Red Country - Dead Meat

The new Government of Ecuador has been making a lot of changes lately. (Note: The Constitutional Assembly that is writing the new Constitution is still hard at work. You can tell that it is hard at work because that´s what the commercials say. Yeah, they have to have advertise! The country overwhelmingly voted for the new Constitution, but after the Assembly dissolved the Congress, took it´s power for themselves, and several members have been involved in scandals, I guess they feel that they need a little good publicity.) From tougher rules for the mining industry to possibly kicking out one of the country´s biggest cell phone companies (my cell phone company) the new guys are turning everything upside down. They even declared a new National Holiday on May 1st. May Day is now the “Day of the Worker” in Ecuador…Communism City here we come.

Another smaller change that they have made deals with the customs department. They have made it a lot harder and much more expensive to get something out of customs. Therefore I want to repeat the rules for sending packages down here. DO NOT SEND ANYTHING OVER 2 KILOGRAMS (4.4 POUNDS) OR DECLARE A VALUE ON ANY PACKAGE. Please don´t take this as a plea for gifts. I don´t need anything and since I´ll be in the Status in July, I´ll be able to get everything I need for the rest of my time down here then. I just don´t want anyone to send a $10 gift that would cost me $50 to get out of hock (I probably would just leave it there).

If you will remember from my post a couple of weeks ago, we had to say good-bye to one of my good friends. She had been traveling too much and the PC bosses kicked her out. The day before she left we had a going away party in Quito for her. One of my other good friends came up from down South to see her off. Unfortunately he didn´t have permission. He traveled a lot too and when he called his boss to tell him that he was coming, his boss said that he couldn´t. He came anyway, and sure enough, the PC found out and he got the boot as well. That takes my original training group of five down to two and the whole Omnibus from 46 to 28.

Speaking of my Omnibus, we had our Mid-Service meetings last week in Quito. It was nice to see everyone and share stories/experiences, but from a “work” standpoint, it was a waste of time. At this point everyone´s situation is unique and what everyone is trying to do is so different that it is better just to call someone up on the phone if you have questions about a project that may be applicable in your site. Also, there are a couple people in my group that love to hear themselves talk. Any session that should have taken one hour inevitable took two or more. By the end of the second day everyone was exhausted and a lot of people were getting frustrated.

Thankfully, yours truly suggested an post-meeting activity for everyone, and it turned out well. We all met up at a bar after dinner and had a Pub Quiz. If you don´t know what that is, it is basically a trivia contest with some beer thrown in. All but two of the PCVs in our group came, and even though my group came in third, I had a good time.

The interesting culinary store of the last two weeks happened the other day when I walked in to my neighbor´s house and she was frying up some meat. She asked me to eat a bowl of rice and meat. It was surprisingly good and I asked what it was and where she got it. She said that it was sheep and our neighbor gave it to her. I was surprised that someone gave away that much meat, so I asked why the neighbor did that. Rosa then explained that a dog got into the neighbor´s flock and killed a bunch of sheep. There was too much meat for her to eat, and you can´t sell dead animals in the market, so she gave it all away. I´m not 100% sure, but I think that was the first time I´ve ever eaten and animal killed by another animal.

The Great Gringo Goalkeeper experiment may be over. I got benched last week. I probably shouldn´t be upset seeing that the other guy has been playing all his life and I have a grand total of ten games at goal under my belt, but I don´t like being told that I´m no good at anything (especially since I´ve given up less goals so far than he has). Anyway, I probably will just play when the other guy can´t make it.