As I sit here writing this I listen to music from Argentina and wonder if I’m on vacation, at summer camp, or in some weird social experiment that I don’t know when I’ll get out of. I spent the morning working on a little booklet of everything Cahuastours (the group I’m working with) has to offer. Typing in Spanish is so much tougher than in English! Gotta break that muscle memory to include a few more vowels. For lunch I moseyed back up to the hostel. I had plans of making zucchini pancakes because my family is never going to use the zucchinis in the fridge that Ryan brought up about 2 weeks ago. I am confronted in the driveway. They need someone to bring the asparagus up from the fields in order to process it after lunch. I go get it and make it back in time to make some pancakes. They came out alright. My host mom liked them. After lunch I decided to make some banana pudding. That came out spectacular. Now I’m just hanging out thinking about how much it seems like fall here today. That is if you’re sitting in a pile of dried bean husks, in the shade, while the wind is blowing. The temperature is right, a little chillier than normal. Right now the family is finishing up the asparagus harvest and starting on the frejol seco, or dry beans. They bring all the dried up pods back to the house and lay them out on the driveway. Then they take huge sticks and beat them. After beating for a bit they pick up all the dry cascaras (would that part be called the pod?) to reveal a driveway full of maroon colored beans. Those they sweep up and put in huge sacks to be cleaned later and then exported. My host sister has a little 2 year old and I’ve decided to start a “Jair collection” of pictures of him. I got a good one of him with the stick beating the beans. The smell of the pods just makes me think of the smell of drying out corn husks. In addition to the smells and temperature it has also been winder than normal. It’s really refreshing on a super hot sunny day but on days like today it just feels like fall. At this point in my service I’m still in limbo. I’m getting to the end of my interviews (or should be) and am not longer super new in town. I need to get cracking on my actual Peace Corps official project. I’m turning a corner now.

I’ve finally crossed the line. Before, leaving was always an option. How much could the people here really miss me? What have I done that’s really so spectacular? Now, I no longer fear the beginning of my days. I don’t dread making the switch to Spanish anymore. I always used to tell people that I didn’t like mornings because all night long I spoke English in my dreams and it was tough to start all over in a new language at the beginning of the day. Not a problem anymore. I remember when I first got here and talking was such a chore. I would always formulate my sentences in my head first and then wait for the opportunity to say them. Now there is less thought involved. I need to put a lot more thought into forming sentences in English now. I’m going to start talking like Morty. So the language is better. So much better. Also is my life in general. I’m really finally starting to feel like I’m at home now. Before I felt like I was still on vacation but now I’m really settling in. I started an aerobics class. I feel like these women need me. Already I have a group that is so faithful, always on time, always ready to sweat. The majority of the women are not that consistent but already there are about 4 or 5 who are super “pilas”. It’s hard to articulate how important this group is to me. Being the 3rd volunteer in Cahuasqui I do have large shoes to fill. And I’m being introduced to all of Nick and Ryan’s friends. All the men; who will then call me over for a cup of beer in the middle of the day. If I were a man this would be great, however I am not. But now with this aerobics group I’m integrating better into the group that I should be integrating into. More lady friends! And it’s a wonderful opportunity for the women to get out of their houses, away from their children, and in a group of other women, and EXERCISING! I bought a scale too so that we can weigh ourselves and see if we’re losing or not. I’m feeling the pressure already. Hopefully these women are losing weight. So much of it has to do with diet though. I want to start a cooking class once a week once the school year begins. Teach these women how to use vegetables. Hopefully they’re a little more open to new things than my host family is. So we’ve got the language barrier broken, an aerobics class, and finally CLIMBING! I signed up for a membership at the climbing wall in Ibarra in the beginning of July. It has been so necessary. I’ve come to realize that climbers are relatively the same regardless of what country they’re from. I love spending the morning climbing, even if it’s on a fake wall. I can’t explain how nice it is to be in the company of people who have the same passions that I do. I go from my site, where I seem to really confuse people, to Ibarra, to the wall, where I can just monkey around and work out bouldering problems.
Working with the tourism group has been alright. At times super frustrating, but overall a good experience. I’m seeing a lot of indifference from the members, who show up a half hour late if at all to the meetings every other week. Right now the big thing on my mind is getting the municipio to help us finish bedrooms and private bathrooms in a couple of the group members’ houses. The municipio has offered us money, but only 60% of what we’ll need. We have to find a counterpart to donate the last 40%. And the max that the municipio is going to give us is $4,000 so that means that we have a $6,000 project, and are left to find the last $2,000. Oh and this is all under the conditions that we’re a legalized group which we’re not. This could all work out really fortunately or we might just not be able to get the money. Why we want the rooms and private bathrooms is so that we can call ourselves a community tourism group as well as an ecotourism group. Tourists would have the option to live actually within the community, with a family and work with the family when arriving here. Now is just the issue of the legalization. We’re going to see if we can affiliate ourselves with Cahuascuy (the women’s group for the growth of cuyes, or guinea pigs) because we actually do a lot with them. If we can use their legalization then we can get the money!

I have recently come back from Cuenca, a city about 14 hours from my site. There was an Ecuador youth climbing competition so I went down with the coach, Eduardo, and the kids, Kathy, Isaac, and Estephania. I dropped Cuca off with Kate in Otovalo because she’s already got a cat. I figured it would be a small adjustment, just another mouth to feed, making a little bit more poop to scoop. I find out that Cuca does not like to travel in boxes. She is more of a llorona when inside a box, if possible. And she hates the return trip more than the initial drop off trip. Good news is that she made a new friend. Now she and Kate’s cat, Mauricio, are pals. Thank goodness for that. I actually went down to Cuenca before the kids to get in some additional climbing before the comp actually started. The day we arrived we met up with some of Edu’s friends and went out and did a multipitch route in a town about an hour from the city. We started a little too late and it ended up getting dark for the 3rd pitch. It was terrifying. Luckily one friend stayed with the car and was able to shine the headlights onto the wall to see some of the holds. It was a super fun experience though, looking back on it. The next day we went out to a different town to get our boulder on. We got a little lost finding the boulders but eventually we found some clean ones. Climbing is so different here. We arrived in the town and are asking everyone how we can get there and no one seems to know. And there really are boulders everywhere but there are clean ones out there somewhere that someone has already labored over for the finding. We found ourselves walking through pastures, climbing over barbwire fences, and stepping over cow shit to get to these boulders. I took all of the climbing spots in New England way for granted. Here very little is developed. We still had fun though. And I actually did step in cow poop. Gross. I only stayed for the first day of the climbing comp because I didn’t want to use all of my Peace Corps vacation days but it was pretty awesome. It was the speed day. I’m proud to say that both Kathy and Isaac got golds in speed. Isaac was incredible! I swear he climbs faster than I run. He climbed a wall probably between 40 and 50 feet in 6 seconds. I was waiting for him to fall just because of how dynamically he was moving but he never did. It’s amazing to see how powerful these kids are. And they’re so young too! I just look at everyone like they’re the same age now. 16 year olds look sometimes look like they’re 25. Men over 50 are asking me to marry them. Some of my best friends are 12 year old girls. Age ain’t nothing but a number. Don’t worry Peace Corps; I won’t get involved with anyone under the legal age. Anyways, after day 1 of the comp I headed back to Ibarra to get back to work. Picked Cuca up and she made the worst noises I’ve heard in my life on the bus. She was yowling like I was slowly pulling out her toenails or something. Everyone kept looking at me to see what I was going to do about it. She just wanted to be out of the carrier. I let her get out and she stuck her head out the window and was fine. She is certainly not a traveling cat.

So what else is new and exciting down here? We’re getting another volunteer. He seems pretty cool and is coming in a couple weeks. It feels really good not to be the “freshman” of PC anymore. Makes me more cognizant of how rapidly time is moving though. Already the next group of volunteers is here! So the new volunteer is coming mid/end of August and Ryan leaves at the end of August. All of my time spent in site will be spend with another volunteer. When I was home I would have loved the thought of that but now I have mixed feelings about it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have someone to speak English with and make American food with every so often. At the same time though I don’t know how good of a sharer I am. This site isn’t that big. He visited me for a week and already people were wondering if we’re married or cousins or siblings. I don’t know what’s more difficult: to be the first volunteer in your site where no one knows anything about PC; or to be the 2nd, 3rd, 4th volunteer and constantly be compared with the person who was there before you. Always a new challenge on the horizon. I think what will be most important is that this new volunteer and I both have our spheres of influence. We need to lead separate lives and have our separate activities. It shouldn’t be too hard hopefully. Only time will tell. At least he’s not a nutcase. That would be terrible.
Oh another wonderful improvement since the last blog: less flies! I don’t know what happened but I just noticed how few there were the other day. Never take for granted your fly free lives back in the US! There haven’t been any real significant climate changes here that could explain their absence. Who knows. Maybe they were migrating. Nope, they were definitely not migrating. Just wishful thinking.

We have some fiestas coming up this weekend. There are also fiestas in Buenos Aires (the Ecuador one) and some other neighboring town. Should be a good time! I’m going to stay in town after being away in Cuenca. This past weekend there were some fiestas as well. It was the Virgin de Transito so everyone was dancing in the streets around where the shrine is. There were supposed to be “Cintas”, this game that is usually done on horses. There are ribbons wrapped around a string that’s strung between 2 trees. The men on horses run at the string with a stick which they try to put through a tiny hole at the end of the ribbons. I guess there was a shortage of horses because I showed up and people were doing it on foot. I’ve heard that this is rare. Usually when they falta horses they switch to bicycles. Maybe there was a shortage of bicycles too? I’ve been assured that this Sunday there will be horses.

The other day we went to Chachimbiro, to the hot springs. Time was running out for Ryan’s friend Geoff. I think we ended up going his second to last day in Ecuador. It was a fun little despedida. Also in attendance were a member of the tourism group, Gavicho as well as his sister Analia and my friend/wanna-be-boyfriend Jesus. Somehow I kept ending up alone with Jesus when I just wanted to be with the group. A lot of days I feel like I’m on the Groundhog’s Day and my days are just repeating themselves. Here I think you have all of your conversations twice if not 3 times. I tell people that I’m off the market, not looking for a boyfriend and they tell me that I need to find someone closer, that Ibarra is too far away to have a boyfriend. Not to worry though, I can continue to date him; I just need to find an additional boyfriend in town. I tell them that I’m not that way, thanks but no thanks. 3 days after they accept the fact its right back to square one. All over again- he lives in Ibarra? That’s way too far away! Find someone here in town! I still haven’t gotten used to it. I’m living in the land of the optimists. My ego is going to be so crushed when I get back to the US and am no longer treated like the most beautiful person in the world.

This has gotten pretty long I realize. I’ll save some of the action for a later blog entry. Right now it’s off to learn how to knit better! Then off to aerobics and back for dinner. And after that, banana pudding time! Can’t believe I’ve been here almost 6 months now…it is incredible how time flies.

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