The slow process of integration

Hola a todos!

It certainly is always an adventure traveling to and from Azogues. On the way home last Saturday, the bus broke down about 30 minutes from Azogues, so the usual 2 hour ride quickly turned into a 3 ½ hour bus ride as we sat for an hour trying to repair it and then another 30 minutes waiting for a new bus to get us and bring us into Zhoray. I decided to take an earlier bus instead of the last bus to try and get home before the rain and dark, but we ended up pulling into Zhoray about 45 seconds in front of the later bus!

I woke up Sunday to Nayeli knocking on the door asking when we were going to start baking (apparently the set time we had decided on the day before wasn’t really understood). So I got up and we made banana and chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, then we started the carrot cake adventure. The carrot cake itself turned out well, but Nayeli insisted on using small, silicon, star-shaped cup-cake holders, so it took us hours to bake all of them. The campo-style cream-cheese frosting turned out horribly, so it went straight into the pig bucket and we just ate the carrot cake plain. The cake was a huge hit with the whole extended family, including Suca (host mom), so I have plans to make more with her sometime soon, in a big tin and in the real oven in her kitchen. I’ve decided that if nothing else, I can try to win over the community through baked goods. So far, it’s working well!

Sunday was great because Nayeli and I hung out together all day, along with the various other kids who would appear for an hour at a time, but I also got to spend more time with Suca. I sat down in the store with her for a few hours, then helped tend to the cows. I’m putting in my time with the cows now in hopes that I’ll get to help milk them once they give birth – there are two that are both pregnant, so I’m sure there will be plenty more work to do once the milking begins.

The rest of the week passed smoothly. I am not doing too much workwise right now, but I’m ever hopeful that something will start soon. I really need to get working on my community diagnostic surveys, but I don’t have any support with it and it’s hard to make myself go ask people alone if I can ask them a lot of personal questions. I only have a month left to get them done, so I guess that’s what is going to have to happen, so we’ll see how it goes. Otherwise I am still sitting in the subcentro most of the time, which is great for socializing and practicing Spanish, but not quite what I want to be doing for an extended amount of time. I’m trying to be patient, realizing I haven’t been here that long. As I get more and more comfortable, I can also become more proactive and make my own work, it’s just going to take a little time.

My Spanish continues to improve – I am definitely understanding much more than I was and I am beginning to be able to speak a little more at a time. I think spending time with the kids is really helping because they just laugh at my mistakes, then correct them for me, so I learn what it is supposed to be. Trying to be polite, the adults frequently won’t correct me, so I have no way of knowing when I’m saying things correctly or not. Aside from Nayeli, I spend time with Erika, the other girl living at our house to be able to go to school. She, Nayeli and I hang out in the evenings, their newest interest being to learn how to type quickly, so they practice on my computer each night. Little Sebitas (Sebastian, the 2-year-old whose dad owns the house I live in) frequently comes around to see what I’m doing in the kitchen and hang out for a while. As much as my Spanish is improving, I understand about ¼ of what he says, but he’s cute and hilarious, so he’ll just keep talking regardless of whether anyone knows what he’s rambling about, then he’ll break into song and dance!

MacKenzie has begun cleaning out her room and she gave me a bunch of books, so I have finally started the reading I had hoped to do during my time in the Peace Corps. I am currently on “Love in the Time of Cholera,” and I am looking for any and all suggestions, so please send them to me!

A little more on the food: the most interesting thing I ate this week was cow udder. Suca has begun feeding me dinner again, so I was lucky enough to have cow udder early in the week. I knew it was a mystery meat and nervously asked MacKenzie, who reluctantly revealed it to me. As much as the thought of it weirded me out a bit, the overall dish wasn’t bad. The rice and veggie flavorings covered everything else. As for my own cooking, I have been making my own lunches and loving the mole sauce that my mom sent me from Mexico – a little shake of it in most of the dishes adds some much needed spice and flavor! The last baking adventure of the week was apple pie. I decided to start practicing early to get ready for the holidays - it certainly wasn’t Grandma’s apple pie, but it turned out well! Next on Nayeli’s list is peach pie, which should require about 30 peaches because they are the size of golf balls here, but delicious none-the-less. Here are few more pictures of the baking adventures and my life in Zhoray.

Happy birthday to Darcy and Jamie, happy block break to the girls at CC, and hello to everyone at home!

Love,

Kerry