October 16, 2008

Another eventful day as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Today my counterpart gave out the second half of the scholarships and I spent the morning trying to help her out. I really wasn’t doing much so I asked her if I could duck out early because I had a few things I needed to do. There is this house that I have my eye on for my future home. It says for sale and I only want to rent, but I am hoping that my counterpart and I can contact that owners and convince them to rent to me. I also haven’t actually looked inside… so to be honest I don’t know much about the house. But as long as it has a bathroom, electricity, and plumbing I will be happy. I know whatever place I get will require me to fix the place up. That is ok. I’m looking forward to making my place a home, my little oasis. I like the place because it is a house and not an apartment, it has a place for me to hang up a hammock outside where I can sit and read, and there is a place where I can start a garden. It is also in a pretty good part of town—safe and a few minutes from the central park. Cross your fingers for me!

In the afternoon I went to Machala with the town librarian to talk to the boss guy about the town meeting. He wasn’t there, but another lady was. I had met this lady before and had a really bad first impression, but I warmed up to her during our second meeting. She is no-nonsense and I can respect that. We both kind of brushed aside the librarian (who, while good-intentioned, has a tendency to be very flighty) and got down to business. We decided to have a formal meeting on Monday to discuss the new town computers and then have a celebration/inauguration for them on the Wednesday. I will have to make all sorts of formal speeches—which terrifies me. But hey, I make a fool of myself everyday so I should be used to it… right?

In the evening, my host sister and I made snickerdoodles. My counterpart wants to make and sell cookies with the youth for the cultural night as a fundraiser for a holiday party. She thought cinnamon cookies would be a cool idea because they don’t exist here. Since I promised the children that I would make cookies for them if they showed up on time for the next dance practice, I figured I would try out the snickerdoodle recipe and kill two birds with one stone. I was a little worried because I couldn’t find any cream of tartar, but I was able to adjust the recipe a bit and they turned out fine. My host sister really loves to help me bake and makes me translate all the recipes into Spanish.

Tonight Ecuador played Venezuela in soccer and lost. It was a real tragedy. The country is in mourning.