Welcome to the Jungle

For those of you who are addicted to hearing the latest from Ecuador every Sunday (I´m sure there are a ton of you), I have to apologize. My normal Sunday trip to the market and Internet Café was thrown out in favor of an impromptu trip to the jungle. I went into Quito on Friday to pick up mail and get supplies (Thanks Steph and Matt for the Post Dispatch issues). They finally had Peanut Butter at the store, so I was content. When I met up with one of my friends, she told me that she was planning on heading out to the jungle to hangout with another of our friends. I didn´t have anything going on, so Saturday we left.

It was only a three hour trip, but very beautiful. My friend lives in a town called El Chaco, which really isn´t in the rain forest, but still very cool. The first night there, they had a big festival with a tower covered in fireworks that they shot off. We were pretty close, and the roof of the pavilion we were under kept getting hit with rockets. After that, they had a bunch of dancing acts. We drank some beers with the local friends of my friend. They were all very nice, and it ended up being a late night.

Before we went out, they were explaining what food and acts were going to be there. They also said that there would be a lot of "Peladas" there. I then jokingly asked if there were going to be a girls there. My buddy looked at me like I was an idiot and explained that "Peladas" were hot girls. I had to explain that in my site I didn´t get a chance to use that word, so I never learned it. They all got a laugh out of that, but I wasn´t amused.

Because we were up so late, we didn´t get an early start the next day. We had planned on going to see San Rafael Falls and some caves by my friend´s site. I was planning on coming right home after the caves, so I brought all my bags along (which were packed for a weekend in the city). The bus ride took longer than normal to the Falls, but it was worth it. After a 20 minute hike, the trail opened on a view of the biggest waterfall in Ecuador and the biggest waterfall I´ve ever seen. It is over 520 feet tall and the flow is enormous. Even the hike there and back was interesting and full of plants I´d not seen before. (For pics go to http://www.uct.edu.ec/napo/san_rafael.htm )

After the falls we waited for another bus to take us to the caves. I should have asked, but I just assumed that it would be like all the caves I´ve been to in the past, walk up on the trail, go in with some lights, and avoid the bats. I was about as far off as you can be. First off, the trail was just a muddy clearing through the forest (and this really was the rain forest: hot, cloudy, and constantly drizzling). Thankfully, my friend brought some shoes and shorts for me to wear. We hiked about 25 minutes; up, down, under fallen trees, slipping and sliding, and generally getting covered in mud. Now remember, I´m hauling all my luggage, so this was no treat. Finally, we got to a river and had to cross over. The water was freezing cold run-off from the mountain snow. I crossed with my bags held high, thinking the whole way that one misstep in the fast current would ruin my phone, camera, and iPod. Luckily we made it across and hiked up the river to a gorge. It was unlike anything I´d ever seen before. 100 foot vertical walls with small waterfalls all over the place and dense tree and vine growth. It was like something out of a movie. Finally we reached the "cave". It was actually a giant hole in the side of a cliff where the river passes through. we took off all our gear, set it under my umbrella, and walked through sometimes armpit deep water through the maybe 200 foot cave. As we walked, the words "Flash Flood" kept running through my head.

At the other end was more beautiful scenery. Then we hiked all the way back and waited again for a bus. By the time we got on a bus, it was to late for me to head back to L.L., so I ended up spending the night at my friend´s house. It wasn't a big deal except I had carried all my luggage on a difficult rain forest hike for no reason. Oh well, at least I can say that I´m one a very few people to hike that trail with dental floss, a book by Marcel Poust, and a grocery list.

This weekend will be fun too. It is the annual Fiesta de San Juan in my town. I really don´t know what is going to happen, but three other American will be there, so it will be good. On the 28th of August my friend from Rolla a Chicago, Conor Magee, is going to visit. That will be a blast and I´m really looking foreward to seeing a friend from home and hitting some parts of the country that I haven´t seen before. Because of this stuff, the blog posts may be infrequent for a bit, but I´ll try to keep it up to date.

SHORT NOTES:
While in Quito I finally found a soccer jersey I´d been looking for. It is for a Paraguayan team called Libertad. Not only does it say "Club Libertad" on front, but they are sponsored by...Budweiser. No I have a jersey with my site and a little bit of St. Louis on the front.

I assume you all heard about the big earthquake in Peru. I saw the first reports on the news one night, and got a call from my PC Emergency Coordinator and hour or so later. He said that we were in Tsunami warning and couldn´t go to the beach. Then he said that we might have to go into standby mode and not leave our sites. I thought the reaction time was good on PC´s part, but your not going to out run a Tsunami going 500 miles an hour. Also, my site is over 2 miles high, so I don´t think that going to the next town over was going to put me in great danger of getting hit by a wave.

Tortillas and Circuses

I hate to admit it, but I was extremely disappointed with the circus. I ended up going 2 times (it was in town for 10 days) and both times were pretty much the same. The had a big tent set up in the middle of town with lights strung up all over and loud music playing, so I thought it would be a little better than it was. The tickets were only $1 ($.50 the second visit), so I didn´t lose much.

The show started with a girl of maybe 16 years coming out to hip-hop music (they call it Raggeaton down here) in short shorts and a bra and "dancing". I say dancing, but it looked more like she was having a seizure. There were a lot of whoops and cat-calls from the crowd, but I wasn´t that impressed. Next, a clown and a guy in a suit came out and did a 15 minute routine. It was basically a vulgar (a lot of penis and homosexual jokes) version of Abbott and Costello. I understood a lot of it, but I didn´t think it was close to funny. The rest of the crowd was laughing hysterically. Especially when the clown would grab the other guy´s butt. They are very sophisticated, comically speaking, down here. This first part was the same both times I went to the show. The middle was different though.

The first time they had a juggler and the second time they had a fire swallower. At least that was something that I couldn´t do, but definitely no Cirque du Soleil. Both times after these acts they had a knife thrower. He brought out the girsl from the beginning of the show. She didn´t look confident and I was nervous that he was going to hit her. He got close and it wasn´t the, "Wow, that guy is good!" close, it was the, "Holy shit, this girl is going to die!" close. After her, they brought up someone from the crowd to get thrown at. I was hopping they´d pick me. I imagined the phone call I´d have to make to the PC office to explain that I had a steel throwing star lodged in my leg. That would have been a good blog post!

After this, both nights they then two guys come out and balance sticks, knives, and other junk on their chins/foreheads. This was OK, but it got a little boring after 10 minutes. Then the clowns came out and did some more ass-grabbin´ to the delight of the audience.

There was then an intermission both nights and the clowns came out selling food. A clown really looses some of his gravitas when he starts haggling with the person next to you about trying to buy a $.50 candied apple with a five dollar bill. (Note: "No tengo sueltos" or "I don´t have change" should be the Ecuadorian national motto)

After intermission, it was crowd participation time. The first night they picked 6 guys from the crowd and had them act out a scene where one guy sold a real live duck to another guy. The lines for all the guys (we had to watch all six do this) were...

- "Would you like to buy a duck?"
- "Does it bite?"
- "No."
- "Sure."

...That was it! The guys had to do the scene normally, angrily, sadly, and then do it acting like women. As you can see, this is a recipe for hilarity. I was more concerned with the torturing the poor duck as the performed this scene 24 times, but the crowd again went wild. Move over Dennis Miller...It´s guys with a duck!

The next time I went, they pulled three kids from the crowd and had them leap-frog each other. Again, "Gold, Jerry! Gold!" And that was all. A let down, yes, but who else do I know that can say they´ve seen a circus south of the Equator.

Not a lot else going on this week. My landlord and I fixed my roof this week, which is nice. Since I have some space let, I´ll talk a little about my humorous problem with Spanish. First off, Spanish is a subtle language. A slight change can make a big difference. For example, "Yo tengo 29 años" means "I´m 29 years old", but "Yo tengo 29 anos" (a difference of only a "ñ" versus a "n") means "I have 29 ass holes". I haven´t got caught in that one, but the other day I was at the market and asked for some pork. The vendor asked me how much I wanted, and I said I wanted a "Libre". She was confused and asked me again. I repeated that I wanted a "Libre". This went on for a while until that lady in the next booth said that I wanted a "Libra". I had been saying "free", when I wanted to say "pound". A very Back to the Future Part I moment ("Gimme a Pepsi Free"). Also, at a restaurant I I got a burrito that was frozen in the middle. The waitress was very surprised as I explained to her that there was "helado" in my burrito. I meant to say "hielo" or "ice, but I actually was telling her that somehow they had put "ice cream" in the middle of my Mexican food. Another time, the teachers in the school were asking about my family. They asked what their jobs were. When they asked what my sister did to make money, I said she was sick. "Enferma" as opposed to "Enfermera". They got a kick out of that. If I just grabbed their butts, I could take it on the road.

P.S. - Just saw that Rick Ankiel has hit three Home Runs in three game in the Bigs. I´m pulling for him (like I´m sure everyone else is). I almost cry at the end of Rudy, so I guess I´m a softy for sport´s stories.

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).

Free at last, Free at last!

My probation is finally over. For the last three months in-site, we were not allowed to leave without special permission. That officially ended this week. I´ve been able to leave my site with my family, but nothing else. Many other PCVs in my group have blown off this rule and done whatever they felt like, but growing up under Rich and Mary Verhoff, I have learned that I can´t break any rule without getting caught. Therefore, I have been a "Site Rat" since April. Now, let the fun begin. I already have some trips semi-planned for August.

I hope everyone has had a chance to look at the pictures I sent out last week. If you didn´t get them (I got a lot of undeliverable messages afterwords) , or would like some more, let me know. Here are some of the reactions I received via e-mail. Aaron "Bulldog" Ogorzalek, a friend from Rolla wrote: "Sweeeet! You look like Andre the Giant next to them!!". Jared "Millertime" Miller, a friend from after college wrote:"Dang Jay! You must be like Andre the Giant to the people of Ecuador!". And Brian "Manilla" Curylo, a friend from work in Chicago wrote: "Jay the American Giant". They say that great minds think alike. I guess this proves that the opposite is true as well.

A couple of weeks ago the owner of my house decided that it was time to repaint the roof. My house is made of concrete and cinder block walls, but the roof is just raw timber (Eucalyptus and pine branches) trusses with corrugated fiberglass sheets over that. I offered to help, but the owner said that he didn´t want me to because I was too heavy and would break the roof. It took him a while to finish, and afterwords he asked me if the roof leaked every time it rained. It never did, but w hadn´t been getting very much rain. I figured that he was worried that he may have put a hole in the roof while painting. My thoughts were proved correct when we got a heavy rain last week. The roof leaked, but I was able to catch the water with two buckets and a pot. When the owner´s wife found out, she said that we had to put a plastic sheet over the hole. Seeing as the owner wasn´t home, it was my job to climb up on the roof and put on the plastic. I said OK to this and climbed up. I got to the peak of the roof and saw a small crack that looked like the owner had misstepped while painting. I turned around to get the plastic sheet to cover it, and then I had my own misstep. I only fell about three feet to the ceiling of my bedroom and my right foot stayed on the roof, but I had turned a small manageable crack into a hula-hoop sized hole. Good work Jay! I ended up covering both holes with plastic (which has worked perfectly). The big hole is still there and I have a feeling it is not going to get fixed for a while.

After six months in-country, the PC nurses do a follow up to see how all the PCVs are doing. My appointment was scheduled for this week. The interview/check-up went fine and afterwords, the nurse asked if I wanted to ride along to the next site. I said OK and off we went. WE headed South to Ambato and talked to two more PCVs. Then the nurse asked us all to come with her to the next site and spend the night. We took advantage of our new freedom and all said yes. We ended up with four PCVs and headed West to Guaranda, The drive there was cool. We passed right under Mt Chimborazo (Which because of the bulge at the Equator, the top of Mt Chimborazo is the farthest point from the center of the Earth). WE had a nice dinner and then crashed at the local PCV´s house. I volunteered to sleep on the floor and woke up to a cat starring at me about six inches from my face. I freaked out and woke everybody up at 5:50 AM. Normally this would have pissed everyone off, but not in Guaranda, Ecuador because we were all getting up in ten minutes anyway. Apparently an old Mayor of the town thought it would be a good idea to install a town alarm clock. They put up air raid sirens all over town and had them go off every day at 6:00AM, noon, and 9:00PM. I´ve seen Big Ben, the Glockenspiel in Munich, and the Astronomical Clock in Prague, but I´ve never heard of public time telling that included waking everyone up at the same god awful hour.

Yesterday, I performed a rarely accomplished feat, "The Holy Hat Trick". Yes, that´s right, I went to mass three times in the same day. I got up at 7:00AM and went with the family to another family member´s new house for a "blessing". A priest came and had a full mass in the living room and then blessed the inside and outside of the house. After that, w had boiled potatoes and fried pork at 10:ooAM and then went back to La Libertad for a 1:00PM mass at the grade school to commemorate the one year anniversary of the death of the former school director. After the mass we ate boiled potatoes and fried pork. I took an hour nap, and then it was off to Machachi for a Wedding. I didn´t know that people who were getting married, but apparently they were friends of friends of the family. Then it was back to L.L. for dinner of...leftover boiled potatoes and fried pork. I declined the "Anti-Atkins/Cholesterol Hat Trick" and had a PBJ sandwich and wrote out this blog post instead. I guess that is what I get for making fun of the Niña Sana last week.

La Niña Santa

First off, I got booze spit on me finally. I´ve used the excuse, "My stomach hurts" a bunch down here with the family. Usually because I just ate and the won´t except, "I´m not hungry" as a reason for not eating. I´ve been waiting for them to cure my ever present stomach ache, and it happened last week. First they rubbed oil on my chest, back, head, and neck. Next they spit trago, cane alcohol, on me. They told me to go to bed without a shower, but I didn´t want to sleep smelling like W.C. Fields, so I did anyway. I´m currently trying to think of a new excuse for not eating that doesn´t require bathing afterwords...any ideas?

Also, one of the family´s cows had a calf this week. I got to drink colostrum for the first time. This is the first milk that a cow (or mother) gives after birth. It is thick and yellow and after they added some sugar, not that bad. I think that it is better for the calf to get this than the family, but what do I know.

I went to Quito on Sunday to hang out with some friends and watch the Cards game on ESPN. The Cardinals won big (The first time I´ve seen them win this year), so it was nice. One of my friends from Philadelphia was there too, so I got to rub in the Phillie's 10,000th loss.

I´ve been reading James Joyce´s "Ulysses" the last couple of weeks, and it has been kicking my butt. It is very complicates and even he said, "It will keep the Professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant." I decided that when I went to Quito, I´d print out a study guide at the office to help me understand. Huge coincidence though, when I went to the office, in the PCV lending library, there was a copy of "Ulysses Annotated". Over 600 pages of notes for a 700 page book. I´m glad I didn´t have to print the notes out. I think the office manager wouldn´t have been too happy if I used all the paper ion the office for that.

While I Quito I picked up a bunch of packages too. 1) Scott and Kari Mueller sent a book 2) Jason Muchacho sent books and a reading light (Which I used this week when the power went out) 3) Mom and Steph sent books, socks, and thermal underwear. The books I got were...Collapse, Black Hawk Down, Frankenstein, The Panama Hat Trail, War and Peace, The Communist Manifesto, Airframe, Grant and Sherman, The Mayflower, The Conquerors, and The HP 48G Users Guide (Exciting reading that one). Total pages received - 5,243. I think I´ll have enough books for a while. Books, socks, and underwear though. If I were 10 years old, I´d have thought I had a shitty Christmas, but down here I couldn´t have asked for anything more. Thanks to all you guys who sent packages, it means a lot. I also got some letters from my Mom and a packet of Pectin for making jelly. I´m going to try again this week, so wish me luck. On the box there are instruction for making the jelly, and a chart for converting the cooking times for high altitudes. Unfortunately I live 1,200 feet above the highest altitude in the chart, so I´ll have to extrapolate.

Speaking of my altitude, I was bored the other day (I was taking a break form Ulysses) and figured out that if the ground under my site disappeared, it would take me over 27 seconds to fall to sea level and by then I would be travelling 580 mph. Of course this is assuming no wind resistance, but you get the idea...I´m up there. Also, to pass the time, I carved "Wonderboy" with a lightening bolt a la Roy Hobbs into my walking/dog beating stick. The kids didn´t understand , but they thought the ´bolt was cool.

I should preface this next story by saying that I am a religious person. I believe in God, the devil, and the rest of the heavenly host. My doubts though, come in the belief in God´s intervention in our daily lives. I don´t think that praying for a sunny day to dry out your clothes (which I´ve been tempted to do down here) actually works. Many people do believe, and that´s fine. I´m not conceited enough to think I´m always right, and far be it for me to belittle another person´s (my Mother for example)beliefs. I do though have a line, and that line was crossed on Wednesday.

Two weeks ago one of the sisters of my host family asked me if I wanted to go on a trip to the coast. Of course I said yes, because I wanted some warm weather. The trip was planned to leave at 10:00PM on Tuesday night and return the following evening. I was excited until Tuesday night when I found out why we were going. They had told me that we were going to "Pass a little time"in the sun, but now they told me that we were going for "The Cure". I asked what this was and they explained that it was a mass with the "Niña Sana", or "Curing Child". I was interested to see this, but not looking forward to the 10 hour bus ride to do so. I tried to back out, but they wouldn´t let me. We left at 8:00PM (early for a change) and after a horrible overnight bus ride (everyone slept but me), we arrived in a small coastal town at 7:30AM. The one good thing about the trip was that I got to see some aspects of coastal life. 3:30AM and there were people in the streets dancing, eating, and hanging out. This is a stark contrast from the town by my site. There, everyone is at home watching bad TV by 10:00PM.

Anyway, we soon found out that the mass wasn´t until 11:00AM, so we spent some time walking around the town. It was a town smaller than mine with one main street with about 40 houses. All the houses had been turned into restaurants and their were vendors selling food, clothes, and other crap. Also a ton of people were selling gallons of water. I immediately didn´t like this, but held my tongue. As the time neared, the people I was with all bought water and we headed behind the town where the mass was. There were about 2,500 people there and more vendors (also, chair rental stands). There were a lot of people with physical disabilities and obvious aliments; amputees, crooked backs and legs, mentally handicapped children, etc. All of whom (or their caretakers) were carrying jugs of water. We waited around for a while talking and I taking pictures. Finally, a man came out in one of the backyard with a bullhorn and said that the niña sana would come out soon, but that NO ONE!!! was to take pictures or the cure wouldn´t work. The people I was with quickly told me to put my camera away. I did so and then asked who the niña santa was. They told me she was a girl from the town who had prayed to God to help a man who couldn´t walk. She said that God told her that if the man could raise a glass of water over his head, then he was a servant of God and would be cured. The man did so and immediately could walk. Now people come from far away to see the girl and raise water over their heads (hence the water vendors).
A couple of minutes went by and then a group came out in the yard and began the service. It took about 25 minutes and was just some praying and singing. Then the niña sana came out. She was about 15 and began shaking people´s hands along the fence that separated us. People were crowding to touch her and have her bless their water. I just stood in the back in awe. They said a closing prayer, and that was it. The niña santa shock more hands for 10 minutes. I had to wait because the people I was with wanted to touch her. They didn´t get to, but weren´t too upset because they´d have a chance to at the next service. What?!? I thought we´d be going home or hopefully to a bigger town, but no, we were going to sit in the bus for 4 hours waiting for the next time. I was not happy to put it mildly.

I passed some of the time walking around looking at the stuff to buy and watching parents rub the supposedly bless water on the heads of their children with Down´s Syndrome hoping for a cure. When the people I was with asked me what I thought, I told them that I didn´t like it. They couldn´t understand that I didn´t believe in any of it and thought it was all a ploy for the town to draw tourists and make a ton of money selling food, junk, and overpriced bottles of water. They then went to the next service and I went to sleep on the bus. Afterwords, they got back on the bus. Many still limping.

Then it was another 9 hours on the bus back to Machachi (although the trip was only 110 miles as the crow files). We got there too late to catch the bus to my site, so we slept on couches at someone´s house. WE got up at 5:00AM and caught the 6:30 bus to La Libertad. I got home at 7:15 and crashed in my clothes. Thirty six hours, three Ecuadorian Provinces, and a $10 fare (which they ended up not charging me) all to see the World´s worst impression of Lourdes. And I thought we were going to the beach! Oh well, it is all for the experience.

I just wonder if the guy standing next to me at the first service with a gallon of bought water over his head will have his amputated leg grow back.

(NOTE: They are going back again next week. They asked me if I want to go, but I said no. Also, the sister of the family says that since she got back, her back pain has gone away.)

Correct cell phone number.

Correction, my new cell phone number is 011-593-93-98-6503

4th of July, Not a Big Deal In Ecuador

I had my first culinary failure last week. I tried to make pesto sauce, but it turned out horribly. I couldn´t find any fresh basil, so I used dried. That may have been the problem, or possibly the garlic was bad. Either way, the pasta was ruined. Right after that, I tried to make blueberry/blackberry jam. I didn´t know how long to cook it, so I just kept it on the heat until it got thick. It never did, so after an hour I stopped cooking it and let it cool. Within 10 minutes it turned rock hard. Apparently I cooked it about 50 minutes too long and instead of jelly, I had made Jolly Ranchers. I´m going to try again and I´ll let you know how it turns out.

Last year I spent the 4th of July in San Diego on the beach. It was a beautiful day and my friends, a couple hundred thousand other people and I spent it eating BBQ, relaxing in the sun, drinking some beers, and watching 4 simultaneous fireworks displays. This year however was a little different. I woke up at 6:30 AM when someone started beating on my door. I opened it and it was a women and her son. She asked if I could teach her son English. I said OK and asked when. She said, "Now". I said no and told them to come back later. I tried to go back to sleep, but soon another person was beating on my door. This time it was my neighbor asking for a band-aid. I gave her one and figured that it wasn´t my day to sleep in. Instead, I spent the next two hours beating my clothes on a concrete slab. After the laundry was done, I went up to the school for a planned game of basketball. The game was between the 6th and 7th grade girls, and I was the Ref. Now, I´m not saying that they were bad, but I´ve seen street brawls that were better organized. After an hour the score was 2-2, so I called a foul and let the best girl shot free-throws under the basket. Luckily she made one and it ended 3-2. Then it was the teacher´s turn to play. They let me play too and put me on the team with the ladies. I haven´t ran in a while, so I could barley make it up and down the court. They wanted me to stand under the basket and just toss it in. Since I was so much taller, it was pretty easy. I really didn´t want to win this way, so I passed it off a lot. We ended up winning, and now I know how Wilt Chamberlin must have felt. After the game we all had some soup.

Next, I went in to town to use the Internet and then came back to teach the kid from the morning some English. After "class" I hung out with the family. I had bought some peanuts and Budweisers in town, so we shared them and had a small Independence Day party. They though the beer was good, but too cold (I had put them in the fridge for an hour). The older Grandma and the two-year old tried the beer and both were impressed. (Note: the two-year old´s condition got worse on Tuesday, so they took her to the Hospital. She is fine now, but I guess spitting booze on here didn´t work after all...surprising.) Later, I made a ham and cheese sandwich and sat in my room listening to music. I hate to admit it, but I got really homesick while listening to Willie Nelson´s version of "City of New Orleans". I was thinking of everybody being together and having fun and well, "Good morning America, how are ya?", it got to me.

This was the last week of classes at the school. Graduation was on Friday and the teachers asked me to come to the ceremony. It was nice, and they even had me sit on stage and help hand out diplomas. I had to call out the students names. Luckily they were all easy ones. After that we had a Guinea Pig lunch and then drank and danced in a classroom for 6 hours. During the afternoon, I took a break and went outside to play with the kids. They were kicking a tennis ball around and I told them to throw it to me. This turned into me throwing the ball across the yard. They were all impressed at how far I could throw it (It wasn´t far for me but miles for them). Soon we had a crowd and there were probably 12 parents and 30 kids Oohing and Aahing at every toss.

The next day I took a 4 hour bus ride with the family to their relatives house for a Birthday party. I had met the girl whose B-Day it was, so I thought it would be fun. I didn´t know it, but turning 15 is a big deal down here. It is the "coming of age" for a girl. The girl got all dressed up and the house was cleared for guests. We first went to a special mass for her. It was interesting at the mass. She was sitting up front with her family like the wedding party. She had came wearing slipper, but in the middle of mass, she switched to high-heels that her Godmother had brought on a pillow. After mass, we went to the house for toasts and special dances. It was just like a wedding. They had prepared a ton of good food, so I ate like a king. The the DJ started playing music and people began to dance and pass bottles. I was tired of dancing from the night before, but I ended up staying up until 4:30. I can´t say that I had a good time, but it was better than being at home. I was disappointed to see the girl drinking heavily. By 1:00 she was fall down drunk(The same as her parents). They grow up quicker down here, but I really don´t agree with someone that young getting hammered. I eventually made it to bed (I say bed, but I had to sleep on the floor), but the party was still going on. I only got 2-3 hours of sleep that night and was glad to get back to L.L. the next day in time to help the ladies of the community bank write some correspondence on the computer and then get to bed early.

Finishing the Fun with Female Fowl

How´s that for alliteration! [For those of you who didn´t read the last post, you may want to do that now. This is the second pat of a "To Be Continued..."]

3) Hen Games - Last Sunday I went with the family to the next town over for the Fiesta de San Juan (St. John the Baptist). We got there around noon and first thing, headed to church for mass. It was packed, so we had to stand in the back. I almost left after 10 minutes because it was so crowded and stuffy that I couldn´t breath. People were smashing me, but since I was in church, I thought it better to leave than to punch an old lady in the face. I ended up staying because I didn´t want the family to think I was weak.

After Church, we jumped in the back of a truck and drove across town to a house party. I didn´t know who lived there or why we went there, but we showed up, ate lunch, and then took off. Free lunch, I´m not complaining. We then walked back to town and headed up to the soccer field. The young son said we were going to the "Juegos de Gallinas". This would translate into "Hen Games". I thought this would be some kind of feminist Cock-Fight, but I was way off. The soccer field was packed with about 1,000 people drinking and dancing and a lot of guys and girls on horseback. I had seen the riders earlier when we first got into town, and I remember wondering why the all were holding chickens. Now I found out why. The riders were all at one end of the field and took turns riding around waving their chickens windmill style. The people in the field were waiting fr the riders to come by them so that they could grab a chicken to take home and eat. That was the game! Drunk horse riders swinging live chickens while riding full blast through a crowd of drunken chicken fiends. We just stood by the side and watched the craziness. I´m surprised that no one got hurt, although I heard that in the past, people had been seriously injured. I did see a couple of guys get run over, but they got up, brushed themselves off, and walked away smiling. When all the chickens had been grabbed, the people stayed to drink and dance. I knew one of the girls on a horse, so she let me ride for a while. The people got a kick out of seeing the 6´2" Gringo on a tiny horse. I told them that next time I´d need a bigger ride. They gave me a cowboy hat and a chicken to hold and everybody took pictures. I don´t know if they were laughing at me or with me, but at least I was entertaining.
After this we hung around for a while and then went back into town. The party was just getting really started (6 stages with music and a ton of people dancing and drinking), but it was time to go. I wish I could have stayed, but I thought it was better to stay with the family. It was funny though. When I went to dance with a friend while we were waiting, the family made me give them my phone to hold so I wouldn´t lose it again. Apparently I have gotten a reputation for not being able to hold my phone while dancing.

It is summer now and very windy, so I´ve had a problem taking a shower. I know you´re wondering, "What does wind have to do with showering?", but since my water heater is outside, it matters a lot. I got sick of the flame blowing out three time a shower and getting frozen, so I built a wind break out of feed sacks, plastic string, rocks, sticks, and old tires. So far it has worked like a charm and my twice a week shower is bearable again.

I played some stickball with the kids this week using a tennis ball and a broom stick. The kids couldn´t hit, so I hit all the time and they fetched the balls. It was nice to swing a bat again, and I think my wind aided longest hit of about 275 feet may be a new La Libertad record.

On the subject of Baseball, here are some Latin American terms that I like. "Punchar". This means to strike out. The noun is "Puncha", as in "Two strikes, Wainwright on the mound, the pitch...PUNCHA!! Cardinals win the World Series." Also, a pitcher is called a "Lanzador", and a batter is a "Bateador".
The two-year old girl of the family was sick the other day and for medicine, they singed a handful of weeds and rubbed it all over her body. Next, the Grandmother took a big swig of cane alcohol and spit it over the girls chest and face. I don´t know if the alcohol evaporates and cools the body, or if it dissolves the oils in the plant and helps it absorb, but as for as home remedies go, I´ll take Chicken Noodle Soup. (Note: Karol was much better the next day, and now is 100%).

I finally got sheets for my bed this week, so for the first time in two months, I´m sleeping out of my sleeping bag. My two blankets aren´t enough though, so I put the bag on top of me. I guess under is better than in, and I should be getting an electric blanket from a friend soon, so I´ll be fine.

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.

A Room With A View

Things have been pretty much the same here this week. Class went well even though I told the kids that there were 50 stars on the American flag because there were 50 places to play soccer in the US (I used estadios instead of Estados). Things at the High School were good too. We harvested some lettuce/beets and got a bunch of land ready to plant next week. The funny thing was that on Thursday I showed up at 7:30 AM and the Teacher wasn´t there. The Principal told me the class (15 boys) was mine. I had no idea what they were supposed to be doing, so we just weeded the garden for an hour and a half and then played some soccer.

The teachers at the High School have been very nice, so I invited them to lunch at my house on Tuesday. Only three showed up (four couldn´t make it). but that turned out to be a good thing because I barely had enough food for them. I made tuna fish sandwiches (which they liked) and had apples and peanut butter (which they hated) on the side. I also made pancakes on Saturday for the family I live with. The previous PCV had made pancakes for them and they wanted me to do the same. I had a recipe for buttermilk pancakes (Did You Know: You can make buttermilk by putting 1 TBS vinegar into 1 Cup of milk and letting it sit?!) They turned out OK, but the family immediately said, "That´s not how Mike made them" and shook their heads. I can´t win.

The weather has been on a roller coaster this week. Wed - Fri it was bad (violent storms on Thursday and Friday knocked out the power all day) and when I woke up on Saturday, we didn´t have running water (this lasted until 7:00PM).

At the beginning of the week though, it was beautiful. During the day, I was able to see farther than I had before. I was able to get my first good view of Cotopaxi. This spurred me to do some research. Here are the interesting facts that I found out. From my backyard, I can see...the Volcano Cotopaxi (19,350 feet) [Note:Depending on your source, this is the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd tallest "active" volcano in the world. The last time it erupted was in the late 17th century and it destroyed the city of Latacunga, which is a lot farter away than I am. Let´s hope Cotopaxi stays inactively active.], the Volcano Iliniza Sur (17,217 ft), the Volcano Iliniza Norte (16,800 ft), Sincholagua (16,069 fy), El Corazon (15,708 fy), and the Volcano Rumiñahui (15,406 ft). There are probably a couple of other Mountains/Volcanoes that I can see that are this high, but those are all pretty far away. The interesting thing is that all these are taller than any mountain in the Continental US. Mt. Whitney in California is the tallest at 14,494 feet. The smallest of my mountains has this beat by 1,000 feet. Mt Hood in Oregon at 11,200 feet is right about at the elevation my HOUSE is (no wonder I can´t breath). To give a little more perspective, if you took Pike´s Peak (14,110 feet) and added 8 1/2 Gateway Arches on top, you would just about be as tall as Cotopaxi. Also, Cotopaxi is taller than any mountain in Africa, Europe, Antarctica, and Australia/Oceania. The beauty, the majesty, the grandeur of one of the World´s tallest volcanoes and I can see it all from my bathroom window (site of some other large eruptions).

At night since there were no clouds I also got the chance to see the Constellation of the Southern Hemispheres. Being at the Equator, I can see pretty much the whole sky. Look to the North and I can see the Big Dipper and the Belt of Orion. look to the South and I can see the Southern Cross (This is the most famous Southern Hemisphere Constellation and can be found on the flags of New Zealand http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagen:Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg, Australia http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagen:Flag_of_Australia.svg, and Brazil http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagen:Flag_of_Brazil.svg ). It was a beautiful night, so I sat outside and looked at the stars and though how crazy it was that most historical figures had never been this far south. When you are in the States, you are looking at the same sky the Julius Caesar saw, but down here I get to see things that Moses and George Washington never had the chance to. Kind of nuts.

Also, this week I looked out my window and saw some stray doge alternately humping and fighting in my yard and a seven year old girl peeing in the street (twice!). This is definitely an interesting country.

Jay

P.S. - As I finished writing this outside my house, I looked up and saw a circular rainbow around the sun. I´ve seen this before in San Diego, but I think they are pretty rare. Just add that to the list.

Books Food and iPods

They say, "You don´t know what you´ve got ´till it´s gone". After what happenend this week with my iPod, I believe them. Last Tuesday after studying and listening to some Jazz for a while, I was going to bed and plugged the iPod in to let it charge (there wasn´t much battery left), but nothing happened. The normal "Charging" screen didn´t pop up. I tried my back-up cable and different outlets, but to no avail. I tried to think of what else to do, but my only hope was that the brand new power converter I have was broke. This seemed unlikely since it was only three months old. I was worried that something was wrong inside the iPod and that I wouldn´t be able to get it replaced, or even then that I wouldn´t have all the music. I know that I´m a worrier by nature, but sadly, I didn´t really sleep much that night beacuse I was thinking about what I would do if I had to go without it. I didn´t realize til then how reliant I had gotten to this little piece of plastic. I listen to it every day to relax and feel "at home". The next day,I tried a couple of things, but nothing worked. Luckly, I was already planning on heading to Quito on Friady (more about the trip later), so at least I could go to the MacWorld and get a new converter. I did this and thankfully, that was the problem. Everything is back to normal, but I much more grateful to everyone who chipped in to get me that present.

The last 2 weeks in L.L. have been OK. I´ve had class at the school (they´ve even asked me already to teach more classes next year). Hopefully I´ll be to busy with other projects to help them out as much as they want. This week I made a list of all the sounds the different letters in English make (ex. Apple, Angel, etc.). They really didn´t like this and it was hard getting them to pay attention. I think they are starting to loose interest and I´m going to have to figure out a way to make class more fun, but I don´t know how. Maybe next week I´ll wear a clown suit.

I also started helping out at the High School. Class starts at 7:30 AM, so I´ve had to get up earlier than normal. On the way to the first day of class, I passed a couple of people and they all said hello and then, "Madrugado". I didn´t know what this meant, but since three people said it, I looked it up right after class. It means, "Early Riser". No wonder I haven´t heard that before. In the High School , I´m going to help with Ag classes and on a project to start animal production on an integrated farm. Hopefully I´ll be able to do some construction/design/strategic planning.

I went last week to watch some local teams play a couple of soccer games. It was fun to watch and I even got to see my first South American soccer fight (therse guys take it seriously). I think my reguloar Sunday will be to go to the nearest town and use the internet (which I´m doing right now), grab lunch at the place that serves roast pork on Sundays, and then hit the Farmer´s Market. After that it is back to L.L. to watch soccer and go to mass. A nice little Sunday.

On the food front, I have been cooking my own meals. Nothing fancy yet, but I have made some tuna fish sandwiches for the first time (I actually liked them). Also, I had Caldo de Pata for the first time. This would translate to "Foot Broth". It is basically cow foot boiled with onions and corn. The broth wasn´t too bad, but I had trouble with the foot meat. The family that served it to me was nice and told me I didn´t have to finish it all. I got three bites down and had to stop. It was the same texture as raw calamari. I guess it just needed marinara sauce and fried jalapeño slices.

I got the chance to talk with my family back in St. Louis the day before Mother´s Day (by the way, happy late Mother´s Day to all the Mom´s reading!). It was nice to hear their voices and kind of funny when Steph said something that I couldn´t hear, I said, "Mande", which is like "I didn´t get that" in Spanish. That was the first time I´ve said something in Spanish when I ment to say it in English.

So, the trip to Quito went well. I first went to the mall, but it wasn´t open yet, so I went next door to the Pancake House (I had Pancakes and Bacon...it was great). Then when the mall opened I got some books ("Don Quixote" and "El amor en los tiempos del cólera" [This one in Spanish]) It cost a lot for the books, but they should keep me busy at night. I also went to the grocery store, SuperMaxi, and got spices, Jiff peanut butter, ranch dressing, and Tobasco habañero hot sauce. Now I´m set for cooking. Then I went to the PCoffice to get my mail. I got some cards and letters from Mom and Dad and two more baseball gloves from Steph and Matt to play catch withthe local kids (I already tried them açout,and the kids are going to need some work. All hand/foot and no had/eye coordination) THANKS!!! I also got my copy of "Ulysses" from Mom. I ran out of books last week and was frantically looking for something to read. I actually was searching the neighbors house for a copy of a Nancy Drew book in English that I saw one o the kids with. Quite a difference...going from looking for a kids mystery book to having one of the most complicated books in English, a 1000 page novel, and a book in Spanish. I don´t think I´ll need Nancy just yet.

I also, talked to my bass at the office about a trip the rest of my training group and I were planning. We wanted to go back to our CBT site,Cangahua, for the big festival, San Pedro. I wanted to see the bull fight, but my boss said no. There is a policy against taking trips in the first three months of service, so the bull fight will have to wait. Lastly at the offfice I paiacked up a space heater. Hopefully this will kepp me a little warmer at night.

Ater the office I went to the MacWorld and got the converter and grabbed a burger and a beer (a Budweieser, my first cold beer and only second beer in a month). Then it was on the bus for the two hour ride to La Libertad.

Jay

2 Weeks Down 102 To Go

So it has been a week since I´ve showered. La Libertad has been out of water for six days because they needed to drain and clean the water holding tank that supplies the town. I´m starting to have a not so nice odor and my 500 o´clock shadow looks great (about what Nate W. looks like 10 minutes after he shaves). I´ve been buying water to drink, but my family has been using collected rainwater to cook with. I´ve been skipping these meals as much as possible. Hopefully we will get water soon. (NOTE: I wrote this yesterday and we actually got water for about three hours last night. Enough to take a shower. I feel better now, but the water is out again.)

For the first two weeks, things have been going OK. I´m really just "Hanging-Out" with my family and Counterpart (both have been awesome) and practicing my Spanish. The one project I started is that I´m teaching English at the Grade School. 5th, 6th, and 7th grades for an hour a day three days a week. The kids are great and really seem excited to learn, but we´ll see how much they study. My first classes were over the English Alphabet. I made up a chart of the Alphabet with phonetic pronunciation in Spanish (Example; C= Si). This was a lot harder to make than I thought it would be. I´m an Engineer damn it, not an English Major! Anyway, I´ll be doing this until my real projects start up. Also, the High School wants me to help out with Chemistry and Physics classes in the Fall. Anyone know how to say "Moment of Inertia" in Spanish?

I did try to help the Ladies at the Community Bank the other day. They were having problems balancing their accounts. Finally we discovered that one woman´s account wasn´t showing up on their reports. Long story short, I figured that there was an internal problem in the system and her info got deleted off one file. I tried to explain this, but gave up after a few minutes. Oh well, more vocab to learn...database management.

I haven't been able to cook my own food yet. The water shortage is one thing, but there also seems to to be a lack of gas. There are no gas mains here. You buy your gas in tanks and hook them up to your appliances. I have one for hot water (when there is water), but I need one for my stove. After two weeks, no luck in buying one. So, for the first time in my life, I´m suffering from a want of gas.

As rough as things sound, I actually have it pretty good. I´ve heard from other PCV´s in my group who don´t have electricity, share one toilet with the entire town, have to take a canoe ride up a river to get to town, and my one friend´s site is so hot that after showering he lays in bed naked to cool off every night (although he did catch a bunch of people the other day staring at him through a crack in his wall. Great first impression!). It was so bad for one of my good friends that she has gone home. After 10 days of not sleeping and being constantly on edge, she left.

Other Quick Notes

• Because it was the name of the old PCV here, everyone in the town calls me Miguel (except for the two year old daughter of the family that lives by me)


• I was wearing my dirty old "Pike" hat and the family asked me why I don´t wash it. I can´t get away from people giving me crap about that hat.


• I did laundry last week and because it rains so much, it took over five days to dry.


• I got to milk a cow for the first time. I don´t think I did a good job, because the next time I helped, they just had me hold the bucket to catch the milk.


• I watched a pregnant cuy (guinea pig) get killed by our neighbor. She grabbed it by the neck and pushed the head in until we heard a couple of loud pops. Then she drained the blood out, dumped it in a pot of boiling water, and started ripping the fur off. Oh, forgot to mention that this all happened in our kitchen while I was sitting there drinking hot chocolate. Also, the pot of boiling water was the same one they make tea in. Very old school!


• Thank you Megan M. for correcting me on my misspelling of "poo". I really though there was an "h" at the end. That is why it is good to have nurse friends.

JLV - PCV

(Note: this is the first of two new posts)

Quito, Ecuador - Second highest Capital in the World. A city with 400 year old churches and overpriced dress shirts. They put the Omnibus into two hostels close to the PC office and from the time we got there to swearing-in we were busy with meetings.

We had meetings with almost every US Government agency that works in Ecuador from the Army to US AID. W also had final meetings on health, security, and lesson on self defense tactics ("Hit ´em in the balls!!"). It was actually a pretty fun week especially since after the meetings we got to go out to some nice places for dinner and I got to drink my first Budweisers in a while.

One problem did happen when a girl apparently had to much fun the night before and showed up late for some meetings. This wasn´t her first offense, so they sent her home, bringing the Omnibus number to 39 from the original 46.

We also did have the chance to explore Quito a bit. We went to a couple old churches, a casino (I won $2.50), a mall ($100.00 for a shirt that would cost $50 in the States), and the Quito snake museum. I think a story describes someone in the Peace Corps pretty well. A friend and I went in to look at the poisonus snakes of Ecuador. There was a room where you could hold a "Horse Killer Boa", a very deadly snake from the jungle. We both were totally into getting a picture with it. Then they said that it cost $3 so we turned and left. We had no problem letting a lethal 5 foot snake wrap itself aound our necks, but three bucks, I´m not crazy.

In Quito we also had a meeting about mail and phones. For the next two years my address will be...

Jay Verhoff - PCV (PCV from PCT is the only change)
Cassilla 17-08-8624
Quito, Ecuador
South America

(Note: Do not send packages over 4.4 pounds and DO NOT declare a value)

My new cell number is...

011-593-9-191-6891

I can send a recieve texts from the US, but can only recieve calls. Also, I have unlimited incoming minutes so feel free to call anytime. It maybe a bit pricey, so a good option is to use an internet VOIP service or check your phone company for country specific plans.

On the tech side, in Quito I was able to get over 1,200 more songs for my iPod form two other Trainees (Thanks Crystal and Andrew) now I´m really set with over 6,200 songs. To all the guys who chipped in to get me that, thanks again. I´ve been using it almost evey day.

After all the meetings, all the work, all the Spanish conversations that I was competely lost during, it was finally time to swear-in. The ceremony was held at the US Ambasador´s house. The Ambasador, Linda Jewell, was there to administer the oath. First we had a couple of speaches telling us how great we were and then the Ambasador said a few words. During her speach she teared up. We think she must have had her kids on her mind. Then we raised our right hand and swore to, "Protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic" Pretty much the same oath as the President. We also sang the National Anthem. As we were singing, "...and the home of the brave.", a jet flew over us on its way to the airport. Just like Opening Day.

After that we had a picnic at the PC Country Director´s house and then a late night party at a Quito club. The next day we goofed around in Quito and ate at a really nice Greek restaurant that overlooked the Historic Center of Quito. The next day (Sunday, April 22nd) we got up early, packed our junk, and started jumping into cabs to catch busses. It was sad to say bye to people who you´d been with almost constantly for the last ten weeks. More tears were shed by some of the girls.

I was the last top go. I got into a cab and two busses later I was unpacking my stuff in my room in La Libertad.

So here I am. A Professianal Developement Extensionist with experience in Engineering and a little Agriculture, a basic ability in Spanish and two years to get God knows what accomplished. Wish me luck!

The One Week Countdown

Even though we´re pretty close to finishing up, there was still a lot to do. A couple of the competencies that we had to complete weren´t totally finished and we had to take the final language test.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post was was that while we were in Riobamba we went to a German restaurant. It was owned by a German man and his Ecuadorian wife. The food was good (the beer even better), but it made me miss a couple of things. I´ve decided that I´m going to try and make Sauerkraut and pickles while I´m down here. I don´t know how it will turn out. Hopefully it goes well and I can find somebody to make me some brats.

Easter in Cangahua was interesting. I went to mass with another Gringo Trainee. We weren´t the only whites there though. there was a guy there that I´d have to describe as a middle-aged hippy. He had white hair, a nose ring, and was wearing goofy clothes while constantly taking pictures at the front of the church. Jeff and I were talking about how stupid the guy looked when he came back and sat down right behind us. With his wife! Ouch, I hope that they were French or something and couldn´t understand that we were ripping on him for 10 minutes. I couldn´t really make out what the Priest was saying all mass, but it was still interesting. They had some traditional dances and a procession of local products that were then blessed. Also, there were two baptisms and a marriage during the service. Both the ceremonies were short, but similar to the ones back home. After mass though, they took down the statue of Jesus from the Alter, changed his hands to ones with holes in them and then had another procession around the town with music and fireworks. Very different!

The rest of the week flew by as we were getting our final business and gardening activities completed. The business competency required us to think of a business and then do a feasibility study on it. My business was a hot sauce company and according to the study it would work. The garden on the other had didn´t fare so well. You did have a good view of the ground because it wasn´t blocked by any plants growing in it at all. Since the garden sucked, I have a couple months to get something going at my site. I´ll have time, so it shouldn´t be a problem. We also took our final LPI (Language Placement Index) test. This is the one that I had to get a five/ten to go to my site. I somehow got a 6 (Intermediate High). I think this was a little generous, but I´ll take it since I started with a Novice Mid score on my first test. The test I was more concerned with was the stool sample that I had to turn in. I hadn´t been feeling great for about a week, so the nurses asked me (and almost everyone else) to turn some pooh in. I didn´t think about it when they gave me the vial, but putting a small handful of poop into a plastic tube ain´t that easy. Actually it is pretty disgusting. Anyway, that test came out fine and unlike a couple of other PCTs, I don´t have intestinal parasites.

One of the last days of Spanish class we got to watch "The Last King of Scotland". I had been wanting to see this (and "The Departed", which I finally saw) for a while. Spoiler Alert!! The Facilitators wanted to show us an story of someone who went to a foreign country to help others and ended up doing more harm than good. This was supposed to be an example for us, but I thought to my self, "This guy become the personal Dr. to the President, had an affair with his wife, and made important political and economic decisions for Uganda. I have four months to try and get some radishes to grow! Good example."

I got some packages in the mail this last week too. Sam and Linda (Aunt/Uncle) sent me some much appreciated Easter Candy, toys for the kids at my site, and Cards gear. Jean and Kent (Cousin/Cousin-In-Law) sent me a Cardinals calender, and my Sister and Mom sent Easter Cards. THANK YOU!!!
(See what I did there...send me stuff and you get props on the Blog)

Finally the last day came at CBT. It was harder to say goodbye than I thought t would be because all the families were very emotional. I promised that I´d come back to visit during one of the festivals. Then the group jumped in the back of a truck with our stuff and we were off to catch the bus for Quito. Adios Cangahua I hardly knew ya!

Trips

It has been a while since I´ve been able to update this blog (or even check my e-mail) because for the last couple of weeks I have been pretty busy. I had the eight day site visit to La Libertad (L.L.) and then two days later, we went in groups on a ten day Technical Trip. There is a lot to talk about from these two trips, so this post is going to be long...bare with me.

First, I found out from my Mom right before my site visit that my Cousin Dale passed away. He was only 36 and died from a blot clot. I was shocked when I heard this. I never deluded myself that I would be able to be away from home for two years without anything bad happening, but I never thought it would be to someone so young. This is the hardest part of the PC experience, being away from friends/family during hard times. Dale will be missed.

As for my trips, they both went well. I was nervous before my trip to L.L. because I didn´t want to give my new neighbors a bad impression. I think that everything went as good as possible given my limited Spanish. I arrived with the current PCV who is living in my site, Mike. He showed me the house he is living in now and that I will move into at the end of the month and introduced me to the family that owns the house. It is actually a kind of compound with the family's three houses surrounding an open area. Two sisters live in the houses next to mine with a third sister living nearby. The third house in the compound is solely for me. My house is great. It has four rooms (bedroom, bath, living room, and kitchen). The bathroom is about two years old as the family added it on when Mike moved in. The bathroom is nicer than some of the bathrooms that I had in Chicago. I have a hot water heater that runs to the shower, sink, and kitchen. This is huge because most of the other PCVs have to take cold showers or boil water and take bucket baths.

Mike has the place set-up, but he is moving to Quito to work in the PC office and is taking everything with him. I get some money for a settling-in allowance, so I´ll get to set things up the way I want to. I think I´m going to turn the living room into a work-out room. I´ll have to make all the equipment and weights myself, but it will give me something to do in the evenings.

The only problem with the house is that it wasn´t built for a 6 foot 2 man. The door to get into the house only goes up to the tip of my nose, and the ceiling is about one inch too short in some places. I can stand in the bathroom (it is sunken) and the kitchen, but to get through the jams between the rooms is going to be an adventure. I foresee a lot of busted foreheads and broken light fixtures in my future.

I didn´t have a lot of time to hang out with the family, but they seem very nice. Mike likes them a ton. They have a couple of young kids who are always running around and a son who is about 11 who I´m going to teach how to play baseball (I need to get him a glove in Quito before I get there so we can toss the pill around after dinner).

The town of L.L. is pretty small and on the cold side. March is during the rainy season, so we got rain everyday. When the sun came out, it got pretty warm, but as soon as it went behind the ever present clouds, the temp quickly dropped. At night it was especially cold. I slept with my socks, warm-up pants, and sweater on and three blankets and was still cold. I´m definitely going to need an electric blanket.

There are a couple of stores in town that sell the basics, so I´ll have that for emergencies. Otherwise I can take a 1/2 hour bus ride to the nearest town, Machachi, to shop in the supermarket, farmer´s market, or other stores that will have pretty much anything else I could need. I´ll probably head to Machachi at least once a week. Quito is a little under two hours away, so heading there for special stuff won´t be a big problem either. Also, L.L. has good cell phone reception. I get a PC issued cell when I swear-in on April 20th, so y´all will be able to call me whenever you want to catch-up.

The one really cool thing about L.L. is that is is between a couple of mountains. When the clouds were light (once during the week), you can see the Ilinizas range, El Corazón, and Cotapaxi (the second or third tallest active volcano in the world, depending on your definition). The view is amazing.

I will have a lot of work to do in L.L. once I get settled and a little stronger with my Spanish. The irrigation system needs some work and there is talk of constructing some reservoirs for the dry season. The community bank is strong, and I hope to work with individual loan recipients on projects. Also, onions are one of the only products that are grown around the town, so I´m going to try and help with crop diversification and possibly value added products derived from onion (can you say dry soup mix). There are a bunch of other things going on, so I´ll definitely be busy. To start off, twice a week I´m going to teach English to 6th and 7th graders. I think they will actually be teaching me Spanish, but oh well, it´ll be fun.

The main group that I´ll be working with is the women's group that runs the bank. They are a great bunch of ladies and when the found out that my Birthday was on the Saturday of my visit, ("when is your Birthday" was the second question they asked), they decide to have a party. It was fun. Cake, beer, and party games what else could a 29 year old ask for.

The day after the party I had to head back to my CBT site, but I am excited to return to L.L. and get going with my work.

The two days between the trips were spent getting stuff ready and doing laundry. Not so exciting.

The 41 of us left on Omnibus 97 (2 more quit after the site visit. Bring the total to 5) were split into 5 groups for the Tech Trip. I´m in the Sierra-Ag group with 8 others. We spent the first day of the trip at an Organic farm outside of Quito. It was a beautiful farm. The guy that ran it, Don Pancho, spoke perfect English. He gave us a tour and a background of Ecuadorian agricultural practices. He blamed a lot of the problems of Ecuador today on Chemical companies taking advantage of the peasants after the Agricultural revolution of the ´60s. He really HATED chemical usage and chemical companies in general. Later he asked us what we studied in college. I tried to avoid the question, but finally had to say Chemical Engineering. He was surprised, but not to pissed. Actually, he had me explain a couple chemical processes to the group. It felt good to use Thermodynamics for a change. I have to admit that I didn´t really agree with a lot of what Don Pancho was saying, but it was still interesting.

The next day we went to a tree nursery. It was nice, but I started to feel bad. I had some stomach problems and sadly most of my energy was focused on not crapping my pants. I didn´t get a lot out of that day. The next was worse though and I actually puked for the first time in a while in the middle of and organic fruit farm. I was able to get away from the group so nobody saw. I felt better after that, but still have some GI probs even today.

We spent most of the rest of the trip in Riobamba at a nice Hotel. It was good to be in a city for a change. We ate at nice restaurants every night and I took a lot of long hot showers. The best thing about being in Riobamba was that we had ESPN. I was able to watch the Final Four and the Cards opening day game. It would have been better if STL won, but I´ll take what I can get. I also saw the Cards third game (another loss). I have the 29th marked on my calender because they are showing the Cards/Cubs game here. Now I just have to find a place to watch it. On the subject of the Cardinals, there was a hat shop in Riobamba that had a Cards hat that I bought for $3. I got a Guinness hat too. The funny thing was that as I looked around, I saw a hat that said "Sachs Electric" and "St. Louis, MO" on the back. I have no idea why a Chinese run knock-off hat shop in Riobamba, Ecuador would have a Sachs Electric hat. Small World!

To finish the trip, we went to a couple of local markets, a fruit drying project, another organic farm, and a couple of days in an indigenous village. Overall it was a good trip. I did get to see something crazy for the first time. As we were riding the bus back from the fruit farm, I looked to the right and "Holy Shit", there was a volcano in the distance erupting a huge plume of smoke. I asked to Tech Trainer next to me what we had to do. He just said, "It has been doing that for a couple of years". That was my first view of Tungurahua. I guess you get used to it. The wind did change one day and covered the streets with ash. I was busy watching Opening Day, so I missed that.

We got back from the trip last night (one day early). I´m glad we came back early so we could see Good Friday in Cangahua. For dinner I had a traditional Good Friday dish called Fanesca. It is a tasty chowder with fish and a bunch of grains and beans. After that they had a procession through town with a cross, music, and huge representations of Saints. I was exactly like the parade in Godfather II that goes on when Vito kills The Black Hand. Tonight they are having a big fiesta at the town hall, so I´m going to have to dance and drink wine all night...a tough life.

We are getting to the end of training now. One more week in Cangahua then a week in Quito, and it´s off to L.L. This really has flown by. I have another language test on Friday this week where I have to get a five out of ten. I think I should be OK, we´ll see. Other than that this week is just getting or training activities finished and stuff ready for Quito. I´ll have time next week to jump back on the computer, so I´ll let you know then how Easter is in Ecuador and how the test went.

Until then, take ´er easy!

Jay