Well here we are wrapping up week number three. This past week has been rather long, both in a boring "I've been stuck in class learning about policies" and "we try to do as much as we can on the weekends" way. Last Sunday the host family and I piled into the family car, a KIA SUV, and drove about 2 hours out into the country to the Quito Zoo. The zoo was quite interesting seeing as how nearly all the flora and fauna there are native to Ecuador. My host dad took off for work on Monday, he is and electrician in the oil fields by the Colombian boarder, were he stayed until Friday night. Early in the week we started our community garden out back behind the training center. Each group of 4 gets a plot about 10 by 30 feet to work with and the best plot at the end of training gets a prize. We also learned about building worm beds, organic composting "the right way" and how to make a very effective liquid organic fertilizer, consisting of pig manure, wood ash, tree leaves, old milk and some other lovely ingredients all mixed into a mesh bag left to steep in a tank of water.
On Wednesday the advantage of being in the "advanced" language class became evident. Following our trip to the Peace Corps office in Quito, all the volunteers headed back to Tumbaco to work on community maps and various other class projects. My group on the other hand ended up getting ice cream and laying in the central park experiencing a "cultural" siesta with our professor who decided we knew enough about the neighborhood.
Throughout the rest of the week we spent a fair deal of time talking about various tropical diseases, more safety and security policies, community banks (which actually thrive here), as well as a trip to a local tree nursery where we learned everything from planting seed beds and transplanting, to harvesting seeds and large scale composting. Saturday's class time was spent in language classes followed by a tour of a small farm next to the training center. The farm next door raises cuy (guinea pigs), rabbits and real pigs. It was interesting getting to learn about raising all three animals and could be vary useful out in the boonies where basic concepts like not inbreeding have yet to take root.
Playing with the pigs next door gave way to the rest of my weekend at around 3 o' clock that afternoon. Following a short siesta my host family and I, as well as a fellow volunteer, drove up to Quito to tour the major churches in the city. By far the largest and most impressive in my opinion was the Basilica which tours over nearly every building in Quito and is complete with turtles and birds in place of the more traditional gargoyles. For dinner we stopped off at a kebab restaurant in Cumbaya, an upscale suburb of Quito much like Tumbaco. The food was amazing and to my extreme joy the kebab restaurant is located right next to a high end sushi restaurant and an Irish pub, I may have to move in.
On Sunday we got out of the house around 8 and drove south up over the Papallacta Pass at 14,000 feet on our way to the Papallacta hot springs. The drive up was by far my favorite part of the trip, winding through the high Andes Mountains. As you reach the top of Papallacta Pass the land opens up in front of you, looking down the valley of Papallacta and out at Volcan Antisana, touring at 18,875 feet. On the way back from the hot springs we stopped at a fish farm in the hills owned by a family friend who gave us a quick tour of the fish ponds and his cuy barn, complete with a thatched roof. We also toured the fish farm across the street which used the slope of the hill to run the farm. He had split a small stream in two and dug small tanks into the ground, separating each tank with a net that would hold the fish back. Each tank had different sized fish with the smallest at the top and the largest at the bottom of the hill. As the largest fish were sold off he could open the upper tanks to let the fish flow down to the lower tanks, a rather nice set up in my opinion that required very little work.
Lastly, today being Presidents Day and all, we took a class field trip the La Mitad del Mundo, or the Center of the World. La Mitad del Mundo is a very large monument to the equatorial line which was calculated by hand by some French guy back in the 70's. To his dismay however, he was off by a few hundred meters but they still built a very large monument with his name on it. Slightly to the north is another, much smaller, museum which actually lies at 0'00"000 latitude. On the equatorial line you can preform a few experiments like balance an egg on end on a nail (which I successfully did), have a vertical sun clock, and watch the water in a sink drain straight downward. The last one was a bit more of a surprise to me since the lady doing the demonstration moved the sink 10 feet to either side of the equatorial line to demonstrate that it does in fact drain opposite directions. Also at that museum were various examples of indigenous cultures which included seeing a real Tsantsa of the Shuar tribe (Quichua for "shrunken head"). The Shuar people are known as mighty warriors who cut off the head of great opponents and shrink them believing that the head contains the soul of their fallen enemy.
Espero que les vaya bien, Chao!
On Wednesday the advantage of being in the "advanced" language class became evident. Following our trip to the Peace Corps office in Quito, all the volunteers headed back to Tumbaco to work on community maps and various other class projects. My group on the other hand ended up getting ice cream and laying in the central park experiencing a "cultural" siesta with our professor who decided we knew enough about the neighborhood.
Throughout the rest of the week we spent a fair deal of time talking about various tropical diseases, more safety and security policies, community banks (which actually thrive here), as well as a trip to a local tree nursery where we learned everything from planting seed beds and transplanting, to harvesting seeds and large scale composting. Saturday's class time was spent in language classes followed by a tour of a small farm next to the training center. The farm next door raises cuy (guinea pigs), rabbits and real pigs. It was interesting getting to learn about raising all three animals and could be vary useful out in the boonies where basic concepts like not inbreeding have yet to take root.
On Sunday we got out of the house around 8 and drove south up over the Papallacta Pass at 14,000 feet on our way to the Papallacta hot springs. The drive up was by far my favorite part of the trip, winding through the high Andes Mountains. As you reach the top of Papallacta Pass the land opens up in front of you, looking down the valley of Papallacta and out at Volcan Antisana, touring at 18,875 feet. On the way back from the hot springs we stopped at a fish farm in the hills owned by a family friend who gave us a quick tour of the fish ponds and his cuy barn, complete with a thatched roof. We also toured the fish farm across the street which used the slope of the hill to run the farm. He had split a small stream in two and dug small tanks into the ground, separating each tank with a net that would hold the fish back. Each tank had different sized fish with the smallest at the top and the largest at the bottom of the hill. As the largest fish were sold off he could open the upper tanks to let the fish flow down to the lower tanks, a rather nice set up in my opinion that required very little work.
Lastly, today being Presidents Day and all, we took a class field trip the La Mitad del Mundo, or the Center of the World. La Mitad del Mundo is a very large monument to the equatorial line which was calculated by hand by some French guy back in the 70's. To his dismay however, he was off by a few hundred meters but they still built a very large monument with his name on it. Slightly to the north is another, much smaller, museum which actually lies at 0'00"000 latitude. On the equatorial line you can preform a few experiments like balance an egg on end on a nail (which I successfully did), have a vertical sun clock, and watch the water in a sink drain straight downward. The last one was a bit more of a surprise to me since the lady doing the demonstration moved the sink 10 feet to either side of the equatorial line to demonstrate that it does in fact drain opposite directions. Also at that museum were various examples of indigenous cultures which included seeing a real Tsantsa of the Shuar tribe (Quichua for "shrunken head"). The Shuar people are known as mighty warriors who cut off the head of great opponents and shrink them believing that the head contains the soul of their fallen enemy.
Espero que les vaya bien, Chao!
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