Compost, Bracelets and Ham Sandwiches

   To whom ever may find themselves reading this blog,

  Having left off on the 25th of March, I will try and best remember what I have done in the last two weeks. That weekend I did in fact get to try the famous Cuy (guinea pig) from Ecuador and it was indeed rather tasty. Sunday night the PCVL's invited the "Jungle Crew" out for dinner following a work party on composting. We ate 3 different kinds of Pita bread (yuca, plantain and fava bean flours) as well as a giant plate of salad which we had all been craving for weeks. It was a great opportunity to unwind a bit and talk with the PCVL's (volunteers that stayed on an extra year to help us with our service) about their time in the Amazon and share stories.

   The following week was spent learning Kichwa, and apparently I am at the Beginner Advanced level already, discussing HIV in Ecuador, working on our garden plots, teaching middle school kids business practices and Sports Day. Kichwa has definitely proved itself to be a difficult task, however I feel like we are all picking it up pretty quickly and it is fun to be able to throw phrases around in class with other students. So far I've learned to introduce myself and talk about certain things and events in the present tense as well as count to a million. Wednesday we had an open house for the first half of the day in which 120 middle school children from the neighborhood school came to the training center and rotated around the 10 stations we had set up. My group and I taught about good business practices including marketing, costing- pricing, product quality and handling money. In other words, we made lemonade stands. They had fun and all but the youngest group of students seemed to fully understand the concepts we had taught. Then on Friday we had a Sports Day. We began with a 2 hour session of talking to current PC volunteers who had come to the training center for the day for an open forum. This was followed by the commencement of the Dia de Deportes. I gave the inaugural speech, followed by the national anthem and a Mrs. Sports Day competition or Reyina in Spanish. This was followed by 4 or 5 hours of soccer games, 30 minutes each and a huge lunch buffet prepared by the PC Volunteers who had come for the day. My team didn't win the games however we did win nicest Reyina.

   That weekend was spent packing for the Tech Trip to Arenillas, attending a birthday party and being invited over to Grandma's house for cow tongue. We left to Arenillas, on the coast near the Peruvian boarder, around 5 pm on Sunday evening and arrived to Arenillas around 8 in the morning on Monday. After a short stop to drop our things in the hostel and a quick breakfast, we headed to the Municipal tree nursery to see how they were working to reforest much of the area and what techniques they used there. Around noon we drove south to the boarder and visited a local National Reserve run by the military. They gave us a tour through the Tropical Dry Forest and discussed various projects being run through the park, we also bought our first frozen chocolate bananas. The next morning we were up early and on a bus out to the Mangroves. We hopped a Navy boat for the price of 10 gallons of gas and a quart of oil and headed into the mangroves. Our guide took us to a shrimp farm and we walked the perimeter of their 5 hectare plantation amongst the mangroves before heading back to Arenillas. Then following lunch we spoke with the local government about their waste management practices and their new campaign for recycling.

   The next day we spent the morning at a local girls high school teaching about recycling and family gardens. I was in the garden group and over the coarse of the morning we taught around 120 girls how to prepare their garden plot behind the school which had long since over grown in waste high weeds and been covered in about 4 trash cans of garbage. With each of our 8 groups of 15 girls we cleared the garden and dug rows, all the while discussing proper technique and ground preparation with compost. Being the more talkative person in our group (go figure) and the most comfortable Spanish speaker, I ended up giving most of the introductions and major speeches while the other volunteers felt more comfortable talking to smaller groups during our projects. As a comical highlight, one of the girls asked 3 different volunteers for my number (they thankfully all declined) and to my credit she was the most mature 14 year old there haha. Other than that, the morning went well and was topped off with the purchase of 2 chocolate covered bananas. We also visited a local Reserve in which a High School teach had reforested farmland over the coarse of 25-30 years back to what is naturally a Tropical Dry Forest. We walked around the forest and also helped to clear some of the pathway with machetes. Afterwards he and his wife gave us each an Ecuadorian bracelet made by their family. That night some of the volunteers and I attended the local pickup basketball game in Arenillas. I must say I have never sweat that much outside of a sauna with the heat turned all the way up. After sitting on the concrete bench to cool down afterwards we left a large pool of sweat where each of us had sat.

  The following morning we bussed East about an hour to the site of another Volunteer who has been working with a local organization of coffee farmers who are trying to move into the bigger markets here in Quito and Guayacil. We toured a coffee plantation and saw a venomous snake related to the Equis, or Fer-de-Lance, the most venomous snake in Ecuador, which caused the tour guide to jump quite high before killing it. We also got to sample some of the coffee they roast there at the plantation. It was interesting to see all the volunteers go wild over the "best coffee ever" which I would stack very low on any shelf in the states (not to mention in Langley).Though I must admit even I was happy to drink anything that was not Nescafe. We then headed about 2 hours north to Naranjal, a larger city of around 50,000 occupants, for the evening of street food and beer in our air conditioned room at Hotel Delicious. I have to say that stay was much appreciated and I enjoyed our 3 bed room between the two of us including the A/C and hot water. Also, the two dollar pork chop I picked up for lunch was probably the better pork I have had to date in Ecuador (while it might be more risky, street food is usually quite amazing).

   Friday morning was the bigging of my longest day yet. We started off around 6:30 am leaving the hotel and heading to the Ecological Mangrove Reserve in Churute, about an hour long bus ride to the north. We learned about problems within the park and how the ministry goes about improving the park. This was followed by a 5 hour tour of various parts within the park including a short hike up a hill to look out over the valley, an hour and a half hike through the jungle where we saw monkeys, tarantulas and waterfalls, and a quick stop at the mangrove forest. It was during the jungle hike when I truly began to appreciate the power of Vitamin B1 and DEET insect repellent. As we walked through the jungle nearly everyone was followed by a thick cloud of mosquitoes and nearly everyone was eaten alive with the exception of myself and one other volunteer who is also taking B1. This goes to show that I will continue taking it in Tena and highly recommend it for the itchy traveler.  Following a short bus ride back to Naranjal and a crab salad lunch for the bargained price of $3.00,   I took a group of volunteers to a jersey shop we had passed the day before. I picked up 5 different jerseys (2 Real Madrids,  Chelsea, Barcelona from Ecuador, and Oriental Petrolero) all for 20 dollars, or 4 bux a piece. After a quick meeting with a volunteer stationed in Naranjal, we hopped the 3 hour bus to Guayacil which passed a giant chocolate factory and then the Chiquita Banana factory, the combination of which was nearly a religious experience. After a 3 hour layover in the four story mall that is the Guayacil bus terminal, we boarded our 10 pm bus headed to Quito. I believe I managed to get some 2 or 3 hours of sleep in over the coarse of the bus ride which ended in nearly everyone freezing cold by around 3 30 am. We arrived in Tumbaco by about 8:15 am on Saturday.

   After a quick hot shower and a big cup of coffee Saturday morning, the host family and I jumped in the car and drove out to Otavalo, 2 hours north-east of Quito. Otavalo is the single largest indigenous market in the entire continent of South America and is one of the better cultural treasures for today's tourist. After wandering aimlessly through the sea of tapestries, gold jewelry and local Kichwa dresses, I was forced to pick up an Alpaca Poncho for the price of $15 after some haggling, as well as some very comfortable woven pants and a giant pumpkin. For lunch we went to a local favorite restaurant where I got what is probably the best Cuy  (guinea pig) in all of Ecaudor and topped off with biscotti and coffee. I finally got to bed around 11 pm that night after watching the soccer game between La Liga and Deportivo Quito (a local rivalry) with my entire family.

   . We are now coming to the final stretch of training with this week of classes and then swearing in next Wednesday. I am looking forward to getting out to my site to start working. And with that I better call it a night here, I am up early in the morning to get back to class. I hope you have enjoyed the post for this week y Espero que les vaya bien, Chao!