Can you believe your eyes?

Finally I’ve put aside some time to commit to writing a new blog. That or enough seemingly significant things have happened this month to justify writing a blog.

You can´t see it but this little girl has a piece of pig skin in her hand that she´s been chewing on.

My boss came to visit me a couple weeks ago. He came about a month after I had got to my site. For the 3 month visit. He explained that he has to visit a lot of sites so he’s just doing them all over the course of 2 months. That’s Peace Corps! The visit went well. I told him about our plans to do the greenhouse and that I’ve been doing all kinds of interviews. I told him about my problems with the old men here. I know that they just need more time to get used to me. If its not this old man its that one. This one wants to feed me all the time and seems to think that he‘s my owner. He’s got his wheel chair bound nephew on the alert for him. Whenever the nephew spots me he calls his uncle’s name down the street to give him the heads up that I’m coming. That other old man on the corner wants to marry me. Following on with the joke I tell him sure, I’ll see him in the church. Then he tells me “en serio, en serio” that we should get married. I get worried and tell him that I’m much too young to marry, sorry old man. Bueno, he has a house a little bit lower on the island that we can go to and be alone in. Bottom line: can’t trust any guy here! Well maybe you can but my screening process just needs to be a little more rigorous. Can’t assume that men old enough to be my grandfather don’t want some serious alone time with me.

Some times its really depressing here. I feel like I have to say “no” to everyone all the time. No, I don’t want to teach you English. No, I don’t have any money to give you. No, I don’t want to go to Buenos Aires this weekend. Sometimes I feel that I’m being pulled in so many directions and I don’t know how to deal with it. At home I was always the really laid back girl that would go along with whatever anyone wanted to do. I worked in restaurants for 4 years where the customer is never wrong and it’s a sin to say no. Here I feel like I’m making a 180. “No” has to be my default answer. It does get me down though. Its especially hard when I think about what everyone is doing back home. Its June, no more classes, summer is starting. Here nothing has really changed. I’ve been here for a little bit longer and longer as the days progress but from day to day nothing really changes. Similar faces, similar climate, similar work. I really do miss everyone from home. Not enough to want to go back or anything but I do find myself wondering what everyone is up to from time to time. I guess that’s why we have Facebook, right?

My host dog, Pikachu, sleeping on a bag of corn.

So as I’m writing that nothing really changes I remember that now that its June we’re onto…..ASPARAGUS HARVEST!!! For 60 straight days (Sundays included) the people here are putting blood, sweat, and tears into harvesting fields and fields of asparagus. I have to say that’s a pretty cool process. You’d never know that a field is full of asparagus if you looked at it a week before harvest. Its full of these huge plants that look like little trees kind of. The plants are this vibrant green and all grow really close to each other. The branches are all really full and start to grow red berries. No where in this mess can you see anything that you might want to eat. If you happened to break one of the branches you could smell the faint odor of asparagus. Right before harvest the farmers go out into the fields to cut down all these branches. But wait, where are the vegetables?? They leave the asparagus standing in the fields. They look just like what you eat, they’re just dirty and stuck in the ground. Its pretty weird seeing all this refuse vegetation for just those few stalks of asparagus that remain. Its an interesting process alright. And what funny about the whole thing is that not many Ecuadorians like asparagus. More for us gringos. My family has made asparagus soup as well as an asparagus omelet and I just want more! Luckily its only mid June. We have until the end of July to enjoy the crop. In other news, there are new people making “papipollo” downtown. Papipollo is actually papas y pollo, or French fries and chicken. They lived in a neighboring town for 5 years and have now set up shop, have a little tienda and sell chicken and French fries. I ate there Sunday, had the meal with a coke all for less than $2.00. What a steal. Here it’s the little things that matter.

Here you can´t walk in fields of gold, just asparagus.

Work has been going. Still working in the plaza. It will consist someday of 4 parts: soccer field, 2 volleyball courts, a green space and basketball court. The goals are up in the soccer field and its seeded. The grass is coming up quite nicely. The volleyball courts are still being raked out (they’re just earth) and the bricks outlining them have been laid. There are still no nets up. The green space is more or less a little bit of a mess still. There are huge chunks of coagulated dirt. I don’t know how we’re going to break them up without some rain. We had a minga last Saturday which was actually really fruitful. The parents of the kids in the escuela (school/middle school) were asked to come help plant some trees. About 50 parents showed up and we planted trees for about 3 hours. The green space has got some color now. But also since its summer and not raining they need to be watered every day. That’s just for right now. Eventually they’ll really take root and won’t need so much care. There are also 3 huge mounds of dirt in the green space. The other volunteer here wants to leave them for the kids. Like little mountains. We might have to take one down and use the dirt to help level out the volleyball courts. Soon enough we’ll know. The basketball court is a whole different story. Its going to be of concrete obviously…concrete that we don’t have. So there’s that. And there’s the time issue. The other volunteer is finishing up and probably won’t have time to finish up the basketball court. Which means that everyone may just turn to me and expect me to finish it. Hopefully not. Another volunteer is coming up here soon enough, August I think. Maybe finishing up the plaza can be his or her first project. I’m sure the people here would appreciate it.

My counterpart and another member of the ecotourism group showing off some abono organico and a Bugambilla tree

So the best news for last: today I got a cat. Very exciting. She previously belonged to another volunteer. This girl is leaving at the end of July and was looking for a new home for her kitty, Cuca. I volunteered to take her. She’s still young, less than a year and looks surprisingly like Clawdia, one of the kitties at home. I picked her up in a neighboring town with all of her food and her litter box and everything. She was not a huge fan of the bus or walking through the town. Lots of dogs, yelling people, donkeys, I don’t blame here. I got her settled up in my room and she calmed down a bit. She took a nap while I watched some Seinfeld. Then tonight the other volunteer came up to make cookies and as we were talking I heard her crying. She was in my bathroom window, which has no glass or screen, just a hole in the wall kind of. She’s trying to gauge whether she can jump from the second story to come hang out with us. I ran up and brought her down and shut her in the kitchen with us. She hung out for a bit but was doing a lot of whining so I brought her back up to my room and shut the door. Later I’m walking up there and my host dad’s sister tells me that she’s been hanging out downstairs in the house with them. So I conclude that she must have jumped. Or can pass through closed doors. What a wild cat. I put her back upstairs but this time left the door open so that way she can get back in when she jumps out the window again. When I came up to go to bed she was sitting in the main area of the hostel outside of my room on the bench. She got up when she saw me and came into my room and plopped herself down on the bed. How good at adjusting! She’s soooo laid back I just can’t believe it. She’ll come right up to me and throw herself into my lap. Right now she’s sleeping at my feet. Hopefully no one poisons her. People do that to animals here if they’re a nuisance. Your neighbor might just slip your dog or cat a sausage with poison in it to get rid of them. Every country has their way of disposing of animals I guess. We just run all of ours over in cars in the US. Anyhow, she is a very cool looking girl. She’s petite with a tiger pattern and a huge circle on her side. She’s got really cool yellow eyes and a kind of pointy face. She actually really reminds me of the African Wildcat, Mooshka, that was semi tamed but still really very wild. Its weird how alike they are. This kitty is also very chatty too. She is always making some kind of noise, never really quite meowing but kind of grunting, just like another one of our cats, Kneader, used to do. She’s quite the girly. Hopefully things pan out alright. Her name, Cuca, actually is the feminine form of boogeyman. Cuco is boogeyman and this other volunteer named her Cuca because she wanted her to be a killer cat. She had mouse problems so she got the cat and hasn’t had problems since. The beginning of a new adventure! So its the day after I wrote this and things have started to unfold. She decided that 4 AM was a good time to start the day this morning. I´m in my bed and I hear a thunk because she has jumped out the bathroom window. About an hour later I hear something at the window. She´s on the roof and wants in. Then later my host sister takes it upon herself to carry the cat around the entire house and brings her into the kitchen where my host brother is holding the family´s cat. They want to put the cats face to face. I told them that they´re staying on the floor if they´re going to meet. So Cuca gets spooked of Nermal and takes off and then the dog Pikachu can´t help but chase her. Up a tree. Thanks for nothing host siblings. After I finally got her out of the tree I made it clear that no one is to pick her up unless she is in grave danger. Its been a rough first 24 hours.

Not Cuca...but looks a little like her right? This is Mooshka, the African Wild Cat.

Here she is: Cuca in all of her glory.

My birthday is this weekend. I’ve gotten invited to Buenos Aires and La Florida. My host family is going back to Buenos Aires and the whole ecotourism group is heading to La Florida for their festivals. I’m going to Ibarra. I’m going to go shake it on the dance floor with some fellow gringos. I’m pretty excited. Its so great to get together with people you hardly know and speak English. What’s cooler, speaking your native language with people you just met 3 months ago or trying to communicate with people that you see every single day of the week in a language that you don’t really know? Depends who you are I guess. My Spanish is improving. At the same time I also feel that my English is worsening. Not important. I’ll worry about that in 2 years. All in all I’m not that super excited for my birthday. I am excited about dancing and also cooking. I’ve decided that I’m going to make a tres leches cake to celebrate with Friday night. And then Sunday I’m going to make a oatmeal cake for my host dad for Father’s Day. He is one of the few members of my family that will still be here on Sunday. The rest will be over on the other side of the Paramo in Buenos Aires. So I think that’s about it that’s new and exciting here in Ecuador. Cat, old men, birthday, asparagus…yeah I think that covers the gamut. Hope everyone is enjoying the change of seasons back home!

Once again

As my luck with technology continues I´m still having problems getting pictures up on here. Some day luck is going to improve and I can put up the folders and folders of pictures I have...