Banana, Banana, Banana, Shrimp, Banana, Banana

Eat, training center, eat, eat some more, sleep – repeat.  This pretty much sums up my past few weeks here in Tumbaco.  Long days filled with Spanish, Ecuadorian Culture, and impressive views of the Andean mountains.  Inserted somewhere in the middle of this routine is the time I’ve spent with my host family

Last weekend Pedro and Rocio took me three hours north to a little rural agricultural community outside of the town of Ibarra where Pedro grew up and still has family.  The community seemed to be as ancient as the mountains it belonged to.  Dusty streets lined with thickly walled homes built years before from straw and mud.  All doors opened up to the cool air of the Andean mountains.  I spent the weekend picking peas from Pedro{s family farm on the hillside and struggling to find the right words of gratitude to give to Pedro’s mother.  She was reserved and (Pedro told me) embarrassed by how small she perceived her home to be.  I felt quite the opposite.  I have stepped into few homes in which I have so instantly felt the presence of stories from years past. 

This kind of rural mountain community is what I have romanticized my Ecuadorian Peace Corps experience would be.  I have grown to love the Andean mountains of South America laced with Indigenous Cultures who speak of the pachamama, cosmos, and their appreciation for fitting into the order of the land instead of owning it.  My introverted personality and tendency to always keep an eye open for a quite place to sit and think has fit well into the quite cultures of the Andes.  But, I did not apply to the Peace Corps for the sole intent of finding inspiring places to sit and consider things.  I applied to work with people, and based on the skills I have and the needs of communities throughout Ecuador, the mountains will not be my permanent home in Ecuador for my Peace Corps service. 

And so, now, as I walk the streets of Ecuador over the next few weeks my brain is on overload.  Not only am I trying to process my site, but my mind is often occupied with thoughts of home with the weddings of cousins Megan and Rob, as well as my grandmother, Gramsie’s, 80^th birthday.  When I close my eyes I feel I am there with everyone sitting on the porch in Maine, sipping tea, and trying to hear those singing flowers.  The best gift I can offer everyone is to share a little of the excitement I have for where I am going to be spending my next two years. 

The excitement I had leading up to hearing about my placement is the same I used to feel as a little girl waiting for Christmas morning.  Not filled with worry for the outcome, rather, wonder and suspense.  And so I resumed the role of a little girl waiting for Christmas morning and did not sleep at all the night before I heard of my placement.  Thursday, the big day, we were locked out of the training center for an hour over lunch as the PC staff prepared for our site placement ceremony.  At 1:30 the guard opened the door and we were ushered into the backyard of the training center where staff, dressed in Ecuador soccer jerseys were waiting for us with music playing.  On the grass they created a huge map of Ecuador out of rose peddles.  One by one our names were drawn out of a hat and our site was announced to us as one of the staff grabbed our hand and ran us to our place on the giant rose peddle map.  My name was announced somewhere in the middle and I was guided to the district of El Oro, a southern coastal province hours from the border of Peru.  I tried to slap some kind of a smile on my face as seemed appropriate for the moment, but my mind was completely occupied by one thought, coast… HOT!!!!!

After the ceremony we received presentations of ever trainee’s placement.  In hearing about all the placements I have to give the Peace Corps staff a lot of credit.  Given the opportunity, I would have placed myself in El Oro as well, despite the heat, I could not be more thrilled with the organizations I am going to be working with.  My counterparts are three librarians.  The head librarian of the district of El Orro who is based in the main municipal of Machala, a librarian from the town, El Cambio, where the Peace Corps has had three past volunteers, and a librarian from the town of La Aurora, where I will be the first volunteer.

As to specifics of what I will be doing, that will follow in the posts to come in the next two years.  I will be spending the next week in El Oro getting acquainted with my site and am excited to share pictures in my next post.  At the moment the picture I can share is this:  banana, banana, banana, banana… when you look up information about El Oro online, or in lonely planet, that is all you will find.  El Orro is the land of bananas!

Visit to the campo

Tech Trip

Scrolling through my ipod, Billy Joel’s greatest hits seemed to fit my mood, head phones in, play...  And thus, Billy Joel rang in my ears as my eyes took in our buses decent through the lush green mountains that ushered us into the coastal region of Ecuador.  This past week the 14 trainees in the Youth and Family program headed to the coast of Ecuador for a week of technical training in the district of Manabi.  This was my first experience on the coast of South America.  My body seemed to register the change of environment more readily then I was able to process it in my mind.  My hair doubled in volume from the humidity and my skin instantly became sticky from the hot clammy air.  I had to change my rings to smaller fingers as my hands swelled from the heat.  While some trainees seemed to be delighted to be back in a climate they loved, I admit to grumbling a bit and having to bite my tongue once or twice as this kind of heat is really not my style.  I will have some major adjusting to do if my site ends up being along the coast. 

While I tried to tame my hair, my mind ran in circle trying to process the fact that such amazing biodiversity exists in a country so small and in the course of so short a bus ride.  Beautiful beyond comprehension.  The bus ride was around eight hours and when we finally greeted the coast it was along side rolling hills filled with banana trees, not flat plains as I had imagined.  Once we arrived to the coast we hopped off the bus and onto a little boat taxi that took us across the bay to Bahia, where we were based for the week. 

We had a busy week, which included visits to 4 current Peace Corps Volunteers sites.  Seeing volunteers in their sites started to help me see past the bubble I’ve felt we’ve been living in in our Tumbaco life.  The sites of all of the Peace Corps Volunteers were very different from one another.  They helped me appreciate, once again, that the best way I can prepare for my site is to have no expectations and be open and flexible toward anything.  That said, I cannot help but draw comparisons between the different regions in which I could be placed.  Note that these are large generalizations, but, the people along the coast seem to live a much more open, welcoming and louder lifestyle from what I have experienced in the sierra where people seem to be much more reserved.  Integrating into a community in either of these regions would pose very different kinds of challenges for me.

Excited to be on the coast and on a boat!

Bahia

Visiting different communities and practicing giving presentations in Manabi.  Note, ´Honcho Frisbee´ flying through the air.  My ´Honcho Frisbee´ was a gift from my amazing cousins before I left.  Maybe I can use it as my version of ´Flat Stanley´

Next time I post, I should have my site!  I also wanted to thank people for sending me messages.  I love the updates and soak in every word.

Tumbaco Life

I am realizing pretty quickly that my time here training in Tumbaco is going to be a completely different experience in Ecuador then the time I will have for my two years in site.  For one, I spend the days in training with my fellow Peace Corps Trainees.  It has been fun learning about everyone’s lives leading up to May 16th.  In the morning, the bus I catch to the training center jerks along picking up other local Tumbacians and PC Trainees.  I don’t know how everyone fits, it is like a clown car, we all cling to bars or handles scanning for empty seats slamming into one another the whole time from the rugged stop and go.  So, within a three-week period all of us PC Trainees have gotten very close, both in sharing stories and aspirations, and in understanding a very different concept of personal space.    

Life here has started to fall into a steady routine.   In writing this I am trying to thinking back to a month ago when Ecuador and the Peace Corps seemed like such a mystery.  I had so many questions about what Tumbaco would look like, whom I would be spending my days with, what would I be eating…  Now I find myself shrugging and thinking, of course this is how it would be. 

My Room!  Note, my recently purchased guitar which I have named ‘Blacky’ for its o-so-stylish rendered black edging.  When I asked Pedro if he knew of anywhere I could get a guitar, he wipped out the phone book, we all hopped in the car, twenty minutes later I came home with Blacky.  My days are divided with training and time with my host family.  When at home with my host family this is generally where I hang out.  Studying, practicing guitar, or chatting with Rocio.  She often comes into my room and we talk about our days while hanging out on my bed.  At 7:30ish we usually sit down for some Manzanilla con Miel (Chamomile and Honey) tea, and a snack of rice, chicken, and potatoes.  Pedro is turning me into a major Ecuador soccer fan, and Rocio likes to question me about the strange ways I cook quinoa.  She only uses it in soups, which is the custom here.

  Training Center.  In training we have been doing a lot of traveling to Quito and nearby school to start to get comfortable working with youth in a variety of different social situations.  Training is divided up between technical training and language and in moments in between we are learning about all sorts of crazy illnesses, and safety and security issues.

   

Rocio, Me, and Pedro... on our way back from the hot spring in Papallacta.  The hour drive through the mountains was beautiful, the natural hot springs were delightfully warm, and afterwards we enjoyed a lunch of fish, rice, and potatoes.  All in all, a great day.

Achotillo (left)... I am not sure if I spelled that correctly and I do not know of any english translation.  BUT, this little fruit is my favorite among the many interesting ones I have come across in the past few weeks.  You break open the spiky shell and squeeze the little white fruit into your mouth.  It has a pit like an olive and the texture of a what I can only think of as a hard to chew grape.  Simply wonderful!  Above to the right are tree tomatoes.  Besides blackberry juice, tree tomato juice is my favorite.  Rocio makes it almost every morning.

Quito... Last weekend I joined three friends on a bus tour of Quito.  This was one of our views. 

View on the way back from Papallacta.