Hen Games, Exploding Toilets, and Pork Roulette

I don´t know which of these interesting topics from the title to lead with, so I´ll just pick one at random...

1) Exploding Toilets - My house and the family by me share a waste system. It isn´t a septic tank, but it isn´t a cess pool either. It is kind of a ´tweener. Our "waste" flows though pipes to a big hole in the ground with a concrete top. (Note: I can flush toilet paper down the drain which is very uncommon here. Even in the cities) The hole is pretty big and I think that when it fills up, they just dig a new hole. Also, in the top, there is a small hole for a PVC pipe vent. The problem we had was that the pipe broke at the base, so animals and trash could get in. The owner wanted to change the pipe the other days, but there was still some of the broken pipe i the hole. He asked me to help get it out with paper and alcohol by stuffing the pipe with paper and soaking it in booze and then burning it out. I said OK and away we were. I also grabbed a metal rod to pry some of the plastic off. After about 10 minutes and 2 pints of "White Lightning", he took a big whack with the rod and knocked the tube/paper/fire combo down the hole. Then in true "Christmas Vacation" style, the accumulated shit fumes in the hole exploded. I think a stream of vapor and poop shot out the hole, but I can´t be certain because I was running away at that point. Fortunately no one got hurt, and we had a good laugh. Later though (as you may have guessed), I went into my house and was shocked to see a massive spray of water out my bathroom door and across my bedroom floor. The explosion in the shit hole had pushed all the water in the connecting pie out my toilet. Everything was soaked, but a little cleaning (and toothbrush disinfecting) put everything in order.

2) Pork Roulette - I went to a baptism party last Friday night. I didn´t know the kids, but I never turn down a free meal. I got therewith the Mom from my host family at about 10:00 PM. I didn´t know more than ten people there, so there was a lot of staring at the Gringo. We sat down in chairs against the wall in one of the rooms of the house (like everyone else was doing) and waited to eat. My seat was second from the front door, so I got to see every plate that was brought in to the maybe 70 guests. First we had soup. I got a bowl with a chicken neck in it, so I decided to dive in and try something new. It wasn´t bad, but had hardly any meat (Note: Also this week I had cow´s milk straight from the tit). After soup, they served plates with boiled potato, chicken, and pork. They started serving the family first and then the guests in the other rooms. I sat there watching the plates go by and realised they must have had an entire pig out back, because they were serving EVERY part of that swine. A plate of meat, a plate of fat, a plate of skin, then a plate with a hoof. I was pretty hungry, so I was praying to get a good plate. The strangest thing was when I saw them carry in a plate with the snout. I don´t know what snout tastes like, but I can guess. I don´t know maybe getting the snout is like winning the lottery. I´m glad I didn´t get it then, because I´d hate for the other guests to have "snout envy". Anyway, I ended up rolling Double Zero in Pork Roulette and got all fat and a cold, meatless chicken wing...the potatoes were delicious.

3) Hen Games - sorry, I´m running out of time, so I´ll wait till the next post to finish.

Also, my boss this week came to visit. All PCVs get a site visit in the first couple of months. We spent the day talking to people with the different groups I´ll be working with. I was a little worried because it has only been two months since I got here and I haven´t done a lot of stuff. My boss said what I had gotten done (integration and helping out a bit) was great. He also gave me some ideas and talked me up a bunch to the community. I was really hoping that he´d take me out to lunch, but the ladies in the day care invited us to eat. They had pork steaks which was the first time I´ve had them outside of Missouri. Unfortunately, no Maul´s. Damn!

Notes From a God Forsaken Place

The title of this post comes from a line in a letter that my Grandma wrote me. The letter ended, "...and be careful in the God Forsaken place!". I got the letter while I was in Quito this weekend. There were a bunch of other PCVs in the office and they all got a kick out of hearing that. While in Quito I also got another Cardinals calender from my Aunt and Uncle, Glenn and Kathy. Since I already received one, I gave the extra to the PC nurse at the office. She is from South St. Louis (Graduated from Nerinx Hall) and greatly appreciated a little bit of home in Quito. I also bought a radio/alarm clock/iPod docking station. Now I can listen to the iPod without having to use the headphones and when I wake up (using my watch as an alarm was starting to get old). Although I have only had it a couple of days, I´ve used it a lot. It wasn´t that expensive and it is small enough that I´ll be able to bring it back to the States. I also got my new phone from the PC office. It is an older model than my previous one and has a slight problem. When I get a call, it only vibrates. This lack of ringing my cause a problem, so I´m going to see if I can switch them when I go back to Quito next month.

It was nice to be in Quito too because five of my friends were there too. I called/e-mailed them all last week and we all decided to meet up. It was nice to speak English and go out to some nice restaurants with friend (Indian and Pizza). Lastly, I went to the grocery store to stock up on supplies. I got all that I needed, but they were out of American Peanut Butter...Horrible! Then I headed back to La Libertad. After all that good food (which included my first Big Mac in four months), it was funny to get home to a meal with the family of boiled potatoes and fried rabbit stomach (note: the rabbit was actually very good).

When I got back, I first checked on my plants in their Coke Bottle "GreenHouses". To my surprise, they are actually growing! I feel like a new mother (I´m right there with you Marla). For the first time in my life, something that I planted is growing. Now I just have to find a place to put the little plants. Sauerkraut City here I come.

When I got back, I also finished helping out my neighbor with a little project. He is in charge of the local Men´s Fútbol League and needed the official rule book written on the computer. I offered to help and re-typed most of it. It wasn´t the rules of soccer, but just the rules of the league. I think it ended up being about 20 pages. Ecuador is in the process of writing a new Constitution (Their current Constitution is less than 10 years old). If soccer rules are any indication, the new Constitution will be enormous.

Right now, we are having exams at the grade school. They are going about as I expected...terribly. The kids, due either to my incompetence or their lack of desire, learned nothing. The average from the fifth grade was 21%. The Director is asking me to teach all the grades next year, but I´m going to stick with only a couple of hours a week.

Some people have also been asking me to teach their kids individually. I´ve always said yes, but the kids never have shown up at the decided on time. Finally last week, a kid actually showed up (1 1/2 hours late). We talked for two hours and made an appointment for this week, but he didn´t show up for that. I don´t know, but it seems like people are very excited about learning English, but don´t follow through.

NOTES:
- I finally got bit by one of the dogs in town. It´s not a big deal. I was at a guys house talking about a project and his dog came from behind me and snapped at my leg. I had jeans on, so no damage done, but I´d been waiting for one of the dogs here to get me. They are less pets, and more guards, so everywhere I walk they come out of the houses to bark.

- A bunch of tourists drove through town last week on their way to the mountains. They had a ton of North Face gear, so I could tell that they were going climbing. We had bad weather for two days after that, so I don´t think the got to see very much from the top. I thought that it was funny that people would pay a ton of money to come from the States to my site when I get to get paid to live here. Then I thought that they get to leave after a couple of days, and I have to say. Maybe the jokes on me.

- Two of my friends got robbed at gunpoint in Quito this weekend after I left. If I had decided to stay another day, I would have been with them. They are fine and only lost some cash, but it could have been worse.

- Funny story. All the teachers at the High School have a hard time remembering my name. They all call me Mike after the old Volunteer. It is always Mike this and Mike that. Yesterday Mike came to L.L with some other PC bosses to look at his old project and when the teachers saw him they ran up to him yelling, "Jay!". I guess it works both ways.

New Cell Phone Number

Just wanted to give y'all the heads up that my new number is... 011-593-9-191-6891

Jay

Sayonara Cell Phone

Ill start off with the bad news. Im without a cell phone again! I lost it, or it was stolen (this depends on your point of view) this weekend. Ill give the details later, but I wanted to let those of you who have tried or will try to call, know why I wont be answering. Ill have to go to Quito to get a new one. Hopefully I can shoot up there on Friday. As my old boss, Jason, used to tell me,"Its only a problem if money cant fix it". This situation will cost $50 to fix, so it is not a huge deal. Ill update the blog when I get the new number .

(Note: You may notice the lack of apostrophes in this post...the computer Im using doesnt have them.)

Things have actually been kind of busy this week. I talked to one of the PC bosses in Quito about a project that the teachers in the High School want to start. He said that we cant get funding for four more months because the PC has a rule against new PCvs getting started right away on big projects. We can start a small project now though to show that we are really into it.
The project is to build a Cuyeria or "Guinea Pig House". It should cost a couple of thousand dollars to build and the Profs need me to help with the design, construction, and funding (this is really what they want the most). They want to start it so they can get their Integrated Farm going (The cuys eat the farms grass and them well use the cuy poop as fertilizer. Since we dont have the money now, we are going to start with a couple of cuyes to show that we can keep them alive. On Friday I had all 7 of the teachers to my house for lunch. We had planned it for a week in advance, so when the teachers at the grade school asked me the day before to go on an outing with them, I had to say no. It was nice to decline an invitation because I had plans. That was the first time that has happened here.

This week I built 15 coke bottle "Greenhouses". Since it is so cold here, Im using them to start my garden, It took a while to drink that much soda, but finally I had enough to justify getting the soil ready. I used dirt, ash, compost, and dry cow shit. I had to used my metal kitchen sieve to sift the cow dung, so now Im using that for a fly swatter. Basically I just cut the bottles in half, poked holes in the bottom for drainage, added some small rocks, soil, and then planted the seeds. I planted cabbage (for my plan to make sauerkraut), lettuce, cucumber,squash,and okra. I really hope the okra grows because they dont have it here. It is probably too cold, but well see.

I finally found a dry cleaner in the town by me. This was a good get because I needed to wash my wool sweater. Four months without a cleaning...it was a little ripe. This week I made hummus from scratch for the first time. It wasnt hard and tasted pretty good. The only problem was that it was so thick that my high quality Venezuelan blender started to overheat and smoke.
A kind of funny story from this week happened when I was reading Don Quixote the other night. It was a chapter about a town whose residents were constantly getting harassed by other towns. The other towns would bray like a donkey to insult them. The chapter is pretty funny and as I was reading it, a donkey outside my house started braying very loudly. I thought that was ironic and very unlikely to have happened in San Diego or Chicago.

One of the families that I met in town invited me to their cousins Wedding party on Saturday. The family is very nice, so I was excited to go. Saturday afternoon we walked to the next town for the fiesta. They had a band and a ton of food (I had lamb intestine soup for the first time). It was a lot like an American Wedding reception. The big difference is that instead of an open bar, people just buy bottles and get a little cup. Then they walk around giving people shots. Everyone drinks out of the same cup and usually there are a bunch of bottles of rum, scotch, or fruit flavored liquor floating around at one time. Also, they have boxes of VERY fruity Ecuadorian wine. I was dancing a lot, and after dancing for a while, I realized my phone was gone. The family tried to find it and we had the band make an announcement, but no one turned it in. Similar things have happened to other PCVs (my friend lost her iPod this way), so I wasnt surprised. I guess the locals figure that Im rich and can get a new phone, so theyll keep mine. Thats the part that sucks, but what can you do.

Thats it for now, but I also wanted to say that if anyone has any questions about Ecuador or Ecuadorian culture, please let me know. Im just writing about what has been happening to me. Id be happy to fill in the blanks you guys may have about life down here and I could use the ideas about what to write.

Carne Molida...A ticket to Toilet Town

So, last week after I left the Internet "cafe", I went shopping for the week´s groceries. I had a spice packet for enchiladas, but needed to get the meat. I have been avoiding buying meat in town because the meat stalls are outside and basically just wood tables with piles of uncovered meat. It is about as unsanitary as you can get (in-keeping with the rest of Ecuadorian food safety practices). I finally worked up enough courage, or desire for red meat, and went up to a booth and asked for, "Una libra de carne molida" [one pound of ground meat]. The enchiladas were ok (as good as can be expected without an oven, good cheese, or tortillas[I used lettuce leaves]). The problem came at about 4:00AM, when I woke-up and realised that I had about 15 seconds to undo the drawstrings on my sleeping bag, unzip it, worm my way out, and get to the bathroom. Luckily, I just made it. I would have hated to, "Shit the bed", and not in the figurative way. Anyway, I made trips to the John about every hour all day. At least this was on a Monday, so I didn´t have classes to interrupt the fun.

Also at the market I tried to buy three potatoes for the carrot soup that I was going to make. Now seeing as this area grows almost nothing but potatoes and onions, I thought this wouldn´t be a problem. I went up to one of the many women selling massive amounts of pappas and asked for three potatoes. She said, "Three Quintals?". A Quintal is an entire sack, so she was asking if I wanted about 150 Lbs. of potatoes. Of course I said no and explained that I only needed three single potatoes. She was amazed and confused that I would want such a small amount because most people buy enough for an entire family for a month. After a little broken discussion, she finally said that she wouldn´t sell them to me. I tried other stalls, but with no luck. In a market with tons of potatoes, I couldn´t buy three.

The family had some bad luck this week when the old father fell and broke his leg. As far as I can tell, he is doing ok, but is still in the hospital in town. I must be a bad luck charm for dad´s legs, because that father of the first host family I lived with had both his legs amputated while I was there.

I keep forgetting to mention a funny story. After being here for about three weeks, I would be talking to someone in town, and they would say, "¿Está sencilla?". Now, I took this as, "Are you simple?". Wait, are they asking if I´m retarded. Is my Spanish that bad? I had them repeat it, and yep, that´s what they were saying. I just looked dumbfounded for the first couple of times until someone explained that they were asking if I was happy. I´ve told probably 50 people that I was,"sencillo". finally after a couple of weeks I was studying and came across the word, "enseño". It means, "accustomed", and that is really what people are saying, but with their accents, I couldn´t understand. Maybe I am simple.

Finally, it has been COLD here this week. I´ve had a hard time sleeping and can see my breath in my house. The heater is not really working and since it uses a lot of power, I don´t turn it on much. It is so cold here that the other day I grabbed a bottle of vegetable oil and saw that it had solidified. Oh well, at least I don´t need a refrigerator for my food.