The holidays

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Whew ... this holiday season has been jam packed! It's good ... sometimes just keeping busy helps being away from friends and family. My deepest wishes of love and peace to everyone with the year 2010. I am one who believes you don't have to wait for the "New Years Resolutions" to make changes in your life; but like the Ecuadorians do, there's always time to burn your past and leave it there (I'll explain ... just keep reading... ).

Thank you sooo much for all the holiday cards, presents, snowflakes, and wishes from home!!

CHRISTMAS WITH THE FAMILY
To back-track just a little, besides the Christmas activities with work, my family celebrated the Novena leading up to Christmas. It included the nine nights before Christmas Eve. The family meets at a different member's house every night. The host provides song, readings, reflection, and (of course) food. I hosted the night of the 23rd with a single mother (she's the sister of Teresa and lives in my apartment complex) Dora. She prepared the readings and reflection for the night, and I made breakfast burritos!! There was a song we kept singing every night previously during Novena called "El burrito caminando" (the walking donkey), and haha ... it just made me think of Vegetarian Primavera Illegal Pete's Burritos, so I had to make the closest thing I could. Nancy and I also taught the family "Jingle Bells", I'll have to make a video of it next year!!

I spent Christmas Eve in Guaranda with my family ... I highly advise reading and rereading this part about their Christmas Program -- one of the best ways to spend the holidays with loved ones! I think more people should celebrate Christmas this way. They have a party Christmas Eve - it starts with the Misa de las Gallinas (mass of the roosters or midnight mass). Afterward, everyone (three generations - this year's count was 53 family members from Guaranda, Ambato and Quito) travels to the Casa de la Rena (the Queen's House - specifically for Christmas, she was elected last year). Nancy and I made three turkeys (thanks Grandma and Jenny for the bag and recipes!! We did brine the turkeys, and they were AMAZING!!), stuffing and mashed potatoes.


After the food (the Queen also prepared a salad, rice, and a coconut dessert!), we started with the program. The Queen and Princess paraded in and gave speeches of thanks for all who came.
I had the honor of hosting the program with my cousin - we basically announced who was going to preform next and read some good holiday thoughts and wishes in between acts. I think the family just enjoyed laughing at my Spanish and listening to my lame attempts at cracking jokes. Each family member performed in one (or more) numeros or acts - including dances (we did a traditional dance with long colorful dresses, there were also two Michael Jackson Thriller presentations), singing, and even a mass (a couple did a reenactment of la Misa de las Gallinas, dressed up like a priests and a nun and recited "new-aged prayers" for the family).

After the acts, it was about 4am, and the dance party started. I made it until around 6am dancing Salsa, Reggeaton, and Cumbia. Man -- Ecuadorians are born to dance for hours and hours. I don't know how to keep up here ... I find old men with bad hips out dancing me. After making it to a respectable 6am, I squished into the back of a camioneta with Teresa and some cousins and enjoyed the sun rise on Chimborazo as we rode home. At least I got to see snow at the top of the volcano Christmas morning :).

The next morning, after a 2-hr nap, I took the 9am bus to Riobamba to join up at Jason's for their Christmas Party. We spent the day catching up, getting Christmas hair-cuts and filling ourselves with amazing food!

NEW YEARS
For New Years, I decided to head to the beach. It's amazing how different la playa (the beach) y (and) la sierra (the mountains) are. They are like two different worlds - the people, the attitude, the climate, the food, even the dialect is different (I officially have a Spanish accent and use momentita y cercita - diminutive words for "in a moment" and "very close" filled with love and strong sierra roots). It was great to see old friends, get a little sun (okay, I got burnt), eat some seafood (while sitting on the beach, sipping Club and watching the sunset - good times Peyton!), and pancakes with peanut butter!!

For New Years, people here have a few traditions. First, they make replicas of people out of corn stocks or newspaper including politicians, ex's, bosses and self-replicas. The idea is that by burning the figure at midnight you are leaving behind bad thoughts/ events and entering the new year fresh! Us PCVs decided to burn a cuey (guinea pig). Everyone wrote their "burn-wishes" on a piece of paper, put it into the cuey, and at midnight with champagne and sparklers, we burnt our past. Another tradition is to run around the block with a suitcase - this signifies you will travel in the new year. And if you eat 12 grapes, you will have wealth in the new year.

...AND THE HOLIDAY SEASON CONTINUES
After the wonderful holiday season, I was ready to get back to site - refreshed, driven, focused after talking to other PCVs (all in all, a successful mental health break). Unexpectedly - this word is becoming daily language here in Ecuador - I learned that the BIG festival in my town, the CARNAVAL, the place to be in Ecuador, which I thought started mid-February ... actually starts today. In the Catholic Church, the three wise men arrive in Bethlehem, and I guess this is how they celebrated.

RECONNECT
Next week I'm heading to Riobamba for the week for Peace Corps Reconnect (we've nick-named it disconnect, because our Omnibus is being divided into three regional areas). It's when we come together with our counterparts (our community/work contacts) to talk about our communities, their needs and our future projects. During training, Peace Corps trained us in CAT and PACA tools, or community assessment tools (surveys, community maps, 24-hour clocks, seasonal maps), during our first months at site were supposed to utilize these tools during our integration to learn more about the community. The CAT and PACA tools are not only for us though, they are for our communities as well - it's the process of uncovering needs and project potential WITH not FOR your community.


New photos UP.

Merry Christmas!!

Feliz Navidad de mi familia y amigos en Guaranda!!



Here are a few local traditions and how I've been celebrating the holidays this year ...


Teresa and Byanca filling bags with cookies, chocolate and candy for kids in the campo. This is a tradition for many families and organizations here in Guaranda. Most of the families in the campo don't celebrate Christmas with gifts and Santa Clause. For the very poor families in the campo, gifts are not an option - however it is a tradition for people to bring kids bags of candy, and in some cases clothes and small presents.


Teresa's nacimiento. Families put together small replicas of the baby Jesus's birth, adding small figures, houses and animals. This nacimiento includes several scenes - Noah's arc on the bottom left, next to it Guaranda, and up top the "white house neighborhood" and Colorado!! I told my host family how we have snow for the holidays, so they made a scene with all the snow-covered houses and now call it "Colorado".


Teaching the cousins how to make snowflakes.


Snowflakes around town. I missed snow for Christmas, so I helped several groups learn to make snowflakes from paper ... and we started decorating the town white.


With work, the schools I work at had school Christmas festivals. A school hosted 2-3 other surrounding schools to come and celebrate the day with traditional dances, activities, a lunch and, a few surprises. This photo is the School Christmas Festival in Gradas Central - Un Paso de Nino - the kids dress up like Mary, Joseph, the three wise men, angels and walked to the school to begin the festivities.


School Christmas Festival - "la vaca loca" - kids from one school dress up and try to rope the torro (the opposing school). The school which successfully ropes the torro in the least amount of time wins - 19 seconds was this year's winner!


School Christmas Festival - traditional dances.


The school kids standing in line for almuerzo (lunch) after receiving their bags of candy. The almuerzo was cooked by the community and everyone that came to the School Christmas Festival received a meal.



My New Years resolution is to post more frequently on my blog :)

A Travel Bracelet

November 15^th

I moved into my very own apartment this weekend! After looking at 20-some apartments (some turned down for personal reasons, others because of PC safety and security policy), and trying to explain to my host mother my reasons for wanting to move out, I found my perfect apartment. It's small – a studio apartment with a personal bathroom and kitchen. It has huge windows with an amazing view over the city and a shower with hot water. I looked all over the city, and had three in mind before Peace Corps came to approve my housing. However, at the end of the day, none of them felt right. I would not only be moving houses, but changing families. In Ecuador families are very very close. It's normal for children to live with their parents until they get married, and even then parents often have a hard time letting their children leave the house. The family is number one in Ecuador, and these traditional feelings shine through with my host family. My host mother lives on the same street as her parents, her husband's parents and five of her siblings/ siblings-in-law. In fact, my new apartment is across the street from my host family, it's in her mother's house. It feels great. I have family all around me, but I have my own space. I can leave my papers and books out, read till all hours of the night, and make my cafe and avena in my underwear :). While I still need a few things (a stove, a broom, some curtains), but I feel safe and happy here – it will be easy to start calling this my home.

I have been in Ecuador for five months now. It's longer than anytime I have spent away from my family and Colorado. There are days when I miss home, the US, my family, and all my amazing friends. There have been days when I call loved ones, and the sound of familiar voices makes me want to jump on a plane and head home. The worst is when things are wrong, and all I want to do is give someone a hug – but, I hug doesn't have the same sentiment when it occurs over the phone. But this travel has just begun. I'm starting to feel comfortable here, and would love to show some foreigners around (hint, hint, wink, wink).

Before I left the states, Ella and her sister Michelle gave me a travel bracelet from South-East Asia. It was hand-woven blue thread with bright beads and small seeds all the way around. The story goes … with this Travel Bracelet, put it on at the beginning of your travel. During this time, make wishes, hopes, dreams for the coming adventures. Eventually, once your travel dreams are ready to take form - the bracelet will fall off. At this time, all of your travel karma will be released into the Universe. During your travels, your good thoughts, hopes and dreams will come back to find you. I've worn my travel bracelet for the past 5 months, through training, my time living with my host family and the first three months of my work here. During this time, I thought often of the meaning of the bracelet and my reasons for traveling to Ecuador. Last night, I was moving my last load of stuff from my host family's house to my new apartment. I started looking around, to make sure I hadn't let anything. My host mother came to my door and told me she was going to miss me. We started talking about some of our plans for the coming years, how we were going to stay in touch and special days we wanted to spend together (yes, my new apartment is right across the street). I looked in all the drawers for left thing, and under the bed, where, I found my broken Travel Bracelet. I've found a place to call home and people to call family.

First solita-almuerzo!


The door on the left goes outside, the middle one goes to my kitchen, the one on the right the bathroom.



The view from the windows is over all of Guaranda :)

Mental Health Breaks

One of the great inventions of Peace Corps for us Volunteers are Mental Health Breaks ... they are 2 3-day periods during the month when we are able to visit other volunteers, see other areas of Ecuador, or for PCVs out in the campo - a chance to check mail, use the internet, and go to a market in town. They are an amazing opportunity for us to see other parts of Ecuador, get to know other volunteers and re-energize for the coming weeks.

This past weekend PCV Peyton came to visit me! Two Ecuadorians I work with took us on a bike ride from Chimborazo to Salinas. At first, we were told it was going to be an hour and a half bikeride, all downhill. That quickly became a joke as we went up into the clouds to start our 7.5 hour ride (with a modest 3 hours uphill). Words just won't do the photos justice ... PHOTOS

My work.

I know... two posts in one day! I've had both of these blogs started for at least a week, and today is Saturday and I'm working in the office, so I have time to update.

Three weeks ago (or maybe four...) I spent visiting 5 communities in the Sierra. This past week (or two) I spent visiting 6 communities in the Coast. My head is spinning from stimulation overload, but I love it!

My work operates in the “red zones” of the Provence Bolivar, or the poorest communities (of the poorest Provence in Ecuador). My work reaches out to them to better their living conditions through resources, knowledge and income generating opportunities. They focus heavily on organic agriculture, health, human rights, and woman's empowerment (I know, I know, how did I get so lucky!!?!). They have hundreds of projects going on, so learning the ins-and-outs will probably take me my two years alone!

The Provence Bolivar is considered half Sierra and half Coastal. The climates, geography, and cultures within these two areas are very very different. The Sierra consists of both indigenous campos and mountain communities. The Coastal is made up of coastal people, but not beach-coastal, mountain-coastal. I'm rambling, but I hope you start to get an idea of the diversity.

Just when I've started feeling comfortable with my Spanish around people, I go to the Sierra, where they speak Kichwa (Ecuador's most common indigenous language). A few of the schools I will be working in are bilingual – the majority of students speak Kichwa in their homes, and then learn Spanish at school. Each of the schools are very different – the students, the buildings, the teachers – each paints a small picture of their lives, the history of their families, and their stories of love and tragedy. I won't make you read all about all my visits … but here's just one …

7am Wednesday morning I meet Melania at a market in the center of town to leave for the two school visits we had planned for the day. Melania helps the schools build and maintain school huertos (gardens), at the first school we went to on Tuesday, the older kids in the school helped us plant seeds while we chatted and got to know each other – today, I remembered to wear more sunscreen to work in the sun. We walked for about 15minutes to a bridge where we met with the teachers of the school to take a camioneta to the community. A camioneta is a truck-taxi. Basically, as many people as possible pile into the bed of the truck to move from place A to place B. At times, more than 15 people are standing in the truck beds – I've seen as many as 20!! (Tina – I need to put pictures up for you!)

Once at the school, Melania introduced me to the teachers and spoke with them a little about who I was. Each of the teachers kept asking what I was going to do and if I was going to be there everyday. But, that's the funny thing about my work here – I don't know what I'm going to do until I see (1) the community needs, and (2) community interests. Also, since I'll be working in several schools, I'm unable to visit them all everyday. So, I really have no idea what I'll be doing/ who I'll be working with until I know more about the school and community – and this was my first visit ... after trying to explain that I was here to help with what they wanted me to help in, we walked over to a concrete court (In the US it would look like a basketball court, but here they play voli and soccer on the cement), where the entire school was lining up, in rows according to grade.

At attention, facing away from us towards the school director, they greeted him and at his command, made a half turn to face Melania and me. In unison, they greeted us and all 80-pairs of eyes looked timidly at us. I looked at Melania for her to begin speaking, but she was looking at me.

Introduce yourself she told me. So, in my broken Spanish I said hi to the kids and explained a little of where I came from and that I was going to be working with them for the school year. After a short explanation, I looked back at Melania for some direction so we could begin working on the huertos. I figured we would divide out the older kids, like we had done in the previous school and take them to work on the school huerto.

I was not expecting the words that followed – Play something with them.

My brain shut down – I knew we were coming to visit the schools, but I expected to simply help out with the huertos and to casually say hi to students around the school. Thank goodness I was a YMCA leader, and for PC's dynamicas we did everyday during training, I was able to “Simon dice” and “Cuando yo digo...” my way through the next 30 minutes.

Although it was completely not what I expected that day, while reflecting, I think – what else did you expect? Seize the day. Es la vida.

My coastal experiences have been very different. Traveling to the coast takes 2-3 hours, but is the most beautiful drive – descending thousands of meters into a sub-tropical paradise. My co-workers call me crazy for liking the drive – it's mainly dirt road, hot, at times very dusty and long – well, maybe this is still the honeymoon phase of cultural adaptation, or maybe I have my dad's love for 4-wheeling after all. Eitherway, I must say, some of the most beautiful sunsets I've seen.

The first time I went to the coast was to distribute food rations to communities. In one day we went to three communities and distributed around 80 rations of food. Each of the communities has a community contact who Promocion Humana contacts to let the community know when and why PHD is coming. One of the communities we went to was very well organized; when we arrived at the selected meeting place, all the families were present to receive their rations. At the other two, it took a little more time to distribute the rations to everyone - some of the communities appeared very unorganized, or it could have been lack of motivation to come get the food rations or simple that phone service cuts in and out at times and they didn't hear the news. Either way, working to unite the communities to work with PHD is a key to success. Without them working and interested in the projects, FPH does not succeed. Because FPH only visits each community once or twice every month, the communication and organization the community has within itself is crucial to the sustainability of the work we do.

In the coast, we received regalos (presents) of oranges, bananas, and various other delicious fruits! There have been days where they field promotors I'm working with don't stop for food -- these fruits have been a life saver for me!

In both the Sierra and the Coast my Foundation has worked with family organic huertos (vegetable gardens). While traveling, we visit the gardens. It's amazing to see some of them - with the three A's: Amor, Alimentacion and Agua, they grow like crazy! The majority of the farmers here in Eucador use chemicals to grow their veggies, so a large part of our projects are to educate and start oganic huertos for families and schools! Next just might be cooking classes.

A love story.

Last weekend I went to a wedding!

At 7pm we arrived at the Cathedral in downtown Guaranda for the mass. My host grandmother had invited the family to come (her niece was the bride-to-be). So, Nancy and I decided to tag along with the family. We came equipped with a juice-maker and pressure cooker as presents and rice to throw on the newly weds as they exited the church. When we got to the church, people outside told us the mass started at 8pm. It seemed a little strange, but it's Ecuador and everything starts late! We took the time to stop in at my favorite cafe downtown – Siete Santos - and order hot chocolate and cheese (Gemma – you have to try this!!), which is delicious and my new favorite treat. The cubed cheese turns soft and chewy in the hot chocolate. Just trust me, you have to try it!

When we returned to the Cathedral there was lots of commotion going on inside and outside. Inside, at the front near the alter, there were a group of people crowding around the groom. There was a rumor going around that someone didn't want to marry someone. (Pause for *gasp*) My host grandmother and aunts quickly took off to assess the evening's happenings. A few men came into the church and were directed (rather forcefully for being inside a Cathedral) to sit in the pews at the front. The news came back to us that the friend's of someone didn't want them to get married. (Another pause for *gasp*) A few short minutes later, the bride came in running and in what appeared a confused state. She was wearing her wedding gown, and rushed to the front of the church where the priest and groom were. Soon the couple was talking to the priest. People started to be shushed out of the Cathedral, and as we made our way to the back, the lights turned out and after the last person left, the large doors were closed. The couple and the priest still inside. (*Gasp*) Outside, everyone tried find an explanation for what was happening - we figured out it was the groom's friends who didn't want the couple to wed.

In Ecuador, it's tradition for both the groom's and bride's parents to give their blessings to the couple before they wed. When the couple came out and hopped into a camioneta, everyone said – to the party. The priest had married the couple alone in the church! So, off we went, to the mother of the bride's house.

Once we got to the house, the pain of the newly-weds was present. The importance of family and friends here in Ecuador was displayed strongly as the bride was consoled by all. However, soon, as well, the love of the fiesta shone threw, and all began to dance the night away.

The next morning, I learned more of the previous night from my host mother, in fact, it turned out to be more explosive and thought-provoking than I initially anticipated. (Pause for *Gasp*) It was the groom's friend's who were protesting the wedding. The reason - the groom comes from a lighter skinned family and his friend's didn't want him to marry a woman with dark skin. (*gasp*) They had gotten him wasted before the wedding and locked him in a room. (*gasp **gasp*) Finally he escaped and called his fiance and told her to meet him at the church, that he still wanted to marry her. (Hence why the wedding was delayed an hour.) At the Cathedral, the same friends came to protest the wedding. With too much confrontation and anger, the priest had hold everyone to leave while he privately married the desiring couple. *SIGH*

I send out my best wishes to the newly-weds. I can only imagine the difficulties of trying to start a new life together without the support of your friends. This degree of discrimination is not often seen in Ecuador. However, it is a county of extreme differences – cultures, geography, history, climate, and skin color. I find it respectable and amazing that a small country, the size of Colorado, is still uncovering these differences and learning how to live peacefully with them.

Alta Mira, Echeandia, Ecuador

I went to the jungle this past weekend ... well it really was the coast, but it felt like the jungle.

A few photos ...


My host sister and I went to help my mom cook for a local cooking competition. We cooked all day preparing for 100 peole to show-up, eat our food, and vote for their favorite. I guess the people organizing the event didn't publicize very well ... because, noone showed up! It was an unfortunate event, but we went exploring anyways...


Alta Mira.


A little haven in the jungle.


They had an ostrich, tiger, turtle, birds, fish and snakes!


There were 7 waterfalls on the property ... photo with Ide and Waterfall #2.


Waterfall #1 and the swimming pool.


Hiking to the top of the hill ... my host mother got some help from the horse.


Sunset over Echeandia, Ecuador. Our guide and his daughter.


Plus ... weekend live entertainment!