A little late, but here it is:
2009: A Year in Review
January:
-Started the year in Baltimore, watching the fireworks with Gill and her (then-boyfriend, now husband) Ken, freezing our butts off, praying for good things.
-The inauguration of President Obama.
February:
-Road tripped to Pittsburgh and Penn State, for a final farewell of friends and fun.
-Left for Peace Corps, Ecuador. Arrived in Quito one warm rainy night, then journeyed on to Cayambe to begin training.
-Went to Mitad del Mundo, the center of the earth, and stood with one foot in each hemisphere
March:
-My first stomach flu of Ecuador….the first of many.
- Learned to wash my clothes on a big stone, went to Cotacachi, went on big hikes, saw an indigenous sun celebration and was blessed by a shaman, ate guinea pig for the first time, had long days of classes
- Found out my site placement was La Victoria, Tungurahua
April:
-Went on my site visit, and came away from it scared and upset and dreading the future.
-Went on the Tech Trip, which included lounging in a pool and playing soccer and doing yoga in the steaming heat of Puerto Quito, and staring at the stars, buying chocolate, and doing karaoke in Salinas de Guaranda. One of the best weeks of my life.
-Finished my classes.
-Swore in in Quito on April 30, and became an official Peace Corps Volunteer.
May:
-Moved to my site, and had to sit on my hands for three weeks because my house in LV was not finished.
-Finally moved into my house in LV.
-Started planning many projects, many of which would never come to fruition. Ah, PC life.
June:
-23rd Birthday in Rio Bamba!
- It rained all month.
-Thus started summer depression.
July:
- Depressed and stuck in LV alone. It continued to rain. Not a great month.
August:
- Pretty depressed and without work and got sick in Tena… until…
- I got permission to move to Patate. I started looking for an apartment and found one that I absolutely love.
September:
- Moved to Patate
- Went to the grad school fair in Quito, which changed what I want to study and direction my life will take, and, completely coincidently, met Adam
-He followed me home and lived with me for the next month
-Began work with my new counterpart group, Aves y Conservacion, first trip to El Triunfo, and the rest is history.
- Reconnect in Rio Bamba
October:
- More work, good times with Adam
-The El Chaco trip, in which I got way too sick and missed whitewater rafting. Yeah, that sucked.
November:
- Thanksgiving at the embassy
December:
- Christmas, went home, and all of the wonderful times that came with it
-My sister got engaged
A few low points, but all in all, a pretty great year. Here’s to 2010: I can’t wait to see what you will bring me.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
A New Year
I realize that I have lacking in writing in this journal, and for that matter, even in my own journal. I feel like my entries are few and far between and unable to accurately show a realistic portrayal of Ecuador, its people, and my life here.
Recently, though, there has been very little to write. The weeks before I went home were filled with the agony of waiting, and also the desperate rush to finish revising my book before I left (though now I realize that it needs MORE revising. I swear, I will never be done.) Then I returned, went to Guaranda for New Year's, and have spent the remaining days sick in bed and spending far too much time on the internet.
First off:
Christmas was wonderful, and honestly, soul-sustaining. I encourage every volunteer who has even a lukewarm relationship with their family to go home at least once. Sometimes your mind just needs a respite, to be surrounded by nostalgic things before it can keep going.
The big news is, of course, that my amazing, brilliant, wonderful, smart, witty , fantastic sister is engaged, and this is a wedding that I will definately be coming home for. It's tentatively next fall, so I have about another ten months to go, and I am just so happy for her that I could frolic.
I also saw friends, exchanged gifts (Zombie Christmas Carols, anyone?), and generally just basked in love. Oh, and I got a netbook, since my old computer was just about to die on me.
Going to Guaranda for New Year's was not what I had anticipated or planned, but was fun and cold and turned out to be an amazing cultural experience.
A cultural note: In Ecuador, the tradition for New Year's Eve, or Ano Viejo (literally, old year) is to build representations of all of the sins and problems and anger of the year and burn them at midnight. Also, there are transvestites. Lots of them. This is due to a tradition that men dress up as widows of the old year, asking for money, which eventually evolved into simply dressing up as flashy women and doing a little booty-shaking dance for a few cents. Kids also hold cars hostage by stretching a rope across city streets and refusing to lower it until a fee of five cents is paid (or in some cases, until the driver gets royally pissed off and yells at the kids.) It's pretty awesome to see Ecuadorians, usually so strict in their machismo and male/female roles, dress up in glitter and high heels and makeup and hot pants. They are fierce.
The picture displayed is one of my favorite images of the night: A well done, room-sized display of the Simpsons (representing capitalism/US influences/what?) with a masked, smoking transvestite standing randomly at its side.
We (my new friend Katie and I, since the others went to bed early) were literally the only gringos in the entire city, which meant that we were famous, getting our pictures taking by everyone with a camera and dancing around fires with drunk boys and their elderly moms. Still, just to be safe (because though the enviroment was fun it did combine fire, the pent-up rage due to counting all the bad things that happened that year, and massive amounts of alcohol) we were home by midnight, just in time to watch the fireworks from afar.
Oh, and by the way, if you are ever planning a trip to the Ecuadorian Sierra (mountains), the road from Ambato to Guaranda is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen, with high paramos and grazing alpacas and huge, snow-capped peaks close enough to walk to.
In other news, I have found a martial arts "academy" that looks legit enough, though it doesn't have straight-up tae kwon do. It's apparently some mix of kickboxing, tae kwon do, jujitsu (throwing), and boxing, so it's...kinda of MMA? I'll have to see, but I'll definately be trying it out! I miss fighting. It gives me a sense of control and action, this feeling of being truly within my own skin, of power, that I lack in my day-to-day life. And hey, you can't beat ten bucks a month.
Things are going really well here, and will improve when I am feeling 100 percent and get my ass out of this apartment and start doing some real work. I'm anticipating that from here on out is when it all begins to take shape...God, I hope so. Once I slide back into my charlas, pick some more communties up, start my anti human trafficking work, maybe start writing some articles, and just, well, put myself out there, I'll feel more like a PC volunteer and less like a lazy ass. We'll see.
A happy and beautiful 2010 to all of you, everywhere.
Recently, though, there has been very little to write. The weeks before I went home were filled with the agony of waiting, and also the desperate rush to finish revising my book before I left (though now I realize that it needs MORE revising. I swear, I will never be done.) Then I returned, went to Guaranda for New Year's, and have spent the remaining days sick in bed and spending far too much time on the internet.
First off:
Christmas was wonderful, and honestly, soul-sustaining. I encourage every volunteer who has even a lukewarm relationship with their family to go home at least once. Sometimes your mind just needs a respite, to be surrounded by nostalgic things before it can keep going.
The big news is, of course, that my amazing, brilliant, wonderful, smart, witty , fantastic sister is engaged, and this is a wedding that I will definately be coming home for. It's tentatively next fall, so I have about another ten months to go, and I am just so happy for her that I could frolic.
I also saw friends, exchanged gifts (Zombie Christmas Carols, anyone?), and generally just basked in love. Oh, and I got a netbook, since my old computer was just about to die on me.
Going to Guaranda for New Year's was not what I had anticipated or planned, but was fun and cold and turned out to be an amazing cultural experience.
A cultural note: In Ecuador, the tradition for New Year's Eve, or Ano Viejo (literally, old year) is to build representations of all of the sins and problems and anger of the year and burn them at midnight. Also, there are transvestites. Lots of them. This is due to a tradition that men dress up as widows of the old year, asking for money, which eventually evolved into simply dressing up as flashy women and doing a little booty-shaking dance for a few cents. Kids also hold cars hostage by stretching a rope across city streets and refusing to lower it until a fee of five cents is paid (or in some cases, until the driver gets royally pissed off and yells at the kids.) It's pretty awesome to see Ecuadorians, usually so strict in their machismo and male/female roles, dress up in glitter and high heels and makeup and hot pants. They are fierce.
The picture displayed is one of my favorite images of the night: A well done, room-sized display of the Simpsons (representing capitalism/US influences/what?) with a masked, smoking transvestite standing randomly at its side.
We (my new friend Katie and I, since the others went to bed early) were literally the only gringos in the entire city, which meant that we were famous, getting our pictures taking by everyone with a camera and dancing around fires with drunk boys and their elderly moms. Still, just to be safe (because though the enviroment was fun it did combine fire, the pent-up rage due to counting all the bad things that happened that year, and massive amounts of alcohol) we were home by midnight, just in time to watch the fireworks from afar.
Oh, and by the way, if you are ever planning a trip to the Ecuadorian Sierra (mountains), the road from Ambato to Guaranda is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen, with high paramos and grazing alpacas and huge, snow-capped peaks close enough to walk to.
In other news, I have found a martial arts "academy" that looks legit enough, though it doesn't have straight-up tae kwon do. It's apparently some mix of kickboxing, tae kwon do, jujitsu (throwing), and boxing, so it's...kinda of MMA? I'll have to see, but I'll definately be trying it out! I miss fighting. It gives me a sense of control and action, this feeling of being truly within my own skin, of power, that I lack in my day-to-day life. And hey, you can't beat ten bucks a month.
Things are going really well here, and will improve when I am feeling 100 percent and get my ass out of this apartment and start doing some real work. I'm anticipating that from here on out is when it all begins to take shape...God, I hope so. Once I slide back into my charlas, pick some more communties up, start my anti human trafficking work, maybe start writing some articles, and just, well, put myself out there, I'll feel more like a PC volunteer and less like a lazy ass. We'll see.
A happy and beautiful 2010 to all of you, everywhere.
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