Movin' On Up

Quito, Ecuador – This is the city I’ve had to go to go get anything done for the last two years. If I wanted peanut butter, I had to go to Quito. If I needed to get my mail, I had to go to Quito. If I wanted to have a cold beer, I had to go to Quito. Now this is my home…life is good.

I got the last load of my stuff to the office on January 17th, and then headed back to La Libertad for one final night. On the 18th at 4:00 the other three Co-Trainers and I met up at the PC office to get a ride to our home-stay houses. Usually they had the Co-Trainers stay close to the office, but this time they decided to try a different location, so we are now living a bit north of the office.

The four of us are living in two houses that are right next to each other, so it is convenient to get together to cook and hang out. Andrea and I are living with a Mother and her 21 year old son. Andres and Graciela are nice, but…well, we’ll get to that later. Susan and Mary live with an older woman who is sweet as well. When we showed up at their houses we had tea and cake and both the old ladies told us how grateful they were that we had come. Graciela kept saying that she had prayed for God to send her some angels, and that we were a blessing.

To start off, the houses are AWESOME. Ours is three stories, fully furnished, and we have a washer and a dryer. I about soiled myself when I saw that. The first night we took a cab to a sports bar to have watch the NFL game. I spent the next day organizing and doing laundry. I can’t explain how nice it is to live near restaurants and bars, and to have such decadent luxuries as consistent water and electricity.

We cooked two big meals for the two families, and everything was going great with them. Work was good too. We spent the first week getting things organized for the new Omnibus’ arrival in February. There is a whole team involved, but we are the only ones with recent experience as PCVs. Right now we are updating the training manuals, revising vocabulary lists, planning the Technical Trips, and soliciting advice/input from other PCVs.

A couple examples of how different my life is here…
In the two weeks since we got here, I’ve ran almost every day
In the two weeks since we got here, I’ve read only six pages of the book I’m reading
In the two weeks since we got here, I haven’t taken a nap

So after a fun and productive first week, I got off of work on Friday afternoon and had nothing to do until Monday morning. I took a weekend trip (like any normal American), and came back to a different world. During the weekend the girls had gone out dancing and didn’t come back until very late. Graciela was pissed! She talked with Andrea and we thought things were cool, but she called up one of the PC bosses and then came in on Monday to bitch about us. She said that we were using too much water, too much electricity, were coming home late, and worst of all, that I was using the washer and dryer too much.

We had to have a meeting about it with some of the PC staff and decided to talk to Graciela. I sat down with her to explain the situation (and hopefully come to an agreement about laundry). We came to an agreement, but unfortunately the agreement was that I am no longer allowed to use the washing equipment, and that we have to tell her where we are at night. I don’t mind telling her where we are at, but the laundry thing is horrible. I tried to convince her to let me pay per load, but she said she’d rather me do it somewhere else. There are laundromats near the PC office, but it was so nice to live the dream of in-home laundry, if only for a week.

I did talk to my old La Libertad neighbor’s kids twice since I moved here. They just wanted to say hi, but I think they miss me.

Note:
Ecuador just initiated a 35% tariff on over 600 imported goods. The hope is that Ecuadorian producers will get more business, but I’m sure that they will just raise their prices too. When we found out about the price increases, we all went to the supermarket to stock up on foreign products that we like. One of them is a Chilean boxed wine called "Clos" that is very popular with PCVs. We were scared that they would stop selling it if people stopped buying it because of the higher price. We rushed to the store right before the tariffs hit because we had, as I called it…Clostrophobia