Raisins in My Lasagna?!

Each day here brings something new and unpredictable. 99% of the time the novelty is what makes life exciting, keeps me on my toes, and continues to leave me guessing at what’s going to happen next. The other 1% of the time it can get frustrating and momentarily, I wish for my sense of ‘normalcy’. Sometimes, I get the feeling that my life here is just upside-down. Dogs hang out on roofs. Woof.

So Friday afternoon, we had a tutoring session with 3 English teachers in Latacunga who were practically begging for our help for the TOEFL exam they have to take in a couple months. I think it went pretty well and we’ll be working with them from now on, at least once a week. Before tutoring, I went into the post office in the city for what felt like the 100^th time and my care package was finally there! I got so excited! Then the unenthused postal lady tells me she needs a copy of my ID. Okay, sounds good. No, she says, you need to go make a copy. So, yet again, I laugh at how little I am able to predict, I head out of the post office in search of an internet café and copy it myself. After tutoring, we went to get dinner. I decided I wanted Italian and my volunteer friend heard of a good lasagna place. I order the house special which had chicken and a creamy béchamel sauce. A couple bites in, I find large ‘pasas’ in my lasagna. Raisins! What the funky?! I stopped and thought, “I can’t even predict what I will find in my mouth”. 

The next day, we were invited to attend our Ministry coordinator’s birthday party. She is a very sweet lady and does a lot of hard work for us so the other volunteer and I were pretty excited about celebrating her special day. On the invitation was the agenda of the party. First, we would be going to church for a mass to honor the memory of her parents and then the cemetery to put flowers on their graves. Soooo we didn’t expect this of course, but we showed up to both and couldn’t find the family. We ran into them on the way out of the cemetery and they gave us a ride to the party venue which is an event space called “UgshaWasi” in the campo of our town. It was a gorgeous area in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by beautiful, green mountains. We started with Chugchucaras for lunch, which is a large plate of chanchofritado (fried pork), mote and tostado (steamed and roasted corn), bacon bits, canguil (popcorn), chicharron (fried pork skin), and fried empanadas. Yeah, heart attack on a plate, but so very delicioso. 

We also had espumilla, which is whipped egg whites with fruit and sugar on a cone. But! No one eats cones here! They’ll buy ice cream or espumilla en cono (on a cone) and then toss the cone! Didn’t expect that either.

So after lunch, we headed out to the fields in the back to play games. We did a sack race, a tomato dance, and a 3 legged race. Anything involving couples meant I was forced to participate with the other volunteer because he is obviously my boyfriend. In this culture, platonic relationships between members of the opposite sex do not exist. So because I spend time with a male volunteer and we look alike and are close in age, everyone insists that we are in a relationship. Even though we are coworkers and we have to work together for teacher trainings, it’s impossible to convince them otherwise. Sigh. 

After the games, we head over to the Plaza de Toros (bullfighting ring) which is tiny and has been converted into a volleyball court. They announce that all the women need to get together in order to do a lap around the Plaza. I have no idea why we’re doing this, but I play along. As we’re leaving the ring, the women start to scream and run! I’m still baffled because I realize that what they’re scared of is a small sheep being led into the ring by a rope. Turns out, the next game was bullfighting a sheep! Sheepfighting! Talk about unpredictable- never woulda guessed that one. So the women sit in chairs on the side and cheer on the men who even have the little cloths to egg on the sheep. Then they stop and bring in a larger, angrier sheep! And this one actually did scare me a little. He would back up slowly and then charge and grunt. The whole ordeal was hilarious and I watched as the party host, the principal of my school, passed out shots of tasty chocolate liqueur to the women and whiskey to the men. 

Then we danced for hours and chatted with the family. We listened to some live music and had coffee and humitas (similar to cornbread). We met the birthday girl’s brother and his family, who live in Cumbaya (the richest city in Ecuador) and they invited us over to swim in their pool next weekend! I think we’re going to take them up on it and then stop by Tumbaco to visit Sonia and family. I’m so excited! 

Today, Sunday, was a more relaxed day. We met up with our Peer Support Network representative, who is like a volunteer advocate, and had lunch in the mall in Latacunga, walked the Sinchaguasin steps, and shopped at the market. Today would have been predictable, until I got home and found out that the water never came back to town. So I took a bucket shower for the 2^nd time in my life. (My host grandmother keeps buckets of water filled up for just such occasions.)

Although it was a fun and exciting weekend, I can’t help but wish I was in SD, heading home from Disneyland with Momma, Carly, Chris, and Colton. Happy Birthday, C-Baby! I love and miss you so much! I’m just going to drown my homesickness in peanut butter M&M’s from my care package.

Goodnight. And wish me good luck with this never-ending guessing game.

(pictures to come later. apparently I found the slowest internet connection in the country)

Pujili in photo form

Sinchaguasin seen from town

The bottom of Sinchaguasin

Valentina looking regal on the roof

neighbor dog- will probably be murdered before I leave this place

Starting the climb

El Danzante. You´ll see more of him later.

Signing up to be a volunteer for the Ecuadorian Red Cross

View on top of Sinchaguasin

Kiara- Momma of dumb dogs

Ponky and Beto- baby chicken killers

Valentina

Chickens- named Lunch and Dinner

Teaching Up a Storm

I’m officially a high school English teacher. I started co-teaching with my 4 English teachers yesterday and these first 2 days have been awesome! I love the students! Especially the octavos (means 8^th grade, which is the same as our 7^th grade). They’re so tiny and motivated and adorable. A little girl gave me a paper heart that she folded and a little boy gave me Manicho! Which is pretty much my favorite candy here- it’s chocolate with crushed peanuts.

I decided to lay down some rules right off the bat because I’ve found the discipline somewhat lacking here and I’m very easy to walk all over. So I printed and laminated these symbols to help them understand me and to keep them in check. It’s very hard for them to understand my English, even if they’ve been studying it for years because the accent is so different from what they’ve heard from their Ecuadorian teachers. So I have the symbols and I explained at the beginning of class in Spanish so it would be clear. There’s a book and pencil which are obvious- I’ll use them to ask the students to read or write something or to take out those materials. I cut out an ear to ask them to listen to each other and to the teachers. I showed a hand and said that it meant that I’m going to hit them when they get an answer wrong, to which they look terrified until I start laughing and say “Es un chiste! No voy a pegarles.” “It’s a joke! I’m not going to hit you.” The hand means that they need to raise their hands to participate. (They’re very accustomed to just yelling random things at the same time, which I can’t understand at all!) I cut out a mouth to symbolize speaking but also to tell them that they’re not allowed to laugh at each other. I explained that I will never laugh at them when they are learning English so they don’t need to be embarrassed about speaking in front of me or the class and that it’s okay to laugh at me because I already know that my Spanish is terrible but I’m also learning. I also used an index finger that they can use when I’m speaking too quickly or using words they don’t know. And finally I cut out a nose and told them it means that they stink and need to take a shower, which is also a joke and they love it. So the catch is- the symbols are like yellow cards in soccer. If they break a rule, they get one card as a warning but then if it happens again, red card! And they can’t play all the awesome games I have planned for class. I think it’s going to work. Keep your fingers crossed.

So I created 3 or 4 games just in the last 2 days that incorporate didactic materials, dynamic activities, and tactile learning, all of which are not often used in the classrooms here. I’ve been putting a lot of work in and really trying to encourage the teachers to get more excited about planning classes.

I’m also 100% healthy! (Knock on wood) After about 9 days of stomach problems, my first stool sample, and a pretty unsanitary experience at the lab, I’m finally peachy. And the weather has been gorgeous for the first time at site. There isn’t a cloud in the sky and you can see the Cotopaxi volcano perfectly from the windows in the classroom. The other volunteer and I went out for beers and a cheeseburger yesterday after school to celebrate.

So of course, in the Universe’s effort to maintain cosmic balance, a German Shepherd bit me today. I went for a run at the park and as I was walking by this big yard, 2 huge German Shepherds came running out and I did all the wrong things. They say if it’s s stray dog, act like you’re going to throw something at them and they’ll leave. If it’s not a stray, you’re supposed to stop walking, face the dog, puff up your chest a little and stare in their direction but not into their eyes. Considering I don’t have a badass bone in my body, I turned away, squealed, and jogged a little away from them. Number one rule is: don’t run! Ooops. So he just nipped the back of my thigh, probably just a warning bite to stay off of his turf. I have a small bruise but he didn’t break the skin. But man. I’ve never been afraid of dogs until I got here. This incident made the dogs I live with seem like Lose Tres Chiflados (the 3 Stooges).

Anyway, now I’m waiting for the water to get here so I can shower. The water comes into town through tubes and apparently runs out in the afternoons. Gotta love livin the EcuaLife.

Abrazos y besos.

It’s a Small and Beautiful World

As I settle into my new site and my new home, I’m finding fewer reasons to update. I hope to start going on some more exciting adventures, but while I’m still getting accustomed to this new place, I’ll try to fill in the blanks with tidbits of my daily life and various things I find interesting about Ecuador.

I played my first soccer game as I mentioned in the last post and it was so much fun! We lost… real bad… but I loved it. It was the female teachers vs the mothers and those women played HARD! They kicked and pushed and deserved the win. I was an “atacante”, so I played forward and almost made 3 goals, but the moms on defense were badass. All of the students stuck around to watch me play and even started chanting “queremos Chelsea” and cheered me on, which was awesome, and they all said I played hard and did well. 

Then last weekend we hiked in Puela, which is a small town outside of Riobamba. We hopped on a bus in the city and took it down a bumpy road in the middle of nowhere and then hiked following the river for about an hour. We arrived at a gorgeous waterfall on the Tungurahua volcano and had a short meeting with the other volunteers in our cluster. Our volunteer leader brought along a friend she met here in Ecuador from the States who turned out to be doing research here for her Masters at UCSD and lives in Hillcrest! A block away from my old house! Crazy! I love coincidences. It really is a small world. So after the meeting was over, we didn’t have time to keep hiking on to the hot springs so we decided we’ll have to make a trip back there when we have more time. The volcano is actually currently active, but the lava only flows on the opposite side of the volcano from where we were. 

After the adventure and long day of traveling on Saturday, my volunteer friend, Todd came into town and we climbed the 584 steps of Sinchaguasin in my town and then walked around the other side back to the market and shopped. I did my laundry, cleaned up, and Todd and I prepared for our big presentation this week. 

Part of my job in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) is language capacity building and new methodology training for the High School teachers. To accomplish this, the Ministry of Education coordinator arranges for a classroom and teachers and the volunteers take care of the training. Normally, we wouldn’t have this responsibility until after a few months in our sites, but because of scheduling conflicts with the other volunteers, Todd and I had our first TOT (training of teachers) in our second week! I was definitely nervous, but we had the presentation and materials planned out from the current volunteers. We were lucky to get a really nice group of teachers and Monday, Wednesday, and Friday went off without a hitch. I had been feeling pretty queasy over the previous weekend and then I caught a cold at the beginning of the week. The combination of the two just wiped my energy completely and I ended up missing 2 days of work. I felt really bad since I’m so new but everyone was really understanding. In fact, one of the English teachers actually showed up at my house with about 30 students on Thursday morning to check on me. I was in my jammies with some crazy hair so I felt pretty awkward but it was nice of them. Apparently 2 other teachers had come by also but my host grandmother told them I was sleeping. 

Now it’s Friday and I can’t sleep because I’ve been sleeping for 2 days. So I’m watching my favorite Telenovela, “Porque el Amor Manda”. I’ve had stomach problems for a full week. I’ve tried fasting, but my host family forces me to eat anyway. So I’ve been basically just eating bread, broth, and tea, but nothing is doing the trick. I’m gonna call the Peace Corps medical office tomorrow and see what they suggest. Wish me luck. It’s probably just getting accustomed to new foods, but it might be from the cow’s milk. Some other Ecuadorians have been telling me that they can’t even drink straight cow’s milk because it’s so heavy, so I’ll probably be eliminating it. 

Anywhozer, esos estan mis novedades ahora. Talk at you soon. Abrazos.

Cascadas de Puela and the lovely volunteers in my cluster

El Dia de los Maestros

Thursday April 11^th, 2013. A couple of students chased after me earlier this week on my way to the bathroom, and after I put down my defenses (switchblade), I realized they were trying to get me to sign an invitation. I sort of got the gist that they were inviting me to a lunch on Thursday but I didn’t fully understand their out-of-breath, teenage Spanish enough to know what I had just signed up for. 

Pause: Oh my god- my host mom just came in my room to give me candy. Awesome, right? WRONG! It tastes almost exactly like Pepto Bismol, but worse, I think it’s actually going to induce vomiting!

So I’m at school today and there’s this teacher who’s a total joker and always tells me the wrong things in Spanish and tries to convince me that they’re true and he says we’re going to eat cuy (guinea pig) today for lunch. So I didn’t believe him, of course. But it was true! I’d wanted to try this as it is considered a special treat here so this was the perfect time. I found out that we were celebrating Teacher’s Day! So I got a free sandwich, a coke, and a red rose during recess and then half a guinea pig and 5 whole boiled potatoes for lunch! But let me tell you- cuy was disappointing. The skin was so tough, I couldn’t rip it with my hands and they only give you a spoon here when serving your food, no fork or knife. It also had a faint fishy smell and there was still hair on some parts of it. I picked it apart a little bit and moved it around my plate, ate 5 potatoes for lunch, and then asked for a bag (which is customary here). I thought I’d end up feeding the leftovers to the dogs, but when I offered it to my host family, they were so excited! They ate it with our dinner, which was potato soup followed by the main course of potatoes in a sauce with rice. You can call me Spud.

So then! After lunch, I attended some school meeting and then met with the principal, who totally made my day when he said that my presence has made the school better, in just one week. J Then I headed home and when I got there, my host mom was already home, which was surprising because she usually gets home much later. She got off work early because of Teacher’s Day (she’s also an English teacher) and she decided she was going to take me to meet the mayor of our town! What the famous! But he was busy planning a party so we’re going to go back next week. So I headed into the library nearby which is never open when I’ve walked by and I’ve been dying to check it out (no pun intended) since I’ll be needing some good reading material, but to my dismay, it was the size of my mom’s kitchen. When I asked if there were fiction books, I got a blank stare, so I asked if there was literature and she had to search in the computer and then handed me a tiny paperback about the literature of Ecuador. Bummer numero uno. Then I went to the “post office” which is a tiny internet café that happens to accept mail. I’ve been going in every day for the past few days to see if the care package from my mom is here and every day I get the same answer “mañana”.  And today was no exception. Bummer numero dos.

But then! When I got home, I had cafecito with my host mom and she and I discussed a bunch of really cool secondary projects that she can help me start. Then, my host brother offered to teach me how to play soccer! (I signed up to play in the first annual parents vs. teachers game tomorrow. I’ll let you know how that goes.) So I learned the basics and had a lot of fun. Then after dinner, my host brother read an Ecuadorian legend to me called “La Caja Ronca”, which was supposed to be really scary and I played along. 

Super awesome day. I’m feeling pretty good about myself and my new life. I ran every day this week, I’ve been eating healthy (when not eating 392,471 potatoes), learning a lot, stepping out of my comfort zone, and living a pretty ideal Peace Corps Pujili life. And it gets better! I’m going on a hike this weekend to a waterfall AND hot springs! Can’t hardly wait.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for caring.

Abrazos y besos.