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 |
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