Cuenca: Oh you fancy, huh? / Recovering from Baby’s First Breakdown

Last week, I had to get out of town. I was pretty much somewhere between

and

While I was getting frustrated with general stuff, realistically neither Peace Corps service nor Riobamba had anything to do with what I’m calling “baby’s first breakdown.” I couldn’t be happier about my service or my placement in Riobamba. I feel well supported and excited for the potential that the next two years. Even the days when I miss home, my family, and my friends represent an incredible privilege. Nonetheless, I was a little antsy last week. I signed up to take my LSAT and GRE just to have my bases covered, and I was just freaking out a little. Well,

(background on why I’m calling my very-mini-early-20s-existential-crisis “baby’s first breakdown”: I find my inner-monologue here to sometimes take on the style of a baby book. Because I’m basically at the skill level of an Ecuadorian child when it comes to taking care of myself and I’m so early on in my service, I find myself thinking things like “well, Baby’s first workshop today- April 23, 2013,” “Baby’s first breakdown in site- May 31, 2013,” “Baby’s first solo trip- June 8th-June 9th, 2013”– Btw, just so we’re all clear, I consider it a major feat that I didn’t have a bigger breakdown sooner. I’m counting this as a big win.)

Anyway, I needed to calm down. When the opportunity came up to visit Cuenca over the weekend, I jumped it. I just sort of needed to go anywhere, but man, was Cuenca a good choice.

Cuenca is basically like little America. It’s about 6 hours by bus from Riobamba. Much of that 6 hours is spent like this:

But it was so worth it. Cuenca is a world heritage site, and has been a huge hot spot for retiring Americans within the past several years. The city has benefitted tremendously from this influx of  income. FDI FTW. It was awesome although I do feel a little guilty for enjoying Cuenca so much. I’m supposed to be integrating all hard core and what not. Peace Corps’ policy is basically:

but man, sometimes I just want a green smoothie, and you can only get that in Little America.

Seriously, there’s water all day, and you can drink it straight from the tap! By definition, that’s awesome. Plus,

Granted, I say this about any bathroom that completes the trifecta of toilet seat, toilet paper, and soap. But for real, Cuenca be fancy. This was my hostal, La Cigale:

Oh Cigale Shower, I do decree,
How I love thee.
Hot water, fine pressure,  you are my sunshine
and drinkable water, how divine!

Oh my god, I slept soooooo well. Look Ma, no fleas!

Breakfast included and delicious enough that I would have gladly paid for it.

By sunday when I had regular Ecua service in Cuenca instead of customer-is-always-right-yes-ma’am-I-will-bring-you-your-smoothie-right-this-minute-your-15-minute-wait-has-already-been too-long-American fancy service, I was just like:

Then it was back to reality and long Ecua mountain bus rides. I’m super happy to be back. Riobamba is home, sweet, home, but it’s good to know that I can get Thai food just one 6 hour bus ride away.

Back to the Grind and I Feel Fine/ Return from the Festivales

Last week was the festivales del colegio. The closest thing I can compare it to is homecoming week… kind of.

Festivales mean that almost all classes are cancelled for a week of celebrations. I thought I could handle a week with no work to do. I was all “pfhst, a week with no work. I can handle that:

“

It was way harder than what I thought it would be, way harder… I still went into work everyday, and for about 2 hours per day, I got real work done. Ok, maybe an hour. The rest of the time:

On Monday when I finally got back to work and found my co-workers pretty motivated after a bit of a rest, I was so indescribably happy. Everyone was so cooperative and open. And! And! There was stuff to dooooo!

But, a little background on the festivales:

For a week the school celebrates its founding and takes pride in its specialities. We had a food fair, a fashion show, a speech competition, ceremonies for the graduating seniors, and we all got to leave early everyday.

Other random stuff happens too. For example,  a really long ceremony honoring a number of different things– we honored several teachers for 25 years of service, then we honored some people for punctuality. I lost track at a certain point, but they handed out like 6 more awards, including one to students from another high school who won the speech competition. When I heard about this competition, I was pretty excited about it. Does my school have a debate team that I don’t know about yet? I know things about things when it comes to high school debate…kind of. I could do stuffs with this!

Things about things!

Stuff with stuff!!

The words “secondary project potential!!” were ringing in my ears.

Well,  I was getting ahead of myself. We do not have a debate or forensics team. Teachers from the Spanish Language area selected some of their students at random, more or less, to participate in this competition.  In fact, when I asked if we had a debate team that I didn’t know about, my teachers were very confused as to why I was asking silly questions again. Bummer.

However this week back at work, I’ve been looking into several other secondary projects that have a higher success rate potential, given that they, ya know, exist. I don’t want to get too excited yet, but I feel like I’m on the right track– mas o menos. It’s a good feeling.

Little by little, I’m getting to know my community more. I haven’t gotten lost in a while. Work feels like it has potential. The corner store lady totally knew who I was today AND was nice to me! Cranky post office lady is still cranky, but she now knows me and my PO box number because I’ve asked her to open it so many times. Win? win. win.

This Week in Ecuador

I don’t have any specific updates, but here are a few things that have happened this week (in no particular order):

1. Yesterday I was awoken at 3am by 4.0 earthquake. The saddest part is that I was so disoriented that I doubted it was an earthquake. I sat up in bed, like

I thought maybe there was a loud truck passing, and then realized, no, the earth is in fact shaking. But now what?

I grabbed my computer and run under a doorway, because uh,

…..And 4 seconds later the earthquake stopped.

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2. In Riobamba, I don’t have water all day. Some people do because they have a cistern or something, but it seems like most people get their water when the city gives it. Anyway, I was taking a much needed shower the other day when the water started going in and out. First a panic  ensued because I had a head full of shampoo, and my water was threatening to cut out:

And then, the following sadness:

…. cold bucket bath to follow.

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3. I used my saturday morning to make banana coconut pancakes. It was glorious

Actually, they didn’t look anywhere near that good, but still, I was happy:

Then I ran four miles at 9,000 ft– which looked a lot less glorious, but that brings my total to 13 miles this week. yay!

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4. My brother got married last weekend, and I got to sort of skype-stalk the ceremony and even parts of the reception:

I was incredibly sad that I couldn’t be there, but everyone’s efforts to include me as much as possible were really quite touching. Also, just knowing how incredibly happy my brother and new sister-in-law are has kept my spirits very high this week.
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6. The costumes came in for the parade that I’ll be dancing in on monday. I really did not anticipate how difficult they would be to put on…. My co-workers all jumped up to help me because, ya know, they could anticipate that the gringa would probably have a little trouble. Let me tell you, it wasn’t this cute:

Because when you’re a grown-adult, it’s generally not attractive to not be able to dress yourself. I mean, Cinderella pulls it off. I did not. I was also hoping that they would all teach me how in fact to put on this outfit, but no. However, they did offer to help me again on the day of the parade. We’ll see how it goes….

Got that Gripe

So first things first: “gripe” (pronounced gree-pay) literally translates to the “flu,” but here in Ecuador it’s often used generically to describe any number of ailments from the common cold to bronchitis to strep throat. During my three months of training I came down with the gripe twice, maybe three times. Well, I’m looking to at least double that rate here in Riobamba.

The past few weeks I’ve been having a bit of bad luck illness-wise. Two weeks ago on saturday, I had some, um, stomach problems. I spent the weekend laid up and actually missed work the following Monday. I really underestimated how incredibly concerned everyone would be. When I showed up on Tuesday there was a lot of “Oh my God, Meaghan! What happened?” Quickly followed by the third degree about what I ate. I was not prepared for this:

But it was fun hearing all the speculation that ensued as to why I was sick.  Here are some of my favorite theories:

– I’m mixing too many fruits and vegetables–I had noticed that Ecuadorians tend not to mix a lot of different ingredients. I was puzzled by this, and now know why. Apparently it makes you sick– or rather, if you get sick, it makes it very difficult to find out from what.

– I ate beans and peanut butter in the evening (not together per se– I had a bean salad for dinner and a buckeye– or 3– for dessert… apparently this is a recipe for disaster).

– I’m not eating enough. How could a salad possibly be filling?! And with no rice?!— I think they think of me like this:

Trust me, I’m eating well. I went to SuperMaxi and splurged on what I like to call a party pack of seeds. I’m doing just fine. I have lost some weight though. My host mom noticed this and told me I need to eat more because otherwise people will think she’s not taking care of me. This is actually a very legitimate concern. One of my teachers noticed that I had lost weight and said “ah, it is because your host family is not giving you enough food.” It was tough to persuade her otherwise. Anyway I think my host mom has been making more Patacones– fried smashed plantains – to fatten me up because she knows I love them. This is just my theory though.

Anyway, after a bit of hydration, hydration, hydration, I was back to good as new… for three days. The following friday morning I woke up feeling half-sick. I took some motrin and went into work. By the time I got home though I was really not feeling well. I went to bed at 6pm and woke up at 12:30am with a crazy fever.

Good news: when push comes to shove, I can read my old-school mercury-based thermometer!:

Bad news: I felt like this:

I got some gatorade, and my internet came back on Saturday morning after being out for a week, so I, of course, watched a lot of netflix. Mad Men is better than I thought it would be…

I  went to work on Monday and the theories started again:

– It’s the rain… the rain started on friday afternoon, hours after I started to feel sick.
– It’s the ash… Tungurahua, a nearby volcano, exploded on Sunday and ash has been falling over Riobamba for the past few days. Volcanic ash tends to cause respiratory problems, and I do actually believe this aggravated my illness.
– “What did you eat? You mix too much”
– “You were walking around the house in just your socks. The gripe and the cold are entering through your feet.”

And I’m just trying to make it through the work day like:

I’ve been drinking a lot of tea and gatorade and stuff, but I’m still not better. In fact I missed work again yesterday. I did go in at the end of the day to work with my English club, set up dates for a summer English club with the community (which I’m super excited about by the way), and to say hello to all the teachers that I’m supposed to be practicing a dance with. There’s a parade coming up and I’ll be in it, dancing a kumbia step with several of the other teachers at the school. I got roped into dancing on my sick day.
But it was fine. I got a lot accomplished, and it was the best practice we had so far.

Making Mama’s Banana Bread

Tuesday was my first workshop with my teachers. I did a presentation about who I am and what I do. It’s a relatively fun topic, but still, getting perfect attendance for workshops doesn’t happen very often. I decided to bribe them to come. Just a small bribe. I figured who doesn’t appreciate a nice fresh-baked treat? I thought for a while about what to make, but when my host mom and I accidentally double-bought bananas…. the answer became clear: Mom’s Banana Bread! The search for ingredients was much easier this time. Getting baking soda was still a bit of a struggle. The first two places I went didn’t have it, but the second corner store owner told me where I could go to get it. She added the very unnecessary, “and she’ll sell you as much as you want….” I followed up with “Thanks, but I really only need a little. I’m making bread.” And she was just like: In hindsight I should have bought a lot to avoid future awkward situations, but well, hindsight is always 20/20. Also, fun fact, the woman who finally sold me baking soda, poured it out of an old instant coffee can into a plastic bag– so ya know, it actually looks like you’re carrying drugs. The baking process actually went a lot better this time as well. Mostly in great thanks to my wonderful site mate. When I told her my baking plans, she offered to lend me her american measuring cups. I was so grateful, all I could do was look at her like,

They were glorious.

and things were looking pretty good:

I even found out my oven even had a temperature gage!!

My new digs are much more conducive to baking.

Unfortunately, I could only find one loaf pan at the entire mall, so I did have to bake this in three batches. It took all afternoon. But it got done, rather successfully, I might add.

And look, Hannah helped too (via skype) 🙂

So after about a week of promoting my workshop like:

and bribing my teachers with homemade goodies, most of them showed up. However, almost all of them feel asleep at some point during the workshop. It was a tough time of day to hold the workshop. Next time, I’ll have to make it more interactive. Also, if anyone has any suggestions about other treats I should make for my teachers, I’m all ears. Please drop me a comment with some ideas.

Oh, also, at the suggestion of one of the other volunteers, I made some bread for the principal’s office too. Good choice. One of the secretaries in that office caught up with me today and was like, “You made that delicious bread, right?”: So congratulations mom, your banana bread in now internationally renowned.

Highlights of My First Weeks at Site #MyLifeIsAwesome

Sorry about the hashtag, but it’s been a pretty exciting week.

Highlights of the first two weeks:

-My school couldn’t have been more welcoming:

Well, the principal did say she wished the best of luck  during my “internship” here…However, the teachers in the English area, with whom I will actually be working, are all very excited for me to get to work. Of course there will be many challenges. Some are easily foreseen; others will be a surprise.
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-Teacher’s Day is seriously big deal here. It was on Saturday this year, so we started celebrating on Thursday and continued celebrations through Monday. I heard this was actually pretty tame compared to some other schools, but we had a pretty fancy-schmancy event on friday.

They had some speeches from students, then a professional singer for warm up, but the real show started with the Andean folk band.

Oh yeah, dance party time:

After about 15 minutes of something like this, we had about 80% of teachers on the floor, rocking it. I had gone to the bathroom and when I got back, it was just like:

So, of course I joined in like:

They all congratulated me on my “not bad” dancing skills. That’s right. I’m improving! I’m up to “not bad.”

Oh yeah, and the lunch music: Mexican Mariachi band:

It was quite a day…
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– English song competitions are pretty popular here. Three of my students were working on preparing a set for a competition that took place yesterday. They asked for my help, and it was a ton of fun working with them.

There were definitely different ideas about extra-curricular activities,  organization, and planning floating around, but it got done.

They did pretty well, and I’m very proud of them. Nevertheless, I have grand hopes of more organization and time to plan next year. I think I’m being overly optimistic here, but I’m a new volunteer, and this is inevitable for us.

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-Found a nightly free Ecudorian zumba classes. Those are a good time. Favorite dance move name: Machete. I’m really on a learning curve with that move though because I just used my first machete last week (Don’t worry, mom! No one got hurt).
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– I get a lot of this on my way to school:

Well, actually I get this at school too, but at least at school I suspect that the staring will subside sooner rather than later. I hope.
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-My entire class, including the teacher, got locked out of one of our classrooms this week. I showed up and saw a student trying to climb through the small window to unlock the door from the inside.
I just sort of watched on like:

Wondering what would happen if the student happened to fall…. also, fun fact: our school is almost all-girls. The uniform is skirts. This is not so good for climbing through windows. We were then hard-pressed to find a very small boy to climb through the window, but ya know, it all worked out.
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-I’m trying to start an English club and was looking to get a wonderful space approved by the principal of my school. When I finally got a meeting with her, I was all excited, like:

and she was all like, ummm,:

The space I was hoping to use had already been kind of, sort of, reserved for a maybe-sometime-later project, so I couldn’t have it. We were able to find another space though, and we should be starting things up pretty soon.
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– Got my first offer at the school to be set up with someone’s son/brother/cousin:

I was really hoping it would take longer than the first week for that to happen.

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– On a much more serious note: There has been a lot of bad news coming out of the US this week, and I didn’t feel right publishing this entry without addressing some of the issues. I was shocked and deeply saddened to hear about the events that have unfolded in Boston this week . Today’s news reports are even more terrifying. I am at a loss for words to describe such a grave situation. All I can say is that my thoughts are prayers are with the people in the affected areas.  I offer my deepest sympathies to victims and their families, but I regret that I cannot do more in this time of tragedy.

I do sincerely hope that the above image is enduring, and that we do not lose site of our values that celebrate, rather than degenerate, diversity. Attacks like this are often met with xenophobia and anti-immigrant fervor,  but let us remember that we are a nation of immigrants. Additionally, and more importantly, we are all human beings. We deserve kindness and respect. We must not let a few individuals spoil our hope for all of humanity.

God Bless America.

Swear-in!

Last week Thursday Omnibus 109 swore in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. We grew up from trainees to real live Volunteers. It was a really big day.

The Ambassador came (pictured above) to congratulate all of us and hand out our little diplomas with the Country Director:

Another Volunteer and I gave speeches:

We’re kind of a big deal… (In all seriousness, I’m really proud of all my fellow Volunteers, myself, this speech and this day. There’s a video of this speech out there somewhere. When I get a copy of it, I’ll upload it here).

Lots of picture taking ensued:

One of the very talented artists from my Omnibus designed this mural and oversaw the project of painting it. She’s a genius. Each of the leaves has the signature of one of the Volunteers in Omnibus 109. The yellow, red, and blue rings represent the Ecuadorian flag. The dove is for Peace Corps. The book symbolizes the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) program, and the tree is representative of the Natural Resources Conservation (NRC) program. We couldn’t have been more pleased with how it turned out.

(Most of the TEFL program and our training manager)

(Me with my truly wonderful training manager. I owe this woman so many thanks.)

After our big event at the training center, we had a little get together at another volunteers house. At about 9pm I realized I had a ton of missed calls from my host family. I thought that was strange because they don’t usually have any problem with me going out. They asked what time I would be back, and I told them in few hours, not too late, but I wasn’t sure. They seemed fine with this answer. Clearly,  I had missed something.

Little did I know they had been planning a surprise serenade and small birthday celebration for me. When I finally got home at around 11pm, my host mom asked me “Meaghan, how could you have forgotten about the surprise?!”… I felt kind of bad  because the musician had left as had most of the guests. A persistant few had stayed so they sang me happy birthday and had me blow out the candles.

I had to take part in the Ecuadorian tradition of getting my face shoved in cake. They all shout “Que muerde el pastel! Que Muerde el pastel!” (“Bite the cake! Bite the Cake!”) after they sing Happy Birthday, and as you bite the cake, they shove your face in it. Then there’s usually a lot of laughter and few “Que viva la cumpleañera!”s
Fortunately they were pretty nice about it. They know gringos usually don’t like having cake shoved in their face so they didn’t get me too bad. Just a little:

So yeah, it was a pretty good day.

Making Papa Kelly’s Cookies at 9,000 ft.

Up until last week, I hadn’t really cooked anything here in Ecuador. It just hadn’t come up, but alas, two days shy of swearing-in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer, the need arose to bake cookies.

The birthday of another volunteer was coming up, and I wanted to do something nice for her; so I embarked on the adventure of cookie making at 9,000 ft.

Step One: Getting the ingredients:

Most grocery stores here aren’t like meijer’s. They don’t have everything you need in one stop. It’s not uncommon to stop at 5 or 6 stores to complete your shopping list. And,

There are a couple of mega chain supermarkets that are likely to have almost everything. I was low on time so I decided to make the bus trip out to the fancy mall where one of these stores, MegaMaxi, is located. (By the way, this mall is crazy fancy, like Twelve Oaks Fancy. There is a freakin’ Tiffany’s & Co. in this place).

I was on the hunt for rarities like vanilla extract, baking powder, chocolate chips, and the most elusive, baking soda.

The first three I encountered without struggle… well, there was a little bit of struggle with the chocolate chips because they were $3 USD (about a day’s wages for me), and they looked awful; so I just crushed up some chocolate bars.

I went on scouring for the baking soda. I knew this one would be difficult. Baking soda is one of the main ingredients in making crack. Several years ago it was pulled from shelves in supermarkets here and put behind the counter in pharmacies, like Sudafed in the US.

When I got there, the pharmacist was all “Oh, baking soda, we don’t sell that here. You have to get that at MegaMaxi.” And, I was just like,

“No, senor, I just came from there, and they told me to come here.” This line of conversation went on for a good 5 minutes, before the pharmacist gave me a lecture on the history of baking soda and crack making and then consented that baking soda could be purchased at your local corner store.

I got home three hours and four stores later with all the ingredients in tow.  It was time to get started.

Step Two: Making the batter

When it became abundantly clear that I had no measuring cups or baking sheets at my disposal:

Time to get creative… I started using a regular drinking cup as a measuring cup. I know. This sounds like a terrible idea. But it mostly worked! After about twenty minutes I had something that resembled papa kelly cookie batter.

There was only one little hiccup with making the mixture…. That vanilla extract that I had hunted for (looking even more like a lost gringa than I had previously thought possible), wasn’t what I expected it to be. It wasn’t really a liquid. It was more like concentrated vanilla goo. YOU SHOULD NOT PUT A FULL TEASPOON OF THIS INTO YOUR COOKIE BATTER. I’m sorry for shouting there, but I can’t stress enough how important this is.  I almost ruined the batter this way. Luckily I decided to taste the vanilla before mixing it. Super nasty. Gagged a little, and then scooped most of it out. Worked out fine.

Step Three: Baking

So, realistically my substitute for baking sheets was a terrible idea. I used one large round metal cake pan and one large glass casserole dish.

Baking 101: glass and metal bake at different temperatures for different lengths of time. I knew this, and ignored it. It was a bit of a hot mess.

Also, on the topic of oven temperatures: when I was finally ready to get baking I asked my host mom how to turn the oven on. She turned a dial, and I asked “ok, great, how do I set it to 170 degrees Celsius?” She just looked at me for a second. Then she turned the dial all the way up and said “Well, this is high, and the other way is off.”

I burned the first batch. And the second batch.

As it got later, I grew more delirious. So when I burned the third batch, it was just like:

Even my host mom gathered that things were not going as expected. She kind of looked at me like:

“you’re still making those?”

I decided to employ another papa kelly strategy. The famous “you can always cook it more; you can’t uncook it.” I’ve grown to dislike this phrase over the years because it always meant everyone wants dinner now, and no one is getting fed for at least another hour.

Unfortunately, I have to admit the “you can always cook it some more” strategy worked out, and when I realized that at around midnight, I was just like:

No one likes admitting their parents were right…

Final results:

Got to bed around 1am with some pretty decent cookies cooling. I have to say, papa kelly makes them better, but they turned out pretty well– better than I expected for sure!

In the end, I was really glad that I made them. Making baking and cooking adventures to come I’m sure.

Highlights from the past week or so:

Last week was fiesta for the military academy of Tumbaco. On Saturday morning they had a really cool parade set up. The program said it started at 7, so ya know, at 8, which was wonderful because who wants to wake up that early on a Saturday?

Anyway, a few highlights of this parade:
– It showcased the traditional clothes and dances from every region of Ecuador
– There were at least 10 bands. I lost count after that.
– There were 2 all-female drum lines, and they were awesome. Who says girls can’t play drums?
– The only float that threw candy was from the Afro-Ecuadorian Barrio Chota– because clearly Afro-Ecuadorians know how to do it big.

After the parade we hustled home (and by hustle, I mean went shopping at the supermarket, the fruit market, the meat market, and the general store before heading home). Hustle is a far term though. There was some rushing involved. We had a lot to do! It was family day at Peace Corps. I had to make a salad– and washing lettuce here is hard. Also, later that night was my birthday celebration which kind of morphed into another volunteer party.  It was a tame evening, with  good vibes and some fantastic cake. I don’t know what it was or what was in it, but it tasted like magic. It was the best cake I think any of us has had in Ecuador.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures for you. I couldn’t find my camera charger for a hot second, but it’s back now. I had to get my priorities straight. Tomorrow I’m headed off to the Puyo in Ecuador’s Oriente for Easter weekend! There will be pictures of that.

But first, other important week highlights:

-I’ve been thinking about taking the GRE more lately, but I usually only get about this far:

– I made a trek with some other volunteers this week to get brownies in Quito. I was hoping to would be like:

but really, it was more like this:

– I had found a great link to watch American TV, but my internet kept cutting out and nothing would load. All I could do was at my computer like:

Any other problem solving techniques and advice would be gladly appreciated.

– The staff could see that we were getting a little stressed out with a heavy workload. They decided to fix it by doing a surprise Harlem Shake, but as PC trainees we’re a little out of touch so a third of us were like:

Another third were like:

And the rest joined in like:

Then, when they were done, the staff told us to stop coming in late. Fair. Completely fair.

– Next week, I swear- in and become a big kid volunteer. I’ll even be giving a speech there with the Ambassador. baller.

– You can find my new address under the contact tab. Send me letters! Please! Whenever I get one, I light up just like this:

 Seriously, it’s like the best part of the day.

Anyway,  now I’m off to the jungle:

well, first I have to pack. But then!:

Back from Riobamba

So Site Visit actually went really well. I’ll be working at very large school with grades 7-12. The school is almost entirely girls. In the past it was an all-girls school, but recently the government demanded integration of the sexes. It’s been a slow process. My school is still at least 85-90% female. My co-teachers seem great. They’ve been working with a wonderful volunteer for almost two years now, and fortunately, I’ll get the chance to work with that volunteer for a few months before she heads home.

I’ll be living with a new host family. With time I’ll make a new home in Riobamba, but I must say, it will be hard to leave Tumbaco. I’ve done a good job of putting down roots here. Fortunately, Riobamaba is pretty close. It’s about a 4-5hr bus ride. My host mom here says she’ll help me buy furniture there when it’s time for me to find my own place. Gotta have those bargaining skills at my side.

For now, there’s a lot of processing to do– a lot to think about. I have to be careful not to get too far ahead of myself. When I’m already overwhelmed, I become frustrated more easily. For example, I went to the post office today (some of you should be getting letters pretty soon). Waited twenty minutes in line behind one little old lady who was mailing one package. I spent most of the time just thinking:

And trying hard to not make this face:

(mostly because my program manager told me I should cut that out and it’s too early for me to stop taking advice).

I actually had to leave, walk four blocks to a paper store, buy special envelopes, come back, and wait in line again. Also, sending a letter from Ecuador to the US costs twice as much as it does to send one from the US to Ecuador. So, that was a fun surprise….

Also, I really need to unpack,

Anyway, it’s more important to focus on the positive– and there’s plenty of that. I still have a couple more weeks in Tumbaco to enjoy my host family here. Next weekend we’ll celebrate my birthday and the week after we’re headed to the jungle for Semana Santa. Malaria meds here I come!

Also on a positive note, Riobamba is a beautiful city. It’s nice and relaxed. I live just a few blocks from a little market with fresh fruits and veggies. I’ve even heard tell of a running club there– running at 9000 ft will definitely be good training. Anyone have any advice about altitude running? Summer vacation there starts in June, and I should have a lot of free time. The biggest limit will realistically be my imagination.

I’ll post more pictures next time. Sorry!