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.