My New Job(s)

So I’ve been here a week…although there is never hot water unless you boil it, I have to flush the toilet by dumping a bucket a water and use the same bucket to wash my hair… I love it here!

I wake up around 6:30 have a delicious breakfast of eggs and veggies, a roll and café and then wait for the bus that comes generally around 7:45ish…it’s the only bus that comes to my community so even though I don’t have to be at work until 8:30ish I generally take it (18 cents) … sometimes I walk…its about a 40 min walk into town buts its beautiful, the whole way you can see mountains, a volcano, farms, cows, and the best part is the people.. everyone is super nice greeting you with a Buenos dias as you pass!

So per usual I had to be difficult and work at two places instead of just one…

1: Cooperativa Santa Anita de crédito y ahorros….

It is the main cooperative of Cotacachi, when I am here I follow around Luis, a 23 year indigenous young man… a typical day consist of some paperwork at the office and by 10 o’clock were off to visit clients in the communities further up in the mountains… the best part is that we travel by motorcycle! There really isn't a better way to spend the day then cruising through windy mountain roads on the back of a motorcycle!

The downside is I understand practically nothing because when you get up in the mountains a lot of the people only speak kichwa… which is nothing remotely like Spanish or English… but I really want to learn it… I already have one phrase down “ally punchga” (no clue how to spell it but that’s what it sounds like) means “good day”….

2: Unión de Organizaciones Campesinas de Cotacachi: UNORCA

Here I am working with a 24 year girl Mira who just started there as well a month ago, she is currently working on a project with “cajas de mujers.” The project first consists of doing a diagnosis of all the cajas, which are basically women’s group that take out credit from the cooperativas because it is a lot of work and paperwork and time for one person to take out credit on their own and if you only need a small amount then the cajas are a much better route…

After evaluating the cajas she’s going to make some huge report and evaluate how the cajas are doing … and then go to the communities and teach the women how to operate more effectively.

Right now we are in the stage of visiting the communities, so I go with her and another indegious woman and we sit with group meetings for sometimes as long as 3 hours talking and learning all about their caja, again a lot of this is done in kichwa…

Sometimes we stay in the office and I help here record the information about loans and debts into excel files…

I’ve only been at both places a few days because I’m splitting my time each week so I still don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing but that’s the general idea

My new home

So a few observations after day one in Cotacachi

1. my dad has longer hair than I do

2. 2. 2. I have 2 pigs, a bunch of chickens, 1 sheep, a puppy and a whole guinea pig farm

3. 3. 3. My mother, Ines, is beautiful both inside and out

4. 4. 4. My mom dresses in the traditional indigenous attire, my dad does not

5. 5. 5. my bed kind of feels like a stack of cardboard

6. 6. 6. If you’re lucky, the sink lets out a small drip when you turn it on high at night

7. 7. 7. I no dresser so I will be living out of my suitcase

8. 8. 8. We eat SO many fruits and vegetables!

9. 9. 9.All the teenage boys in the community come to my house to play video games… I have been hearing some war sort of game for the past 3 hours

10. 10. My host mom thought I was insane when I said I go to bed around 11 or 12…

And so concludes day one…

spring break in 3 photos

spring break: climbing COTOPAXI y la PLAYA y BRENNA!

Spring Break! (march 12^th – 21^st)

Que Besita…

Hands down one of the best spring breaks of my life… I don’t even know where to begin..

Part 1: Baños y Cotopaxi

Well the Friday we got out of school , we caught a bus and headed three hours south to Banos…

If I haven’t told you the story of my guia (my river rafting guide from the first time in Banos) be sure to ask me… or anyone in my host family as its their FAVOIRTE story to tell… anyways it’s a good story that made for a really a very funny night our first night back in Banos, (quick synopsis- pretty much this whole bar was trying to get me talk to this boy… including an English boy who came up to me and I quote… (in a strong English accent), “Excuse me miss but who do you fancy?”)

Anyways boys aside the weekend was a blast… we went horseback riding in the mountains, found some natural springs that produce natural seltzer water, hiked, hit the hot springs, ate at our favorite restaurant (we’ve eaten their multiple times and it's amazing! Casa hood … if you ever make it to Banos…) some of our Quito friends even drove all the way to Banos to meet us and dance… oh and I jumped off the bridge again… I mean it was right there I had to!

We were suppose to pick up Brenna from the airport that night but she missed her flight and so didn’t make it in until the next night…

Monday we had team dinner with a friend who worked at the US embassy and was going to climb Cotopaxi with us… after dinner we went to pick up Brenna from the airport… it was really strange being back at the airport, my first view of Ecuador 2 months ago…

The next morning we headed south to Cotopaxi to meet our guides for the climb and get our gear…

Our climbing team consisted of Kelly, Tanya, Brenna, Jake (or friend from the Embassy) and an English kid who had tried to summit the weekend before but didn’t make and was super determined… and three guides Jose, Natito y Lobo… all of which were amazing

After getting all our gear we headed to Cotopaxi national park, we put all our gear in backpacking backpacks, put on our hiking boots and headed up to the refuge, which looked like a ten minute hike but in reality was more of 30-40 minute hike…

After unloading at the refuge and getting a quick, delicious snack of bread and cheese we headed to glacier to do a practice climb…

Once we hit the glacier I was really starting to feel the altitude as we were at some ridiculous altitude… headach.. stomach ach, dizziness you name it... but if you´re too sick they don´t let you do the climb... so i decided if i didn´t say i was sick it would go away... whcih pretty much worked!

When we got back Lobo had prepared a delicious dinner for us… catering to my vegetarian desires which I told him he didn’t have to…

After dinner around 7pm… we all climbed into our sleeping bags… huddling for warmth… I’m not really sure how much sleep I got but in a few short hours around 11pm Jose was waking us up…

In the dark with headlamps as our only lights we began to pile on the layers, polar pants, snow pants, fleece liners, mittens, wool hats, helmets, we ate some breakfast and were going to head out at midnight exactly but we had to wait about 20 minutes as it was blizarding/raining… after 20 minutes it hadn’t let up much so put on our harnesses and headed out into the snow…

The first hour was mostly through loose dirt, straight up which was really hard to walk through… finally after an hour we hit the glacier, we put on our SHOE SPIKE things (cramp-ons), hooked into our harnesses and had ice axe in hand… the journey was far more intense than I had imagined, not only are you traveling with almost zero sleep through the middle of night, you are walking on a glacier at literally heights your body has never experienced… sometimes we were almost climbing straight up it felt like…

The scariest parts were when there were holes in the glacier that dropped so far down you couldn’t see the bottom… for this reason we were in harnesses all connected… when our guide first crossed a narrow passage with giant holes on either side he told us “if I fall in you have to jump as fast you can in the other direction”

At one point I felt so tired that I literally didn’t know if my body could physically make it… I mean I’m trying to say im super in shape because im not but I rarely get to the point where I think that my body cannot go on… I never even felt that running a marathon… finally around 7am we reached the summit of one of the highest active volcanoes in the world! It truly was an amazing feeling! Unfortunately it was kind of cloudy so it was hard to see in the carter but just knowing it was right there was a wonderful feeling… the way down took less than 2 hours… and we were down by 9am…

We packed up and headed back to Quito, luckily one of guides was from around Quito and gave us a ride, he ended up being an awesome guy… with lots of advice including “never date a latino” this coming from one…

Part 2: to the PLAYA

When we got back we quick showered, changed and headed to airport to make our flight to Guayaquil… Our next plan was Monitnita, but the only way to get there is through Guayaquil and to avoid a 12 hour bus ride we took a 35 minute flight, it was wonderful! Once you get to Guayaquil it’s a 3 hour bus ride to Monitnita, a little hippy town on the coast…

We pretty much went to bed right when we got there, as we still hadn’t slept since the day before… the next morning we woke up dripping in sweat… the coast is hot, a new hot I have never experienced…

After spending the morning on the beach watching people who are ridiculously good at surfing, we decided we wanted to learn how to surf, so after a delicious typical lunch of soup, rice, and fish we rented some boards…

It was a little harder than I anticipated but everyone said it helped that we knew how to snowboard as it is a similar sensation…

Anyways the rest of the trip was great… we hung out with our friends we had made the night before… went to a reggae concert where I’m pretty sure not only were we the only people without dreads we were also the only people not smoking pot…

but no worries with our sweet interpretative dance moves we fit right in…

We decided to move out of hostel after the ceiling was leaking.. there were cockroaches in our bathroom… the music from the street blared until 4 in the morning and the electricity stopped working…

Switching was the best decision ever… we stayed in these little cabanas right on the beach… for the exact same price as our other hostel… $10 a person a night…. Not to bad for our own private house right on the beach… but the best part wasn’t the house (that had its own problems, like when I woke up with a cockroach INSIDE my mosquito net…) the best part was the man who worked there… we ended up talking to him a ton… learning all about his life… we talked about differences between U.S. and Ecuador, politics , religion, everything… and I always get kind of excited when I can have any sort of extended conversation that has more significance than “where are you from?” “what’s your family like?” in Spanish…

We found out he worked every day except Tuesday 8am-8pm and received about $250 a month… do the math…

Our new friends stopped by in the morning and we spent the morning passing around the guitar and talking… (I performed a wonderful rendition of leaving on a jet plane…and SANG) then some guy from the beach came up and started rapping or singing really fast not sure … but it sounded sweet

After another lunch, we only had about an hour before our bus left so we rented some boards and our friends helped us in our second attempt at surfing …

We got to Guayaquil that night around 8ish … found a very cheap… 3.50 a person.. hostel… once we got in the room we understood the price… but we were only there for a few hours as we got up early the next day to fly back to Quito…

We got back to Quito much later than anticipated as our flight was delayed about three hours… one note about the airports in Ecuador … not once did I need any form of identification … nothing.. also I could bring a full open water bottle .. shampoo.. whatever I please on the plane…

Once I got home it was a mad rush to wash my clothes and pack up everything I owned as the next morning at6am I was moving to a new city to start my internship…

PHOTOS de la post below

1.8people in a 5 person car on the way to Mindo
2. hora loca
3. My Quito Sibs!

(in opposite order i guess)

Mi fin tiempo en Quito

March 8th 2010

What a weekend. Its Sunday night right now and I am SO exhustanted. Its 8:00 and I am ready to sleep. While after I eat dinner that is. Where to begin…
So Friday, after a loooong day of classes, yes I have classes here, with tests and papers, although I know some people are judging me for never doing school work… was Taylor’s, my cousin who lives below me, 21st birthday!

Her family is amazing and got her a ridiculously huge thing of flowers, party hats balloons, a huge cake! The works! It was so cute! I came down to help them decorate while taylor was not allowed out of her room…Finally, we some of our friends arrived they let her out! It was quite the party; we sang, danced, pushed her face in the cake, spanked her with the belt 21 times, drank wine, and ate lots of food! After the party we headed out to dance for the rest of the night!
The next day Kelly and I ran pretty much to the other side of Quito to watch our friends’ track meet

Well first I never wrote about last weekend which was definitely worth writing about so first you shall get a small glimpse at last weekend before I elaborate on this weekend… (That was my cliff hanging so HAVE to read to the end to hear about this weekend).

Anyways last weekend we decided to go Mindo, Mindo is a city a lot like Banos, in the mountains but very jungly as well, with lots of adventure things to do…
So myself and 5 others were going leave at 8ish and take a bus…BUT somehow our Ecuadorian friends we met at the beach during carnival, enter the situation and offered to drive us…

So the next morning we all met around 8:30-9ish and walked to a busy street where our “friends” were going to pick us up… after about 30 minutes of sitting on the sidewalk , we started thinking the bus would have been a better choice, also we were sitting next to a busy car repair shop and I’m pretty sure everyone working there was very confused why 6 gringa girls were sitting on the curb in front of their shop, probably thought we had nothing better to do… anyways about 40 minutes later, after many difficult to understand phone calls, ONE, TINY car shows up, with 2 of our friends… that leaves 3 seats for SIX people!

We had already committed to waiting for over an hour for this car, so we decided to just get in and said they had to find another friend with another car… after many unsuccessful phone calls we were on our way… Mindo is 2 hours away which is a VERY long time to have EIGHT people in a very SMALL car… but its Ecuador, you can make anything work…

We stopped in some little town for some famous food that “the whole world knows you have to stop if you go to mindo” So the guys bought two plates for us to share… then we were on our way!
We first took a cable car across the mountain to go explore and swim in some waterfalls…

Then we went ZIP lining! 10 ziplines for 10 dollars! When we got to the ziplines we were all freezing and soaking due to the pouring rain.. So Edison one of our Ecuadorian friends who drove us, bought us all empanadas and coffee which hit the spot!

We then all suited up in our harnesses and hit the zip lines! First normal… then superman… then butterfly (upside down, hands out, guide behind) then bat, completely upside down by yourself! It was so exhilarating!
We all packed back into the cars while the boys bought us some road snack for the way home… part of the reason we wanted to go with guys in the first place was to be forced to speak in Spanish the whole day, so on the way home we all shared first kiss stories in Spanish it was quite amusing…
The boys made us promise we would go out with them that night, so we got home showered/changed/ate and headed to a discotecha… its nice having Ecuadorian friends who not only have cars (so we don’t have to take taxis) but also just know where to go…

We ended up staying out until 4-4:30ish… which taylor was not happy about because we were suppose to go on a family trip at 8 the next morning…
Due to all my college training I can function on very little sleep, so at 7:30, three and half hours after I hit the hay I was up again headed somewhere with the whole family, dog, grandparents, aunts, uncles and some cousins…

I am still not completely sure where went.. but it was this huge mansion thing being restored, which they tried to convince me that my grandparents owned , to which im still not sure if they were lying or not… regardless it was super sweet and we took about a billion pictures which if I ever get internet on my computer again I will put up… it was kind of fun to be the only American with a group of Ecuadorians that big…
After we headed to lunch in cotocachi, which I had no clue I would be living in soon….
Anyways back to this weekend…

So Friday was Taylor’s birthday… Saturday Kelly and I ran to the track meet and then decided to take a bus home… unfortuatly we were in new part of town and I kind of just assumed I knew what I was doing … so kel got off the bus at her street and stayed on hoping the bus would coutinue on and go past my street but I was so wrong… before I knew the bus was headed towards the airport and we were in some tunnel thing were you can’t get off the bus.. by the time I finally got off the bus I was on way other side of airport.. normally this wouldn’t be a huge a problem but the fact that I was suppose to be home no later than 3 for a family party at my house and it was 2:55 did create a problem… so my only option was to run.. normally I love to run but running on busy quito streets is not the most fun..

Anyways I made it home within about 15 minutes, dripping in sweat to my host mothers disdain but luckily they hadn’t served lunch yet..
Again I got seated at the kids table but it was ok because my cousin was fun to talk to and taylor was there too, we had a special soup they normally serve durning holy week which was delicious!

After lunch everyone rested for a bit and before long my mom told me to get ready for loco hora .. I thought she was kidding but she was right on…
Before long all the furniture was moved out of the sala and everyone had masks on face and whistles in mouth… my uncle was even going around spraying silver hair spray on people…

Everyone danced CRAZY (hence the loco) for far more than an hour… grandparents included… I was laughing for pretty much two straight hours, finally around 7 or 8 the craziness began to settle and I was able to rest for about an hour before going out with Ecuadorian friends to dance the night away once more…

Family Fiesta

2 de Marzo 2010

So up until tonight I thought I had a normal family. I mean really anything compared to my family is normal (anyone who’s had a family dinner at my house knows that). But finally tonight I was able to see that they are a little more like my family than I realized.

The big event- my aunt and uncle (host aunt and unc) moved to Utah 8 years ago and had not seen anyone in our family for 8 years! So they finally decided to return to Quito and are staying with us for a month.

So what do you do when someone’s been gone that long…FIESTA! Claro! So let me back up ..the crazyness actually began this morning… everyone was kind of rushing around but it didn’t bother me… I tried to finish my homework while I ate the papaya my madre cut up for me, along with some banana blended milk and a cheese bread roll… pretty standard and delicious…

Taylor, mi madre, y yo got in the car as normal so I thought we were about to leave when my aunt got in the car with her two dogs, than my grandpa with his dog, madness already, but then my mom starts honking the horn “Esteben!” my brother… so then he piles in with our dog… dogs are jumping, everyone’s talking, esteben’s late for an interview, we’re late for school and everyone else is late for an appointment and the dog salon? Because clearly when having out of town guest it is very important to have ALL the dogs looking good… meanwhile we go through a red light get stuck in the middle of an intersection, pretty much all of Quito is honking at us… but somehow everyone gets where they’re suppose to be going…

Anyways after a pretty tranquil day at school, I went for a run in La Carolina, with my friend Erin, after not running for so long we both we’re out of breath pretty fast… anyways I got home and everyone was all ready getting ready, downstairs in my aunt and uncles house balloons and people filled the rooms… I went upstairs, quickly showered (because my mom told me too) and changed into something nice…

Then three cars worth of people headed to airport, only to meet a bunch more relatives at the airport… Signs, confetti, balloons oh and leyes.. for some reason taylor and I had to put leyes around our aunt and uncle when they arrived… after anxiously awaiting and practicing their arrival for about 40 minutes (we were quite the spectacle of people in airport) the tios arrived!

Everyone was so emotional, I almost started crying when my host dead burst into silent tears while hugging his brother… we took some family photos that insisted that I be in as well, and finally we headed back to the house… little did I know this was only the beginning of the craziness.

One of my aunts is a professional singer, so as soon as the tios walked in the door the music began to blare (they had somehow obtained HUGE speakers and microphones) and my aunt began to sing beautiful traditional songs, that somehow everyone knew, after a few songs of singing and clapping, one of my aunts grabbed a napkin and started doing some sort of traditional veil dance, we took a singing/dancing break and made about 50 toast, and of course they pass the microphone to me make a toast… talk about pressure… finally it was time to eat, luckily I got seated at the kids table and was able to converse with my literally insane wild little cousins…after fruit kabobs, dinner and dessert, the singing began again…

This time it was more karaoke style… still traditional Ecuadorian songs… which clearly I know none of… so they pass the microphone and everyone is singing.. finally they realize that Taylor and I haven’t been singing, so they decide we MUST sing the one Ecuadorian song we know, entitled mi nina bonita, I literally only know 2 frases but that was enough we HAD to sing… after much singing the tradional dance began again and last well past midnight (THIS IS SCHOOL NIGHT) ok I know midnight is not that late but I’m use to going to bed around 10:30 on school nights so its going to rough tomorrow…

We’re having another family fiesta on Saturday! Can’t wait!

Buenos Noches!