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).