Saturday, September 29, 2007

"la chica come grande"/ Romans 5:3-5

Recently, I met up with my familia to eat encebollado in the park. As we sat down the woman began to joke with Carlos. Amidst the discussion she noticed that I too had showed up and yelled merrily to her husband, "la chica come grande". "No, no!" I tried to interject. "I want a small today, I just came from the gym." Too late.
Part of me was excellently happy that the encebollado lady in the park knows who I am. The other part of me wishes that I weren´t reknowned at a food establishment.
Such is my life as of late.
During tutoring the other day, Iscara reached out and grabbed my stomach. She said, "la señorita tiene guatita!" What upset me more: that she said I had a pansa and reached out to grab it, or that I have so much pansa really was able to grab it? You decide.
Either way, I´ve discovered the gym down the street and am loving it! The aerobics class is pretty fun. It´s not really intense, but I enjoy listening to trance music for an hour and hopping around following the instructions of possibly the most attractive man in Ecuador.
Fernanda has joined my support group and is now allowing me to serve myself at meals. Instead of 3 heaping spoons of rice, I get a spoon and a half, one piece of meat, a lot of salad, thank you very much.
Yesterday I taught her how to make cereal...yes, cereal. "How much do I put?" "a cup" "and then what?" "you put milk" "how much" "depends on how much you want, i´d put half a cup" "and?" "well, you could put fruit, I like raisins and bananas, here use some of my raisins" "how many do I put?" (as she begins to pick them out one by one and count) "just put a handful" "how about 6? just so he can try it"
Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that the cereal was not for herself, but for Efrén. He´s got high cholesterol and it´s making him dizzy (???). He´s been drinking disgusting mixtures of cucumber and garlic, oatmeal and lime, and now he´s eating cereal. Whatever makes you feel better I guess.

I´m not fond of writing when I´m down because I can notice it in my tone. So I´m sure that you all notice it too. Really it´s only been the past week and a half. I could tell you a million stories about all the bad things, but what good would that do? Part of me feels bad for having a rough spot, much more for admitting it. But another part of me feels human. Would it be normal to go live in a 3rd world country for 2 yrs with the intent of living "poor" while striving to serve others that live in dire poverty and not get bummed out at first? I´ve had a few good crys, and talked to my parents, boss, aunt, ha! everybody.

Don´t worry about me though, I´ve got hope. I have a better understanding of why I feel the way I do, and how I can cope with it. Those of you who really know me though know that even when I´m down, down, down, I´m still a positive and happy person. Good thing God blessed me with eternal optimism.
I just can´t not be excited. :)
Plus, I think about Romans 5:3-5. Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not dissapoint!

The good? Well, there´s lots of that too:

I bought a kitchen table for the house I don´t have yet. There was a sale at Tía, the Target of Ecuador, on a little table and 4 chairs. It´s really cute and pretty large, plus it fit right into my Peace Corps budget. I´m excited to have my own place. I´ve never lived solo before- but, oh, I am so ready. Just the thought of waking up in the morning and doing what I want, when I want, without having to worry about anybody else or their habits...it makes me so happy. Plus, the thought of having people over at my house makes me excited. Especially if my new and wonderful Peace Corps friends come to visit me.

That is something worth writing about, the lovely people here with me. Theresa, Allison, Alli, Kentucky, Jessi, Cynthia, Kat, Damon, etc.- I could name you at least 30 people. They are wonderful and beautiful. They remind me of why I´m here: because we believe in something common. I believe that maybe by my being here I can influence one person, one change. Or, even better, I can let one person affect me. Something good, something great will come out of this experience and so that makes it worth sticking it out. Worst comes to worst, I´ll be fluent in Spanish, finally, ha!

Got lots of mail this week. My family loves me. :)
Hopefully, reading JFK´s "Profiles in Courage" will help inspire me. My mommy mailed me a pretty pink skirt that I´m wearing today with a green tank top. It´s a law: you can´t wear pink and green and not be happy.

Promise next time I´ll have more animo for writing.
Love!

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

earthquakes and chickens

Howdy howdy howdy!
Yes, it´s true. It is 1040am and I have free from work until 3pm- technically, it´s lunch time. So being the stress driven estadounidense that I am, I´m going to try to pack the next few hours with as much as possible so as not to feel completely worthless. After blogging, I´m going to head over to the museum, then maybe head to the park to buy a newspaper, which I can read before lunch, after which I will work on my portfolio until it´s time to go. Then at 4pm I´m going to meet up with Jesse and go to Plaza Civica to watch a marimba show, woot! Just trying to stay sane.

Things have been crazy the past few days, and I´m loving it! Sunday night we had a little bitty tremor. I was laying in bed listening to Lila Downs. "Entra copa y copa se acabó me vida, llorando borracha tu perfido amor!!!!!" My bed only shook two or three times. I got up to go to the door and Fernanda burst in with a towel on her head: "SARAH! come stand in the doorway!" "Ok, ok! Just let me put on some pants, first." Tremors are so rare here on the coast that they scare everybody. All the neighbors came out of their houses and the kids kept screaming, "¡temblor! ¡temblor!" Efrén told me that once Fernanda crawled under the table while he wasn´t looking. She started to shake the table and he freaked out. Ha! Just the thought of her one-upping him makes me content with life.

Yesterday morning I woke up to go running on the beach. It is so beautiful. The coast is lined by huge hills covered in flowing grass taller than I am. They plummet down onto the sandy beach strewn with ancient old tree logs. Sitting in my room staring at my map on the wall it hit me. ECUADOR. I LIVE IN ECUADOR. When I wake up in the mornings, I´m on a different continent, a fantastic continent. I can hop a very reliable public bus filled with astonishing characters and ride to the most beautiful beach, just because I feel like it. So I do.

Lately, in an ironic twist that only Mom could appreciate, I´ve been waking up at 445am to the little rooster across the street who can´t quite give us a rousing "cock-a-doodle-doo". He gives me more of a "gak-eh-ga-duh". It´s the most heart wrenching sound. He starts earlier than all of the other roosters, I think in an attempt to compensate for his speech impedement. Hopefully someone will eat him soon.

My kids are wonderful little monsters who I love more each day. Yesterday, my counterpart showed up an hour and a half late. It was me and them, one-on-one. There´s this one kid, Nasli, talk about a peleona! And Gabi is the definition of brava. We all sat around for a little, got gossiping/fighting out of our systems, made fun of the gringa a little (oh wait, that´s me...), and then played some fútbol.

Here is where I pause, because my parental units brought it to my attention that I never explained the title of my last blog. The significance of my dirty soccer ball is that I have put myself in a terribly uncomfortable situation in order to better integrate into my community. Instead of Sarah sitting around quietly and being scared of the kids around her- or, worse, sitting alone in her room- I am outside, running around giving myself over to the free will of these mini human beings that jabber in a language I don´t quite understand but seem to like me, so, hey, I´ll go with it.

After about 40 minutes, I realized that it was probably my responsibility to the U.S. tax payer to start a more productive activity with these kids. It was a reading day, so my fear of them not really respecting my authority took a backseat, because everybody knows I LOVE reading. And, by some miracle of God, they all got out their stuff and sat in little rows ready to go. Ok, ok, it was more like they were grouped around and we ended up using Nasli´s book (by use I mean tore out pages and handed them to everybody- well, fought over them until we got the one we wanted). Everybody took turns reading, and we even had a little show at the end by Iscara who stood in front of everyone and read a song. She was promptly booed off stage for not singing the song and replaced by Maria Jose. Really nobody could hear anything over Gabi´s rant, reminiscent more of a soccer game than an after-school tutoring session. Then they all wanted me to read. Yes, yes, let´s hear the gringa read, this should be an entertaining mess. When I finished, they all just stared at me. Reading with voices and exclamation, I think, is totally new to them. I asked them if they wanted to read more for fun, novelas instead of school assignments. They said yes. I asked them if maybe they wanted to read a play together. We could put on our own little theatre show. Only two of them even knew what theatre is; one had seen it, the other had heard of it. So that´s the plan. We´re going to read fun things and then act them out. I´m so excited again!!!

At one point in our little ruckus, Gabi started playing with my hair. Their jabbering didn´t stop, Maria Jose wouldn´t sit down, Miguel cracked the taxi´s window with the soccer ball- but Gabi´s little hands on my back, touching me for no reason, completely distracted me from it all. I could only think of how much I loved those kids right then and there. I love being here in Ecuador with them. I love living in their city that the tour books label a red zone and advise to stay away from. I love that there are these beautiful children hiding here, and I´ve been lucky enough to find them. Even if yesterday was the only good day we´ll have had, and even if Gabi was really just wiping something dirty on me, I could care less. Tomorrow could be shit all over again with them, but I will love it.

And so I remember why I came to Peace Corps in the first place...
because waking up to impotent chickens, running on beautiful beaches, living with adorable people, and working with kids who demand patience and understanding leaves me with a complete and utter happiness at the end of the day.

Mr. Chicken awaits the dawn.

Friday, September 7, 2007

I´ve got a parasite and a dirty soccer ball

Peace Corps is so AWESOME!!!

Well, here I am friends in lovely Esmeraldas, Ecuador. It´s everything I could have ever imagined. My group of kids is wild, I got a parasite on day 2, it just keeps getting hotter, and I still can´t make it back to my house in a direct route. Woot! I did, however, manage to find an internet cafe with A/C, muaha! It´s also pretty fantastic the quantity and quality of fruits that I am eating every day. Yesterday I had a banana, an apple, and a juicy juicy orange. People sit on street corners with these carts of brilliant fruits piled 20 high- apples, pears, oranges, starfruit, passionfruit, papayas, pineapples, watermelons, tree tomatoes, mandarins, etc.!

My host family is pretty great. Fernanda and I have been home alone all week (Efren is at a conference in Atacames). We watch "Dame chocolate", the best novela ever, and paint our fingernails pink. Sometimes the neighbor, Clarita, 11, comes over and eats dinner with us. It took some convincing, but Fernanda has finally accepted that I HAPPILY eat cereal with fruit EVERY morning and it doesn´t leave me hungry. We´ve agreed though that on weekends she can make me something bigger or we can go out for encebollado.

And it happened, just like I told Gumby- he´s getting a PhD and I´m getting my first parasites. Lucky Parasite #1 was Mr. "giardia". I would describe the symptoms, but y´all don´t want to hear about foamy yellow diarrhea. Nurse Kelly told me what to get at the pharmacy and the bugger is gone! Now, if I can just get my mosquito net up this weekend I can rest in peace. The neighbor´s salsa music and screaming child bother me not.

Work has been OK so far. My hours are 9ish-1200ish and then 300ish-500ish. Wed and Thurs we have afterschool tutoring with about 15 little monsters. They are all really behind on their reading levels and math too. Big goals right now are for Leidi to start reading her numbers and for the boys to actually start showing up for sessions. I would just like for them to stop throwing rocks at each others heads. Gira is terribly patient with them. It makes me cherish our schooling system in the states. Everything here is based on memorization; teacher dictates, students copy. Hopefully, with time, we can start doing fun things with our kiddos. Maybe get them to read a play, instead of boring texts. That would be fun. Either way, I can see now that work is going to be tough. When I get back maybe I´ll go into teaching but at a younger level that I had originally wanted to. I´d love to get kids when they´re this age and give them the chance to explore and create. Discovery as a teaching method is just fantastic.

My town rumbles and bumbles from dawn till dusk and all in between. There are just people everywhere! So far my favorite activities are riding the public bus and buying watermelon slices on the street. Yeah, I know, "watermelon slices on the street? no wonder you have parasites". Humbug! I also enjoy running across the Bon-Ice man in the park and getting 10cent icecream sticks from him. Yesterday, I went to mail a bunch of stuff and not one person could tell me where the post office was. They just don´t have an extensive postal system here. It´s because no one uses it really! I told Fernanda about how in the States, mail comes to your door every single day, rain, sun, snow, hurricane. She gasped. "And what about packages?" I told her they come too. If they´re small enough, they leave them on the porch, and if not, then they come back the next day. She sat there with her mouth agape. Whether it was the concept of no one stealing the package immediately or the postman charging himself with the responsibility of returning until delivery is complete...she just couldn´t believe it. And so I heart the U.S. of A. for delivering mail in a timely and so very professional and courteous manner.

p.s. If you want to send me maaail, then email me and I´ll send you my address. I think I specifically remember them telling us something about not putting our address on our blog.

´Till next time amigos.