The cat is gone but the chickens are here to stay.

This week started off fantastic! Cuenca was so much fun – I got to meet about 10 other volunteers from the area and we hung out all night. They are really cool and a tight-knit bunch, so I definitely have more people I can hang out with in Cuenca, which will especially be nice when MacKenzie leaves for the States in October. I also got to do a lot of shopping on Saturday at the SuperMaxi in Cuenca before going home to Azogues. The SuperMaxi is more expensive than a regular grocery store, but has all sorts of American favorites! It will be dangerous to go there too much, so I’m going to try to limit myself to every few months, but it is a nice treat.

I got home Saturday night to find out that MacKenzie had made me a functioning copy of the house key, so I won’t get locked out anymore! Also, the family had discovered the cat’s habit of eating their guinea pigs, so the devil cat is now gone and we are living in peace upstairs (aside from the frequent chicken visitors that we are still battling with). The family was also very chatty with me, so it was a great return from an even better outing in Cuenca!

I’m still working on the cookbook. This week I made cinnamon-raisin and oat bagels! I had planned ahead and bought cream cheese in Cuenca, so I am loving it right now. I know I’ll be able to survive here with my new bagel making skills, so things are looking bright! Well, things are looking bright metaphorically, but the weather is still awful. I’m starting to think this is going to be the weather for the next few years – I guess it’s like having moved to the Northeast? Permanent overcast and frequent rain. I don’t mind it too much, but it still gets cold and the rain is keeping the landslides coming, which makes me hesitant to travel. Even though it is still gloomy and rainy, I am either getting more accustomed to the cold or it’s actually starting to warm up! I no longer shiver 24/7 and the nights aren’t as bad as they were in the beginning. I think summer is on it’s way!

Another baking endeavor that turned out to be a huge hit was the oatmeal-raisin cookies. Nayeli (the 8-year-old girl in my family) loves to bake things with me, so we spend a lot of time together at night baking and hanging out. She is adorable and very helpful with my Spanish because she doesn’t give up easily on me understanding a word or idea. The baking has proven to be the perfect way to share some of my culture with her and give her something to do after school. We have plans to try a carrot cake with campo cream-cheese frosting and an apple pie this upcoming week, so we’ll see how it goes!

Classes in the school went really well on Monday. I actually taught 1^st-7^th this time, which was completely exhausting, but also really fun! In 4^th-7^th grades we went over body parts, then played Simon Says, which was a huge hit. The little kids are crazy and energetic, so we did some quick learning of colors enough to get us outside and have them running for Red Light, Green Light. I think games are going to be the way to go, so if anyone has easy suggestions, please send them this way!

Work in the subcentro was very infrequent this week, so I dared to try more laundry on Wednesday when I had a free afternoon. After last week’s painful and poor laundry job, I was a bit hesitant, but it has to happen. Last week’s clothing all had soap left in it, so I decided to wash a smaller amount and have a new rinsing technique – if it is ever sunny enough to dry the clothes, I’ll be able to see how it went! At least I provide good entertainment for the family with my lacking laundry skills. I’m also not convinced it will ever get any easier because laundry is frequently the biggest complaint of the women living here who have been doing it their whole lives. Hmm.

On Thursday I gave the subcentro staff their first English class. We hang out in the kitchen, so we just learned kitchen vocab and phrases, etc. They are very excited about it and wanted to learn everything, so we did a 2.5 hour class! I never thought I would want to teach English classes here, but people are genuinely excited about it, so it’s a lot of fun.

Lucy and Pablo walked me down because it was dark out by the time we finished (at 6pm…). Zoila, from my host family, was outside and still using my headlamp that she borrowed, so I stopped to see what she was doing. Turns out she owns a house across the street from where we live that she is fixing up. She is currently replacing all the old electrical wire in the house, so I hung out for a while to watch. She couldn’t understand why I was nervous about her getting electrocuted…it might have been the live, bare wires hanging everywhere that did it, but they didn’t seem to bother her. She seems to know all about fixing things – houses, cars, locks, etc, - so I think I’ll be able to learn a lot from her!

I actually started my community surveys on Friday, which means I completed 1 of the 100+ I need to finish in the next month. Zoila agreed to do it with me during lunch, which ended up taking a few hours, but I got a better idea of how to conduct them, the important and feasible questions, etc, so I’m getting ready to actually go out in the community and conduct them. I’m supposed to go with someone from the subcentro for safety and credibility reasons, but they don’t have a lot of time, so I am planning to start with the extended family that I already know, then working outward to the other communities who I’ve already started forming relationships with. Hopefully by then the subcentro will understand what I’m trying to do and will make some more time to help!

The family situation is going to be tough for the next few months. MacKenzie leaves in 1 month and the dread has set in with them, so I’m bracing for the next 2 months or so – first until she leaves, then the month after she leaves. After that I think I’ll have a better idea of how I really fit in with the family and will be able to better evaluate how it might go for the next two years. Until then, I’m trying to give them as much or little space as they seem to want at any given second and continue working on things on my own. Nayeli and I have big plans for carrot cake, apple pie and banana pancakes this week J.

Here are some pics for you – I will try to take some more soon of the people here, the subcentro, my work, etc, but until then, this is a little slice of the most consuming parts of my life in Zhoray:

Market day in Zhoray!

 The actual view from my bedroom window - I get to look at the Andes all day, everyday :)

 More of the market

 My hallway during times of peace

 Here comes trouble....

Annnd my archnemisis. We are in a constant battle over the use and cleanliness of the hallway...

Just another week in the Andes

Last week I ended up spending Saturday night in Azogues at Lucy’s house, which was nice because my house in Zhoray was completely empty because everyone was on a trip. She picked me and Britney up with two of her friends (who I have now hung out with several times and they are great). We went to Cuenca, so I got my first glimpse of what is supposed to be the prettiest city in Ecuador. We hung around Cuenca for a while, met up with Lucy’s sisters and went to see Planet of the Apes at the movie theater, then went back to Azogues. We went to a discoteca in Azogues for several hours of dancing and karaoke before going back to Lucy’s. Britney and I woke up early on Sunday to make them an American style breakfast – Mom, your French toast recipe was a huge hit! We also had an egg-scramble that Britney made. It ended up just being me and Britney, Lucy and her sister for breakfast, so we ate and talked for a few hours, which was really fun because our Spanish is finally getting good enough for them to be able to talk to us and ask lots of questions!

Getting home on Sunday was a whole other adventure. The landslide that I mentioned last week turned into a huge landslide sometime Saturday after I had gone to Azogues, so the road back to Zhoray from Azogues was impassable. The bus stopped at the point of the landslide and told us there was a pickup truck on the other side to get us and bring us the rest of the way to Zhoray. Well, I got off the bus and had to walk about 100 meters over the huge boulders and rocks that had fallen. I had my heavy bags with me from grocery shopping in Azogues, but I practically ran across because small stones were still tumbling down in several places, and based on the size of the boulders I was passing over, I didn’t feel like taking my time to see what else might be coming down…Sure enough, there was a truck waiting on the other side. Yep, a single truck for all of us on the bus. I was crammed into the back next to a chicken, a pit bull pup, and people all on top of each other. Luckily it was only about a 15 minute ride into Zhoray at this point, but unluckily my grocery bag ended up beneath a pile of people and all my fresh goodies were squished. Oh well, at least we all made it back safe and sound!

I was the only one home when I got back, so I called my host family and Lucy to warn them that they would have to take the other route into Zhoray to get home. I then dove into my first laundry adventure. I spent about 2.5 hours and washed maybe half of my clothes. Several things came of it: I will have very strong forearms by the end of 2 years, but that’s only if I have clothing to wash because the stone wears it down really, really quickly. I was just glad to be home alone while doing it because I know it would have been quite the site to see. I’ve learned it’s probably best to do small amounts more frequently than to wait and do a bunch at once (at least that’s what my arms and back were telling me the next day!).  A lot of it is dependent on the rain though, and we’ve only had a few days with sun so far, so not a whole lot of choice.

Monday was my first day of teaching English at the school. I got there at 8am, met with the director for a few minutes, then jumped into teaching 7^th grade. I ended up teaching 4^th-7^th for about an hour each. The kids in 6^th and 7^th grade were great, really excited about learning English and following directions. The 5^th graders weren’t too bad, but the 4^th graders were much trickier. There were a lot of them, they all talked at once, were running around and hitting each other, etc. It was impossible to do much, so it turned into more of babysitting than teaching English, but they were still cute. I’m going to have to do a lot of planning to come up with lessons that will be at all beneficial to the younger kids – every Monday from now on I will be working with 1^st-7^th grades, so even younger of kids. If you have any suggestions, please send them this way! I left when classes got out at 1pm and was completely exhausted, but it was still a lot of fun and now I have a better idea of what to expect, so I can plan even better. I think it is going to be a good experience, even if it is just hanging with the kids and gaining the trust of the parents.

The meeting of health volunteers that was supposed to happen this week will be “next week,” for about the 3^rd week in a row, so we’ll see. On Wednesday I did get to go to Colepato, another community about 40 minutes away. Unfortunately we went under bad circumstances to continue investigating the death of the woman during childbirth, but I got a really good sense about the community. They are all very united and seem willing to work together towards common goals. During the community meeting, Lucy put me on the spot to explain to them my community diagnostic surveys. I was not only able to explain it to them in Spanish, but they seem enthusiastic to help! Hopefully several people will be coming for next week’s meeting. I did get some work done in the medicinal garden this week. Pablo and I weeded for several hours and got about half of the garden weeded. It should look good for next week’s meeting and we will be able to begin learning the uses of the different plants that are growing.

In my free evenings this week I decided to experiment with some baking to help pass the time. I invited 5 kids to come help me make banana bread, which they got very, very excited for! It turned out okay, but I learned a lot to improve it next time. We used baking chocolate, which was a mistake. I will be looking for some milk chocolate when I go to Cuenca! Also, I don’t have an oven for baking, so I am learning to use a “campo oven,” which is a large pot on the stove with a little dish inside to act as a platform and then a lid to trap the heat. I now bake things at the temperatures of low-flame, medium-flame and high-flame! We have a really neat Peace Corps cookbook that is specific to Ecuador that has all our favorite American foods in it, but with ingredients and methods that are feasible in Ecuador. I made soft pretzels another night this week with Nayeli, which actually turned out really well. My weekend project is cinnamon raisin bagels – we’ll see how they go, but I’m hoping they are at least a little bit like bagels from home J. My goal is to use my spare time to learn how to cook and bake many more things while I’m here, which is not only good for passing time, but the kids love it so I get to interact with them more.

Teaching English classes in the school is probably the best decision I’ve made so far. The kids now stop and talk to me in town, so it takes me (a welcome) 5x longer to get anywhere, but they are all adorable and so excited to see me that I’m really beginning to feel more welcome in the town. In the subcentro, they still introduce me to people when they come in, but now a lot of times the parents so, “oh yeah, we have heard all about her, the English professor!” So not only am I making friends with the kids, but I’m also gaining the trust and friendship of a lot more of the adults, which is nice. Things that used to be painful, such as getting locked out of the house (because yes, the 2^nd copy of the key I had made still doesn’t work) are no longer so bad because I have other people I can go talk to and hang out with.

I am now on my way into Cuenca to get my flu vaccine from the Peace Corps doctor, which happens to be perfect timing because the whole cluster has to be there during the hour he is there to get the vaccines, so tonight is also going to be the welcome party for me and Britney with the cluster coordinators. I’m excited to get to know Cuenca better, but mostly all the PCVs in the cluster and surrounding areas. I will also get to do some shopping in Cuenca on Saturday for the goodies that can’t be found in Azogues (peanut butter, mats to hang pictures, etc), which will be great. Aside from another round of mysterious bug bites along my waist, all is going well here and I finally feel like I’m beginning to get used to the very different style of life here in Zhoray.

I miss everyone at home a lot and hope you are all doing well – please keep sending me all the updates!

Love,

Kerry

Getting to know Zhoray

I finally spent more than a full week in Zhoray! I now have a better understanding of what goes on here (or doesn’t) during the different days of the week, what the daily routine is of many of the people, and I am slowly getting more used to life here.

I got my first real taste of what the Peace Corps promised us would be an emotional roller coaster – between a bad 24-hour bug and continued miscommunications and language barriers, there were some moments of frustration, but I am now healthy and my Spanish definitely seems to be improving!

I am now in Azogues on Saturday after learning last weekend that almost the entire town leaves on Saturdays, so it is like a ghost town here until late afternoon. Sundays pick up a lot more and much of the town is outside playing sports and socializing, so Saturdays will also be my day out and Sundays a good opportunity to get to know more people!

The weather has been miserable – it rained and was freezing cold for the first 3 weeks I was here. They assured me that it was unusual weather and we really are entering the “warm” season soon, which I hope is true! The last two days have been promising because the sun was out and shining bright, so hopefully that will last. The rain also makes it difficult to do laundry, so I haven’t done it yet. Tomorrow will be my laundry day, and between the washing stone and the mound of laundry that I have awaiting me, it will likely be my only Sunday activity. Luckily I will be alone in the house, so no critical eyes will be watching my poorly developed laundry skills!

I spent my week helping out in the subcentro again. They’ve been teaching me a little more as time goes on, so I now get to interact with the patients more by greeting them and getting their charts ready. I’ve also learned how to take blood-pressure, pulse, weight and height and I regularly get to weigh the patients. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s way more than I have been doing! I will be starting English classes in the school this Monday, which I’m very excited about and also nervous for. Unfortunately MacKenzie won’t be in town Monday, so I have to jump into it alone. The kids around here are all great though, so I don’t think it will be too much of an issue. This week I’m also going to start with English classes with the subcentro staff (and any adults from the community who are interested), along with work in the medicinal garden. We have a meeting with the group of women health volunteers, so I’m excited to get to meet them and see where that will be going. My other task during the days is to work on developing activities to make the health charlas in the schools more interactive, which is much of what we did in training, so I know it is something I can do! Other than that, I’m still just working on getting to know more people in the community, practice my Spanish and learn about the life here.

I met another PC Volunteer on Friday because she happened to be passing through town during the Friday market on her way home from fieldwork. She seems really nice and is one of the two cluster coordinators, so next weekend they will be throwing a cluster party in Cuenca as a welcome party for me and Britney, which should be a lot of fun!

The Friday market is the most exciting day in Zhoray because people come in from all of the communities to sell goods, get medical attention and just hang out. This is my one day to be able to buy any fresh food I need for the week, so I was able to stock up on fruits and veggies. The family is gone on vacation this weekend, so I get to cook for myself, which I’m really excited for! We have a neat Peace Corps cookbook that is designed for Ecuador, so it’s full of easy recipes with foods that are available locally. I’ve been looking through it a lot and definitely plan to learn to cook during my time here!

Nothing too big happened this week, it was mostly time to learn more of the little nuances about the culture and beliefs here, which are VERY different from those at home. It is certainly going to take some more time to get accustomed too, but it always keeps things interesting! While nothing exciting happened, things are still going really well and I’m loving my time here. I’m looking forward to working more and continuing to integrate, but I’m also adjusting well to Ecuadorian time, so I don’t feel any real sense of urgency J.

A few quick updates from the bus ride into Azogues this morning - sometimes standing out and being a gringo definitely pays off, such as when the creepy bus driver called me a queen, but moved a bunch of stuff so I had a seat on the completely full 2.5 hour ride! I was even more glad that I was sitting up front when shouts starting to come from the back to pass back bags as various people got sick behind me. I am still scared to travel on the roads because of the landslides, such as today when the fare collector jumped off the bus to move a giant rock that we could not pass over before more fell...all the little stones were tumbling our way, but we made it no problem. Always an adventure!!

I hope all is well at home – sending my love from Ecuador!

Kerry

Finally Settling In!

It has only been a week since I was last in town, but it feels like a lifetime because so much has been happening here. So many new things happen each day that I lose all track of time!

I’ll start with my work. I haven’t been doing a whole lot so far, which is just what Peace Corps encourages. The first weeks and months are to integrate into the community, build relationships with my counterparts and community members, and begin thinking about projects I want to complete in the future. I have been spending my weekdays at the subcentro observing the consults with the doctor and just hanging out with Lucy, Marta and Pablo, getting to know them better, the work schedules, what they expect from me, etc.

The subcentro here is a pretty amazing place for me to be observing. I knew I was in a rural site, but I’m still figuring out just how rural. Last week a woman who was about 8 months pregnant and carrying a toddler walked for 3 hours to get medical attention at the subcentro, which is a low level center with limited medical facilities and care. We went out one day last week to give medical attention in one of the farthest communities. We drove for about 45 minutes in the car before we couldn’t go any further because of a landslide. The community members who could travel met us at this point after travelling for 5 hours on horseback. Another woman came in last week who was 9 months pregnant and ready to give birth at any time. I was able to listen to the healthy heartbeat of the baby during the consult before she left. Unfortunately we heard this week that she and the baby both passed away over the weekend due to complications during birth at her home in a far community. It is still unbelievable to me that people live so remotely with so little care, but it is quickly becoming more of a reality.

Other than these observations, I am going to be starting my Community Analysis Tools soon, which are surveys developed by Peace Corps as community diagnostic tools. I have to complete 100 household surveys before our reconnect meeting in Quito in November, so there is a lot to do. I will be going to each of the houses in the center of Zhoray (I hear different things, so there are somewhere between 30-80 homes), then I will conduct the surveys with the group of women health volunteers who come from all the communities, as well as in the other communities when I travel with the subcentro staff. They are going to accompany me on all the surveys because they are well known and trusted in the area, so this will help people be more willing to me and help me get accurate answers with my still struggling Spanish levels. I’m excited for the surveys, especially in the town center, because it is really just a great way to meet people and let them know who I am, what I’m doing here, etc. Aside from the surveys, I’ll be working in the medicinal garden at the subcentro, helping with the first meeting of the women’s group of health volunteers next week, teaching English in the school one day a week, potentially working on more of community gardens, and helping tutor kids after school. None of these are overwhelming tasks, so it should be good to help keep me busy and let me get to know different groups of people in the area.

My room is finally coming together a little better. I got fabric to hang over my window for a little privacy (which I hope to sew into actual curtains sometime soon…), I got a dresser today, so my clothes are no longer strewn all over the place, and tomorrow I’ll get a few more containers to put away the random other things I have. I was irritated with my bulky sleeping bag when trying to pack my things from Tumbaco to Zhoray, but now I am SO glad to have it! It is a little bit chilly here, so I sleep in leggings, PJ pants, wool socks and a fleece inside my sleeping bag and under 3 blankets, which makes it just warm enough to sleep! These past few days have been particularly ugly with a lot of rain and wind, so I’ve been layering up more than I ever thought I would have to along the equator. While it’s cold, I’m so much happier to be here than on the hot, humid coast.

I went on a vacation to the coast with my family this weekend, which was a great way to bond with them more, but there was a lot of uncomfortable travel in a short amount of time. We took a night bus on Friday night, leaving Azogues at 8:30pm and arriving at our destination in Santo Domingo at 5:30am. The bus was not exactly comfortable with the lights flashing on and off at every stop, the police stopping for a complete bus search with us standing half-asleep out in the cold, and my own paranoia about night travel after the training sessions we had. We got to the extended family’s home in time to alternate between napping and eating for most of the day. We did some things on Saturday night and Sunday, but mostly hung around the house. Monday took us 5 hours longer than expected to get home, and we were crammed with 7 of us in the cab of a dump truck, not exactly comfortable. We finally got home at 12:30 am on Monday night/Tuesday morning, completely exhausted from a weekend of family and travel!

My host family and I are getting more and more used to each other and they are great. It is awesome to have the other volunteer, MacKenzie, here because they know and love her and she is a great bridge to begin gaining their trust and friendship. The Spanish is still really difficult for me, some days even more so than others, so they use MacKenzie as a go to a lot, but they’re starting to talk more directly to me and learning that if they talk more slowly and rephrase things at times then I really can understand a lot of what’s happening. I live with Carmita, her sister Zoila and her 8-year-old daughter Nayeli, but there is a ton more family in the area. We live in the house owned by Carmita’s brother Napo, his wife Pachi and their young kids Sebas and Michelle, both of whom are adorable. Sebas is 2-years-old and a dancing fool, always entertaining everyone who is around! There is more extended family throughout town and it’s great to know people and I think they will definitely take care of me if I ever need anything.

A few other random things that have happened: the other day on our medical trip out to the further community, I got cleansed by a shaman! He accompanied us to teach the people about medicinal plants because the rarely have access to other medications, then he gave us a cleansing. The cleansing consisted of rubbing two smooth stones all over our body, followed by two smooth sticks, then spitting mouthfuls of some liquid all over us. It was chilly and interesting! Another funny thing about what my life is like: when we got back from the family vacation, the hallway and kitchen where MacKenzie and I live was a disaster. The chickens had escaped from the roof and made little messes all over the place for us to come back to. Not exactly the same problems I’d face in the U.S.! Also, there is a crazy little demon kitten who was gifted (unwantedly) to MacKenzie, so he lives in our space. He is currently pouncing all over me and attacking everything in my room, but earlier he reached a whole new level of bizarreness when I walked out for a minute and came back in to find that he had destroyed a plastic bag I had on the table and was helping himself to my roll of bread! I guess I’m not a cat person (no offense, Thal), but he’s going to take a little bit more getting used to.

I’m still adjusting to not being able to be in touch with people as easily, which is a little difficult. My parents were able to call the subcentro phone while I was hanging out there the other night, which was good because the once spot of cell phone service in the house wasn’t receiving any service due to the rain! It is so great to have MacKenzie here because she and I talk for a long time every night, so I have someone to debrief and share stories with, swap gossip that we pick up from our various connections in town (oftening having different versions of the same story…) and someone who just understands what life is like here in Zhoray. She’s leaving in mid-October, which will be tough, but I know I have to do this on my own and she is a great transition into a very, very different life. This is what I imagined my Peace Corps service to be, so now I’m just adjusting to living it as my reality!

I hope everything is going well at home – happy Block 1 of senior year to all the girls I love and miss so much from CC! Keep in touch, I love getting news from everyone in the States!

Love from Ecuador,

Kerry