A year after Peace Corps

It's been nearly a year since I came home from Peace Corps in Ecuador.  It doesn't feel like a year but I have crammed a lot in, so maybe that's why.

Right after I got back, I headed to North Carolina at Landmark Learning to earn my Wilderness First Responder certification from NOLS WMI.

The Nook, a beautiful home away from home.

Not only did I find the most amazing emergency medical school I could imagine, but I fell back in love with EMS after however many years away from it.  And...who knows... it may have been the start down a new path in life.

Right after I got back from North Carolina, I was on my way north back to Alaska permanently to work as a rock climbing and ziplining guide for Alaska Mountain Guides.  On one of my first days in the tiny super touristy southeast town of Skagway, I walked into the volunteer fire department and began my time as a volunteer. It was rewarding, difficult and inspiring work that ranged from rescue on the sea, glacier rescue, search and rescue overnight on a famous trail, fire training, medical calls, trauma calls, medivacs all the way up by ambulance to Whitehorse, Yukon, by way of dirt roads, and medivacs off cruise ships.  I was aching to have my EMT certification back so...when it became clear that I was returning to Illinois for at least the winter, I reserved my spot with Landmark Learning again for their month-long EMT-B class.

Nothing like wheeling in a stokes litter over a trail with a full overnight rescue pack on.

 

Skagway's water rescue boat on one of southeast's many gorgeous islands.

 

Practicing rappelling and ascending on the clocktower wall over Skagway.

EMS trauma rodeo... I got a traumatic brain injury with raccoon eyes, projectile vomiting (see the red cups of melted ice cream, food coloring, and fruit chunks to the left), and a compound forearm fracture.  Scared the shit out of a passerby but I couldn't verbally communicate to her because my mouth was full of fake vomit.

Oh, right.  I was also a guide for Alaska Mountain Guides:

Leaving Skagway was hard and I had a feeling I wouldn't be coming back as soon as I wanted, which indeed turned out to be true.

I got to stopover a few days in Washington to visit my old friend Scott at Mount Rainier, where my visit just completely happened to coincide with a kind of geological delegation from Colombia.  A group of scientists and emergency management and mitigation personnel from the U.S. visited a group of people with likewise professions in Colombia at the site of a volcanic disaster that claimed approximately 23,000 lives in 1985.  So during my visit, these Colombians just happened to plan their trip up to the same place.  So I got to follow them around and participate in their discussions - even met the famous Marta Calvache!  I was seriously pleased to be able to converse with her in her native language.

What do you do on a geology field trip?  Look at dirt.  I mean, ash.

Pretty soon I was again heading down to North Carolina to work like mad for a month in my EMT class at Landmark Learning with some five teachers, most of them paramedics but all WEMTs.  Despite not having a single call during my 12 hours of practical time, I thoroughly enjoyed focusing pretty much every waking hour of every day on the class.  And when it was over, I was completely at a loss for what to do now.  I spent a month focused and excited about what I was doing and then there was no where to go with it and carry on the energy.

So... reluctantly... I drove back to Illinois.

Job searching in Alaska was going no where since I failed to obtain a state driver's license (my new glasses never arrived in time for me to take the vision exam), and pretty much every job I wanted required one.  And I needed a job.  So I began looking in northern Illinois, which pretty much means retail even with a B.S. and M.S. in geology.  At the same time, curious about continuing EMS education, I started checking out the paramedic program at McHenry County College.  That started leading me in the direction of finding local fire department or private sponsorship, which led me to sign up for my only prerequisite class - Human Biology.

And to help me along with actually living here and being able to pay bills, Starbucks offered me a full time job.  I get a free pound of coffee a week (I'm currently sitting on nearly 10 pounds of coffee as I don't drink it that fast - any takers?) and all the free drinks I could possibly want (that excitement runs out after a month).

I went a 24-hour ridealong with the fire department I most want to work for a couple months ago.  We got slammed by something like eight calls, starting one hour in at 7 am with a full arrest - and so I found myself totally new to this crew, feeling completely calm doing chest compressions and working with the bag valve mask.  The day and night just continued like that with psychiatric patients, some trauma, a car accident on a seriously icy stretch of road, drug withdrawal, on and on.  It was exhausting... especially with the fire calls going off constantly next to our ambulance tones... especially when I had to go to work at Starbucks the following day...but I liked it.

The next step is waiting for them to invite me to a couple tests - one physical, one written, and an interview - before I can possibly be invited on as a cadet.  The disappointing thing is, I can't jump right into paramedic school - they have you become firefighters first.  The positive thing is, though, that I'd get nearly a year working with them as an EMT gaining experience in a suburban Illinois district.  I'm currently working my ass off at the gym preparing for the physical exam (look up 'CPAT' to see why I'm a little driven).  I sort of hope they remember the time when I was one hour new to their department and jumped right into helping with a full arrest patient...maybe that'll get me some leverage...

So that's where I am now.  Working for Starbucks, taking Human Biology, and working out.  Kind of floating, kind of not really sure what's going to happen or where I'm going.  But I think maybe I have a plan?  Sort of, kind of?

Oh, and I turned into Katniss Everdean.  I bought a beautiful black competition recurve bow that I shoot once or twice a week. 

Back home after more than two years

If anyone's still out there, following this blog - I'm sorry I neglected it.  Last Saturday, I flew from Quito to Houston to Chicago for the last time as a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer.  I stuck it out and lasted the two years in country.  Some miserable days, some nice days.  I didn't share the half of it. 

My plan within the next few days is to get my web albums completely updated with photos.  On Monday I have an interview with the Northwest Herald (McHenry County, Illinois) to talk about Peace Corps service.  And soon, I promise I'll write here what it's like for me to return to the United States after life abroad in South America. 

So, thanks for following me this far.  I think the next chapter in my life will be pretty fun as well.

Why not to ET - the big giant list of stuff

Still waiting to visit Imbabura - the date has been pushed back until next Thursday.  So here´s a post I´ve been meaning to publish for a while!

One rainy, cold day when I was feeling particularly down, I decided to try to organize my thoughts into a list of ´Why Not to ET´ (ET = early terminate = governmentspeak for ending service).  Well... suddenly I thought if there´s a list of ´why nots´ maybe I should make a list of why it would be a good idea to ET.  I hope you can see the humor with some of the comments.

WHY NOT TO ET:

1.   I made a commitment to 2 years of service.

2.   I'm worried it would look bad for future employment if I quit.

3.   I have free health care.

4.   My food, shelter, and extra stuff is paid for.

5.   I want to feel a sense of accomplishment for getting to the end.

6.   I get to climb a mountain every month.

7.   My loans are deferred.

8.   I'm practicing Spanish.

9.   I have free time for self like reading, knitting, watching movies, etc.

10. I get to travel occasionally.

11. I'm learning patience.

12. I'm learning humility.

13. I live in the mountains.

14. I like sierra food more than oriente or costa food.

15. I'm remote but I have electricity, water, and gas.

16. The Milky Way is brilliant when the power goes out at night.

17. I get free flute (quena) lessons every Saturday.

18. I have a job with almost no supervision but a lot of trust and faith.

19. People I hardly know from the States sent me packages full of tea and candy.

20. My room is freshly painted.

21. My favorite person in the community is the new president.

22. I am finally cooking for myself.

23. My cat doesn't have the right immunizations or medication to go to the U.S. yet. (done)

24. Movies are $1, yea!!  Which is great until: See #23 of opposing list.

25. People finally want to work with me building ovens and making recycled things in an artesanias group.

26.  I have earplugs now.

27.  I'm learning a new language bit by bit (Quichua).

28.  Getting packages and letters is fun!

29.  My immunity is finally kicking in...?!!!

30.  I'm getting along better with my host now that I cook for myself.

31.  I have a DVD player again!

32.  What else would I do? Job, grad school, be a bum?

33.  Big avocados are roughly 3/$1, oranges 10/$1 and there's Malta, spicy chifles, Amor chocolate wafers, alfahores, patacones with ketchup, fresh limeade, cheese and onion sugar-coated empanadas, mora, bamboo-scented deodorant, lychees, ...

34.  My Ecuadorian mom in Tumbaco checks in on me and cares about me.

35.  There's now recycling in Riobamba that pays for plastic bottles and I'm going to encourage my community to take advantage of this.

36.  I'm getting used to not having internet.

37.  The kids seem to really like me.

38.  I have an amazing mountain view out my window.

39.  I have apparently avoided getting parasites (so far).

40.  I've been offered a site change.

41.  I don't get noncompetitive hiring status in the federal government if I leave early.

WHY TO ET:

1.   I miss blending in.

2.   I'm sick frequently.

3.   I'm lonely and bored.

4.   Every person I've developed a working relationship with in my community has left.

5.   It's cold and I don't have a heater - just lots of blankets.

6.   It rains a lot and there's a lot of mud and pig poo somehow always gets indoors.

7.   Donkies, roosters, buses and lecheros wake me up at 4:30 a.m.

8.   Maria is hard to get along with sometimes.

9.   Internet access is once or twice a week.

10. I don't understand Quichua.

11. There are gigantic chunks of meat in the fridge dripping over everything.

12. The school teachers (used to?) drink during class.

13. Sometimes I see or hear animals slaughtered.

14. The weekly parroquial meeting I pay $1.30 to get to only actually meets...never.

15. Bills are draining my bank account without me noticing.

16. Spanish is still hard to speak and understand sometimes.

17. I feel somewhat forgotten/cut-off...from people outside the country and from people inside.

18. I have to bring my garbage to Riobamba - compared with burning it or tossing it in the river.  Not a great alternative because it just ends up in an environmentally unfriendly dump anyway.

19. After my journal was stolen I've felt a little violated and bitter.

20. People see me as just a rich gringa and attempt to swindle money from me.

21. Things aren't happening and I feel I'm wasting my time for people who don't care about me.

22. The kitchen is gross and when I clean it, it just gets messy again the next day which is not my doing.

23. The cat broke my DVD player (turns out that's not hard to do).  But this is resolved.

24. Phone service cuts out a lot.

25. Sometimes landslides cut off access to my site and I have to walk 2 hours with groceries.  The worst part is that the road is in bad condition when it opens back up - almost too dangerous for buses to travel on.

26. I feel like I'm missing time I'll never get back with family and friends.

27. I miss the changing of the seasons.

28. Maria doesn't believe in me or support me, yet still expects me to get something done when no one else participates.

29. One year has passed and nothing has happened.

30. My cat has all her immunizations to go to the U.S.

Cotopaxi

One of the great things about being a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador is that we live in a country saturated by snowy volcanoes, and if you have the requisite experience/altitude adjustment, you can climb them.

Two of us plus a guide attempted Cotopaxi Saturday night to Sunday morning. A driver our guide knows took us into the park and up to the parking lot (15,088 feet) for $30 one way...a bit pricey huh? From there we hiked up to the refuge that sits at 15,744 feet. We unloaded our gear and claimed beds, then made our way up along the trail towards the glacier which sits an hour and a half away...much, much further than it had been in the past. I felt good, enthusiastic, sure we'd be seeing the summit in the morning.

When we got back everyone was busy preparing dinner, each wood table team retrieving a metal pitcher of boiling water for tea. I didn't realize we had free access to a climber's kitchen - if I had, I would have brought a box of noodles and a mountain of alfredo sauce packets. But luckily I didn't have to get by on packaged snack foods because our guide shared a bowl of quinoa and mushroom soup with each of us.

I was tired and ready for sleep at 8 p.m. But the second I laid down horizontal, I felt the altitude and breathing suddenly felt not so easy anymore. It took a while to get to sleep and when it happened, I'm sure I only slept for winks at a time. The wind often woke me up and made me anxious about waking up and looking at the conditions outside.

At what must have been 11 or 11:30 p.m., a team got up and began noisily gearing up to climb. When they headed out, it was about 12 a.m. and time for us to get up and ready. We geared up, drank water, ate a little, and headed out.

Sad to say we didn't make the Cotopaxi summit due to two reasons. The one I'm most disappointed in is myself - at around 5400 feet I crashed, just lost all my energy. I'm not sure what happened. Breathing was hard, of course, but I don't think that's what got me. But the other reason turned back almost all the other teams: only one team navigated the large crevasse at around 17,700. Our guide told us to get across, we'd need to leap over a gap and land on an ice wall, vertical climb up it, and cross another gap with a wood board...and cross a sketchy snowbridge that our guide believed was in danger of collapsing and might not be there when we returned, which meant commitment to an alternate route on the way down. We said no, and decided to try looking for a way around the crack. But we found other teams probing for the end of the crevasse but they either couldn't find it or it ran out at a spot no one wanted to climb up from. It was a little confounding climbing on the day that this obstacle was discovered to be present or worse than it had been before.

So after scratching our heads for a while and freezing, we turned back. One by one each of the other teams followed and soon there was a long trail of headlamps snaking back down the ice, and then of course the weather turned a bit to ice cold wind and frost. Back at the refuge when the team(s?) that made the summit got back, the guide even told us the crossing was a little hairy and risky.

So... hours later after leaving the refuge where's the one place I really wanted to be? The mountain. I'm taking that as a good sign that being dog tired, freezing and frustrated with a tricky crossing, I still want to go back and try it again. I'm going to make a training plan and stick to it. Like I said, my main problem was exhaustion (beyond a mental block, this physically wasn't surmountable) and breathing. I think my muscles are fine but I'll still work on them... I don't have the slightest ache to indicate I was climbing a mountain yesterday.

Until next time!

And it all falls down

See, we´re all bipolar.

I´m having an awful week. But the good news is, this is happening a lot less frequently.

I think it all began a few days ago when I came home and my host immediately burst in tears telling me her son almost died in a motorcycle crash. Unconscious, he was assumed dead and people robbed him of his valuables including his phone. Thankfully though, he wasn´t, and is recovering. Being able to walk and talk sounded positive to me, but my host was still frantic. It was crushing to listen to her weep as she reminded me her son is her only child who still visits and takes care of her. This among so many other problems has been a hard personal burden on me - that night she came up to talk to me as she so often does, but it´s always negative. She doesn´t have enough money, she can´t take care of all her animals alone, her family has left her, etc. I´m having a very, very difficult time dealing with all this.

And the next day, I found out someone I know in my community (keep in mind my community is only about 500 people) was beaten. I didn´t know the details but it sounded bad, and it might have been rape. I told PC Ecuador because the situation might have been dangerous for me, and they started investigating the event, including making a call to my host. My host has said a number of times that she´s scared now, though when I first came to site she said it was 100% safe. But after attending a meeting (entirely in Quichua, which I don´t speak) and talking a little more to my host, it seems she may have been assaulted by someone she knew...that it probably means it´s not a danger for me.

I´m not sure if all the stress I´m feeling is manifesting itself in illness, but I had a terrible time sleeping last night and woke up feeling less than ideal. Ojala I don´t get sick - if I do, it will be the fourth time in six months. Not good.

But continuing with randomness, I thought I should mention a couple positive notes:

1. I bought a ticket home to visit my family, 19 December 2011 to 3 January 2012. That´ll be in Cary, Illinois, so see you then!

2. After service, I´m fairly certain I´m going to Nepal, possibly India and China, to do the Annapurna Circuit if it still exists in 2013. I´m learning Nepali...very slowly...so maybe by then I´ll know a few words and phrases comfortably. Anyone want to go?

3. Still thinking.

Four months in Ecuador

It's been a while, I know. Here I am, celebrating month four in site as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. Part of why I haven't written in a while is... I'm convinced volunteers are bipolar unless they get lucky with a 100% compatible site and are 100% culturally adapted.

I'm not, which is normal. I have Americanness that will never go away no matter how much I learn about Andean cultures, no matter how fluently I communicate in Spanish or Quichua, no matter anything...I will alway stick out. The idea, however, is to adapt and learn as much as possible in order to function efficiently in a foreign society. The magic word is 'integrate'. It doesn't necessary mean donning a heavy black wool skirt and hard wide-brimmed white hat (I live in a culture where dress codes aren't rigid; instead they're used a social identity), but it definitely means meeting people and making friends.

In four months I've already had my share of tiny victories and big disappointments. It's a testament to the fact that my community will move along when it wants to, and do what it wants to do - they're not on my schedule, I'm on theirs. The other day I was sitting on my steps thinking to myself that I'm not doing anything, and after being here a third of a year, I couldn't see myself doing anything much in the future. I was struggling to get a counterpart to come with me to the Reconnect workshop in Quito in September. My Ministerio friends were waiting for weeks on an answer if one of them could go, but when my community heard about that, they insisted someone who actually lived in the community should go. I fully agreed, and the secretary immediately volunteered...until I told her it was for three days. No one else stepped forward despite me reinforcing the fact that it was fully paid for.

My program directors called me three times asking if someone was going yet...and, frustrated, I kept having to say no.

About two weeks ago I noticed that something was extremely different. I didn't want to jump to conclusions by saying the seasons flopped in a single day, but now I'm not so cautious. One day, the sun came out and it just felt...warmer. I went up to the roof and soaked it in for maybe an hour until clouds came in and, each time one passed in front of the sun, it felt like the temperature plummeted 5 degrees or so. I also noticed the position of the sun rising above the mountains and setting down the valley. It seemed almost instant that we had more sunlight.

During most of May, June, and July we had about two very patchy days of chilly sun, and a lot of rain and wind. Suddenly, for the next two weeks, we had mostly sunny skies (with, of course, copious cloudcover especially in the afternoon). One of these lovely days I used to get to the top of Torre, meaning "Tower", the mountain I live on. I gleefully found it was 14,200 feet high, 4,000 feet above my community. But clouds stretched beyond and covered up the active Sangay volcano. And today, we woke to a completely blue sky, the first I'd seen in many months. It was dazzling!

My host left for the day and I spent my time enjoying the sun. I made (real) coffee from Jipijapa, thanks to Caroline, and a huge plate of naan bread that I devoured cross-legged on my cement balcony glassing over El Torre's beautiful grassy folds that sit above the worked land, too thin and steep for farming and dangerous for grazing (stories of horses tumbling down the mountain aren't all that uncommon). I juggled between a Spanish verb workbook, Nepali practice, and Three Cups of Tea which my parents sent me in a package that miraculously arrived two days before my birthday, over two months after they sent it. I'm really enjoying Three Cups of Tea, even more than Stones for Schools, because it covers the part of Mortenson's inital cultural adaptation, mistakes, and surprises that are different than my own but very relative. I've been getting back into reading after spending the last couple of months semi-obsessed with watching the extremely limited movie selection on my computer. I opened up my PC for Kindle program and, on a curious whim based on alphabetical organization, I started reading George Bush's "Decision Points". If I'm still in a political mood, I plan on following it with "The Audacity of Hope," "The Revolution: A Manifesto," "Bush At War," "Obama's Wars," "End the Fed," "Fiasco," "My Life," and "We Who Dared to Say No to War". So long as my computer doesn't quit me, I have a fountain of literature to choose from.

Around 3 p.m. when the wind picked up and clouds began rolling in, I went out to get some surveys done. I wanted to check on my garden first - the peas I planted months ago are finally blooming, and the radishes are maturing a lightning speed. A week ago, I took a bite of the first successful veggie I ever grew, an extremely peppery radish. I was disappointed to see that someone dug up all the school's carrots, even though they weren't yet as big as they could have been. I went around pulling up a few that remained to give to Moo and brought them home.

I could have stayed in, but I felt I had to get a least a couple surveys done so I went back out. Along the way, I met two men sitting on the low church wall talking and waiting for the bus. One was an employee at the Oficina Tecnica for Parque Nacional Sangay, and another was someone I knew of but didn't actually know, the father of the school director (my counterpart on paper, but he was seriously injured a couple months ago and I haven't seen him since). He asked the usual "Para donde?" which is almost as confusing as the also common "De viene?" Just out for a walk, I responded. And suddenly he launched into comparing the two mountains surrounding us as two towers (being named "El Torre"), like Twin Towers that won't fall...he was using them as a sort of bizarre allegory to say the towers here wouldn't fail the community if they used them for tourism.

I was really, really confused. But he continued: They have this Centro de Interpretacion (of resources, not language) that the community is trying to open and use, but it's no where near being ready. I already knew about it, but wasn't aware that some people have strong desires to see this center be further developed and finally opened. Was I going somewhere in a hurry, he asked. Of course not...so we three wandered down to the site of the Interpretation Center. And I saw it in a different light, having finally been introduced to the grounds by someone extremely enthusiastic about its potential. His enthusiasm was infectous. We followed a level, twisting path that I realized was wide and level enough for a car and connected to the main road. My tourguide explained his vision for lining the small road with native trees growing in the electric company's vivero nearby. The flat grassy area would serve as a parking space. A large, glisteningly new satellite dish sits fenced in outside the Center, ready to work but so far it's been useless. This man and others I've spoken with would love to see the Center stocked with computers hooked to the internet for community use. Peering into the Center for the first time, I was shocked. It's shining, brand-new. It's got sealed wood flooring and white walls, unfinished interpretive exhibits, maps and signs. My guide listed all kinds of adventurous outdoors activities for visitors to enjoy while supplimenting the income of community residents who might like to help. "There, there, and there," he said, pointing out what he hoped would be the three future sites of tourist cabins nearby.

"Hagamos!" he said, "Let's do this!", taking my hand with more relieved enthusiasm than anything else. "Trabajemos!" "Let's work together!" With our combined talents, we could finally get the Center up and running, he said. Is this maybe, finally, really, why I'm here? Have I found my main project and my counterpart? I invited him to the workshop in Quito, half expecting him to say it was too long to be away from work in the community. But surprisingly, he just responded by shaking my hand, a definitive "yes." As we walked back to the road, I told him, "I'm here to serve your community and I would love to work with you. I want to see this Interpretation Center working." He patted me hard on the back, saying to both me and the Ministerio man, "We're going to do this." The Ministerio man said his organization was still investigating if he could go to the workshop too. And I didn't say he couldn't anymore - if the three of us went together, it would be even more helpful because it appears to be a joint project.

I went home floating, thrilled that after all the dead ends and searching, maybe my career in the Peace Corps was starting. I went back to the balcony to read with the last rays of the evening and, instead of way down valley like two weeks before, a thunderstorm rolled comfortingly overhead. My host brought us up two bowls of popcorn and as I focused on talking with her, a chicken jumped into the bowl in my lap. My neighbor waved to us going up his house's steps and, with a big smile, just heard him say "Cristinita!"

I realized I hadn't been called 'gringita' in my community in months.

A week of kids

There is a kid on my roof.

She's running back and forth looking excitedly down on the road below. With the rain and all, I'm not sure why the perch is so attractive, aside from my place being one of the higher buildings in the community. I feel bad because I'm actually hoping it rains harder so maybe she goes home. See, my host is gone for the night and tonight I'm planning on attempting to make garlic naan, my first time in Ecuador. Not that I don't want to share it with her or share the inevitably amusing experience of getting bread dough to rise in 50 degree weather, but sometimes I really, really just need my alone time...especially while cooking.

Oh! There she goes. Honestly I really like the kid, she's one of my favorites in town. But the times when my host goes out of town are cherished alone times for me, meaning time for experimenting in the kitchen (reproducing my Americanized dishes without an oven and without the usual ingredients), time to watch movies or knit, time to read. Also she loves to visit Moo but Moo is much less tolerant of kids than the typical family golden retriever. She sits unhappily in the reveler's arms, ears back and eyes wide while a local kid pets (pats) her head...hard. But I'm lucky - she doesn't bite. When she's irritated, she just kicks at you with her hind claws, or murmors a really pathetic whimper if times are really rough and you've got her captive.

The next day I followed my host down a mud alley to a locked field where she cuts grass for her rabbits and cuyes. She mentioned the house nearby is the kid's home. I was sort of stunned. The house is a really small cement-block one story with a tin roof, guarded by an emaciated black dog. The yard is patchy grass and mud, littered with cement blocks, wire, and knicknacks. Next door is a two story painted house in stark contrast.

She left for Riobamba and I stayed. When school let out for the day, around 12 p.m., I heard a lot of commotion. Kids ran en masse down the road and up an alley, and came back carrying someone in a sheet. I thought it was a kid, until they dropped the sheet and an arm, head, and exposed belly tumbled out. I gasped - I thought for a second it was a body of a dead man. I slid on my boots and went out to investigate.

Turns out, the man is their teacher and he wasn't dead, he was extremely drunk. So much so that he certainly couldn't walk, and neither could he talk. He had to have dangerously drunk. When the kids saw me coming, they all ran up to me and gave me tons of hugs. Some never let go, too, and I had to walk around with a kid clinging to either side of me. They spent over an hour dragging him back and forth with no clear destination in mind. I kept asking what they were going to do with him, and saying that he probably needs to see a doctor - also, telling them to keep him rested on his side. I was in no mood to clear vomit from someone's mouth because he was on his back. Eventually he regained some form of consciousness and began giggling airily every now and then. Everyone, the kids and the passersby, thought this was hilarious. But I wasn't laughing. My dad got the point when I told him the story: any teacher who would do that in the U.S. would be arrested immediately.

So later, I was sitting here in my room again knitting and the girl came back making the same sort of rukus in the storage room next to my place. This time I didn't wish her away. If she wanted to play here, that's fine by me. She clanged and thumped for an hour until she ran off again. I peeked in to see what she'd been doing. An old lime green political banner was strung out from the room and on to the railing, and inside she'd set up a metal plank on a cardboard box, and on top were several pots - some containing mud. On the ground lay an ancient dirty doll swaddled in cloth. Maybe she'd been playing house? It was really adorable. I got this picture before she tore it all down later that night:

And later that night she did come back, this time with her older sister. My host asked me to give her lunch and dinner whenever she stops by, so I heated up the leftover soup, beans, and rice. Wow, can that girl eat. Much more than me. After we'd all finished, and after they spent 30 minutes or so terrifying Moo, the girls asked me for matches to light a "candela." I was really confused. Light what?! Finally I got that they intended to light a fire meetinghouse pit, and, shrugging, handed over my matches.

As they did that, I went off to shower since I had to leave at 6 a.m. the next morning for Riobamba. Of course, the minute I step into the shower and lather up my hair, the power goes out. Which means I was standing in ice cold water (it's an electric shower), in pitch blackness behind a locked door, in ambient temperatures of about 40 degrees, with goop in my hair. I managed to get out, shivering, just wanting to go to bed but the kids were still here. I was confused again - when the power came back on, both the kids jumped into the shower themselves. Turned out they lit the fire to warm up by after showering.

Kids confuse me.

Also, it snowed:

Also, Moo may or may not be saying hello (probably not):

Cold climates and not eating meat

The past couple of weeks, my room hasn't climbed above 60 degrees...which to me, now, is much too warm. It's usually around 52 degrees, which is also a little too cold to sit around in comfort. Sometimes it goes down to 48 degrees or lower, and that's when I wrap my sleeping bag around me at night while I read or knit or do whatever. Sleeping gets uncomfortably warm above 62ish degrees, and when it's below 50, I shiver a bit and pass out...cold.

But today, it's glorious. The sun is shining through high-altitude fair weather clouds, and there's maybe an even amount of blue and white in the sky. This is significant. I'll have my windows open for the first time in weeks to suck in the warm air. "Lindo dia" my host commented. It's unusual for her not to complain about the weather - usually it's too windy or rainy, and she almost daily comments "Ahchachay!" which is in fact a Quichua expression for "It's freaking cold." I always thought it was an Ecuadorian slang phrase (which I'm sure it can be classified as such right now) but it's actually been around for a long while.

Anyways, things just feel more optimistic when you get a nice day; they're rare.

Unfortunately clear skies mean icy-cold nights and, for the first time I ever noticed, there was frost on the ground when I woke up the other morning. My room temp plummeted overnight from 65 to 49 degrees.

(as a funny sidenote, I did go to those hot springs in the mountains. It was mostly cloudy, and in three hours, my shoulders got sunburned. Ouch.)

I have no clever segway into my next topic, being a vegetarian, except that it's both easier and harder than I expected to be one in Ecuador. Easy because, as I'm sure I've mentioned, my phenomenal host family in Tumbaco was already mostly vegetarian so it was (as far as I knew) simple to accommodate me. Plus they never interrogated me in a "are you a moron?" way, just asked me about my beliefs out of curiosity. Tumbaco also has at least two vegetarian restaurants, and one of them is a fantastic, very proud place that serves gourmet meals for $2.50 (soup, tea, huge plate of food, oatmealy drink).

And then there's where I live now. My host is not nearly a vegetarian but she has done her best to accommodate me. She serves me three meals a day, all of them as previously described absolutely gigantic, balanced, and well-made. The first three weeks, she introduced me to everyone as a vegetarian, and everyone gasped in surprise and asked me the questions vegans and vegetarians alike fear in the U.S.: what DO you eat? They list food too. First they start with the meat that isn't meat (at least, not in Ecuador): Do you eat cuyes (guinea pigs)? No. Do you eat chicken? No. Do you eat fish? No. They get so exasperated with all the no's that they start listing everything else: Do you eat rice? Yep. Potatoes? Yep. Beans? Yep. Fruit? Yep. Yes. I eat anything that isn't an animal (except bananas...shudder).

I thought those days were behind me and people got that I'm different in so many ways from them, that I've been here for two months and I haven't died of starvation yet. But the other day, sitting on the bus waiting to go home from Riobamba, the pan man (what I like to call the roving bread vender) picked on me once he discovered I speak Spanish. I had no where to run or hide, so he bombarded me with question after question, eventually ending up on the expected "Do I have a boyfriend?" question. And I hate myself sometimes because I'm too honest, and always say "No." I wish I could just lie and maybe then they'd leave me be. So eventually, somehow, we got on the subject of food and when the conversation got awkward about how he thinks guinea pig is so delicious, I cut it off and mentioned I'm a vegetarian. Why? Oh... well, first because I can't take responsibility for killing animals. And he let out such a laugh. Hint: If you're interested in a girl, genuinely or for a free pass to a foreign country, ought not to laugh at their strongly-held beliefs.

And today is my Riobamba day. In a couple hours, I´ll get back on a bus to ride 1.5 hours back to my site...and so will the pan man. Ugh.