April brings us the rainy season and our 3 month mark. While the rain pours down (always oh-so-conveniently beginning right after we've hung our laundry on the line to dry…), we volunteers rush to visit everywhere we possibly can as the realization that we're halfway done begins to terrify us. These days we watch beautifully sunny days turn into horrible downpours in just minutes and try to plan out the remainder of our trip here in Ecuador. In just a few days now, we'll have to say goodbye to one of our volunteers as she returns to Sweden… ahhh!
One day a few weeks ago, I had quite an adventure with the teachers from our sector. We didn't have school on Friday, because instead, we teachers went to a gorgeous hostel in a town called Puembo about 15 minutes away to spend the day relaxing, playing, and eating. The event was set up, I'm guessing, by the people in charge of the teachers as a way to show their appreciation. I was a bit skeptical about spending an entire day with a bunch of Spanish teachers much much older than myself but, I have to say, I couldn't have enjoyed myself more! The fun began when my host mom/boss shoved me into a game of futbol with the other teachers. It's been far too long since I've played soccer (3 years almost?), and it was the best fun running around with a bunch of like 40 to 60 year-year-olds kicking away at a soccer ball. Then there was the pool and sauna to enjoy followed by a fabulous three-course meal, complete with ice cream crepes at the end! Yum. It was great getting to know the other teachers--a bunch of us females would end up squished together in the hot tub chatting away and making fun of the atrocious karaoke just like old girlfriends. And of course, there was much picture-taking with screams of "Whiskey!" (instead of saying "Cheese!" they say "Whiskey!") with me shoved in between strangers only united by our common profession (my sorta profession). Great great fun.
The next day my school had a minga. This is like a construction party, complete with roofing, painting, beer-drinking, and a pitch-in lunch. Parents of the students and some of my volunteer friends all chipped in to build our new classroom and paint everything in sight. The classroom actually already has a room with walls and a crappy roof, so all we did, and all we had money for, was replace the roof. Meanwhile, the rest of us painted. It was great seeing everyone come together to lend a hand to build something that we really need. The school is expanding and to accommodate the growing number of kids, we need this classroom. Thanks to my awesome mom, there's a fundraiser going on to raise money for building more of the classroom. I can't wait to see it finished which I hope to see before I leave! Thanks to everyone who contributes!! It means so much!!
After the minga, a few of us decided to travel the 3-ish hours to visit "the farm." The farm is another VASE project. Currently five VASE volunteers live and work on this farm growing vegetables and raising a few animals. The trip there was interesting since our friend on the farm had gotten his phone recently stolen, unbeknownst to us. We were calling him frantically, trying to get directions to the farm, and ended up probably 5km away from where we were supposed to be. At night. In the rain. But the three of us hitched up our backpacks and started walking anyway, bouncing and laughing along singing Girl Scout camp songs which I taught them. Despite the circumstances, it was great fun. We finally arrived at the farm and drank hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire and watched movies all night long. The next day we got the tour, with our friend showing us the "dreaded" vegetable patch (he hates weeding) and happily pointing out all the animals they were going to eat next. It's a small farm but they grow tons of veggies and a few fruits, as well as raise cows, sheep, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, and guinea pigs (which they call "cuy" here). Overall, it was actually pretty cool.
April 15 was my host mom's birthday! The kids at the school made cards and brought food so we had a big party at the end of the day. Then, Chavela, Ernesto, and I made a "tres leches postre" (three milk cake) which was almost destroyed by the oven about as old as my 16-year-old host brother, but then was salvaged after we'd scraped off the burnt bottom and drenched it with the special milk sauce. An old friend of my host mom and her ex-husband (awkward!) had been invited so all six of us sat around the cozy kitchen table to celebrate. Speeches were made by all (even me, with my god-awful Spanish), multiple rounds of toasts were made (and I mean MULTIPLE), and plates upon plates of junk food were consumed. By the end, it had dissolved into the six of us slumped in our chairs making sleepy and somewhat drunken toasts glorifying in every way possible my host mom. And in only a few weeks after comes Ernesto's birthday! Oh gosh, and then mine!
One weekend we went to Rucu Pichincha, the active volcano looming over Quito. We took the TeleferiQo (a cable car) partway up the slope, and then Oskar and I climbed the remainder 2 hours to the summit while our other friends opted for horseback-riding up the steep path. The entire mountain was covered in a cloud blanket so we didn't get a spectacularly clear view, but it was so calm and peaceful with no sound reaching your ears but your own hard breathing and pounding heart. It was super great exercise, as you can imagine, and got especially difficult right towards the top where the ground was practically vertical and where it got a bit hard to breathe due to the altitude. I practically screamed for joy once we reached the top because my god, what a great feeling. Some other tourists shared their lunch with us, which was very nice of them, and then with tuna sandwiches and juice filling our stomachs, we tromped back downhill, this time with enough breath for singing camp songs and skipping merrily.
We also went to the Basilica del Voto Nacional (Basilica of the National Vow), this time when it was open. (We'd tried to go once before and managed to sneak into the main part, despite it being closed, where we stood in awe of the total silence and grandeur of the place. But then a priest came and told us to get out RIGHT NOW. Whoops.) This time we got to climb up the rickety ladders into the towers and saw some amazing views of Quito. The church is actually quite new, its construction starting in 1890, and despite looking like a traditional, super old cathedral, it incorporates some more modern elements. Mainly, gargoyles in the shapes of Ecuadorian animals--iguanas, ant eaters, owls, jaguars, turtles. No other cathedral in the world has turtle gargoyles, I bet! Super cool!
This month I've also decided that if I'm going to continue eating this awesome Ecuadorian food all the time, well I'm going to have to start working some of it off, too. So I've started going to this super great aerobics class that only costs $1 for the hour and is open to anyone who wants to come. The instructor is actually a dancer so mixed in with the normal aerobics are dance moves so at the same time I'm sorta learning some dance! And then, on top of that, once a week, I go to a group salsa class in the city. Sooooo much fun! I can't believe I've never tried it before! Great exercise and a total blast. We went dancing that weekend to try out our new moves and oh man, I love it!
And then…we celebrated my host brother's birthday on April 24! Some of their closest cousins came over, and we all hung out, ate pizza, made toasts, etc. Feliz cumple, Neto! Big 17!
We also have a new addition to the family! A baby!! Er… a baby rabbit! Her name's Pascuala (Pascua means Easter so it sorta means Easter bunny), and she showed up one day with one of the students as a belated birthday present for my host mom. She's the cutest little thing--we've been having great fun cuddling with her on the couch watching movies, feeding her bread (yes, she likes bread), and watching her hop around the garden. Sooo cute.
And to wrap up this entry, this past week we had our mid-term camp with our organization, VASE. All of us 6 month-ers (or less--one volunteer is leaving next week and another in a month and a half) traveled to a retreat center that looked a tad bit like a mental institution where we evaluated our past 3 months and made plans for the future. It was so great to reflect over how everything's been going and really organize our plans to improve everything for the future. It was especially helpful for me since I've been having some major problems in my project. In March, we were doing interviews and such for new teachers for the Pre-Kinder class, but now the school doesn't have enough money to actually hire one. Currently they only have enough money to pay for one extra teacher so instead, they hired my assistant English teacher, Lucy. Lucy is a really cool person and I love to complain and gossip with her but… she doesn't do anything really in the English classes. I'm still doing all of the lesson plans and controlling the class (or trying to) alone. And now, on top of that, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I don't have English, I'm basically in charge of Pre-Kinder as well since there's no teacher. It's too much work for a volunteer and my host mom/boss is having trouble realizing this. It's also still against VASE's rules--I can't take any position that an Ecuadorian could fill so I'm really not supposed to be teaching my own English classes either, let alone be with Pre-Kinder as their main teacher for 2 days a week. So we did an activity in the mid-term camp where we wrote a letter to our project boss letting him/her know our feelings and our future goals for our projects. So I'm hoping we can work something out after my host mom has really understood how things are going in my view. So we'll see.
It's so crazy, though. Only 2.5 months left. Where did April go???
Monday, April 26, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Adventures on the beach
Today I returned from a week on the beach! It was adventurous, as all of our trips usually end up being since we seem to find ourselves in some pretty sticky situations sometimes, but it was so great to relax by the sea for an entire week.
We started out in a quiet beach town called Puerto Lopez, a long 10 hours from Quito. Our ears were pounded the entire 10 hours by throbbing reggaetone music, but we managed to keep ourselves busy by either sleeping, talking to our neighbors, or teaching Ecuadorians how to do Sudoku. We arrived in Puerto Lopez at around 9pm and were actually met at the bus station by a guy from our hostel. Much to our surprise, rather than hopping into the normal, yellow taxi, we piled into this cart type thing pulled by a motorcycle--Puerto Lopez's very unique taxi service. For every curve in the road, we would hold tight to each other and grab our huge packs for fear somebody or something would go tumbling right off! Our motorcycle-taxi took us to a gorgeous hostel right on the beach, with grass-roofed, bamboo buildings, hammocks slung between trees, a beautiful, tropical courtyard, and a fabulous breakfast place included.
Puerto Lopez is a quiet coast town with two main roads, one following the beach and the other branching off to the center of town. The road along the beach is littered with bamboo stands selling cocktails and yummy milkshakes that are never big enough, and there are tents selling jewelry and dresses and seafood restaurants open to the humid air. Not many people travel to Puerto Lopez, who knows why because it's gorgeous, so we didn't have to beat the crowds or even share the beach with anyone really. Also, the coast is HOT. Humid, sticky, inescapable heat. Taking a cold shower at the end of a sweltering day on the beach, let me tell you, is the most refreshing thing in the entire world. We sometimes took two showers a day. Or three. And we noticed that on this trip to the coast (compared to our last trip to Manta), the sun was way stronger and the mosquitos were way more common. Even after loads of sunscreen, buckets of bug spray, and huge, draping mosquito nets at night, our skin still ended up looking way too similar to rough, red coral. Not good.
Our last day in Puerto Lopez, we went on a boat trip to what we thought was Isla de la Plata. They call this island "poor man's Galapagos" because it hosts many of the same varieties of wildlife but doesn't cost nearly as much. Turns out, the boat wasn't taking us to the isla at all, just around the islands close to the port in Puerto Lopez. It was a wonderful little journey, though. We took turns diving off the boat and going snorkeling or just swimming around. (Sadly, I still can't say I've been snorkeling, though, because my lack of contact lenses prevented me from seeing anything under the water. Someday, though.) We saw blue-footed boobies and tons of gawking pelicans, a taste of the wildlife on the isla. We even went fishing for our lunch! My friend Eva and I were horrible fisherwomen though.... the only thing we managed to catch was the ground. How sad. Then our awesome tour guide made fish ceviche for lunch. Ceviche is like a cold soap with lots of onions and peppers and sometimes tomatoes. We have it with shrimp all the time at home but this time it was with raw fish that we had caught and skinned (or watched our guide skin them anyway =) ) and then poured tons of lemon juice over them to "cook" the fish. Sooo delicious.
We decided to leave in the middle of the week for Montañita. The lack of people in Puerto Lopez was starting to get to some of our group members so we took the bus for an hour and a half south to the touristy town of Montañita. My awesome Ecuadorian guidebook (thanks Nana and Grandad!!) describes the town perfectly: "Crammed into the centre are straw-roofed, bamboo-walled hostels and pizzerias advertised by bright wooden signs, while tanned, chilled-out gringos lounge around in shorts and bikinis, and surfers stride up the streets with boards under arm." It has a very hippy-like feel to it, with lots of hemp bracelets, tattoos, little clothing, and dope. And chockfull of gringos. But overall, kinda a neat feel. We hopped off our bus and not even 5 minutes into our walk to our $9/night hostel, we were flagged down by another hostel with rooms for only $5/night. What luck! But, excuse my language, it was a pretty shit hostel, with lumpy mattresses, greasy sheets, a bathroom with a perpetually sandy floor, no toilet paper, and a ceiling open to the sky. (Neat feeling showering under the stars though!) However, it also had tons of very comfy hammocks and a cute kitten. And Nina the dog. It was the animals that made us stay, I think.
Then we hit the beach, and man oh man, the beach hit back. There is a very strong ripe tide that will suck you under in a second and waves that tumble you around and around like a washing machine. We had a few scary moments, and once, one of the surfer guys had to come rescue us! After that, we mostly stuck to the very shallow parts and let the surfers take the deeper waters. The rest of the week saw us sleeping for hours on the beach, eating extremely delicious (and expensive) food from our favorite cafe Hola Ola ("Hello Wave"--how clever), dancing around on the beach at night, and meeting all sorts of people from all over--Colombians, Peruvians, Kiwis, Irish, Israeli.... Pick a country and I bet you can find someone in Montan*ita from there.
That weekend, people began pouring into the town as fast as money was pouring out of our poor wallets, which is to say, extremely fast. The weekends there always fill up since there are music concerts, I believe, almost every weekend. But we found ourselves, by the weekend, with only around $15 each or so. Bad news. And unfortunately, it just got worse from there. We decided it would be good to book a bus ticket home before the hordes of people started doing the same thing, but alas, we were too late and all of the buses were full. So. Long story short, we took a bus at 5:30am Sunday morning to Santa Elena, a town further south on the coast with more buses, and from there took a 3 hour, wonderfully air-conditioned bus (air-conditioning in Ecuador??) to Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador. We bought tickets for a bus to Quito, missed that very bus when we got lost in the massive bus terminal (who knew there were buses on the third floor?!), and ended up stuck penniless in Guayaquil. See, we had had only enough money for the one ticket for each of us, so then we tried to just wait around for the next bus to Quito. After hopping on that bus, we were promptly kicked off because we had taken other people's seats. Whoops. Then we tried exchanging the tickets. Wouldn't happen. So. Picture if you can three very tired young people flopped on the floor of a bus station, one sprawled fast asleep on the dirty ground, the other two with heads flopping from exhaustion (no sleep the night before!) and gnawing on a loaf of stale French bread with barely $3 between them. That's how bad it was. My friend Eva called the bread our "Aladdin bread" because we felt like poor Aladdin on the street or something. Looking back, it was all pretty humorous. But it wouldn't have been if we hadn't been rescued by our friend from Guayaquil. She lent us some money, fed us some sandwiches, let us sleep in her bed for a few hours, took us on a mini tour of Guayaquil, and then took us back to catch our bus to Quito. So in the end, we had been traveling or in the process of traveling from 5:30am on Sunday to 10:30am Monday. 29 hours if I did the math correctly. It's always an adventure here in Ecuador! And now it's back to work!
We started out in a quiet beach town called Puerto Lopez, a long 10 hours from Quito. Our ears were pounded the entire 10 hours by throbbing reggaetone music, but we managed to keep ourselves busy by either sleeping, talking to our neighbors, or teaching Ecuadorians how to do Sudoku. We arrived in Puerto Lopez at around 9pm and were actually met at the bus station by a guy from our hostel. Much to our surprise, rather than hopping into the normal, yellow taxi, we piled into this cart type thing pulled by a motorcycle--Puerto Lopez's very unique taxi service. For every curve in the road, we would hold tight to each other and grab our huge packs for fear somebody or something would go tumbling right off! Our motorcycle-taxi took us to a gorgeous hostel right on the beach, with grass-roofed, bamboo buildings, hammocks slung between trees, a beautiful, tropical courtyard, and a fabulous breakfast place included.
Puerto Lopez is a quiet coast town with two main roads, one following the beach and the other branching off to the center of town. The road along the beach is littered with bamboo stands selling cocktails and yummy milkshakes that are never big enough, and there are tents selling jewelry and dresses and seafood restaurants open to the humid air. Not many people travel to Puerto Lopez, who knows why because it's gorgeous, so we didn't have to beat the crowds or even share the beach with anyone really. Also, the coast is HOT. Humid, sticky, inescapable heat. Taking a cold shower at the end of a sweltering day on the beach, let me tell you, is the most refreshing thing in the entire world. We sometimes took two showers a day. Or three. And we noticed that on this trip to the coast (compared to our last trip to Manta), the sun was way stronger and the mosquitos were way more common. Even after loads of sunscreen, buckets of bug spray, and huge, draping mosquito nets at night, our skin still ended up looking way too similar to rough, red coral. Not good.
Our last day in Puerto Lopez, we went on a boat trip to what we thought was Isla de la Plata. They call this island "poor man's Galapagos" because it hosts many of the same varieties of wildlife but doesn't cost nearly as much. Turns out, the boat wasn't taking us to the isla at all, just around the islands close to the port in Puerto Lopez. It was a wonderful little journey, though. We took turns diving off the boat and going snorkeling or just swimming around. (Sadly, I still can't say I've been snorkeling, though, because my lack of contact lenses prevented me from seeing anything under the water. Someday, though.) We saw blue-footed boobies and tons of gawking pelicans, a taste of the wildlife on the isla. We even went fishing for our lunch! My friend Eva and I were horrible fisherwomen though.... the only thing we managed to catch was the ground. How sad. Then our awesome tour guide made fish ceviche for lunch. Ceviche is like a cold soap with lots of onions and peppers and sometimes tomatoes. We have it with shrimp all the time at home but this time it was with raw fish that we had caught and skinned (or watched our guide skin them anyway =) ) and then poured tons of lemon juice over them to "cook" the fish. Sooo delicious.
We decided to leave in the middle of the week for Montañita. The lack of people in Puerto Lopez was starting to get to some of our group members so we took the bus for an hour and a half south to the touristy town of Montañita. My awesome Ecuadorian guidebook (thanks Nana and Grandad!!) describes the town perfectly: "Crammed into the centre are straw-roofed, bamboo-walled hostels and pizzerias advertised by bright wooden signs, while tanned, chilled-out gringos lounge around in shorts and bikinis, and surfers stride up the streets with boards under arm." It has a very hippy-like feel to it, with lots of hemp bracelets, tattoos, little clothing, and dope. And chockfull of gringos. But overall, kinda a neat feel. We hopped off our bus and not even 5 minutes into our walk to our $9/night hostel, we were flagged down by another hostel with rooms for only $5/night. What luck! But, excuse my language, it was a pretty shit hostel, with lumpy mattresses, greasy sheets, a bathroom with a perpetually sandy floor, no toilet paper, and a ceiling open to the sky. (Neat feeling showering under the stars though!) However, it also had tons of very comfy hammocks and a cute kitten. And Nina the dog. It was the animals that made us stay, I think.
Then we hit the beach, and man oh man, the beach hit back. There is a very strong ripe tide that will suck you under in a second and waves that tumble you around and around like a washing machine. We had a few scary moments, and once, one of the surfer guys had to come rescue us! After that, we mostly stuck to the very shallow parts and let the surfers take the deeper waters. The rest of the week saw us sleeping for hours on the beach, eating extremely delicious (and expensive) food from our favorite cafe Hola Ola ("Hello Wave"--how clever), dancing around on the beach at night, and meeting all sorts of people from all over--Colombians, Peruvians, Kiwis, Irish, Israeli.... Pick a country and I bet you can find someone in Montan*ita from there.
That weekend, people began pouring into the town as fast as money was pouring out of our poor wallets, which is to say, extremely fast. The weekends there always fill up since there are music concerts, I believe, almost every weekend. But we found ourselves, by the weekend, with only around $15 each or so. Bad news. And unfortunately, it just got worse from there. We decided it would be good to book a bus ticket home before the hordes of people started doing the same thing, but alas, we were too late and all of the buses were full. So. Long story short, we took a bus at 5:30am Sunday morning to Santa Elena, a town further south on the coast with more buses, and from there took a 3 hour, wonderfully air-conditioned bus (air-conditioning in Ecuador??) to Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador. We bought tickets for a bus to Quito, missed that very bus when we got lost in the massive bus terminal (who knew there were buses on the third floor?!), and ended up stuck penniless in Guayaquil. See, we had had only enough money for the one ticket for each of us, so then we tried to just wait around for the next bus to Quito. After hopping on that bus, we were promptly kicked off because we had taken other people's seats. Whoops. Then we tried exchanging the tickets. Wouldn't happen. So. Picture if you can three very tired young people flopped on the floor of a bus station, one sprawled fast asleep on the dirty ground, the other two with heads flopping from exhaustion (no sleep the night before!) and gnawing on a loaf of stale French bread with barely $3 between them. That's how bad it was. My friend Eva called the bread our "Aladdin bread" because we felt like poor Aladdin on the street or something. Looking back, it was all pretty humorous. But it wouldn't have been if we hadn't been rescued by our friend from Guayaquil. She lent us some money, fed us some sandwiches, let us sleep in her bed for a few hours, took us on a mini tour of Guayaquil, and then took us back to catch our bus to Quito. So in the end, we had been traveling or in the process of traveling from 5:30am on Sunday to 10:30am Monday. 29 hours if I did the math correctly. It's always an adventure here in Ecuador! And now it's back to work!
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