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.