February 24, 2009

For those of you who actually read my blog, sorry I haven't written in awhile. My life got really busy... and then very frustrating... and then I got sick... and then I got engrossed in a really good book... but now I am better and contentedly sitting in an air-conditioned room with nothing better to do then update you on all the fascinating details of mi vida loca.

The past three days have been Carnival. Coastal Ecuadorians celebrate this holiday by throwing water at each other, eating, spending time with family, and going to nearby rivers. Since I am currently 'familyless' my neighbor kindly invited me to celebrate Carnival with her. On Sunday we went to her in-laws house, which is located a short drive from my site, in the middle of a banana finca. It was an unusually rainy and chilly day, but no importa, the children happily attacked each other with water guns and splashed around in a kiddy pool that the dads had filled up. Then we went inside to eat. I changed my clothes, figuring I had been sufficiently doused for the day and, once dry, happily sat around and did my best to not make a nuisance of myself.

After lunch, my neighbor told me the adults were going outside and insisted that I join her. Since I was warm and in my dry clothes, she promised me that I would not get wet. HA!!!! As soon as I got outside my neighbor's brother-in-law insisted the we let him pour a bucket of water on each of our heads. "For luck," he said. Once we had all been 'baptized,' the party got started. Someone started to blast music and we all got up and danced. The men broke out a cooler of beer, and after several rounds of drinks started throwing each other into a nearby pool. The purpose of that pool was to wash the recently harvested bananas and then box them, but it served well enough as a pool for dunking unlucky Carnival celebrators. At first the men were content throwing each other into the pool, but soon enough they moved onto the women. Wanting to be a good sport, I was forced to dunk myself in the pool and let them splash water on me. Soon after, someone brought out several bottles of shaving cream and we sprayed each other until we looked like we were a bunch of rowdy snowmen/women dancing in the snow.

After about an hour, the formidable mother-in-law came out. We were not allowed to intentionally get her wet, but for some reason, we had to passively let her sprinkle flour and confetti on our heads. More dunking followed....

Near the end of the celebrations, one of my neighbor's brother-in-laws insisted on having a reina(beauty queen) contest. All of us women were forced to parade in a circle and then the men decided who would be crowned the reina and winner of some fabulous prize (the prize has yet to be revealed and probably never will be). As the guest, I was crowned reina de Carnival. Woo, hoo!! A rey (beauty king) contest followed, and my neighbor's elderly father-in-law was crowned king. His prize has also yet to be revealed.

On Monday, the same neighbor invited me to go with her side of the family to a river. Around midday, a large group of us piled into one large truck and a camioneta (pickup truck). I live for riding in camionetas-- it is so much fun-- and asked to be allowed to ride in the camioneta. My request was granted and I jumped in the back, along with several kids and two buckets filled with water balloons. We happily spent the 1 1/2 hour drive throwing water balloons at passing groups of people, having water balloons thrown at us, and dousing each other with water. I was completely soaked before we even arrived at the river.

We spent the next several hours soaking each other, eating, and talking. Before I knew it, it was time to load back into the camioneta for the return trip. By the time I got to my house, I was thoroughly exhausted.

Today, my neighbor once again invited to spent the day with her family. They brought me to her sister's house and we had a nice lunch, followed my conversation. I only stayed a few hours-- quickly exhausted by all the Spanish-- and caught a ride home with her aunt. I've decided that I love Carnival, but it is quite exhausting. I need a vacation...

February 7, 2009

Today is an extremely hot day and my friends and I are taking refuge from the heat at the nearby air-conditioned shopping mall. We are going to go see Blindness in about 1 ½ hours and I am killing time by writing letters and (obviously) updating my blog.

The past few days have been filled with lots of little highs and lows. First, I little background: starting next week, the librarians of Machala and the surrounding parroquias are throwing a free summer camp for the children. The other volunteers and I have been asked to help the librarians out and to teach English classes as part of the camp. My counterpart (who works for INFA) agreed to teach a puppet class at the camp in my site. However, when her boss found out, the boss forbade my counterpart from participating in the camp because, she claimed, the Municipal would receive the credit and not INFA. Stupid politics!

After my counterpart told me the bad news, I went to talk to the librarian about finding a replacement and following up on a few other issues. I suggested to her that we should go to the Municipal on Wednesday to talk to her bosses and she agreed. When I arrived at the Municipal that day I realized to my horror that a meeting was about to start and I was expected to attend. I flipped out! I hate those meetings because they take FOREVER!!! I always have to mentally prepare myself to sit through them and this one was completely unexpected. I turned on the librarian and demanded to know why she didn’t tell me there would be a meeting. She said she did and I retorted that she most defiantly did not!!!! We argued back and forth for a few minutes, but both of us adamantly refused to be persuaded to the other’s side… because she really did not tell me, but is too scatterbrained to realize it. I thought about walking out, but I had already pitched too much of a hissy fit and I really did need to talk to the librarian’s boss. Finding myself condemned to sit through a 4 hour meeting, I sat in the back and texted evil messages about the librarian to whoever I though might be sympathetic to my plight.

When I finally got to talk to the librarian’s boss, I told her about the lack of instructor for the puppets class and she promised to send someone to teach it. I then questioned her about the logistics of the camp. According to the schedule that the librarian had drawn up, there was one activity every hour and the children would go from activity to activity as a large group. Since 90 kids were signed up to attend by that time, I was obviously concerned about controlling all of them. I repeatedly talked to the librarian about dividing the children into group and have the groups rotate through the activities. She responded by saying that not everyone would show up, to which I shot back that even if half showed up, it would be impossible to manage them all. And I was expected to teach a foreign language! Another impasse… to which I turned to the librarian’s boss for some voice of reason. When I explained my problem the boss, she told me that I was confused and that the children would not go to every class, only the ones that they chose. The children should have chosen the classes when they registered. Relieved, I went back to talk to explain to the librarian that I had realized that I was confused. After talking to her for several minutes, however, I realized that I was not the only one confused. In fact, I was the only one who understood that there was a miscommunication. I sent the librarian to talk to her boss and work things out. (Since the librarian was the one confused about the registration and I was the one to decipher the problem, can you see why it is more probable that she did not tell me about the meeting than I did not understand her when she told me?)

After we resolved that problem, I then brought up the issue of the missing receipts. Back in November, I hired an artist that worked for the library to paint murals using money that the previous volunteer had left me. Everyone told me that he was great friend with the previous volunteer and buena gente (good people). I gave him $80 for paint. He painted about half the library and then stopped coming. I called him several times, and he always told me that he would come ‘tomorrow.’ Somehow ‘tomorrow’ has not come. Well, I gave up trying to get him to finish painting, and focused on getting the receipts for the money I gave him. Now it is February and I still have not gotten them. After failing to get them myself, I have started to get the Municipal involved. I’ve tried to motivate them by saying that Peace Corps won’t let me make any more purchases with the remaining money until I get those receipts. I am currently sitting on a little over $400. Anyway, the Municipal has tried to help me, but so far no luck. The librarian’s boss did tell us to go talk to one lady. As soon as that lady realized who we came to talk to her about, she looked at us a flatly stated, “he didn’t finish the painting, did he?” Why no, he did not!!! Apparently, he has a history of not finishing his paintings and has recently stopped showing up to work. Buena gente my foot! I am beginning to realize that I will never see those receipts and that I probably will need to get his boss to sign some sort of paper accounting for the money. Unfortunately, his boss happens to be a lady that I don’t get along with and that I have refused to work with. Crap!!!

Moving away from my issues with the Municipal, my swimming lessons began on Tuesday. The first day went really well. All the kids showed up and we had a lot of fun playing and getting used to the water. A few other kids that I did not know were there, but I thought they were military kids and, not wanting to tread on any military shoes, allowed them to play with us. When our hour ended, I rounded all my kids up and we left together. Well, on Tuesday one of the volunteers who teaches swimming at the earlier hour pulled me aside and told me that I need to be sure to leave with all my kids. Apparently some kids had stayed until about 5:30. Confused, I replied that I had most definitely left with all my kids. When our lesson started, I noticed that several of the same kids were back, plus a few more. I asked them who they were with and they told me that they were with me. I replied that they were most definitely not. One of the mothers came up to me and told me that her kids had told her they had registered for the class. I responded that her kids had lied and that I was only going to teach the 5 kids I came with. She tried to convince me to slide her kids in, but the day had turned hectic with so many children, and I was not inclined to take advantage of the military’s generosity, especially for kids that had lied. I let the extra children stay that day, but at the end of the hour I explained to the military men watching the pool that the remaining children were not with me and that I was leaving with the children that I had come with. After I had walked the children out, I went to both doors and gave them a list of names of the children that would be permitted to enter. No more!!!

On a brighter (less ranting) note, the little girl with a learning disability that I had written about in earlier blogs, has continued to come to my house to read. I am immensely proud to report that I have noticed a significant improvement in her reading ability. On Wednesday she managed to read an entire book with only some help from me. And this is a girl who could not read the instructions on her homework assignments a few months ago! We celebrated her accomplishment by baking sugar cookies that she could take home to her family. Despite all my frustrations, I know that I have made a small difference in at least one person’s life!

February 2, 2009

After the first 3 or 4 months of service, every new group of Peace Corps volunteers (called an omnibus in Ecuador) gets together for a meeting called ´Reconnect.´The purpose of Reconnect is to discuss how the volunteers' lives are going and what they are doing, and to receive a bit more training. My omnibus’s Reconnect was last week. Last Saturday night I traveled to Quito with the two other volunteers from my omnibus that live near/ in Machala and our counterparts, who were to join us for the first two days of Reconnect. We were put up in a pretty nice hotel. It had hot water and cable. I loved it and spent a lot of my evenings watching TV.

The first few days of Reconnect the counterparts and us volunteers spent a lot of time discussing how to plan projects. It was pretty useful because my counterpart has a tendency to not plan projects thoroughly. After the counterparts left, we discussed how to do our upcoming work reports, how to work/deal with our counterparts, issues/frustrations we face, how to apply for project funding, and lots of other stuff. Although the days were long and I have become used to spending my days as I please, it was overall pretty useful.

Reconnect ended mid-day on Friday. I spent the afternoon running a few errands for my parents (we finally booked our trip to the Galapagos!!!) and then a group of us went to Latacunga—a good-sized city about 1 ½ hours south of Quito. We spent the night at a volunteer’s house and then on Saturday eight of us volunteers got ready to climb Mt. Cotopaxi—a really freakin’ high volcano!!!

The volunteer from Latacunga had arranged our excursion with a local tour agency. They agency provided all the special gear, food, transportation, and the guides. After receiving all the gear we would need in the morning, we left for the mountain’s refuge. It was extremely high and I got a little altitude sickness (not a good sign for the upcoming climb). We spent the evening resting and becoming acclimated to the altitude.

At 1:00 am we began the ascent. We had to begin when it was dark because the sun melts the glacier during the day and it can be dangerous. We were divided into groups of two people per guide and roped together. It was an extremely difficult vertical climb and VERY cold. I’m sad to say that I did not manage to reach the peak. I got about halfway up—about 5,300 meters—when the cold and altitude began to make me sick Apparently, I’m too much of a costeña. I didn’t want to push myself too much and then be unable to descend... and die. The other person in my group was very understanding. She lives on the coast as well, and she too was suffering terribly from the altitude.

Of the eight of us, four people managed to reach the top. Oh well. I had a blast and I am pleased to say that I did not die! Once we all returned to the refuge, we ate and then returned Latacunga. Upon arrival there, I showered quickly at the volunteer’s house, said my good-byes and thank-yous, and then caught a bus for Machala. It was about midnight when I finally arrived in my site and good lord was I exhausted and sore!

I spent most of today visiting people. I was pleased to note that lots of people noticed my absence. That definitely made me feel good. I got my hair cut (about 6 inches). My counterpart and I had a charla planned, but the people forgot to come so we are going to reschedule it for Friday. I also bought food, cleaned my house, washed my clothes, and prepared an English pre-test to evaluate the levels of the students that I am going to teach. Overall, it was a pretty busy day.