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!
Monday, December 21, 2009
Long time, no post!
So I know that it has been a while since I have gotten around to my last blog entry. I guess I would have to say that is an indicator of the routine and day to day life activities that I am getting into here. Right now, I am currently at my local school which has Internet connection as well as about 15 computers that the government has provided for them. It is pretty amazing actually...and it is really hard to actually get work done because kids and teachers are always coming in and out and wanting to talk! So I will write a quick blog for all of you instead :)
My job is pretty much the same as of now. I am teaching three times a week here at my local school over self-esteem, values, goals and all of that jazz. I also still go to a school about 30 minutes away every Tuesday for the day and teach all four of the classes there with kids from the ages of 5 to 12 with similar type topics. This is very different than the kids that I teach at the local school because the kids that I teach here are 12 to 16. So I get a little of all the age groups and I am not really sure which is better yet! They both have their advantages and their disadvantages. Although I would have to say at the moment I am leaning towards the older kids as they tend to understand more which makes it easier to teach something.
I am also still working with INFA here and there. But that is slowly coming to a stop for the end of the year and we will have to wait and see what comes with the New Year and working with INFA. I do still hope that I am able to work with them here and there because the kids with INFA (mainly 8 to 12) are a lot of fun. I guess the one new thing that I have picked up is that I am now holding three after school English classes every week here in El Retiro to try and help the local 7th, 8th, and 9th grade kids with their English. It is actually really very different to try and teach a language when it is just your native language. At times, I find it hard to explain why something is how it is...I just know that I am right when it comes to English!
The Spanish language gets better day by day and I have better days than others. I think I have really just realized that right now, I don't have the passion to learn a foreign language like I really should to capitalize on this opportunity. However, I am to the point with my language that I am comfortable enough to converse and say what I need to say. I mean, I do stand in front of kids everyday and direct a class of some sort some how!
I am still living with my host family...which is not ideal, but the only choice right now. There really are not a lot of apartments in my site and therefore it is taking quite a bit of work and time to try and find a place where I can live by myself. I have spoke with my boss though up in Quito and she is really try to work with to help the situation. But really there, there is not much that I can do but wait and hope.
Other than that, with the Holidays pretty much here, it seems really weird! The holidays are hard, and from everything that I have heard up to this point it will be one of the harder ones in my life. It is hard to be away from your family for the first time during the holidays and on top of that, you have a whole different culture and climate that you are in. I still find it hard to believe that it is December much less that Christmas is this Friday since the weather is so hot and humid!
For Christmas though, I have taken a couple of vacation days and I am going to head down south a little to Arenillas where another PCV friend lives and we are going to have Christmas there, five PCVs in all. After Christmas Eve and Christmas day there we are all going to head over the border of Peru for three days and go to the beach over there which is just about an hour across the border. I guess if you have to have a different type of holiday, you might as well make it really different! For New Years, I am not 100% sure yet, but I think that I will be heading up north in Ecuador to a beach location to celebrate with other PCVs where there is a gather in Canoa. Still haven't decided on that yet though!
So all in all, life is going pretty well. It still has a lot of ups and downs but you start to except them more and get used to them. I really can't wait to be living in my own place though hopefully pretty soon. I will miss you all for the Holidays and be thinking of you all often!!!
My job is pretty much the same as of now. I am teaching three times a week here at my local school over self-esteem, values, goals and all of that jazz. I also still go to a school about 30 minutes away every Tuesday for the day and teach all four of the classes there with kids from the ages of 5 to 12 with similar type topics. This is very different than the kids that I teach at the local school because the kids that I teach here are 12 to 16. So I get a little of all the age groups and I am not really sure which is better yet! They both have their advantages and their disadvantages. Although I would have to say at the moment I am leaning towards the older kids as they tend to understand more which makes it easier to teach something.
I am also still working with INFA here and there. But that is slowly coming to a stop for the end of the year and we will have to wait and see what comes with the New Year and working with INFA. I do still hope that I am able to work with them here and there because the kids with INFA (mainly 8 to 12) are a lot of fun. I guess the one new thing that I have picked up is that I am now holding three after school English classes every week here in El Retiro to try and help the local 7th, 8th, and 9th grade kids with their English. It is actually really very different to try and teach a language when it is just your native language. At times, I find it hard to explain why something is how it is...I just know that I am right when it comes to English!
The Spanish language gets better day by day and I have better days than others. I think I have really just realized that right now, I don't have the passion to learn a foreign language like I really should to capitalize on this opportunity. However, I am to the point with my language that I am comfortable enough to converse and say what I need to say. I mean, I do stand in front of kids everyday and direct a class of some sort some how!
I am still living with my host family...which is not ideal, but the only choice right now. There really are not a lot of apartments in my site and therefore it is taking quite a bit of work and time to try and find a place where I can live by myself. I have spoke with my boss though up in Quito and she is really try to work with to help the situation. But really there, there is not much that I can do but wait and hope.
Other than that, with the Holidays pretty much here, it seems really weird! The holidays are hard, and from everything that I have heard up to this point it will be one of the harder ones in my life. It is hard to be away from your family for the first time during the holidays and on top of that, you have a whole different culture and climate that you are in. I still find it hard to believe that it is December much less that Christmas is this Friday since the weather is so hot and humid!
For Christmas though, I have taken a couple of vacation days and I am going to head down south a little to Arenillas where another PCV friend lives and we are going to have Christmas there, five PCVs in all. After Christmas Eve and Christmas day there we are all going to head over the border of Peru for three days and go to the beach over there which is just about an hour across the border. I guess if you have to have a different type of holiday, you might as well make it really different! For New Years, I am not 100% sure yet, but I think that I will be heading up north in Ecuador to a beach location to celebrate with other PCVs where there is a gather in Canoa. Still haven't decided on that yet though!
So all in all, life is going pretty well. It still has a lot of ups and downs but you start to except them more and get used to them. I really can't wait to be living in my own place though hopefully pretty soon. I will miss you all for the Holidays and be thinking of you all often!!!
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Thanksgiving Day
So as many of you have probably already guessed...they don't really celebrate Thanksgiving down here in Eucador. It is what one would call a U.S. holiday.
Therefore, I am going to run away from my site and area for the night and following morning to Guayquil to visit other PCVs there and have a somewhat of a Thanksgiving meal. I say somewhat because we are not having Turkey, it will be chicken instead because that is MUCH cheaper down here and in all honestly, I am not really sure what else there will be...but we will find out! The PC budget definately keeps you down to earth and cheap, with everything.
My bus leaves though here in about an hour so I better get going as I want to grab some snacks before I get on the three hour bus ride. That really is not that bad though, I have been on much worse! And I plan on getting back tomorrow in time for a class at Noon which makes these next twenty-four hours some busy ones. Thanks for all of the Thanksgiving Day wishes too :)
Therefore, I am going to run away from my site and area for the night and following morning to Guayquil to visit other PCVs there and have a somewhat of a Thanksgiving meal. I say somewhat because we are not having Turkey, it will be chicken instead because that is MUCH cheaper down here and in all honestly, I am not really sure what else there will be...but we will find out! The PC budget definately keeps you down to earth and cheap, with everything.
My bus leaves though here in about an hour so I better get going as I want to grab some snacks before I get on the three hour bus ride. That really is not that bad though, I have been on much worse! And I plan on getting back tomorrow in time for a class at Noon which makes these next twenty-four hours some busy ones. Thanks for all of the Thanksgiving Day wishes too :)
Friday, November 6, 2009
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.
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.
My Work So Far
November 5th, Thursday
So it has definitely been a while since I have gotten around to writing a blog post. It is kind of funny because it seems like not a lot has happened and yet at the same time when I sit down to think about it a lot comes to mind. So I figure that I will actually write two blogs today, one about my job down here in Ecuador and one about the my life.
My job is still really vague and always will be. Basically my objective is to work with youth and family to help improve their lives in whatever way I figure out I can. I am set up with a counterpart person…but he is not being the best of help which from what I hear is pretty common. A lot of the counterpart people here in Ecuador think that a PCV is someone who will do their job for them, which isn’t the case at all. So anyways, I still work with him but I am also starting some of my own projects. We will just have to wait and see how that all pans out.
With my counterpart and the INFA organization we currently have two after school help programs; one on Tuesday for language and one on Thursday for math. The first week we had one kid show up. So I started just telling other kids about it (as well as bringing a soccer ball to play around with after which helped) and now we have about ten kids that come with about five to ten kids hanging around to play ball afterwards. It is not the best program as the kids really just want to play for the most part, but there are always a few of them that do really listen to the language or math which makes it a good program. It also gives the kids something to do after school as we usually start at around 2:30pm, have the help season for about an hour, and then play until about 5pm.
Along with the help classes, my counterpart and I also hold a season every Wednesday called “Aventura de la Vida” for the INFA kids that starts at about 2:30 and lasts for about an hour, sometimes a little longer. This class teaches different life skills such as self-confidence, what are your dreams, alcohol is bad, tobacco is bad, and so on. We also take frequent trips to the Rio, which is about a 30 minute walk from my town, and we always seem to have more kids show up for that. It is a hard balance to get the kids to show up and yet at the same time have it be a productive charla. I mean, they are just kids after all that really just want to play for the most part.
Other than that, my counterpart has charlas here and there occasionally which sometimes happen and other times don’t. The INFA organization is a really good organization that Ecuador has for the youth and family of Ecuador. However, it is what I would call a typical Ecuadorean Organization as well.
I have started teaching at the local school three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to the equivalent of 8th, 7th, and 9th grade respectfully. There are about 20 students in each class give or take. They love having the American Senorita come in and teach especially as my classes are not the normal type. However, they are difficult at times to try and get calmed back down, especially because Spanish is so not my native language. I do think though that I am getting through to some of them with my classes, which tend to be about self-esteem, self-confidence, values, goals, and so on. As I have been told by a couple of the other volunteers down here, I am brave for taking on this age group…which at times I would definitely agree. But I really do think that this age group is among some of the kids that need to hear this message the most. So I will just keep trucking along bringing my screaming voice to class with me.
I am also going to start teaching at a school in a community about 30 minutes away from where I live in the middle of the banana fields out in the middle of nowhere really. To get there I have to take the bus first for about 15 minutes and then someone comes to the bus stop and picks me up where we drive out through the banana fields and rice patties to get to Buena Esperanza, the town where I will teach every Tuesday. This school only has kids 5 to 12 years old, so it is a little younger than what I teach at the other school. The kids are split into four class rooms there, so I will teach one hour at a time four times on Tuesday mornings. It will be among the same types of themes as what I teach to the kids at the other school, but with more drawing and play time for the younger kids. I start that next week though…so cross your fingers for me!
And lastly, I am hoping that I will be able to work with a NGO from the U.S. called Soluciones Comunitarias. It is really interesting actually what this group does. It was started by a couple of RPCVs from Honduras and an RPCV from Ecuador hopped onboard as well. They started in Honduras with their organization and are now moving down into Ecuador as well as other South American Countries. Since they have such strong ties with the PC, they tend to start there with current volunteers. They basically help small rural areas make small businesses so that the towns’ people become dependent on themselves. The organization supplies the products, such as water purifiers, solar lights, good quality glasses, and so on to the town’s people which they can then sell for a profit. The NGO also teaches business classes to the local people which will help them along their way. All in all, I think it is really interesting and I hope that it works out. The RPCV from Ecuador said that they could help me start my community bank here as well. They are planning their first visit to El Retiro in January. So hopefully that will go well and we will go from there.
As you can see, it is a lot of random stuff here and there. I don’t really have a schedule and I probably never will. I don’t have an office and probably never really will. Most of my classes go in one ear and out the other of the kids. Time goes by slow and yet at the same time fast. The experience itself is unlike any other with the constant ups and downs, which at times even you can’t explain. There was an article in the Peace Corps Times this last issue called “Sometimes you are Left with More Questions than Answers” which I think sums it up best at times:
“How do you tell friends you gave up a nice job and will return jobless, an older woman in a deepening recession, yet have no regrets? How do you tell colleagues you trudge long miles to isolated mountain schools, see crowded classrooms with kids sitting on paint cans, yet learn more than you teach? How do you explain you live among poverty and see beauty; live among HIV and see elegance; live where time is slow yet have rich, full days? How do you tell future employers you failed, yet treasure this failure more than all the successes on your resume?
As one of my PCV friends told me here when she left, they tell you at the beginning that it is really just about all of the relationships that you make along the way that really matter. But you never really realize how true that is until you are leaving at the end.
So it has definitely been a while since I have gotten around to writing a blog post. It is kind of funny because it seems like not a lot has happened and yet at the same time when I sit down to think about it a lot comes to mind. So I figure that I will actually write two blogs today, one about my job down here in Ecuador and one about the my life.
My job is still really vague and always will be. Basically my objective is to work with youth and family to help improve their lives in whatever way I figure out I can. I am set up with a counterpart person…but he is not being the best of help which from what I hear is pretty common. A lot of the counterpart people here in Ecuador think that a PCV is someone who will do their job for them, which isn’t the case at all. So anyways, I still work with him but I am also starting some of my own projects. We will just have to wait and see how that all pans out.
With my counterpart and the INFA organization we currently have two after school help programs; one on Tuesday for language and one on Thursday for math. The first week we had one kid show up. So I started just telling other kids about it (as well as bringing a soccer ball to play around with after which helped) and now we have about ten kids that come with about five to ten kids hanging around to play ball afterwards. It is not the best program as the kids really just want to play for the most part, but there are always a few of them that do really listen to the language or math which makes it a good program. It also gives the kids something to do after school as we usually start at around 2:30pm, have the help season for about an hour, and then play until about 5pm.
Along with the help classes, my counterpart and I also hold a season every Wednesday called “Aventura de la Vida” for the INFA kids that starts at about 2:30 and lasts for about an hour, sometimes a little longer. This class teaches different life skills such as self-confidence, what are your dreams, alcohol is bad, tobacco is bad, and so on. We also take frequent trips to the Rio, which is about a 30 minute walk from my town, and we always seem to have more kids show up for that. It is a hard balance to get the kids to show up and yet at the same time have it be a productive charla. I mean, they are just kids after all that really just want to play for the most part.
Other than that, my counterpart has charlas here and there occasionally which sometimes happen and other times don’t. The INFA organization is a really good organization that Ecuador has for the youth and family of Ecuador. However, it is what I would call a typical Ecuadorean Organization as well.
I have started teaching at the local school three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to the equivalent of 8th, 7th, and 9th grade respectfully. There are about 20 students in each class give or take. They love having the American Senorita come in and teach especially as my classes are not the normal type. However, they are difficult at times to try and get calmed back down, especially because Spanish is so not my native language. I do think though that I am getting through to some of them with my classes, which tend to be about self-esteem, self-confidence, values, goals, and so on. As I have been told by a couple of the other volunteers down here, I am brave for taking on this age group…which at times I would definitely agree. But I really do think that this age group is among some of the kids that need to hear this message the most. So I will just keep trucking along bringing my screaming voice to class with me.
I am also going to start teaching at a school in a community about 30 minutes away from where I live in the middle of the banana fields out in the middle of nowhere really. To get there I have to take the bus first for about 15 minutes and then someone comes to the bus stop and picks me up where we drive out through the banana fields and rice patties to get to Buena Esperanza, the town where I will teach every Tuesday. This school only has kids 5 to 12 years old, so it is a little younger than what I teach at the other school. The kids are split into four class rooms there, so I will teach one hour at a time four times on Tuesday mornings. It will be among the same types of themes as what I teach to the kids at the other school, but with more drawing and play time for the younger kids. I start that next week though…so cross your fingers for me!
And lastly, I am hoping that I will be able to work with a NGO from the U.S. called Soluciones Comunitarias. It is really interesting actually what this group does. It was started by a couple of RPCVs from Honduras and an RPCV from Ecuador hopped onboard as well. They started in Honduras with their organization and are now moving down into Ecuador as well as other South American Countries. Since they have such strong ties with the PC, they tend to start there with current volunteers. They basically help small rural areas make small businesses so that the towns’ people become dependent on themselves. The organization supplies the products, such as water purifiers, solar lights, good quality glasses, and so on to the town’s people which they can then sell for a profit. The NGO also teaches business classes to the local people which will help them along their way. All in all, I think it is really interesting and I hope that it works out. The RPCV from Ecuador said that they could help me start my community bank here as well. They are planning their first visit to El Retiro in January. So hopefully that will go well and we will go from there.
As you can see, it is a lot of random stuff here and there. I don’t really have a schedule and I probably never will. I don’t have an office and probably never really will. Most of my classes go in one ear and out the other of the kids. Time goes by slow and yet at the same time fast. The experience itself is unlike any other with the constant ups and downs, which at times even you can’t explain. There was an article in the Peace Corps Times this last issue called “Sometimes you are Left with More Questions than Answers” which I think sums it up best at times:
“How do you tell friends you gave up a nice job and will return jobless, an older woman in a deepening recession, yet have no regrets? How do you tell colleagues you trudge long miles to isolated mountain schools, see crowded classrooms with kids sitting on paint cans, yet learn more than you teach? How do you explain you live among poverty and see beauty; live among HIV and see elegance; live where time is slow yet have rich, full days? How do you tell future employers you failed, yet treasure this failure more than all the successes on your resume?
As one of my PCV friends told me here when she left, they tell you at the beginning that it is really just about all of the relationships that you make along the way that really matter. But you never really realize how true that is until you are leaving at the end.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
