There is One in Every Community...

Hola a todos!

The past week has been full of work, excitement and success! I continue to love my life here in Chibuleo, including the people and the work. I know I continue to say it, but my host family is so wonderful. This past weekend, the two brothers who don’t live in the house came to visit, along with one’s wife, one’s girlfriend, and an adorable 2-month-old. The brothers are both in the military, so had the same weekend off to come visit. It was a lot of fun and a lot going on, always people around, babies crying, and sports being played! It’s great because I feel comfortable with anyone in the family, so can hang out with whoever is around at any given time.

On Sunday we went to the father’s soccer game at a neighboring community. Apparently Sundays are for soccer, so every Sunday someone in the family is playing and others are watching. I may be joining my host-sister Amparo’s team once the league starts up, so it should be fun! Most of the rest of the days we are out on the cement cancha in front of the house playing, so there is always something soccer happening.

Last week the jovenes at the high school replicated the first taller of the series, including the themes of culture, goals for the future, and self-esteem. They were all nervous, but did a great job for the first taller! It was fun to see how much more confidence they had in themselves once the tallers were over and how it helped motivate them to begin working on the next replication! There were of course some difficulties and some things to work on, but I think we were all relieved to get the first one done to know where everyone stands, how they can improve, and how successful they can be with their peers! I’m excited to get back to work with them next week, after Samana Santa!

At KNH, I had sign-up lists for the groups that I’ll be working with and starting. To begin, we will have an environmental group, handicraft group, garden group and dance group. I received a package of awesome science materials to teach the environmental group about the Earth, global warming, etc. from the GLOBE program at UCAR, so it will be fun for the kids to have neat material to work with. With the gardening group, we flipped our first 5 tires to start the gardens. It took us an entire afternoon to cut and turn inside-out the tires, and a lot of kids helping, but we were finally able to succeed! This happened right before vacation, so next week we will go hunting for sticks to give the tires support, line them with the bags, fill them with earth, and begin planting! Once they are planted, I hope to have more nutrition charlas and hands-on meetings with composting, worm beds and more. The kids were really into the tires and my counterpart has already asked if we can flip more before moving to the next step, so I think it will also be a very successful activity!

Last week we had a German madrina visit the foundation to meet her sponsored daughter. It was a short, but nice visit where she went to the family’s home, then we had lunch at the foundation. The final activity was a dance performance for her that the dance group had worked on for the week. I was part of the performance, so I got to dress in the traditional indigenous clothing from the Chibuleo communities and perform with one of my co-workers. It was a ton of fun and the kids were really excited that I danced with them and wore the traditional clothing!

I only had one day of work this week because it is Samana Santa. The kids are all vacation from school, so there aren’t any classes at KNH. We had a Tuesday full of paperwork, but got it all done (hopefully correctly!) and are now enjoying our vacations too! Tomorrow I’m headed to Ibarra with Shannon to visit a few other volunteers for a few days, which should be a lot of fun. I will be back on Saturday in time for the baptism and big party for one of the family’s cousins, then Pauli’s birthday on Sunday.

It is great being so close to Ambato because I can go into the city for just a few hours on any given day, but still get to live the tranquil campo life. Cora is even happier here than I thought – today I went out to feed her and Precioso breakfast and the grandpa who lives in the house behind said that he already fed them both breakfast. He then went on to tell me how great of company the dogs are for him, how he feeds them leftover food whenever he can, and, much to my surprise, how he loves that Cora sleeps so nicely beside him at night! Here I was feeling sorry for her having to be outside at night, but it turns out she is snuggled in bed with the grandpa because he doesn’t mind if the dogs are in his house! The lucky little Cora is living quite the campo life! I feed her and Precioso dog food whenever I go out back, but the other night I was also told that, “no, don’t feed them that, they eat soup for dinner to cut the cold!” My family feeds her soup every night, so she goes to sleep in a warm bed with a tummy fool of hot, tastey soup. Not a bad life!

Cora continues to be friends with my new arch-nemesis. While it was an evil white chicken in my old community, it’s a bitter, mean, white duck here in Chibuleo! I now have to strategize how I enter and leave the house because the duck is always waiting outside for me and just loveees to chase and bite me. Last week I left and it chased me for a solid 20 feet with my pants in it’s quacky little beak. I of course (unsuccessfully) tried to shake it off and run, but it’s surprisingly quick. At least I could provide great amounts of entertainment for the neighbors! They have maybe never seen anything funnier. The next day, I was on the lookout for it and sure enough it was out front, but it was playing with Cora, so I made a safe getaway. At least Cora made a friend out of it…

I am getting more used to the cold, but there are still just some nasty days. We had to take an extra long lunch at work yesterday and just sit in front of the industrial-sized stove to de-thaw before we could continue. It was been very rainy and windy, which doesn’t help an already cold climate! Hopefully my package arrives from home soon – at work in the foundation my fingers are usually stiff from typing in the freezing, so the fingertip-less mittens my mom sent should help. I still can’t imagine what it’s going to be like during the cold season – I may have to plan some vacations then. Luckily, Ambato is also significantly warmer, so I can always escape there to de-thaw a bit.

That’s a quick update for now. I miss everyone at home, but could not be happier with my life here. I hope all is well there, everyone survived the snowstorm, and that warmer weather comes soon for all of us!

Abrazos,

Kerry