Hace lluvia. Y lluvia. Y lluvia…

February 5, 2013. Well. Someone turned on the rain. Ecuador has 2 seasons- dry and rainy. The rainy season goes from around November to around April but there’s one thing you can always count on: you cannot count on the weather being predictable. So it’s been beautiful since I’ve been here. Not too hot, not too cold, light breeze. Jeans and a t-shirt every day. Until Sunday. I was having myself a nice little siesta and a light sound started on the tin roof. Sometimes pajaritos land on the roof and flop around a bit (one time a little bird started pecking at my window trying to get in) but this sound lasted much longer. Then got stronger. And it hasn’t stopped since. Waterworks. I actually said the words “it hasn’t even really rained yet.” On Sunday. Out loud. Jynxed the $hit out of myself.

I had my first presentation today. This was our first assignment that will be graded. I think I rocked it. I spent a lot of hours on the floor, drawing posters and practicing my speech. (Well, I was on a pillow and an area rug, because I found out that the reason it’s rude to be barefoot indoors stems from the fact that you can get parasites from the ground.) Oh! And I also tested into the intermediate-high range for Spanish last week, which is super chevere because that means I’ve already reached the level I need to swear-in as a volunteer in April. However, I still have a long way to go and I’ve been studying my big booty off.

I had liver for dinner tonight and we’re having cow intestines tomorrow. My host mom decided that I should try these things now so that if I don’t like them, I can let my new host family know right away. Liver is actually really good! Of course, it comes with un chimborazo de arroz (Chimborazo is a large volcano here, so when you get a large amount of food, the popular phrase is “a chimborazo of rice”). And the hot chocolate here is to die for! I walked in the rain a little bit on Monday after school so my host mom made me tea when I got home, then we had soup for dinner (with whole bone-in chicken in it), and hot chocolate with cookies for dessert. I think that my host mom must spend 23 hours a day taking care of me. She’s so nice, it’s ridiculous. I try to always do the dishes and offer to help cook but she usually doesn’t let me. We race to the sink after dinner and my host dad says “oh, van a pelear ahorita?” (oh, are you guys going to fight now?) And every night, we argue (nicely) about who gets to do the dishes.

Yesterday morning I tried jugo de tomate de arbol again (the juice from before that helps you lose weight that I did not like) only this time she made it batido de tomate de arbol, which means she mixed the fruit with milk instead of water, and it was actually really good! I can feel the pounds melting off ;) But today I got my 2^nd favorite- batido de mora (blackberry juice mixed with milk!), my first favorite is batido de guayaba, which is an Ecuadorian fruit that tastes like super sweet strawberries. Tomorrow my host mom said she’s going to make batido de pina with coco, so basically a fresh pina colada! I can’t get over this fruit heaven I’ve found myself in.

Night night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite (they’re pretty big in Ecuador).

<3 Chels

The Road to Otavalo

Saturday, February 2, 2013. My host parents have been talking about taking me to Otavalo since my first day here and finally we were able to go today. 2 of the other volunteers came with us and we were out for 12 hours! It took about 3 hours to get there by bus, but it was a beautiful trip. I took more pictures of scenery than the market itself.

Otavalo is Ecuador’s largest outdoor artisan craft market. The center of the market is called Plaza de Ponchos, and I was determined to find myself a good poncho. We walked around for hours and searched for the perfect one. You have to “regatear” (bargain) here for everything, which I am terrible at, but I’m learning. There is a price for extranjeros (foreigners) and there is a price for nacionales (locals). You can probably guess which one is higher. The poncho I wanted was thick and turquoise and the first offer they gave was $18 at one stand. We walked over to another and the exact same one, made of the same material was $28! Even my host parents tried talking with them and the lowest they would go was $22. So we walked back over to the first stand and talked them down to $15! 

I also got a good price on a hat for my uncle Craigee- a Sombrero de PajaToquilla, also known as a Montecristi, also known to the rest of the world as a Panama hat. It is a common misconception that the hats are made in Panama because they come through the canal to get exported to the States, but Ecuadorians hate it when they’re called that because they’re actually made in a coastal province of Ecuador named Manabi, and they take great pride in their work. The hats range in price from about $20 to $2,000 in a shop in Hawaii, but I got this one for $14, plus a cool box. I rocked that market today. We also saw shrunken heads from the Amazon! Cocaine candy! (Legal because they’re made from the leaves) And monkey hand necklaces! (which are good luck, similar to a rabbit’s foot)

It was time for lunch and we walked around looking for a good restaurant when we stopped on a dime as the most heavenly scent filled our nostrils. At the entrance of this restaurant, there was a man making fresh chocolate. Chocolate dipped apples, marshmallows, bananas (yuck), and peanuts. So we all got the lunch special (for $3) which included soup, meat, rice, potatoes, salad, and fresh squeezed pineapple juice. It was just alright, but we were all looking forward to dessert. I chose a combo which was marshmallow and peanuts (which are called mani here, instead of cacahuate) covered in delicious chocolate. I’ve noticed small changes in my behavior since being here. I found a hair in my candy, which was quite obviously not mine. At home, I would have thrown the whole thing away, but here, I picked the hair out and the surrounding chocolate and continued chowing down. That candy cost $1! For one dollar in Ecuador, you can: talk on the phone for 4 minutes, get all the way to Quito and back on the bus, buy a pound of delicious blackberries or a really big bottle of beer, or you can enjoy hairless mani con chocolate.

This trip was a great escape. We’ve been receiving more homework assignments lately and we have some important projects coming up next week. I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed with training so it was so nice to be a tourist for a day. Now back to homework.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for caring.

Love, 

Chels

p.s. I forgot to mention before- I can receive unlimited text messages for free at my normal number 760-580-7293 until February 15th! Send me updates on life at home and encouraging words!

The Road to Otavalo

I´ll add more pictures later. Every time I get to an internet cafe, I end up having some sort of technical difficulties.

More scenery

so many pretties

Volcanoes everywhere

KCCO from Ecuador- Shrunken head bonanza

Reina de regatear

Quinceñera

This event started and ended pretty awkward but was awesome in between. My host dad’s sister was turning 15 so the family had the huge, traditional birthday party. My host mom had told me about it a week in advance and said that we would just go for a couple hours to be polite but she didn’t want to stay for long. I was okay with this as I knew I was going to stand out like a sore thumb. The night before, we went shopping and made “bocaditos”, which are little candies that are handed out during the party. We stayed up late Friday night working on them and then finished them on Saturday morning. This was really fun and both Sonia and Javier and I made them together.

On the day of the party, Sonia said we would go around 4:00 so during the day, I wanted to find a payphone to finally call home. We were making the bocaditos when 5 family members showed up at the house and everything became hectic. So now Sonia had more errands to run for the party and she was going to drop me off at the payphone place and come back in 20 minutes. So I couldn’t make all the calls I wanted to and the calls I did make were very expensive. We headed back home and got ready and then Javier’s stepdad was picking us up, so we were leaving by 3:00 but Ayllen’s dress wasn’t ready and neither was Sonia’s pair of pants, so we get to a church (which I didn’t know was involved) and Sonia and Ayllen waited in the car for their clothes and I was sent inside. So I participated in this whole Catholic mass by myself when Javier comes in at the end and hands me the baby and a cell phone and tells me how to use the cell phone if needed. He didn’t explain what was happening, so when the mass was over, Sonia and Javier were gone and I had their baby. Apparently they needed to go to the party venue to set up. So some family member drove me there and the party commenced. For a split second, I thought they were giving me their baby…forever.

The party was really fun, muy chevere (very cool). We had a lot of food, really yummy cake, and everyone danced the whole night. This party seemed more like a wedding reception, with various traditions like choreographed dances and the birthday girl has a little group of friends like a bridal party. They like to drink. A lot. So they get a bottle and a cup and they walk around the party pouring a cup or a shot of whatever they have and handing it to each person one-by-one. I was advised not to share this communal cup (because if 1 person has diarrhea, the whole party will have diarrhea, or more likely the only gringa at the party because she has a sensitive stomach). So I had my own cup and a beer (the national beer is called Pilsener and they make it in this huge factory near my house and sell it EVERYwhere). I danced a little bit with my host parents and with this silly old man who danced really crazy, but the most fun song was Gang Nam Style- everyone here knows the dance too, and they played it twice. 

We stayed until midnight and ended up getting home close to 1am. Funny how a couple hours turned into 9, but I really didn’t mind because it was a lot of fun. At the end, when Ayllen was asleep and Sonia was really tired from serving all the food, we sat around from 11 to 12 looking for a way home. The plan was that one of the young men was going to drive people home in his dad’s car, but all the young people got drunk and all the old people got really drunk. So we were looking for sober people for so long! And we ended up just calling a cab. Sonia and Javier apologized profusely but I still really didn’t mind because at this point, people had started making drunk speeches and walking around leaning on each other and being silly. Sonia and Javier ask a lot about if things are the same at home and they asked about the party. I was telling them that the style of the party is quite different but the results are pretty much exactly the same. Partying is pretty universal.

Now it’s Sunday morning and we all got to sleep in! Now I’m going to see if I can help with breakfast. I don’t know what we’re doing today but I’m sure it will be awesome, as usual.

Thank you for reading and thank you for partying.

Chels

 The party tent

 A recuerdo de la fiesta

A few photos

 A cat that lives at the training center.

 A volunteer who caught a chicken

 Me being a kid, playing on the tire swing at the training center

The view from the roof of the training center

 More training center

 My room at my host family´s house. Dolphin bedspread and view of an avocado tree

Cows I moo at every time I walk home from school

El Mercado Ofelia

One of our training classes is called Language and Culture. We assigned ourselves to different levels for the first week (I assigned myself to beginner) and then had an interview with the training managers to determine our actual level. I tested intermediate medium, which is much better than I thought, but I need to be at intermediate high by the end of training, so I still have work to do. The hardest part is that I understand when others talk, I just cannot recall words in Spanish when trying to explain something. But lucky for me, that’s what Language and Culture class is for. 

So our lesson this week was how to bargain and buy things at the market. Each language level group split up and went to a different market. We went to a free trade market just north of Quito called Mercado Ofelia. It’s cheaper because everything is wholesale and direct from the distributor/grower. We saw all the different fruits that are only in Ecuador and we saw lots and lots of animal parts. There was one area with all the meat that was indoors that smelled so strong, I almost lost my almuerzo. There is also a large area with live animals to buy, including guinea pigs, bunnies, and thousands of chickens. A guinea pig is about $8 and a chicken about $12. The only thing I bought was some blackberries which my host mom used for juice the next morning- it was soooo good. There is an Ecuadorian price and a foreigner price for everything. For me, the “mora” (blackberries) cost $1 for a pound, for my facilitator, they were $0.90. So I got them for $0.90 with his help. I’m terrible at bargaining in English, much worse in Spanish. I’ll probably just pay the gringa price when I’m on my own.

Awesome lesson. Good day. I’ll definitely be shopping at the markets when I’m out on my own rather than the stores (SuperMaxi and MegaMaxi) which are in the center of each city and much more expensive, with less culture.

<3 Chels

Mercado Ofelia

Went to the market today. This is all I have time to upload right now but HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY EAT THIS ADORABLE LITTLE CREATURES?!

to be continued...

4 Seasons in One Day

I got sunburnt this morning (I now have a watch tan. Real cute. ) and it rained on me this afternoon as I walked home in a jacket. I got home and exclaimed about this ridiculous weather to my host mom and her answer was simply, “Bienvenidos a Ecuador. Cuatro estaciones en un dia.” She explained that everywhere I go, I need to wear sunblock and bring a jacket. Everyday. I opened my curtains, I’m waiting for snow.

I find myself thinking in Spanish now. I’m not sure if this is the road to being bilingual or if this is temporary insanity caused by my preoccupation with learning the language. New words, phrases, and customs are constantly at the forefront of my mind to the point of obsession.

We visited a school today to observe the English classes, but it was a military academy, so the environment is different than our future sites. The kids were hilarious! And so cute. They seemed very nervous with us watching, I’m really going to make an effort to make the students feel more comfortable when I’m in my permanent site at my school. One of the kids walked up to a volunteer and said “what’s your name?” (in English) the volunteer responded with his name and asked for the student’s name, the student said “thank you” J This is going to be fun.

Talk at you soon.

<3 Chels