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