A ver...

A ver…

6-29-11

Tuesday was a particularly clear day—in the morning there were absolutely no clouds in the sky and you could see the snow-covered Cotopaxi volcano very well.  It was amazing! The kids in the morning were especially clingy and lovable.  It is getting easier understanding the kids speaking Spanish now that I know them a little better.  There have been a few other volunteers working with me at the daycare, so the kid-teacher ratio is easier to handle all the running, screaming children.  After working with the kids, we go to the comedor to serve the elderly their daily lunch.  They are so grateful that it is easy to serve them their soup, rice, potatoes, meat, salad, and juice.  Something interesting happened yesterday, though.  Since us servers were running a little behind at the end, the elderly were getting out of their chairs before I could even get out the door ahead of them.  Because of this, some of them felt obligated to give me hugs and say their thanks to me.  It was so sweet! :-)  After lunch, I walked down to the river by myself because I was in need of some adventure and to be surrounded by nature.  It was a great hike (and I wore Keens instead of flip-flops) and it’s a beautiful place.

A HUGE plant/tree that looks similar to Aloe Vera.

My hike down to the river.

The view from where I was sitting down by the river.

I only had about an hour to hike down to the river, so I had to run back up to get to the English classes on time.  Three girls came (ages 16, 12, 8) and they read a story aloud, taking turns reading.  This was very successful and I’m so proud of them!  We worked on pronunciation and a little bit of comprehension, since they are more worried about actually saying the words correctly (past tense in English is difficult for first-time learners).

Today was the opposite of yesterday—total cloud cover instead of clear skies in the morning.  However, the sun truly burned through those clouds and it was really hot during the day!  There were a few more volunteers helping out at Muñequitos, so it a little more fun playing with the kids. 

It’s really interesting to me how well our bodies adjust to new environments.  Just a few months ago I graduated from college and was speaking English to everyone, being completely comfortable living in a nice house.  Now, I’m speaking Spanish to anyone I come into contact with, eating a totally different diet, but I am still myself, just living in a different country…

Mentira!

6-26-11

Last night was another crazy Ecuadorian party that included lots of dancing and Pilsener beer.  The party was right next door to the grandparents house and everyone in the surrounding area was invited-though only about 30 people were present.  As always, the dancing didn’t begin right away and it was awkward.  Picture a white tent set up with plastic chairs set around the perimeter for people to sit in and just look at each other while they eat food sitting on their laps.  No one really talked, but music played in the background at least.  However, it was an interesting dynamic because everyone knew each other; but no one talked.  After a while, people started dancing (me included) and the booze kept flowing.  This was the exact same as the other Ecuadorian party I’ve been to, as while you’re dancing, someone offers you a shot-like amount of beer that you take (or don’t) and continues onto the next person.  I’m starting to dance better both in meringue and salsa music, so it’s a lot more fun to dance with people.  

This morning I was actually able to sleep in without many disturbances (dogs, crying, roosters, doors slamming, etc).  My host mom made scrambled eggs, fresh fruit, and a mora Batido for breakfast!  Afterward, I helped her carry all the “compostable” food (absolutely nothing gets wasted here) to feed the pigs that they own.  The little pigs are so cute!  I hadn’t seen the pigs since the momma gave birth.  This afternoon, the whole family and I went to their corn field (they own land further away from here) to pick the ears of corn.  This was quite an adventure because I had never picked corn before and also we had to dodge enormous, colorful spiders in their huge webs between the stalks of corn.  The family all seemed to like to scare me, saying “Jolie, watch out!” as I was picking ears of corn.  It is safe to say that I’ve gotten my fix of spiders in the last few days.  We picked corn for about 2 hours; the sun intense as to burn my forearms (luckily I was wearing a hat).  I loved being outdoors, helping out with chores that needed to be done. 

Into the Wild

6-25-11

Today was the day for the hike up the mountain!  For breakfast, I ate a bowl of fruit (bananas, apples, papaya), a cheese empanada, and a warm drink (I think oatmeal somethin’ or other).  It was Zack, Danielle (a guy) and I who went into the wild.  We took a bus to Tumbaco and from there explored the area, trying to find paths leading to this mountain.  After several minutes of walking on roads and mis-leading trails (which were really just people’s driveways leading up to their houses with intimidating gates), we finally called our “tía” to find out where exactly these so-called trails are.  We ended up taking another bus further up to where look-alike trails might be.  Several attempts later, hiking up rocky and other small dirt paths, we eventually came to a house and asked if we could pass through his gate to hike up the mountain.  Although, it looked pretty difficult.  He told us to venture down where we’d come to a “small trail”, pass through some brush, and hike up the rest of the mountain.  Our adventurous spirits met their desires as we hiked down unknown paths, stepping into overgrown grass/weeds where who knows what snakes or spiders might be under our feet.  The trails truly were small, and not many people have traveled on them recently.  Sooner or later we came to an open area, where it was mostly brush, wildflowers, and thorn bushes.  Snakes were no longer on our minds, as we had more things to worry about: massive, colorful spiders in their webs and thorns/prickers to dodge.  As we looked higher up the mountain, it looked like the brush cleared; it didn’t.  We laughed because this was a bad idea to keep hiking up.  By now, my legs were torn up (I was wearing capris—not a good idea), so we decided to hop a barbed wire fence where it looked like mostly tall grass and maybe we could hike to a different mountainside.  The traverse over the barbed wire fence was the easy part.  However, the grass on the other side was infested with thousands of small spiders, scattering in the grass at every step we took.  It was my worse nightmare! The idea here was to just run fast, wherever we were going, which we didn’t really have a plan of action, because we didn’t want these small spiders to cover our bodies if they had the chance.  The spiders didn’t seem to go away the further we hiked.  So, to the other side of the barbed wire fence we went! We were happy with how far we went today, but we never did get to the peak because of various reasons.  It was still a great adventure and satisfied our desire of hiking up a mountain.  We headed back down the way we came up, ending up on a one-way road.  That was the best spot to nourish our bodies, which included peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (thanks Zack! I have actually been craving this…especially on whole wheat bread), a pear, apple, some sour gummy worms and potato chips.  In time we reached civilization; back to the three busses we took to get back to Lumbisí. A good nap and 2 cups of coffee finished off a great afternoon.

Danielle and Zack hiking up the mountain--this is the one with lots of thorns and spiders :-(

Zack and Danielle stopping for a short break to breathe in the wonderful view

Our hike up the mountain! 

Apure!

6-24-11

This was one of the few days I woke up to it raining, with clouds pretty much right above my head.  Once again, it was a very cold morning.  At the guardaría this morning, one of the girls brought a huge smile to my face.  Usually when the kids arrive, there is a short learning lesson for the day in the classroom.  This is where my English teaching usually comes in (colors, numbers, etc).  Except, today was different.  After one of the teachers went through the colors in Spanish, it was my turn to go through them in English.  As I held up the color yellow, and before I could even say the word for them to repeat, one girl shouts out, “Yellooowwww”.  I was amazed.  But that wasn’t all.  I moved onto the next color and the same girl shouts out, “Blueee”, which was correct.  The other two teachers in the room with me were extremely impressed, as was I.  That pretty much made my morning.  I’ve found with the two schools that I’ve been working at (Muñequitos in Lumbisí and the other in Tonsupa), that most of the kids already know the color “yellow” in English, but not much more than that, so the “Blue” was a first.  Later in the afternoon, Zack and Estevan were at the community garden, cutting the tops of trees with machetes so that the garden could get more sunlight, so I decided to join in on the fun.  We all took turns climbing up a ladder to get to the tops of the trees.  It’s hard work cutting branches with a machete!  But it was so worth the adventure…

Other things I’ve been noticing while living in Ecuador is that people just don’t use other “machines” that would make their lives so much easier.   What I mean by this is that wheel barrels for one thing would be a huge help.  I’ve noticed that the women carry 50+ pounds of weight on their backs, using sheets wrapped as slings (like a baby carrier).  This would put so much stress on the body! 

Ya mismo

6-23-11

As I sit here drinking my hot coffee from a French press I was given for my birthday, I’m realizing that I’ve been living in Ecuador for the equivalent time I studied abroad in Costa Rica—5 weeks.  I’m thankful that I don’t have the mindset of this period of time and that I still have much to learn and people to serve.  That being said, I urge you all to keep praying for me, that my mind would be renewed to keep working hard and loving people, while still having the passion to speak Spanish and learn more about the people and culture here in Lumbisí. Being aware of the amount of time I’ve been here, it’s easy to lose track of why I came. It would be easy to become lazy, speak English, and just relax.  However, these were neither my goals, nor my intentions before I came.  When learning a new language, a person has to be intentional and really seek out opportunities to speak, mess up, and learn.  I will strive to do this as much as possible. 

I’ve gotten a little behind in my blog-writing and it is extremely difficult to recall exactly what happened each day that I’ve been away, and also a burden to write play-by-play activities, so I’ll leave you with a few things…:-) I arrived back in Lumbisí Monday night after a 7 hour bus ride, accompanied by a fever, as I’m pretty sure, it was because my body was adjusting to 2 totally different climates.  The fever and chills eventually went away and I was able to eat with my family that night, talking about our previous week and telling stories about the weekend.  The last few days, I’ve been doing the same thing I’ve been doing at Muñequitos and serving food at the comedor.  Ecuadorian kids are so cute and they have even been behaving themselves and not crying as much.  I don’t think any of the kids know my name yet, which is fine because it’s pretty difficult :-).  I think I’ve been called about 10 different names throughout my life, but a new one I heard today: “Jokie”.   Love it.   Even though I love the kids very much, the mornings can be a little boring because most of the kids just play by themselves/with each other, and I’m just the babysitter so that I can console those who cry or hit each other.  The days can become pretty routine if I am not careful to make them enjoyable.  Serving has become more enjoyable, as I am more confident carrying more hot bowls of soup at once on a tray.  The elderly are so thankful when we serve food, saying “Dios le pague”.  The English classes have been non-existent this week, partly the fault of me.  Obviously there were no classes on Monday, since both Zack and I weren’t in Lumbisí.  Tuesday, I tried opening the store overhead door, but it just wouldn’t budge, so I left and had another “vacation” day.  Yesterday was supposed to be our busy day of English classes, with the naughty kids at 3:00PM and older teens at 4; no such luck. Today I had an urge to buy real ice cream in Cumbayá (a Baskin Robbins!), where I ordered a double cone, one scoop Mint Choc. Chip; one scoop Dark Choc. with White Choc.  So, after lunch I met Zack in Cumbayá, but the busses took longer than expected and I was 10 min late to the 4:00 English class. I’m not sure if the girls were there exactly at 4, but I waited until 4:50 just in case they came back.  I’m kind of bummed that we didn’t have English classes this week, as I was unable to attend all of them last week, but hopefully people will come back next week! This weekend we are planning to hike up a mountain (Ilato) close to my house to overlook Lumbisí.  I am looking forward to it!

Birth Day

6-19-11

I woke up to a beautiful, sunshine and blue sky morning.  It hasn’t really been sunny much, so I think it was because it was my birthday :-) that the weather was nice.  For breakfast, we ate fried eggs over rice.  In the morning, some of us went to a market to buy cheap things on the beach and that was successful! Our host mom asked what we wanted for lunch, so I requested Llapingachos.  These are basically like mashed potatoes with some kind of spices in them, and fried and are my favorite.  After lunch, three of us girls relaxed in the hammocks until Rocio came and asked us if we wanted our nails done.  She did a beautiful job and we all felt very special.  Afterward, we took a walk on the beach and saw a very beautiful sunset, which is so difficult to capture on camera.  It was great to be at the beach on my birthday though! We ate my birthday cake after dinner, and I’m so impressed by Rocio and everything she can make from scratch—she is a very talented woman. The cake was vanilla with strawberry frosting and even had birthday wishes and my name written on it!  Except, it was written in English and said “Jipi Birday Jolly”, which made us laugh.  At night, we all went out to the bars on the beach in Atacames (a bigger town close to Tonsupa) to dance: salsa and meringue.  It was a good birthday :-) 

Birthday lunch: rice, sausages, Llapingachos, salad, Mora juice :-)

Syntoya and Mabel relaxing in the hammocks.

Beautiful artwork on my toes

Yuki, me, Rosita and Mabel at the beach.

My 22nd Birthday

Some of us at a bar on the beach!

Me, Mabel, Yuki and Rosita