Thursday, August 18, 2011

the random life of a celebrity


I think this is the first time I have written a blog entry so soon after the previous one! My day today was just so random that I had to tell you all about it, although it wasn’t the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me. In this entry you will get to see what a typical day in my life is like.

So today was my first day back at “work” from my vacation to the Galapagos with my Uncle Shaun and Aunt Tammy and my cousins McKinley and Patrick. We spent 5 days there, and although it was different from what we expected, it was still really cool. We saw all of the endemic plants and animals, and learned a lot about the formation of the volcanic islands. I am proud to report that I didn’t get sea sick once while we were there! We used some scopalamine patches that had some kinda weird side effects, but worked very well. So today I came into the office of the Junta where I’ve been working the last 2 months or so, and pretty much no one was there. I brought my laptop to do some work revising the budget for my water project, but I finished it in about 30 minutes, and then just sat there writing emails to send later and playing games. I was by myself in the office for a while, which I don’t really like because I have no idea what to say to people when they come in needing help with something, I just tell them to wait for the secretary. So later the secretary and the guy in charge of agriculture came back and said “let’s go to a wedding” so of course I said OK; why not? We went to the store next door and bought 6 2-liter bottles of Coke to bring with us as a gift I guess. We walked over to a vacant lot next to the church that had some chairs set up in it, but they were full so we dropped off our Coke and sat on the ground. Then they started handing out the food. A few ladies were coming around with buckets of corn and beans that we just grabbed with our hands, also one lady was handing out rolls and a whole assembly line of people were passing out bowls of soup – chicken soup with carrots, peas, potatoes and rice; pretty much the same food they eat every day. Each person was sitting there in the blazing sun eating this boiling hot soup with a plastic spoon, then picked up the chicken with their hands and ate it before the bones to one of the dogs wandering around. I of course did the same, and after this one bowl of soup I was pretty full. They passed around some pop too for the drinks, and I thought it was pretty much over, until I saw the assembly line form again to pass out the main course. I was not really surprised when I got my plate half full of white rice, a scoop of yellow rice and a scoop of noodles with a little bit of tomato sauce. I don’t know how they do it, but most people were able to eat the entire plate. They even were talking about it while we were eating, saying “Ecuadorians have their stomach’s from their head to their feet” but I couldn’t finish as hard as I tried. It’s really rude here to give back your plate still with food on it, but luckily my friend couldn’t finish his either and so we put one plastic plate on top of the other to bring it back with us. We ran into some other friends right around the corner who hadn’t eaten lunch yet so we gave it to them. This was nothing like a normal US wedding, and they were asking me about our weddings. I told them that my cousin just got married on the beach and he had a video so we could watch it on the internet, and they thought that was the coolest thing ever. The friend who I went with is the guy who everyone thinks I should marry just because he is 26 and single, so then they started talking about our wedding and how it could be on the beach here in Cebadas down by the river. Then I don’t know what they were saying because they were talking in Kichwa, but I know they kept talking about the two of us getting married. It’s annoying but I just have to put up with it, and I know it annoys him too, but we don’t really talk about it with each other. So that was my first experience of a “wedding” in Ecuador, which was pretty much just a lunch with friends, and was actually really similar to the funeral I went to once. I heard that in November my host dad’s brother is having a real wedding in the church, so then I’ll see what it’s like. Most people just get married like in the courthouse first without a real wedding, and then later when they have enough money they have a real ceremony.

Later after doing a little more of nothing in the office, I left and went to visit the nurse who is my BFF in the Subcentro. She kinda just complains all the time about the other people who work there, which is annoying but also I understand how they could make her angry – for the same reasons they made me want to not work there anymore, but she’s not a volunteer and can’t just quit working there. Later I went to a store to have some documents scanned and saved on my flash drive, then tried to use the internet to send them, but it was too slow that the attachments never loaded. I left and went to sit on the sidewalk with my host mom and my neighbor for a while, but they were pretty much only speaking Kichwa and I got bored so I left. I went to change my clothes to go for a jog, which I haven’t been doing since our attempt at Cotopaxi. As I was walking up the hill to the road where I usually run, I passed a little boy who was just staring at me. He was also walking up the hill, and I started talking to him asking where he was going. He was on his way home, which was just a few meters up the hill. We said goodbye, and I kept walking up the hill, putting my headphones back in and listening to my music. I turned around a few minutes later and he was running behind me to catch up. He asked if he could come with me, so I said sure. I just turned off my iPod and kept walking up the hill. We ran a little bit, but then he got tired so we just walked and talked, getting to know each other. I learned that my new friend is named Luis, he is 8 years old, he has 3 dogs and 3 sisters and 3 brothers, but they are older and some live and work in Quito. He has been to Quito once to see them. He asked me how old I am, what is my name, where does my dad live, what are my parent’s names, are there cows in the United States, was I afraid of that bird cawing? Have I ever seen a “fuco”? Apparently its like a big cat but it has really big wings and lives in the forests up in the mountains. What kind of animals eat humans? He has 3 bears in his house – but they are teddy bears. One of them attacked him yesterday. How many friends do I have? Do I have friends who live in Cebadas? He told me there is a boy who lives here who is my friend, and I asked who is that, and he said me! So now I have another new friend in Cebadas.

On August 20 I will have been in Cebadas for exactly one year – my official half way point of my service since the two months of training don’t count for the two years. Still have some good days and some bad days – sometimes I wish I could stay here forever, and sometimes this next year can’t seem to pass fast enough. Overall I’m still enjoying it here, trying as hard as I can to actually get some work done which is harder than I thought, but I know I’m growing and learning something new every day which is a personal benefit even if I don’t help the people here as much as I had wanted to. I like to think that through my daily interactions the people here are benefiting from it as much as I am. My favorite thing about being here is just walking down the street and almost every single person says hi to me. Some are young men my age who bother me just because I am a gringa, but really aren’t confident enough to say anything more than buenos dias. Most are children who yell my name as I walk by, but a lot are mothers and older men too; I’m kinda a celebrity in Cebadas.