Hola,
All is well here and it looks like this Saturday we’ll be able to head to Puerto Quito for our week-long technical training session. Afterwards, the IT folks will be heading to San Juan Bosco in the southern rainforest area of Ecuador for another week of training. We’re all looking forward to a change of scenery from the training center in Tabacundo.
This past week we had to give our first presentation in Spanish, which actually went pretty well. We also had another oral language proficiency exam and I moved up a level to Intermedio-Alto (High Intermediate), so I guess I sound better now than a month ago!
In other news, there were a couple of incidents with “ladrones” (robbers) recently. The first (and most interesting!) was when some thieves tried to steal the car computer out of our around-the-block neighbor’s car which is also where two other trainees live. The father heard some noises, so he opened the gate and the three robbers pointed guns at him. He quickly closed the gate and called the police. He also called my family. After my father hung up he was like, “Hay ladrones, ladrones! Vamos!” (Robbers, robbers, let’s go!). I was thinking to myself, “Oh man this is going to be interesting.” He then pulled a rifle out of the closet that looked like it was from WW I and the two of us ran down the stairs to his car. On the way down, he put a stick in my hand that’s about 2.5 feet long and about an inch thick. I’m thinking, “Right… I’m going to defend myself against 3 armed ladrones with a palo flaco (thin stick).” On the car ride there I was getting ready to duck down to avoid the crossfire, but luckily when the neighbor had called the robbers had already run away. When we got there, a bunch of other neighbors were there and we helped push the family’s car into a gated area. The police came but couldn’t do much, and that really was the end of incident. The second incident was super sad. The Internet store that I’ve been sending all these blog entries from was robbed of all their computers, so now I’ve had to move to another store that’s not nearly as great. We had all become friends with the owners of the place and had even interviewed them for a small business project the day before the robbery. They had only been open for 2 months and had taken out a $6000 loan to buy the equipment (which is huge when people in my neighborhood make $500 a month and oftentimes much less). Hardly anyone has insurance here for something like this so now the owners are in bad shape. :( We’re trying to help them out somehow, but it looks like the chances of them being able to reopen are pretty slim.
Besides the robberies, things are going well here. This past weekend I went with the family to the market since they wanted to make crabs. However they were 10 for 6 bucks which is super expensive so they ended up making some seafood soup instead with octopus, calamari, conch, and some other mystery seafood pieces. We bought a cherimoya at the market as well which is probably one of the best fruits I’ve ever had. It tastes kind of like a cross between a pear, a banana and cotton candy. Highly recommended! We also went for a boat ride on the Laguna San Pablo north of Cayambe and attempted to go fishing as well (which was unsuccessful). Sunday night was a big two-hour episode of “Bailando por La Boda de Mis Sueños” (Dancing for the Wedding of My Dreams). One “famous” person (none of which I’ve ever heard of) dances with their fiancée and the winning couple after many weeks of competition wins the wedding of their dreams. The dancing is pretty shoddy, but people are pretty obsessed with the show here and the results are even recapped in the news every night. My family claims that the dancing gets better as the show progresses, but we’ll see how it goes!
On Tuesday, we all headed to Lake Cuicocha near the town of Cotacachi to hike the 15 km around the crater. The weather turned out to be beautiful and it was a nice change from the daily grind at the training center. There’s an active volcano beneath the lake, and 3000 years ago when it last erupted, the lava formed two islands in the middle of lake. The water in the lake is an awesome turquoise color, and in certain areas you can see bubbles floating up from the steam vents way below the surface.
I probably won’t be making any posts for the next two weeks, but I’m sure I’ll have lots of stories when I get back from two weeks of traveling.
Enjoy the pics below and click to enlarge.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Cancelled!
Just a quick update... because of the nonstop rain in the country there have been several hundred landslides which have closed many of the roads in the country. Since over half of us were not going to be able to reach our sites because of the road conditions (including me), Peace Corps decided to cancel all the site visits. :( Now, we´ll be in Tabacundo all this week instead. We should be able to head to Puerto Quito next week though, which is good since we´re all looking forward to see some new places.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
I'm a Lojano!
Hello!
Today we got our site assignments and I’ll be living in Loja, Ecuador starting April 20th! The site assignment presentation was great, complete with music, cheering, and cheesy PowerPoint animations. Although this site probably won’t be as adventurous as working with the Shwar tribe in the jungle, every site is what you make of it so I think it’ll be great. I’ll probably have better living conditions compared to most of the other volunteers so I’m not going to complain about that! Everyone keeps telling me how beautiful the city is, so I’m pretty excited. My host family and someone else told me they eat a lot of dog in Loja, so I’m not sure how psyched I am about that! One of the language facilitators said they eat donkey down there too... whoa. I guess both options are better than the capybaras (pig-sized rodents) that people eat in the jungle!
This coming Sunday, I leave for my site visit to meet my counterpart (Nature & Culture International) and to get a feel for the city. I think it’s close to a 16 hour bus ride from Quito so hopefully the bus will stop for a bathroom break or two! I’ll be in Loja all next week, and then next Saturday I head to Puerto Quito, which is located in a transitional zone between the Andes and the coast about 2 hours northwest of Quito (so probably 18 hours on the bus). Here, everyone reconnects and we have some technical training day trips (i.e. trips to a cloud forest, an aquaculture facility, a trip to the coast, etc.). After that week, we split up again for another week-long technical training trip. The four IT volunteers will be going to a place called San Juan Bosco which is in the jungle to the east of Cuenca (another super long bus ride!). We’re heading there with the IT guy that works in the Peace Corps office in Quito. There, we’ll be meeting a marginally-crazy current volunteer that is now entering his 3rd or 4th year of service named “Jungle” Dave. He just married an Ecuadorian and we’ll probably be arriving during his honeymoon! He has a foot-long goatee and that’s as much as I know! We’re all pretty excited. After the trip to the jungle, we all head back to our host families for about another week. Then we head to Quito for the week before we swear-in on April 19th.
In other news, this past week we spent a bunch of time learning about non-formal education techniques and some other safety and security info. On Saturday we had a full-day session to become certified in Project Learning Tree, which is an environmental education program put out by the American Forest Association. A lot of the lesson plans are really geared for a US-based audience but can be adapted to the Ecuadorian culture pretty easily.
On Thursday, we had a nice break from language classes and had an EcuaVolley tournament at the training center. EcuaVolley is similar to volleyball, but it’s 3 on 3, you can almost catch the ball before hitting it, and the ball they use is basically a soccer ball so your wrists get nice and sore if you bump a lot! Each of the 11 community groups formed a team and played each other for most of the afternoon. Before the tournament began, each team paraded around the "princess" of the town (one of the female trainees) and then the judges voted on the best EcuaVolley princess. We then sang the Ecuadorian national anthem, and afterwards the tournament began complete with Reggaeton music playing in the background. Apparently the parade and princesses are commonplace at Ecuadorian sporting events. On Sunday, even though I had some major stomach issues, I forced myself to get out of bed and go to my 8-year old Ecuadorian brother's soccer game. This was the first game, and he was super excited about his new uniform so I couldn't pass it up. Like at our EcuaVolley tournament there was a long parade with a princess on each team, speeches, and the singing of the national anthem. Jordan's team ended up winning 2 - 1.
This week we also had some more mystery meat called “molleja” (mo-ye-cha), which I tried and politely declined! I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it’s some part of a chicken that has something to do with digestion. The taste wasn’t horrible (probably because it had lots of salt on it), but just the look of it wasn’t for me!
I’m not sure how much web access I’ll have for the next 3 weeks, so if you don’t hear from me I’m likely still alive!
Enjoy the pics below…. (as always click them to enlarge)
Today we got our site assignments and I’ll be living in Loja, Ecuador starting April 20th! The site assignment presentation was great, complete with music, cheering, and cheesy PowerPoint animations. Although this site probably won’t be as adventurous as working with the Shwar tribe in the jungle, every site is what you make of it so I think it’ll be great. I’ll probably have better living conditions compared to most of the other volunteers so I’m not going to complain about that! Everyone keeps telling me how beautiful the city is, so I’m pretty excited. My host family and someone else told me they eat a lot of dog in Loja, so I’m not sure how psyched I am about that! One of the language facilitators said they eat donkey down there too... whoa. I guess both options are better than the capybaras (pig-sized rodents) that people eat in the jungle!
This coming Sunday, I leave for my site visit to meet my counterpart (Nature & Culture International) and to get a feel for the city. I think it’s close to a 16 hour bus ride from Quito so hopefully the bus will stop for a bathroom break or two! I’ll be in Loja all next week, and then next Saturday I head to Puerto Quito, which is located in a transitional zone between the Andes and the coast about 2 hours northwest of Quito (so probably 18 hours on the bus). Here, everyone reconnects and we have some technical training day trips (i.e. trips to a cloud forest, an aquaculture facility, a trip to the coast, etc.). After that week, we split up again for another week-long technical training trip. The four IT volunteers will be going to a place called San Juan Bosco which is in the jungle to the east of Cuenca (another super long bus ride!). We’re heading there with the IT guy that works in the Peace Corps office in Quito. There, we’ll be meeting a marginally-crazy current volunteer that is now entering his 3rd or 4th year of service named “Jungle” Dave. He just married an Ecuadorian and we’ll probably be arriving during his honeymoon! He has a foot-long goatee and that’s as much as I know! We’re all pretty excited. After the trip to the jungle, we all head back to our host families for about another week. Then we head to Quito for the week before we swear-in on April 19th.
In other news, this past week we spent a bunch of time learning about non-formal education techniques and some other safety and security info. On Saturday we had a full-day session to become certified in Project Learning Tree, which is an environmental education program put out by the American Forest Association. A lot of the lesson plans are really geared for a US-based audience but can be adapted to the Ecuadorian culture pretty easily.
On Thursday, we had a nice break from language classes and had an EcuaVolley tournament at the training center. EcuaVolley is similar to volleyball, but it’s 3 on 3, you can almost catch the ball before hitting it, and the ball they use is basically a soccer ball so your wrists get nice and sore if you bump a lot! Each of the 11 community groups formed a team and played each other for most of the afternoon. Before the tournament began, each team paraded around the "princess" of the town (one of the female trainees) and then the judges voted on the best EcuaVolley princess. We then sang the Ecuadorian national anthem, and afterwards the tournament began complete with Reggaeton music playing in the background. Apparently the parade and princesses are commonplace at Ecuadorian sporting events. On Sunday, even though I had some major stomach issues, I forced myself to get out of bed and go to my 8-year old Ecuadorian brother's soccer game. This was the first game, and he was super excited about his new uniform so I couldn't pass it up. Like at our EcuaVolley tournament there was a long parade with a princess on each team, speeches, and the singing of the national anthem. Jordan's team ended up winning 2 - 1.
This week we also had some more mystery meat called “molleja” (mo-ye-cha), which I tried and politely declined! I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it’s some part of a chicken that has something to do with digestion. The taste wasn’t horrible (probably because it had lots of salt on it), but just the look of it wasn’t for me!
I’m not sure how much web access I’ll have for the next 3 weeks, so if you don’t hear from me I’m likely still alive!
Enjoy the pics below…. (as always click them to enlarge)
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Macas or Loja??
Hola,
Things are still going well here and on the 6th of March I will have officially been in Ecuador for a month – 26 more months to go! This week was rainy again, but we’re all getting used to it. Standing out in the rain and laundry that takes 5 days to dry on the line somehow seems normal!
Last Monday, the Natural Resources group took a trip to Pifo to visit a tree nursery where we got some hands on experience with plant propagation, grafting, seed beds, etc. My group ended up having to stuff soil in plastic bags or “fundas” for an hour and we were happy we didn’t have to do the 1200 bags that the workers there fill everyday! Even though it was pretty monotonous we had fun learning some jokes in Spanish from some of the facilitators. As a follow up later in the week we learned about a bunch of organic remedies for crop pests that you can make at home using everything from garlic to beer.
The crazy nurse paid us a visit again later in the week - dressed in a chicken suit - and spoke about the avian flu for a while. When the roosters outside the classroom saw the chicken suit they got a bit excited and started cock a doodling like mad. Of course, the nurse played along and flapped her wings, which was interesting to say the least! We also went over a bunch of first aid information, discussed some case studies (i.e. your foot gets run over by a tractor – what do you do?), and talked a little bit about poisonous snakes in Ecuador even though there’s never been a Peace Corps Volunteer bitten by a snake in the country. At the end of the day, the language facilitators hooked up some speakers and we had a blast putting our dancing skills to the test, trying out merengue, salsa, cumbia, and a bunch of other common local dances.
On Friday, Ambassador Jewel visited our group at the training center and talked a bunch about US-Ecuadorian relations, which was pretty interesting. In the afternoon, we learned about starting up community banks at our sites, which is a pretty neat and easy to implement concept. Every week, the bank members would meet and would all deposit the same amount into the safe (i.e. one dollar). Members can take out small loans (to buy raw materials for their products, for example) at a 10% interest rate and the loans need to be paid back by the end of the month. 10% sounds like a lot, but it’s not that much on a $30 loan, and is especially worth it if it allows the borrower to produce products he/she otherwise wouldn’t have been able to produce. At the end of a specified period of time – usually a year – all the money in the safe (deposits + interest) is distributed to the bank members. The members can then decide if they want to start the bank over again.
We ended the week with a language simulation test where we went to 5 stations and chose a card at each station with a different scenario that we had to talk about for 5 minutes. I did pretty well and had fun fighting with the “bank teller” when my ATM card got trapped in the machine.
This past weekend was pretty low key. A bunch of us hung out at another trainee’s house on Friday night, and I went to the SuperMaxi (supermarket) with my family in Ibarra on Saturday. We made pizza both Saturday night and Sunday night, since the family is now obsessed with my dough. Saturday was a flop since the fire wasn’t hot enough, so on Sunday we used the oven for the first time since I moved into the house! On Sunday, I went to Café Aroma (AKA Gringo Café) for breakfast with some other trainees, and then walked around the town of Ayora just north of Cayambe, which was nice.
On March 11th, I officially find out where my site will be. Right now, the two natural resources IT sites are Loja in mountains or Macas in the jungle. Loja (pop about 120,000) is one of the oldest cities in the country and was founded in 1548. This site would be the most city-living of any of the sites available to volunteers. The city sounds pretty nice and is known as the “Garden City”. It’s also supposedly the cleanest city in Ecuador, and the people speak the best Spanish. It’s located at about 7300 ft above sea level so the weather is a bit warmer than where I am now. My counterpart at this site would be an organization called Nature and Culture. Some activities I’d be involved with include promotion (radio and mass media), upkeep and management of some kind of Biosphere declaration, website design and maintenance, environmental education in local schools, school gardens, eco-clubs, and assistance with the design of a hydroelectric project to the south of Loja. Macas is located in eastern Ecuador in the jungle. It’s a smaller town of about 15 or 20,000 people. Here I’d be working with the Amazonian Forest Service. Although I’d be living in Macas, most of the work would be way out in the rainforest and I’d get to work with the indigenous Shwar tribe (formerly famous for shrinking heads!), which sounds pretty neat. Some activities I’d be involved with at this site are sustainable forest management, zoning of farms for forest management, elaboration of materials and curriculum for forest management techniques, and a bunch of GIS and GPS work, including teaching the Shwar tribe GPS skills so they can better manage their land and make more informed decisions when, for example, an oil company approaches them wanting to drill on their land. Let me know your thoughts as to which job you think is better!! I have the ability to lobby for one or the other, but the decision is up to the tech trainers in the end.
Click on the pics below to enlarge...
Things are still going well here and on the 6th of March I will have officially been in Ecuador for a month – 26 more months to go! This week was rainy again, but we’re all getting used to it. Standing out in the rain and laundry that takes 5 days to dry on the line somehow seems normal!
Last Monday, the Natural Resources group took a trip to Pifo to visit a tree nursery where we got some hands on experience with plant propagation, grafting, seed beds, etc. My group ended up having to stuff soil in plastic bags or “fundas” for an hour and we were happy we didn’t have to do the 1200 bags that the workers there fill everyday! Even though it was pretty monotonous we had fun learning some jokes in Spanish from some of the facilitators. As a follow up later in the week we learned about a bunch of organic remedies for crop pests that you can make at home using everything from garlic to beer.
The crazy nurse paid us a visit again later in the week - dressed in a chicken suit - and spoke about the avian flu for a while. When the roosters outside the classroom saw the chicken suit they got a bit excited and started cock a doodling like mad. Of course, the nurse played along and flapped her wings, which was interesting to say the least! We also went over a bunch of first aid information, discussed some case studies (i.e. your foot gets run over by a tractor – what do you do?), and talked a little bit about poisonous snakes in Ecuador even though there’s never been a Peace Corps Volunteer bitten by a snake in the country. At the end of the day, the language facilitators hooked up some speakers and we had a blast putting our dancing skills to the test, trying out merengue, salsa, cumbia, and a bunch of other common local dances.
On Friday, Ambassador Jewel visited our group at the training center and talked a bunch about US-Ecuadorian relations, which was pretty interesting. In the afternoon, we learned about starting up community banks at our sites, which is a pretty neat and easy to implement concept. Every week, the bank members would meet and would all deposit the same amount into the safe (i.e. one dollar). Members can take out small loans (to buy raw materials for their products, for example) at a 10% interest rate and the loans need to be paid back by the end of the month. 10% sounds like a lot, but it’s not that much on a $30 loan, and is especially worth it if it allows the borrower to produce products he/she otherwise wouldn’t have been able to produce. At the end of a specified period of time – usually a year – all the money in the safe (deposits + interest) is distributed to the bank members. The members can then decide if they want to start the bank over again.
We ended the week with a language simulation test where we went to 5 stations and chose a card at each station with a different scenario that we had to talk about for 5 minutes. I did pretty well and had fun fighting with the “bank teller” when my ATM card got trapped in the machine.
This past weekend was pretty low key. A bunch of us hung out at another trainee’s house on Friday night, and I went to the SuperMaxi (supermarket) with my family in Ibarra on Saturday. We made pizza both Saturday night and Sunday night, since the family is now obsessed with my dough. Saturday was a flop since the fire wasn’t hot enough, so on Sunday we used the oven for the first time since I moved into the house! On Sunday, I went to Café Aroma (AKA Gringo Café) for breakfast with some other trainees, and then walked around the town of Ayora just north of Cayambe, which was nice.
On March 11th, I officially find out where my site will be. Right now, the two natural resources IT sites are Loja in mountains or Macas in the jungle. Loja (pop about 120,000) is one of the oldest cities in the country and was founded in 1548. This site would be the most city-living of any of the sites available to volunteers. The city sounds pretty nice and is known as the “Garden City”. It’s also supposedly the cleanest city in Ecuador, and the people speak the best Spanish. It’s located at about 7300 ft above sea level so the weather is a bit warmer than where I am now. My counterpart at this site would be an organization called Nature and Culture. Some activities I’d be involved with include promotion (radio and mass media), upkeep and management of some kind of Biosphere declaration, website design and maintenance, environmental education in local schools, school gardens, eco-clubs, and assistance with the design of a hydroelectric project to the south of Loja. Macas is located in eastern Ecuador in the jungle. It’s a smaller town of about 15 or 20,000 people. Here I’d be working with the Amazonian Forest Service. Although I’d be living in Macas, most of the work would be way out in the rainforest and I’d get to work with the indigenous Shwar tribe (formerly famous for shrinking heads!), which sounds pretty neat. Some activities I’d be involved with at this site are sustainable forest management, zoning of farms for forest management, elaboration of materials and curriculum for forest management techniques, and a bunch of GIS and GPS work, including teaching the Shwar tribe GPS skills so they can better manage their land and make more informed decisions when, for example, an oil company approaches them wanting to drill on their land. Let me know your thoughts as to which job you think is better!! I have the ability to lobby for one or the other, but the decision is up to the tech trainers in the end.
Click on the pics below to enlarge...
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