My PCV Life

November 5th, Thursday

Oh where to start where to start. I am splitting this blog up into two parts by the way. One with my life and one with my work because I have so much to get caught up on! My PCV life is what I guess I would have to call a typical one. I have my up and down moments, days, and sometimes even hours. However, it is a little comical at times because you do realize that it is all about the little things that will change your attitude. Sometimes all you might need is to go out and buy a Magnum Ice Cream Bar and your whole attitude and outlook will change for the day. And you get to skip out on the rice for dinner. Other times, you might simply need to rant and rave to another PCV in English about your day and how none of the kids would listen to you. Or it could be just as simple as having a good conversation with a local woman where you finally feel like you understand the majority of the conversation and she understood you. Either way, it is full of ups and downs which constantly change. So here are some of the highlights from this past month.

First we can start with my love; the cat. It is certainly not the Ecuadorean creepy men here and never will be…stupid machismo. My host family has a cat and she has just had three kittens. Now the kittens are still in hiding, but the mother cat still loves me, so I have gotten to see the little kittens and even touch them one night. It is a slow process…but I will get my cat yet!

My little host nephew has the chickenpox, poor boy. However, the parents were afraid to tell me at first because they didn’t know if I had had the chickenpox or not. So they didn’t want me to know because the nephew, who is six, has to be at my host family’s house quite a lot. Once they found out that I had had the chickenpox though, they then quickly asked what they should do to help the boy out. So I pulled out my “Where There is no Doctor” book which basically just said to bathe everyday in warm water with soap and to cut his nails. So then the mom was saying to the dad that they were going to go home and do that right away. It was kind of comical.

I also go running every day, more or less, in this little cement mini-soccer field type area. They play “soccer” here, but it is called Indoor because it is played on a smaller field with a smaller ball and smaller goals. It is kind of interesting really and very popular for everyone to play. So this area, the mini cancha, is where I go running every day in many, many, many circles. However, it does have a bit of a cage around it and of course everyone stops to stare at the Gringa running in circles everyday. In light of this, I have a much better understanding of how a caged animal feels being gawked at everyday and I have to say that I feel some pity for them.

Cold showers – I am never going to get used to this but I do have to admit that I take a shower in about three minutes flat now with what I have named the jump in jump out method. There really is an art form to this just so you know. You start by splashing some water of your face and then you brave it and stick your chest in. You wash all of that down and then move on to your arms. But you only put one arm in at a time while washing. From there you go to the waist and legs just having your lower part in the shower while washing. Lastly you have the hardest part; your back and hair. Here you really just have to take a deep breath and jump on in…cold showers…

My skin tone is official red and white now. Which has made it more fun for the kids to play with as they can push on my red arms, which will then turn to white for a minute and then back to red. They think that it is a chalk type board at times and a new type of toy to play with. My stomach, which gets no sun, is still pasty white and quite the contrast to my now red arms. However, I do wear my watch everyday…so there is a lovely “tan line” there which means I don’t think I can ever go out without my watch from now on.

I love my Dad – I mean, I love my Mom too, of course. But my father figured out a way to send me my current TV shows on a DVD so that I can watch them down here. Every single time I get a new disk and put it in an instant smile comes across my face as I see my lovely shows of Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, One Tree Hill, Desperate Housewives, and Brothers and Sisters. And I get to escape for a couple of hours from whatever I am facing that day down here. Just thinking about them now makes me happy. Oh I really am such a simple person! 

I love my Mom – Wouldn’t be right if I just had a paragraph saying I love my Dad! I really do though. All of the mail that I get from home is great. Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and letters. And SKYPE is amazing and great. I get to talk with my parents about once a week where we get to see each other and talk. And yes Dad…Mom and I could talk for longer so drop it! It is great though.

Bugs = Horrible. I guess they could be worse, but I had some type of bug that decided to live in my bed with me for a while so I have a lot of bites all around my legs which are just now starting to go down about a week later. I think I have taken care of that problem though for the most part as I washed all of my bedding and sprayed some RAID in my room. I think it was/is some type of ant. Who knows? All I know is that I am definitely not a fan of bugs and I actually take joy in killing them now.

Halloween we really didn’t do much. It isn’t much of a holiday here. So we just got together with a small group of PVCs and had dinner and watched some movies. I am not that big on Halloween anyways, so I was alright with it. But it definitely was nice hearing about all of the fall activities back in the States. The banana trees down here, are still showing the same strong green which they will forever. I think for Thanksgiving though we are thinking about going up to Guayaquil where the U.S. Embassy has a free meal for any American Citizens. We will have to wait and see. Oh yeah…and Christmas…you think we start decorating early in the States? The Ecuadoreans have already started to put up lights and decorations. I even saw one fake Christmas tree through a window one day.

And last but not least, we had a video camera come to my little town of El Retiro. And the people that came with the video camera were white and tall so everyone just assumed that they were my family…of course. In reality, they were all from France and there were here doing a TV program that is similar to Amazing Race back in the States. There were ten teams of two, and they are traveling all around South America doing tours in each country. However, these teams don’t have any money and cannot accept any money. They have to ask the local people for food, a place to sleep, and travel for free (or someone on a bus can pay for them if they are going to same way). They start everyday at a certain time and get to travel as far as they can towards their “check point”, which for this portion was Guayaquil, and every day they have a pager which goes off and tells them that they have to stop traveling for that day and go and talk with the local people trying to find food and a place to sleep for the night. And this couple, in their 70’s but you would never have guessed it, got stopped in El Retiro.

Since I am obviously not from Ecuador, they stopped and talked with me on my walk back from the Junta with my kids after our Aventura de la Vida. However, since I don’t speak French and they don’t speak English, we both had to try and communicate in Spanish. The woman spoke Spanish really well and the man didn’t really speak it. All in all, it made for a very interesting day. And my host family feed them both lunch and dinner for free. I also had to call the PC so that they can inform the US Embassy here that I have been tapped talking about the Peace Corps…got to love politics!

So I think that would be the highlights of my life right now. I am sure that there are more but they come and go so often that I forget most of them! It is really hard to explain the life of a PCV. Every experience is so unique and different to the next and yet there is this common thread that we all share. The common thread of having daily contradictions in our lives that make you feel bipolar at times and wonder why you are here and why you can’t leave at the same time. The fact that you find yourself counting down the time you have left and then you can’t decide if that amount is too short or too long. The fact that I know that when I leave here I will feel joy to be returning back to my family and my culture and yet at the same time sadness to be leaving the people and culture that I have learned so much about and probably will never see again.