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 :)