1-19-10, Tuesday
Where to start where to start…this is always the question with these things just because there are so many points that I could start with! I think I will start with a little of what my life is currently like.
I am still living in El Retiro outside of Machala as I will continue to do so for the next 19 months of service hopefully. However, I am also still unfortunately living with my host family. Normally, after three months of living in site with your host family you then find your own apartment to move into by yourself. And yet, as I hit my five month mark tomorrow, I find myself still living with my host family as there are not really available apartments where I live. There is a lady though who is looking to build some apartments so there is some hope there. My plan is to talk with the President of the neighborhood more or less and get something moving here so that I can move out in a month or two more…if that doesn’t happen, then I will either live in Machala or Santa Rosa nearby. This is not ideal, but it is better than my current situation.
Now don’t get me wrong, my host family is not horrible by any means. But with all of the culture differences, it is hard not to have a space of your own. Especially when you consider that I have been living with host families now for a total of seven months and the culture here is VERY family based and not independence based like the States. Not being able to cook or really do anything at all without being judged can get old pretty quick as well as not having your own stuff. Not to mention there are two men in my house that snore all of the time along with three kids of the ages of two, four, and five which are here at least fifty percent of the time that make it hard to sleep at times. Point being, I need my own space for my own mental health.
Other than that, my work right now is starting to come to an end as the school year ends with the last week in February – it will start again in April. This is kind of nice though as it is going to give me some time to reflect back over everything and see how I am doing overall. We also just got back from ReConnect in Cuenca, which is your five month mark in site more or less. ReConnect is a weeklong conference with other PCVs of your group (11 for my group) and your counterparts where you get more training on how to implement projects into your community and how to work on your community assessment tools.
Projects to come in the months of vacation include a fight against the trash here in my town (where we are going to paint and put up wooden signs that say to put trash in its place more or less as well as clean up all of the trash in the street and the Indore fields), a medical and dental brigade in Pasaje, a neighboring town, for two weeks in February (with a NGO from the states called Ecuadant where we will be helping with translating, locating potential kids as patients, and spreading the word of the mission), and hopefully starting to spread the word of a community bank and possibly starting that out. I also have my first project report, like a progress report if you will, due the 5th of February for the PC and a community assessment report due on the 19th of February. So all in all, I think I will find myself enjoying the change in my schedule while still keeping relatively busy.
Now onto the fun(ny) parts of my life.
I have officially had the Ecuadorean hair cut that is given to most North Americans/Europeans/Caucasians at some point during their stay in Ecuador. This hair cut one might just call…well…a mullet. I have no idea why, but for some reason it is what a lot of PCVs have had as a hair cut at one point or another and not by choice. I understand that our hair is different, but I don’t really get why we seem to end up with a mullet cut most of the time. I had this hair cut done in Cuenca during ReConnect. So once I got back to my site I had my lady across the street, who lived in Spain for three years and therefore knows how what to do with my hair, cut my hair. So now, I no longer have the mullet. Just overall short hair which I think I can deal with since the heat is still way up there. But I can honestly say that I had a mullet for three days now…don’t know if that is proud fact or not.
Second point, I have actually had an ant in my pants now. I was in a rush one day and I tripped on the stairs and ripped a hole into my jeans (which I am proud to say I sewed up later). However, throughout the events of the day I ended up down at the river where I picked up an ant somehow. And I am not talking about a little friendly ant here. I am talking about a killer I want to bite you as many times as I can ant. So I came back home to eat my dinner and as I was finishing up I started to feel the little thing biting me in my pants. Somehow it had crawled through my hole and got itself stuck in my jeans. So I ended up excusing myself and running back over into the house so that I could rip my jeans off! In the process, I ended up grabbing the little thing through my jeans so that it would stop biting me at least. I think all in all it probably got about six good bits in…but I would like to say that I had the last word as I made sure to smash it to death with my shoe. So point number two, I can now honestly say that I have had an ant in my pants.
I now get excited when I see that there are two knobs in the shower; one for hot and one for cold is just craziness! Where I am at, we just have one knob and the temperature of what is what you get. There really isn’t a choice. I also think that I am now vaccinated against anything and everything that is possible as we just had the H1N1 vaccination as well. I cannot even tell you anymore how many shots I have had or how many things I am immune to now! And one thing that I have learned since I have been here is that chickens make great garbage disposals. They eat just about anything and everything that you would normally put down the garbage disposal. I think I have also found a new perfume for myself for the following 19 months…it is called bug spray and I tend to put it on at least once a day.
I also have come to the sad realization that I will be two different skin tones for the rest of my time here. My stomach and other parts that get no sun are still my brilliant white while my arms are starting to become a nice shade of red along with the lower half of my legs and face. I tend to wear my thick strapped tank tops a lot as well which also make for lovely tan lines. I guess while we are at it, we can also put the color black/mud brown in there as that tends to be the color of my feet with all of the dust here. I also find myself wondering if my watch tan will ever go away as well.
In other news, I think I have started to integrate some as throwing rocks at dogs is starting to seem normal (I know this might seem odd to you…but the dogs down here are the farthest thing from domestic and they do bite). Not to mention eating with a spoon for just about everything and anything, going to “bathe” yourself in a river as you jump in with all of your clothes on, sweating as you get into the shower as well as the minute you get out no matter what temperature the water is here in on the coast, and accepting the fact that random drunk men will hit on you in the middle of the day no matter what you wear, do, or say. My English has also gotten worse as well so I can only hope that my Spanish has gotten better in the process! It is actually really funny when a group of the PCVs get together now because we all speak in Spanglish and have come to the realization that we are now social awkward in Spanish as well as English. I also am starting to get used to the Spanish key board which now makes it harder to type on the English one!
Other things that might seem odd to you but now seem normal to me: buying a jaba (the equivalent of 12 forties or so) and using one cup for everyone to chug out of as you pass the cup around in a circle until all of the beer is gone, hiding in the shade the minute the sun comes out (well this was normal to me before, but still everyone does it here!), putting a ton of water on your head when the sun does come out because most of the people here have black hair, smashing a ton of people onto a bus until the bus cannot move because of the weight, bug bites twenty-four seven from some type of insect even if you cannot tell what type of insect bite it is (and yes…you will scratch them), and music on telephones. I have to say, I don’t get the last one yet! It is like headphones don’t exist here so they just blare music from their telephones where ever they are whenever they want…let me tell you, it gets old quickly.
I have three other random tidbits for you all to finish with. Number one, my whole definition of Hygiene has now changed. When you have to wash a good portion of your clothes by hand and put them all up on the line to dry…it kind of changes your definition of what is dirty. Jeans for example, they are not dirty until you can see the dirt in them. And when you sweat all day long with a lot of dust, you are never really clean other than maybe for two minutes right after you get out of the shower (but don’t worry people…I still take showers basically daily).
Number two, all I have got to say is one word; bugs – ants, spiders, flies of all types, mosquitoes, cockroaches, grasshoppers on steroids…you get the idea. I hate the lovely little things and I have also learned that with the rainy seasons it is worth the extra thirty seconds at night to tuck in my mosquito net to my bed. I quickly learned this after one night when a grasshopper on steroids (they are the size of the cockroaches) jumped up inside my net on my bed stand. The next morning I had a cockroach fly over my sleeping body onto the inside of my net. The funny part was with the cockroach, I actually didn’t get upset that there was a cockroach inside my net. I got upset because I knew I then had to get up to get my shoe to kill it.
Number three, over our Christmas vacation trip, at one of the restaurants that we ate at, we received a plate of food with a hair in it. And for the five PCVs, it was our natural reaction to point out the hair, laugh at it, and then continue shoving the food into our faces without wasting another second. It was at that moment that we realized we were starting to become immune to the oddities of a third world country. Normally, you would send the plate back and ask for a discount on your meal…instead; we all just laughed at the fact that there was a hair in our food and continued to eat it all without a second thought (this same theory tends to apply with bugs more or less).
Oh the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer…you can’t hate it because you know you will be sad to leave it. And yet, you don’t love it because deep down inside you know the things you are getting used to are not things that you want to be permanently used to…at least not for this girl.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Long Overdue Christmas and New Years Post
1-18-10, Monday
So I know that this blog is way overdue…but like they say, better late than never! And with all of the holidays, we have been busy down here just like I am sure that you all were up there. We were just busy in different ways as I am sure that you will find out as you read on. A little FYI too…I plan on writing another blog post over my life in general next…I am just running behind right now!
First things first, my work is still pretty much the same but it is actually all pretty much coming to an end this week as this is the last week of classes with the next week being exams. With that said, I am a little relieved at this point because I have managed to get myself pretty busy over the last couple of months with my work which has been great. But now it is time to reflect back a little and see how I can improve things for the year to come (the school year here ends at the end of January and starts up again at the beginning of April for the coast schools like me).
As for the memories of Christmas and New Years, I would definitely say that they were some hard ones and yet interesting at the same time. It was very hard to be away from family and friends for the holidays. However, it didn’t really seem like the holidays here much either for me as the temperature I think is averaging about the high eighties to mid nineties with the real feel like temperature is up in the hundreds some days. Point being, I’m a Michigan girl…this seems like summer to me even if you want to call it winter like they do here!
Christmas – They actually don’t really celebrate it much here which surprised me a little at first but then made sense when I started to think about it. For starters, almost all of their family lives in the same block more or less. Point being, they don’t need time off to go down the street and see their mother, brother, sister, extra. Not to mention that they see their family members pretty much every day as they all live in the same area more or less. Secondly, they don’t really do presents as you could guess since the money is always on the tight side…although I do think that the men could cut down on the drinking for a week to be able to buy their kids a toy…but that is just my two cents!
However, they do have lots of candies for all of the kids who walk around door to door in the neighborhood and ask for sweets…more like Halloween in some ways which they don’t celebrate here. Thirdly, everything is still open on Christmas Eve not to mention most things on Christmas itself. The kids have school on Christmas Eve, although this is really just a fiesta for them, and on Christmas there were internet cafes open.
For Christmas this year I went to the Christmas Eve fiesta at my school (which you can see in some of my pictures on facebook) and took part in all of that including drinking some with the other teachers once the kids left at about one. After that I went down to Arenillas where another PCV in my group lives and three other PCVs from my group all came down (this is about an hour and a half from my site give or take that I go to at least once a month I would say). So the five of us all got together and had a Christmas Eve dinner. And I do have to admit, that this is the first Christmas I have ever not been to a Christmas Eve service. For our Christmas Eve service, we just sat around and exchanged experiences as we are all from different places in Ecuador more or less.
Christmas really didn’t seem like Christmas at all for many reasons. One being the weather and another being that we didn’t have Christmas music because the CD player was broken. So instead or being bummed out and mopping around we went to the border town of Ecuador and Peru, Hauquillas, that has an open market right there on the border. Hauqillas is the Ecuadorean side and Agua Verde is the Peruvian side although you really can’t tell which is which as the only thing that separates the two is a foot bridge and signs that say welcome to and goodbye from. So for Christmas we wandered around the markets and bought some cheap clothes ($3 tshirts) and had ceveche (chopped up fish, shrimp, and other sea food that is “cooked” by lemon and lime juice) for our main meal which was amazing.
Then we returned to Arenillas for the night and prepared for our four day trip to Mancora Peru (a beach site about 2-3 hours over the border). Now the trick to this trip, is getting across the border. Not because you need the right paper work, although there is that as well, but because the border is not exactly the safest place. We had to take a taxi from Agua Verdes to Los Tumbes so that we could get a bus from there to Mancora. And getting that taxi was very shady to say the least. Between the five of us though all yelling at the taxi driver, I think we made it alright. But there definitely was a time when some of us thought that we were going to be getting robbed there pretty soon. However, we made it all in one piece!
Mancora is a beach city which actually had some really good waves for surfing. And where there is surf, you have the Australians. It was nice to actually get to act like a tourist for a while though instead of having to try and blend in so much like at our sites…even though we don’t really blend in any where…I think you get the point! So we hung out at the beach and ate some really good seafood and Mexican food on and around the beach. This is where of course I hide in the shade while the other girls took in all of the sun.
The trip back to Ecuador went just fine for the most part…well we did kind of forget to go to immigration in Peru through when we entered. We went to the Ecuadorean one and figure that was enough…but we were wrong. Nonetheless, the guy couldn’t really do much to us about it since we were on our way home when we realized we messed up anyways. So as far as our passports are concerned, it is kind of like we never even went to Peru. However, I do have to say that walking through the back street part of the main market in Peru, Agua Verde, over to the border of Ecuador really felt like a scene from a movie. You had little stores everywhere with people walking through the market “streets” carrying their chickens in their armpits while pushing a trolley with other goods and you could hear people bargaining everywhere. It was really pretty neat…besides the fact that we were all just trying to make it through as fast as possible without getting robbed.
So that was my Christmas more or less; on a beach in Mancora Peru. It was kind of nice though to do something that was very different as when we had those moments when we did realize that it was Christmas that made it harder to be away from home. So the mini vacation to the beach was a good solution for that.
For New Years I decided to take an easy one. And I am proud to say that this is my first New Years in a VERY long time that my first drink was a non-alcoholic one. I actually decided to stay in my site and just have a relaxing New Years here. So for New Years Eve I went to my local school, where they were having a New Years Eve Fiesta of course, and watched my kids burn paper dolls to bring in the New Year. This is a tradition here where people buy paper dolls of different things, such as Bart Simpson, Michael Jackson (most PVCs took joy in watching these ones burn because they WORSHIP him here), random people and things, and when the clock hits twelve, they burn the dolls. Oh yeah…and I forgot to mention…inside these dolls are firecrackers and bottle rockets. So at times, it is a little dangerous, but the kids love it! They say though that this is their tradition for getting rid of all of last year’s problems and starting this year anew. I think it is away to raise the already very hot temperate to an even hotter temperate! But it was interesting to see. They don’t have an official count down either, so it is just whenever people start to burn the dolls that start the New Year.
I had actually stayed in my room until about eleven and watched a movie while drinking some wine. This worked out very nicely because I then got to walk around with some of my youth, up and down our street like they do for fun here, from eleven until one and wish everyone a Happy New Years. Once I got tired of walking up and down the street over and over again I went on home and had my first drink of the new years; guanabana juice :) Impressive, I know.
Now I figured that since for Christmas everything was open, that it would be the same with New Years. Man was I ever wrong. For New Years day EVERYTHING shuts down; even the buses don’t run. Not only were most things shut for New Years day…but they also were shut for the day after New Year’s Day and the day after the day after New Year’s Day! Basically, everyone got to have a three day hangover as New Years Day was a Friday (thus they did nothing for Saturday or Sunday either besides continuing drinking…and man did they ever continue to drink). Very interesting I thought and kind of entertaining to see all of the drunk passed out men in the streets at nine am, noon, and five pm…basically all day! However, having to fend off all of the drunk men from hitting on me, not so much fun.
So there in a nut shell where my Holidays for the end of 2009. There are more details of course if you care to hear you can just ask. But this gives you the idea of it all more or less. Thank you everyone at home for all of the great Holiday wishes, they are truly appreciated :)
So I know that this blog is way overdue…but like they say, better late than never! And with all of the holidays, we have been busy down here just like I am sure that you all were up there. We were just busy in different ways as I am sure that you will find out as you read on. A little FYI too…I plan on writing another blog post over my life in general next…I am just running behind right now!
First things first, my work is still pretty much the same but it is actually all pretty much coming to an end this week as this is the last week of classes with the next week being exams. With that said, I am a little relieved at this point because I have managed to get myself pretty busy over the last couple of months with my work which has been great. But now it is time to reflect back a little and see how I can improve things for the year to come (the school year here ends at the end of January and starts up again at the beginning of April for the coast schools like me).
As for the memories of Christmas and New Years, I would definitely say that they were some hard ones and yet interesting at the same time. It was very hard to be away from family and friends for the holidays. However, it didn’t really seem like the holidays here much either for me as the temperature I think is averaging about the high eighties to mid nineties with the real feel like temperature is up in the hundreds some days. Point being, I’m a Michigan girl…this seems like summer to me even if you want to call it winter like they do here!
Christmas – They actually don’t really celebrate it much here which surprised me a little at first but then made sense when I started to think about it. For starters, almost all of their family lives in the same block more or less. Point being, they don’t need time off to go down the street and see their mother, brother, sister, extra. Not to mention that they see their family members pretty much every day as they all live in the same area more or less. Secondly, they don’t really do presents as you could guess since the money is always on the tight side…although I do think that the men could cut down on the drinking for a week to be able to buy their kids a toy…but that is just my two cents!
However, they do have lots of candies for all of the kids who walk around door to door in the neighborhood and ask for sweets…more like Halloween in some ways which they don’t celebrate here. Thirdly, everything is still open on Christmas Eve not to mention most things on Christmas itself. The kids have school on Christmas Eve, although this is really just a fiesta for them, and on Christmas there were internet cafes open.
For Christmas this year I went to the Christmas Eve fiesta at my school (which you can see in some of my pictures on facebook) and took part in all of that including drinking some with the other teachers once the kids left at about one. After that I went down to Arenillas where another PCV in my group lives and three other PCVs from my group all came down (this is about an hour and a half from my site give or take that I go to at least once a month I would say). So the five of us all got together and had a Christmas Eve dinner. And I do have to admit, that this is the first Christmas I have ever not been to a Christmas Eve service. For our Christmas Eve service, we just sat around and exchanged experiences as we are all from different places in Ecuador more or less.
Christmas really didn’t seem like Christmas at all for many reasons. One being the weather and another being that we didn’t have Christmas music because the CD player was broken. So instead or being bummed out and mopping around we went to the border town of Ecuador and Peru, Hauquillas, that has an open market right there on the border. Hauqillas is the Ecuadorean side and Agua Verde is the Peruvian side although you really can’t tell which is which as the only thing that separates the two is a foot bridge and signs that say welcome to and goodbye from. So for Christmas we wandered around the markets and bought some cheap clothes ($3 tshirts) and had ceveche (chopped up fish, shrimp, and other sea food that is “cooked” by lemon and lime juice) for our main meal which was amazing.
Then we returned to Arenillas for the night and prepared for our four day trip to Mancora Peru (a beach site about 2-3 hours over the border). Now the trick to this trip, is getting across the border. Not because you need the right paper work, although there is that as well, but because the border is not exactly the safest place. We had to take a taxi from Agua Verdes to Los Tumbes so that we could get a bus from there to Mancora. And getting that taxi was very shady to say the least. Between the five of us though all yelling at the taxi driver, I think we made it alright. But there definitely was a time when some of us thought that we were going to be getting robbed there pretty soon. However, we made it all in one piece!
Mancora is a beach city which actually had some really good waves for surfing. And where there is surf, you have the Australians. It was nice to actually get to act like a tourist for a while though instead of having to try and blend in so much like at our sites…even though we don’t really blend in any where…I think you get the point! So we hung out at the beach and ate some really good seafood and Mexican food on and around the beach. This is where of course I hide in the shade while the other girls took in all of the sun.
The trip back to Ecuador went just fine for the most part…well we did kind of forget to go to immigration in Peru through when we entered. We went to the Ecuadorean one and figure that was enough…but we were wrong. Nonetheless, the guy couldn’t really do much to us about it since we were on our way home when we realized we messed up anyways. So as far as our passports are concerned, it is kind of like we never even went to Peru. However, I do have to say that walking through the back street part of the main market in Peru, Agua Verde, over to the border of Ecuador really felt like a scene from a movie. You had little stores everywhere with people walking through the market “streets” carrying their chickens in their armpits while pushing a trolley with other goods and you could hear people bargaining everywhere. It was really pretty neat…besides the fact that we were all just trying to make it through as fast as possible without getting robbed.
So that was my Christmas more or less; on a beach in Mancora Peru. It was kind of nice though to do something that was very different as when we had those moments when we did realize that it was Christmas that made it harder to be away from home. So the mini vacation to the beach was a good solution for that.
For New Years I decided to take an easy one. And I am proud to say that this is my first New Years in a VERY long time that my first drink was a non-alcoholic one. I actually decided to stay in my site and just have a relaxing New Years here. So for New Years Eve I went to my local school, where they were having a New Years Eve Fiesta of course, and watched my kids burn paper dolls to bring in the New Year. This is a tradition here where people buy paper dolls of different things, such as Bart Simpson, Michael Jackson (most PVCs took joy in watching these ones burn because they WORSHIP him here), random people and things, and when the clock hits twelve, they burn the dolls. Oh yeah…and I forgot to mention…inside these dolls are firecrackers and bottle rockets. So at times, it is a little dangerous, but the kids love it! They say though that this is their tradition for getting rid of all of last year’s problems and starting this year anew. I think it is away to raise the already very hot temperate to an even hotter temperate! But it was interesting to see. They don’t have an official count down either, so it is just whenever people start to burn the dolls that start the New Year.
I had actually stayed in my room until about eleven and watched a movie while drinking some wine. This worked out very nicely because I then got to walk around with some of my youth, up and down our street like they do for fun here, from eleven until one and wish everyone a Happy New Years. Once I got tired of walking up and down the street over and over again I went on home and had my first drink of the new years; guanabana juice :) Impressive, I know.
Now I figured that since for Christmas everything was open, that it would be the same with New Years. Man was I ever wrong. For New Years day EVERYTHING shuts down; even the buses don’t run. Not only were most things shut for New Years day…but they also were shut for the day after New Year’s Day and the day after the day after New Year’s Day! Basically, everyone got to have a three day hangover as New Years Day was a Friday (thus they did nothing for Saturday or Sunday either besides continuing drinking…and man did they ever continue to drink). Very interesting I thought and kind of entertaining to see all of the drunk passed out men in the streets at nine am, noon, and five pm…basically all day! However, having to fend off all of the drunk men from hitting on me, not so much fun.
So there in a nut shell where my Holidays for the end of 2009. There are more details of course if you care to hear you can just ask. But this gives you the idea of it all more or less. Thank you everyone at home for all of the great Holiday wishes, they are truly appreciated :)
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
New Pictures Up
Just a quick post to let you all know that I have uploaded some new pictures to my facebook account that you can all see. I still have more to upload from Christmas, but they will come along with a better blog post at some point to let you all know how I am doing.
Long story short, the Holidays were hard but expectantly so. I am glad they are over and ready to move on to the new year of 2010 :) Thanks for all of the Holiday wishes though back from the States!
Long story short, the Holidays were hard but expectantly so. I am glad they are over and ready to move on to the new year of 2010 :) Thanks for all of the Holiday wishes though back from the States!
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