck to another guy. The lines for all the guys (we had to watch all six do this) were...

- "Would you like to buy a duck?"
- "Does it bite?"
- "No."
- "Sure."

...That was it! The guys had to do the scene normally, angrily, sadly, and then do it acting like women. As you can see, this is a recipe for hilarity. I was more concerned with the torturing the poor duck as the performed this scene 24 times, but the crowd again went wild. Move over Dennis Miller...It´s guys with a duck!

The next time I went, they pulled three kids from the crowd and had them leap-frog each other. Again, "Gold, Jerry! Gold!" And that was all. A let down, yes, but who else do I know that can say they´ve seen a circus south of the Equator.

Not a lot else going on this week. My landlord and I fixed my roof this week, which is nice. Since I have some space let, I´ll talk a little about my humorous problem with Spanish. First off, Spanish is a subtle language. A slight change can make a big difference. For example, "Yo tengo 29 años" means "I´m 29 years old", but "Yo tengo 29 anos" (a difference of only a "ñ" versus a "n") means "I have 29 ass holes". I haven´t got caught in that one, but the other day I was at the market and asked for some pork. The vendor asked me how much I wanted, and I said I wanted a "Libre". She was confused and asked me again. I repeated that I wanted a "Libre". This went on for a while until that lady in the next booth said that I wanted a "Libra". I had been saying "free", when I wanted to say "pound". A very Back to the Future Part I moment ("Gimme a Pepsi Free"). Also, at a restaurant I I got a burrito that was frozen in the middle. The waitress was very surprised as I explained to her that there was "helado" in my burrito. I meant to say "hielo" or "ice, but I actually was telling her that somehow they had put "ice cream" in the middle of my Mexican food. Another time, the teachers in the school were asking about my family. They asked what their jobs were. When they asked what my sister did to make money, I said she was sick. "Enferma" as opposed to "Enfermera". They got a kick out of that. If I just grabbed their butts, I could take it on the road.

P.S. - Just saw that Rick Ankiel has hit three Home Runs in three game in the Bigs. I´m pulling for him (like I´m sure everyone else is). I almost cry at the end of Rudy, so I guess I´m a softy for sport´s stories.

Going off the deep end

I finished reading one of the books I picked up in Quito. The book by Tom Miller is called The Panama Hat Trail and i highly recommend it. The book is over 20 years old, bu the experiences the author has in Ecuador are exactly like mine. As he follows the production of Panama Hats (Which are and have always been made in Ecuador), he runs into PCVs, eats some Guinea Pigs, and eventually ends up in San Diego (with a side trip through St. Louis). In one story he goes to a very small town to see a fiesta. I know somebody from that town and showed them the book. He was super excited to see his small town mentioned in an English book and knew one of the ladies mentioned in it. Check it out at your local library!

This week I was visited by a PC Trainee for two days. He is going to be stationed in Latacunga (One hour south of me), so they wanted him to visit me and see what life is like up here. When I had my PCV visit, I came to La Libertad to visit the old PCV here. It was pretty boring and I just read books all day. I didn´t want John´s visit to be the same, and it wasn´t.

I picked him up in Machachi on Sunday afternoon. We first headed to L.L. and watched a few soccer games. On the way home I met a towns person who asked if we were going to church. I said no because I´d been to mass three times the day before and I didn´t want to force John. Then I found out that it was a "Special Service" for the lady who is hosting the town festival in two weeks. I felt that I should make an appearance and John said that he wanted to see it too. The mass was pretty standard, but afterwords we had a procession where they carried their statue of John the Baptist to the woman´s house who is having the festival. There we placed the statue in a home made "Grotto" and ate and danced. The procession activities and the music was led by a couple of Evangelists from Quito who often come to town to help out. As they were leaving they made a speech and told us (about 30 people) that we were supposed to have a good time, but that we didn´t need alcohol to do it. Everyone agreed and John said that it was cool that they could party without booze. I told him that we´d be pounding beers in 5 minutes. Literally 10 seconds after the Quito group left, someone came into the room with a bunch of beer. We ended up leaving after a couple hours of drinking. John was surprised that they would say one thing and then immediately do another. I wasn´t surprised.

The next day, John and I climbed the "Mountain" closest to my house. It is called Santa Cruz, and is really just a very big hill. It is around 12,500 feet at the top and the view from their was amazing. We could see Mt. Cayambe and Mt. Chimbarazo (which are about 120 miles apart) and Cotopaxi was right in front of us. I told some of my PC friends about it and they said, "Finally we have a reason to visit you". The next day, John left and said he had had a great time.

His visit was a huge morale boost for me. I was originally worried that this new guy was going to come in with great Spanish and make me look like a fool. One of the first questions I asked him was how his Spanish was. When he got here, he tested at the same level I had after training. Since he has had two months of Spanish classes since then, I thought he would kick my ass. This wasn´t the case. I had to translate a lot for him and after he left, someone came up to me a said, "He dosen´t understand anything". John is a good guy and I´m sure his communication skills will improve, but it was nice to realize how much I´m learning.

A month ago my boss visited my site and during a meeting with the woman´s group he said that PC would pay for any trips we wanted to make that were for "Technical Exchanges". One of the ladies recalled hearing at an earlier PC meeting about another woman´s group that seemed interesting. I knew who she was talking about told her that I could set up a small trip for the end of August. During the weeks while I was waiting to get the paperwork filled out, we had another meeting of the group, and they started talking about their trip. I hadn´t heard about another trip before, but they had the dates, departure times, and even who was bringing food figured out. They then turned to me and said, "Jay, tell your friend that we are coming". I was shocked because they hadn´t mentioned anything about this to me before, and the city that they were planning on going to wasn´t close to where the other woman´s group is. We tried to work this out, but it wasn´t a good idea to take all the woman to the other small town. They then asked if I new anyone in the city they wanted to go to. I said that I knew a guywho was working on a small farm. The climate there is very different, so I said that I didn´t think it would be very helpful. I thought that that was the end of it, so I kind of forgot about it. Then on Wednesday the head of the group asked if my friend was ready for the trip. I realized that they still wanted to go, so I made some calls and set it up.

We left Saturday at 3:00AM on a charter bus and headed North. We got to the farm at about 8:00 and were only supposed to spend 30 minutes there, but a lot of the 60 people we brought were really interested. We ended up spending a couple of hours there. I didn't really have to do that much planning, but when I have to write it up in my work report next month it will sound a lot better. I should have one of the biggest "Tech Exchanges" in PC Ecuador this quarter.

After the farm we went to the hot springs nearby (the real reason for the trip). The springs were nice and there were a lot of people there. I really just hope that I didn´t pick up a skin disease from all the people swimming in there whitey tighties or with their boxer briefs under their swimsuits "Cousin Eddie Style". I was surprised at how many of the kids didn´t know how to swim. The young ones sure, but 14 and 15 year old wouldn´t go out to the middle of the pool. I helped some of the younger kids learn, but since they only get to get in the water infrequently, they probably will never learn. We got back to L.L. around 9:30 and I was exhausted.

Tonight I´m going to the "Circus" that is currently set up in the center of L.L.. I´m sure that it will be an interesting experience. Look for it in next week´s blog post (That´s called a teaser).