Jay In Ecuador: Top of the World, Ma!

Last week was pretty slow and on Sunday I was supposed to have my first practice with my soccer team, so I didn´t have much to write, or time to write it. I´ll fill you in for two weeks with this post.

Starting with the soccer team, we ended up not having a practice, but I did find out what position I´ll be playing...back-up goalie! I had told the coach, my neighbor Carlos, that I´d played Defense before (I didn´t mention that that was in sixth grade), but he thought that with my height, I should play goal (It is ridiculous how many balls go over the five foot tall goalies they have here, so I understand his logic). We then talked about our new uniforms. I have a 2006 StL Cardinals World Series Banner (Thanks Sam and Linda!) hanging in my kitchen, and Carlos said that he liked the design and wanted to put it on the front of the new uniforms since our team won the Championship last year. I asked if he just wanted the "Champions" part, but he said that he wanted the whole thing "Birds on the Bat" and all. I let him barrow a copy of Cardinals GameDay that I got from my Brother-In-Law so he can show the printers a copy of the design. I´d be surprised if they are able to do it, but we´ll see. Also, he told me that I´ll be #12 (After my favorite 1980´s QB Randall Cunningham).

Last week I was at a meeting at the Community Bank. The President asked me if I could go to Quito the next day to drop off the bank´s 6 month accounting report to the PL-480 office. I said it wasn´t a problem, so the next day at 7:00AM I took off. I got to the office after three hours on three different busses, and literally spent 45 seconds there handing in the report. Then I spent three hours going home. To call that process inefficient would possibly be an understatement.

This week I played some softball with the kids at the high school for the first time. It went better and worse than I expected. The very first day, we just messed around in the center of town. After they took turns, they asked me to hit a few. I tossed the ball to myself and hit a line drive that headed straight for this little girl who I hadn´t seen running towards where we were playing. The ball mised her by a couple feet. I told the kids to take her away from where we were playing. They did, and I hit again. This time it was a pop foul that landed far to my right about 10 feet from where the girl was now standing. I decided right there that we couldn´t play in the center of town any more, so we have moved the game to the "Stadium" as they call it. Really just a flat dirt patch above town where the soccer games are at.

While practicing the next couple of days, two students got hit in the head, and one got a bloody nose. Also, after taking about 20 swings, one of the teachers came back the next day and complained that her whole body hurt and she wouldn´t play anymore.

The good news is that a lot of the kids liked playing and after a couple of days, they got a lot better. They even asked me to keep playing after school was out, so I´m hoping that this is going to work.

This Wednesday, I got a call from another PCV who I didn´t know. She told me that her and some other PCVs were planning on climbing one of the mountains by me, Illiniza Norte. She wanted directions to El Chaupi, the town you go through on your way up, and then asked if I wanted to come too. I wasn´t busy, so I said yes. We (6 other PCVs {3 of whom´I already new} and I) met in El Chaupi on Friday night. We satyed at a hostal that I´d booked the previous day, and at 5:00AM on Saturday, we jumped in the back of a truck that took us up to

La Virgen or The Virgen. This is a parking area about a third of the way up the mountain. We got very luck and the weather was great. It has been raining every day for the past two weeks, so I thought that when we got the The Virgen, the conditions would be so bad that we´d just hike a little and then come back.

First we hiked 3 hours up to the refuge between Illiniza Norte and Sur. The view was beautiful because the clouds were low, so we could see Cotopaxi perfectly and a lot of the other large mountains were visible over the clouds. We could even see the ash spewing from Tungurahua. Amazing! From the refuge, it was another 3 1/2 hours to the top, but since we were all feeling well, we decide to go for it. Illiniza Norte is not a very difficult mountain to climb, and most people who are going to climb the other bigger mountain will climb Norte first to acclimatize.

We were doing good for the next two hours, but two of the girls started gettting headaches from the altitude, so the went back down. Then I started to get a bad stomache ache (from the french fries I had in my town for lunch the day before). I was almost to the top and realized that I´d have to go to the bathroom ASAP. Unfortunately, this mountain did not come equiped with a Johnny-On-The-Spot. I ended up finding a convieniently

shapped rock and did my business. Also unfortunate was my failure to bring any TP with me. The only luck I had was that I brought an extra pair of socks that were not used for their original purpose. After getting that out of my system, I felt better, but had to stop every couple of minutes to rest. We got to the top and the view from 16,800 feet was amazing. I went to grab my camera to take a few pics, but it was not in my pocket. I figured I dropped it when I was on the rock, so on the way back I stopped there and found it next to my other "deposit". It only took 3 1/2 hours to get all the way back to The Virgen and from there we grabbed another truck to take us back. It was a great spur of the moment trip and everybody had a great time despite the headaches from the lack of Oxygen.