My Ecuaventure

While we all wait on pins and needles for Shelby's blogpost about our trip together, I thought I would bring to your attention a funny video about joining the Peace Corps that a friend sent me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-wDq17zyN0 Enjoy.

OK, this is going to be a long one, so bare with me. I’m going to do a little bit of a recap of my year- the ups, the downs, the visitors, the work, the food, the friends, etc. So, my year started as it usually does, with a birthday brunch at Grandma Bev’s house. It’s not that I necessarily started to feel the weight of what was to come whilst eating my bagel and shmear, but I definitely remember thinking that this was going to be my last b-day brunch with the family for at least a couple of years. I’m not a group movement type of gal, so I don’t remember feeling particularly upset about it, but I definitely took a second to think about the sorts of family events that I was about to miss- birthdays, graduations, holidays, etc. January and early Feb were spent mostly running errands and trying to get organized for my upcoming adventure. I don’t think I had ever spent so much money on myself or been into an REI quite as many times as I did during that month and a half. Overwhelmed w...

Well, the update your blog emails have started flowing, so I guess that means it’s time to give you guys something. Not too much has been going on the past few months- well, not much by my standards but according to Mom, you guys will find anything I write fascinating, so here goes nothing… Last time I updated the blog was the beginning of October, right before my birthday. It wasn’t the most exciting birthday I’ve ever had, but I’m a pretty tranquila gal, so hanging out with the host fam was all I needed to honor that fateful day 23 years ago. After that, I hung out in site for a few weeks helping out with a few garden projects that are going on. More on my work a little later, I’ve got to ease my way into that whole schpeil. At the end of October, I headed down to Cuenca to celebrate Halloween and Cuenca’s Independence Day. While Cuenca’s Halloween didn’t quite rival the few Santa Barbara Halloweens I’ve experienced, the Independence Day festivities definitely blew me away. T...

alright, alright i know it´s been way too long since i´ve updated this. instead of writing a novel detailing every single thing i´ve done that has kept me from writing to you, i´ve decided to do a quick rundown of the more important events of the past few months and then later (if you´re lucky and i´m just that bored) i´ll expand a little. first, let´s talk about dad´s visit way back in late august. i don´t take full responsibility for not updating you about his visit because i asked him (very nicely) to write me a blogpost from his perspective detailing our trip and never heard back. we basically went on a whirlwind tour of ecuador starting in and around quito and going north to the cloud forest and then to a huge indigenous market called otavalo, we then headed east into the oriente (amazon jungle) where we stayed for a few days exploring the jungle and trying our best not to get eaten alive by bugs, next we headed south to my favorite city in ecuador, cuenca, where dad got to meet ...

Well, a lot has happened since I last updated this here blog. First, and most importantly, I finally found a place to live. My PC boss had to come do 2 separate site visits to help me out, but in the end we finally found one. It’s a little out of my budget (PC has different living allowance classifications and I’m in the lowest, so my rent max is $70/mo) – the new place is $100 a month so my boss is trying to see if PC will grant me a rent increase for the extra $30 or I might just have to pay out of pocket. The place is really great though, not sure if it’s worth $100 or if the landlady just saw desperate gringa and decided to raise the price a little bit, but either way I’m glad everything got sorted out. It’s in the middle of Cebadas (the town next door), so there are definitely more people around. The trade off is pretty straightforward- campo changed into “city”, birds waking me up every morning between 6 and 7 has changed to construction trucks booming by between 5 and 6, s...

Well, not much new to report on here but the update your blog emails have started up again, so I better give you guys something. The past few weeks I’ve been mostly dealing with a little housing issue that has come up. Long, whiney story short, I had a house set up for the full two years, but Jaime and Sara (who had previously been living in Riobamba) decided that they wanted to live there, so they basically inadvertently kicked me out. They figured we could easily share the house, which in all honesty is probably true, but you see, there is a widely understood and followed PC rule that PCVs don't live with their counterparts. What's the saying, don't shit where you eat? Well, I don't want to shit or eat 2 feet away from the people I already spend almost every waking hour with. There's got to be some separation here (church/state, work/play, Ecuadorian/American, etc), some degree of privacy, right? What if some other PCVs want to come over for the weekend and...

A couple of things have come to my attention recently sobre my blog. First, WAY more people than i thought are reading it. I thought it was just the immediate fam + or – some aunts and cousins, but turns out we´ve got extended fam, family friends, regular friends, old babysitters- i´m starting to feel like Perez Hilton in his early days (before he turned all Hollywood). So request numero 2 coming atcha (since you guys did such a great job on the first one) can you leave a comment or shoot me an email or something so i can get a better feel for who my audience on this thing is. I´ll change the settings so that you don´t have to be a blogpost member to leave comments, but that just means you have to give some sort of indication of who you are within the comment or else they all will just say anonymous and i´ll still have no idea who´s reading this thing. Second, some of you don´t seem to understand my Spanglish. I don´t whip it out very often, only ever single time i open my mouth ar...