Altitude's a bitch. Excuse my less than elegant language, but it really is all I can come up with to describe what it feels like to be at 9895 feet above sea level after having lived for 19 years at roughly 127 feet above sea level. I have a constant head ache here that makes me feel both extremely light-headed and as if one thousand anvils are trying to escape from the confines of my skull. The nausea and dizziness are fun too! Remind me to invest in some cocaine tea.
Despite my crippled physical state, I am so happy to be here in Quito! My apartment is definitely a far cry from the sparse simplicity of the jungle house. I am living with Gabo and Karla, a young couple who own a papeleria, or papergoods store. Karla's cousin, Gabby, who is 25, also lives with us. We also live in close close proximity to many of Karla's other family members. So, while technically only 4 of us live in the apartment, there are usually always some other family members dropping by unannounced. It sometimes seems as if 70% of our time here is spent bopping from one relative's home to another having cafecitos, which is basically just a little get together to eat some nice pastries, coffee, and lemonade. Everyone in the family has been really welcoming and eager to get to know me. I'm SO glad I've had the last couple of weeks to warm-up the old Spanish, because I am definitely using it. Most people I talk to seem really excited that I'm willing to speak so much to them, because I think the exchange students they have had in the past were a bit more timid. Sometimes the last thing I want to do is think of some chatty bit of small talk (which is tiresome in English), but I'm trying to force myself to speak Spanish as much as I can.
So I arrived on Thursday night to the apartment, which is located in a really nice part of Quito. I took a taxi from the bus station, in which I was offered a job! The driver and I were chatting for a bit and it turns out Cesar is really just a part-time driver, and his real job is as a tour guide. He does trips for groups all over Quito and it seems like they go to some really cool places. Anyways, I guess his English-speaking partner just left him, so he was looking for someone else to take his place. I suppose I was the first English speaking candidate that crossed his path, so I was offered the job! It would be a pretty awesome way to see Ecuador...if only my visa didn't prevent me from working in Ecuador. Don't want to risk deportation... When we got to the corner that the apartment was located on, I was a bit confused because all I had been told was that the house was on the corner of 2 streets. The thing about that is that when 2 streets intersect, there are 4 corners to choose from. Cesar wouldn't let me leave the taxi until I was absolutely sure about which house it was, but because I didn't have a cell phone, this was difficult. He let me use his, then carried all of my luggage to the front door of the apartment building. I have been so lucky with meeting really nice people in my time here in Ecuador!
Friday was my first day of orientation. When I woke up, I was treated to my first glass of what would be many, many, many glasses of juice. Ecuadorians love their juice. Every meal includes AT LEAST one type of freshly made fruit juice, and it is treated with the reverence due to a side dish rather than a lowly beverage. Then, it was time for school! To get there, we had to take not one, but two different cross- and out-of-city buses. Since we all know that one could train a giant squid to find it's way to 5 destinations more easily than one could train me to find my way to 1 destination, you will not be surprised to know that I did not have the faintest idea where we were going. I am going to be devoting roughly 98% of my brainpower to finding my way to school every day.
Once we finally got there (after about an hour of travel) I was delighted to see how pretty the campus was. It's not residential, so is fairly small, but the buildings all have really interesting architectural styles, and the landscaping includes a lot of tropical plants, a lagoon, and waterfall. Things were good, until we attended an orientation in which a startling amount of comparisons were made between Quito and the fair city of Bagdhad. Not exactly the "two truths and a lie"-driven orientation of Midd! Despite being terrified by the safety speeches, which included phrases such as "smash and grab", "kidnapping express", "guess which taxi driver is illegitimate...ALL of them!" , and "after 2 months you might find worms in your intestines", orientation was interesting and gave me chance to connect with some other gringos. Very excited to start school on Monday!
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
August 17th, 2011
Today was my last day teaching in the jungle schools. At this particular school , for some reason every morning when we arrive we go for a little walk up and down the streets to each child's house and basically cajole and shame them into coming to school. I am sort of of the opinion that if they don't want to come, I shouldn't have to personally invite them, but it isn't really my place to say this. But today, instead of having to walk down to this house where a gaggle of boys lives, they actually ran up to us on the street. Great! They were excited for school!
The sight of these 8 boys running to school is actually one of my favorite images of the whole jungle project. It was such a bright, sunny day, and the boys were so excited to go to school that they ran there in little spurts of sprinting. They would all race in a pack to whatever the next destination might be. In this blur of mismatched, dirty, and colorful clothing they sped from rock pile, to tree, to cow, all the way until they reached the school yard. I was thinking it was going to be a great last day, full of enthusiasm, love, jokes, and a passionate desire to learn.
And it was. For about 40 minutes. The boys were not so skilled at the word searches we gave them, but were very eager to learn and impress us, and they were really into painting animals on rocks, despite the fact that we kept yelling at them to stop mixing the colors. Things were going great, until we made a fatal error. Because by this point it was "pissing rain" as the Brits would call it, Jeff and I REALLY did not want to play an outdoor game with them. So we let the kids go and play some soccer on their own. Mistake. After that, they were totally unwilling to be re-reigned in. They refused to come back inside to do a nature activity, and kept on mimicking everything we were saying and making mean faces. The ones who did come inside did so only to rip up the nature poster templates that we had made. At one point I went up to one boy to pull him back inside only to discover he was peeing on the soccer court. Charming.
After about 20 minutes of chasing and yelling, I finally told the boys that if they weren't going to sit down and do English, or at least be semi-respectful of us, then they would need to go home. They went home. Not quite the effect I was going for...
I was really torn as to whether or not I handled that situation the right way. On the one hand, I'm a volunteer hear and me helping them to learn is solely for their benefit. But on the other hand, they really don't get much of a chance to just play around and be silly because a lot of them come from rough, poor families. On some level, I know this and totally sympathize, but when a group of 8 year old boys is flipping you the bird as you try to teach them the difference between an adjective and verb, it is a wee bit difficult to beg them to stick around. Was I too impatient with them? Should I have tried different strategies to engage them? Or discipline them? Who knows, but I do know that in my semester of service in Quito I will certainly get more opportunities to ask (and hopefully) answer these questions!
Finally, after
The sight of these 8 boys running to school is actually one of my favorite images of the whole jungle project. It was such a bright, sunny day, and the boys were so excited to go to school that they ran there in little spurts of sprinting. They would all race in a pack to whatever the next destination might be. In this blur of mismatched, dirty, and colorful clothing they sped from rock pile, to tree, to cow, all the way until they reached the school yard. I was thinking it was going to be a great last day, full of enthusiasm, love, jokes, and a passionate desire to learn.
And it was. For about 40 minutes. The boys were not so skilled at the word searches we gave them, but were very eager to learn and impress us, and they were really into painting animals on rocks, despite the fact that we kept yelling at them to stop mixing the colors. Things were going great, until we made a fatal error. Because by this point it was "pissing rain" as the Brits would call it, Jeff and I REALLY did not want to play an outdoor game with them. So we let the kids go and play some soccer on their own. Mistake. After that, they were totally unwilling to be re-reigned in. They refused to come back inside to do a nature activity, and kept on mimicking everything we were saying and making mean faces. The ones who did come inside did so only to rip up the nature poster templates that we had made. At one point I went up to one boy to pull him back inside only to discover he was peeing on the soccer court. Charming.
After about 20 minutes of chasing and yelling, I finally told the boys that if they weren't going to sit down and do English, or at least be semi-respectful of us, then they would need to go home. They went home. Not quite the effect I was going for...
I was really torn as to whether or not I handled that situation the right way. On the one hand, I'm a volunteer hear and me helping them to learn is solely for their benefit. But on the other hand, they really don't get much of a chance to just play around and be silly because a lot of them come from rough, poor families. On some level, I know this and totally sympathize, but when a group of 8 year old boys is flipping you the bird as you try to teach them the difference between an adjective and verb, it is a wee bit difficult to beg them to stick around. Was I too impatient with them? Should I have tried different strategies to engage them? Or discipline them? Who knows, but I do know that in my semester of service in Quito I will certainly get more opportunities to ask (and hopefully) answer these questions!
Finally, after
Monday, August 22, 2011
August 16th, 2011
La Diabla Blanca
So, I must write a post about what has been my least favorite part about living in the jungle. It is…drum roll please…the dogs! What?? You say…dogs are lovable, loyal creatures that should make you feel safe and at home. False. These adjectives do not apply to these jungle dogs in any way, shape or form. I hate them. How much? Take the amount that I dislike my own dog (quite a bit) and multiply it by roughly 8 or 10 times. That should give you some idea of how strong my feelings are.
So, I must write a post about what has been my least favorite part about living in the jungle. It is…drum roll please…the dogs! What?? You say…dogs are lovable, loyal creatures that should make you feel safe and at home. False. These adjectives do not apply to these jungle dogs in any way, shape or form. I hate them. How much? Take the amount that I dislike my own dog (quite a bit) and multiply it by roughly 8 or 10 times. That should give you some idea of how strong my feelings are.
I live in constant fear of these dogs. I am not sure if some of them just roam the streets or if they have someone who, in theory, should be caring for them. But if such a person exists, they’re doing a pretty crap job of it. These dogs are usually small, usually yappy, usually diseased looking with sores or spots of hair missing, usually rock the physique commonly known as heroin-chic and are always, always, always the most foul-smelling creatures you could ever imagine. Before we pass certain houses that are known to house the more aggressive animals, we have a full call to arms and each carry a healthy variety of sticks and rocks to throw at them because they will bite us. And I did not get a rabies shot before I came here. And if any dog would have rabies, it would be one of these guys.
So, while most of the dogs are terrible, there is one that just outshines the rest in terms of her sheer terror factor. I call her La Diabla Blanca, or “The White She-Devil.” This dog is large, white (except where her skin shows through), and has beady red eyes that have haunted my dreams for several nights. Now, most of the time the kids, for some ungodly reason, feel the need to bring their dogs to school with them. These visitor dogs usually only offend me with their stench, not their actions. Not so with LDB. She lives with the family that lives on school grounds, so she is particularly protective of the children that live there. Furthermore, she has just given birth to two puppies that also like to play around while we are having classes. Her protective instincts are on high alert.
Unfortunately, we were playing a rousing game of “What Time is it Mr. Wolf?” when she decided to show her devil face on the soccer field. Even more unfortunately for me, I happened to be playing the role of Mr. Wolf. For those of you that don’t know, this game mandates that Senor Wolf chase the children, threatening to eat them and growling aggressively. You can imagine how well La Diabla Blanca took this game. Not well at all! She really thought I was attacking her children. So what did I do? I almost passed out every time she and I made eye-contact. I sent her desperate telepathic messages pleading with her not to tear me to pieces. And finally, I preyed on the weakest. This is the jungle after all. I’m not proud to say this, but I knew that I could not be Mr. Wolf again, otherwise La Diabla Blanca would eat me, so this time, as I shouted “TIME TO EAT YOU!” I whipped around, and made a positively frantic beeline for the 3 year old child who was playing with us. Nice, a new Mr. Wolf. Am I proud? No. But I did live to tell the tale.
August 13th, 2011
Olivia’s Travel Tips: DO: continue to wear bug spray, because bug bites still suck even if you are immune to Yellow Fever. DON’T: even think about eating chicken feet.
Yesterday we went on a little adventure to one of the most idyllic places I have ever been in my whole entire life. (Excuse the excessive use of hyperbole please). After school, Me, Jeff, Agnes, and Phoebe met Kelsey, Jessie, Jeremy, and his friend Sacia at the bus station in Puyo to start our journey to a river town called Piatua. I hadn’t been told much about this river except that I was surely going to love it, so my expectations weren’t that high when we got off the bus at a pretty non-descript stretch of highway. But then, we took a little path off the highway and the river was revealed! It was wide and fairly shallow at this point, and spotted with rocks of all different sizes and shapes throughout. It was surrounded by trees that provided some spots with welcome shade, but also allowed the sun to turn some of the rocks into frying pans.
We walked over a bridge of questionable structural integrity (that seems to be a theme here, doesn’t it?) and continued walking alongside the river in search of the perfect spot. Because August is a pretty festive month, apparently a lot of people just take every Friday off, despite there being no official holiday. On this particular day, it seemed that other people had had the same idea as us. Ecuadorian families had each staked out their own sandy beach, woodsy grilling site, or bed of flat rocks to sun on, so we had to walk for a couple of minutes to find somewhere to set up our little camp. Finally, we found a huge rock in the middle of the river that seemed appropriate. The thing was, we had to bring all of our things across about 10 feet of river that was about 4 feet deep and had a pretty fast current. I was having some major Oregon Trail flashbacks, only instead of protecting the bags of wheat and salted mean, we were holding aloft our iPods and cameras. After this (somewhat) harrowing forging of the river, we all laid out our towels and began our day of relaxation.
We spent the day exploring the rocky shores of the river, allowing ourselves to be carried by the currents, swimming around, eating, and drinking. It was wonderful. At one point a couple of us trekked about 5 minutes upriver to a deeper part of the river that has a bridge above it from which hangs an excellent rope swing. I was feeling pretty intrepid as I descended the steep banks of the river to scale the rock that served as the platform for the swing. Since noone else was actually using the swing at the time, we gathered quite an audience whilst swimming over to it. Feeling pretty cool, we began our ascent of the rock, made it about 2 feet, and fell back into the water. Shit, the Ecuadorians did not approve. After a couple more attempts, and finally some assistance from Jeremy, we made it up on the rock and did some crowd-pleasing swings into the river. Redemption! Or so I thought. The next wave of embarrassment came when a girl who looked like she was about 10 years old casually sauntered up to the rock, placed her hands on it, and basically apparated to the top of it. Whatever, I didn’t even want to do that…
After a day of perching on the rocks, we walked about minutes upriver to this clearing area with cabanas and a volleyball and soccer court. It had a very beachy feel to it-I was getting some very "Rocket Power characters turn 21 and Hispanic" vibes from it. Very cool.
August 11th, 2011
Olivia’s Travel Tips: Do: start to like Justin Beiber, because the Ecuadorians sure do. Don’t: giggle when a child tells you they are named Stalin, Lennon, or Adonis. They are not joking.
So, I have really been noticing the height difference thing recently. Before coming here, I made jokes that everyone here belongs to the genus midget.. Turns out, it’s kind of true. I first became aware of this when I boarded a bus that was filled to roughly 175% capacity. Because of the sardine-like conditions, I was forced to stand in the aisle and was squished right against the seats. I realized after several moments that I was looking right down into what was, in theory, the over-head storage bin. Also, as I was grabbing a pole for stability with my arm extended parallel from my shoulder, I noticed that not a single person on the bus needed to even duck their heads to go underneath armpit level on me. 5 foot 8 is sort of tallish for a woman in the United States , but it is positively gigantic for a human being in the Oriental region of Ecuador
Not only am I taller than the tallest Ecuadorian (at least in this region), but my coloring also is not helping me on the blending-in front. The kids at school always call me “ojos del
August 9th, 2011
STUDY ABROAD RULES! (punny punny)
So, in addition to my travel do’s and don’ts’, I have developed over the last few weeks some key rules to live by that I think will help me to get the most out of my time here in Quito. At the risk of sounding preachy, they’ve been helping me out so far, so feel free to use them too! (® Olivia Blahut, of course)
1) Don’t be afraid to ask for help…it’s definitely better to clarify what someone is asking/telling you rather than pretending you know what’s going on, because trust me, wandering the streets of a strange Ecuadorian city carrying roughly 90 pounds of luggage is NOT a pleasant experience.
2) Write something down every single day, whether on this blog or in my travel
Journal. In the past I’ve been pretty terrible about actually keeping the journals
That I have such high hopes for, but by making it a non-negotiable part of my day
It’s become a nice way to vent about things that are frustrating, or remember the
Things that I am loving about being here.
3) In the interest of full disclosure, I must reveal my source for this one: The Happiness Project, a book I read just prior to coming here. The author talks about a strategy called “reframing”, which I have definitely been using. Basically it just means that whenever you’re feeling negative, you should just try to change the way you’re thinking about a situation. For example, I am constantly annoyed here at the fact that we don’t have a car, so are entirely reliant on the extraordinarily unreliable bus system or kind drivers to come and pick us up. We sometimes wait outside of school for an hour before we have a way to get home. This irritates me beyond belief, but then I try (sometimes more successfully than others) to remind myself that it may be annoying to wait, but at least I’m doing so in a beautiful, weird place that I may never again get the chance to visit.
4) Say “yes” to everything. Any by everything, I mean everything within reason. This stipulation excludes illegal drugs, excessive drinking, accompanying people to strange unknown places, and of course, eating guinea pig. It’s easy to sit in my room and be on the computer or reading all the time, but I know I’m happier if I have things to do to keep me busy.
5) Be happy where I am. Yeah, it sucks that I won’t get to see anyone from home or
Midd for 5 months, or get to drive my car or eat my favorite foods or see the fall colors, but I need to try and be content where I am.
Today I got the chance to put one of the Golden Rules into action, and I am pleased to say it went pretty well! It all started when I was snuggled up in a hammock after school one day. One eye was reading my book, and the other had a laser-like focus on a tarantula friend that was threatening to come within a 10-feet radius of me, so I was feeling pretty good. I was considering making a cup of tea and settling in for a little mid-afternoon doze when Jessie, the project coordinator and house-manager asked if I wanted to go for a walk with her. Did I want to? Of course not! We all know I love a good nap waayyyy more than the next person. But I went, because I decided that while there will always be time to nap, there will not always be time to hike in the Amazon.
I put on my hiking shoes in a way that I hoped conveyed how difficult this was for me to pull my lazy self off the hammock and accompany her on a hike, and headed out the door. It ended up being an excellent and beautiful journey. We just walked further down the road past our house, which allowed me to see the jungle from yet another angle. The road curves around the edge of a basin that is filled with all kinds of trees and animals. We are so high up that some of the clouds hang below us in the basin. It was really cool to explore a part of the area that I had never been in before.
We then turned off the road and hiked up, literally, into a waterfall. Jessie, aka Jungle Woman Extraordinaire, instructed me to leave my shoes and socks behind and follow her. I did, despite the fact that it seemed pretty impossible that we would scale a waterfall bed made of wet clay. After much slipping, we were rewarded with an even better view of the jungle and the sound of the waterfall pounding the earth beneath us. Lesson learned: this was way better than taking a nap.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Finally, I managed to start the blog!
Sorry I took so long to get the blog up and running! The internet here is QUITE slow, and so it was a real pain to upload everything from my computer onto the house computer that has internet. But here it is, more to come very soon about my last week in the jungle! Missing you all at home!
August 8th, 2011
Olivia’s Travel Tips: DO check the toilet for tarantulas. DON’T engage the crazy Ecuadorian man holding the potted plant like an infant in conversation. Crazies are crazies, no matter what country you’re in.
Today marks the week anniversary of my arrival at Arajuno (I know, that was weird phrasing, but I couldn’t think of the right way to express that). More importantly, as of Sunday morning I was officially vaccinated against Yellow Fever. For those of you who don’t know , I got my vaccination a mere 5 days before I was due to arrive in the jungle. The thing about Yellow Fever vaccinations is that they must be done 10 days before entering a dangerous area. Oops. But, it would appear that I did not, in fact, contract Yellow Fever and can now be far less paranoid about applying bug spray every 5 or 6 minutes.
Since there is no school on the weekends, we are free to do whatever we want here on Saturday and Sunday. We had been told all week that there was going to be a big festival at a sort of temporary fairgrounds that is located along the road to one of the schools we go to. It is called “diez de agosto” (tenth of August), and as far as I could tell it was their Independence Day rolled together with some celebrations for “Festival del Turismo” which means “Festival of Tourism.” We learned that they had deemed August tourism month in an effort to bring more money into the area. I was fascinated that they were doing so much to increase tourism, yet as far as I could tell, we were the only gringos at this festival. Perhaps there were some Ecuadorians from out of town…although this seems relatively unlikely.
Anyways, in the morning before the festival we caught a bus to Puyo (the bigger town), which was absolutely lovely. After using the high-speed internet and dropping off our laundry, we walked about 10 minutes out of town down to “the riverside.” There, we climbed to the top of this rather rickety observation tower. On a scale of 1-10 of steadiness, with 1 being a tower made of Lincoln Logs and 10 being the Empire State Building, I would put this tower in the 4 range of things. Safety concerns aside, the views were incredible! We could see the whole city, and behind it beautiful outlines of mountains. On the other side we had an aerial view of the jungle, which was also fantastic. Naturally, we had to embrace our inner tourist and take millions of pictures here.
After descending the tower (amidst a frightening amount of wind, I might add), we walked across a bridge (again, questionable design integrity there), to this little walk through the jungle. It followed the river, and we were surrounded the whole time by trees, flowers, and exotic looking plants. Since it was pretty hot, there were also a lot of people just playing and relaxing in the river in an effort to cool off. It was so beautiful, and it kept striking me that we hadn’t had to pay for parking or a ticket or wait in a line to get in. There was just so much beauty and no one was controlling it, it was just waiting to be seen. Once we emerged from the jungle we walked back across the bridge and up this rooftop bar to get a bit of lunch and just enjoy the bright sunshine and great views.
TORO!
Then, it was time for the festival! About 10 kilometers away then had set up a fairgrounds with all sorts of booths, trucks selling stuff, foodstands, and best of all, a bullfighting ring! Now, I was , and still am, I suppose pretty conflicted about the whole bullfighting thing. On the one hand I think it is wrong to torture an innocent animal just so that the crowds will be entertained, but on the other hand I am in Ecuador to learn about their culture, not to judge it. On Saturday, as I am sure will happen in the future, I was walking a thin line between maintaining my morals and ideals, and imposing them onto another culture.
As it was, I probably needn’t have worried about the whole animal cruelty piece of things. This bull was actually a pretty small one, and they didn’t actually hurt it at all, or kill it. It seemed that they only reason it was mad was because it had been cooped up and because someone kept waving red banners in his face. This was definitely a bullfight of the DIY variety. And, as bulls from a DIY bullring are wont to do, these bulls would regularly escape from the ring due to a problem with the door. Namely, that it did not close fully. When the bull would start to squirm its way out, everyone in the stands would basically die laughing, and people seemed remarkably relaxed about the whole thing. Then, roughly 30 men (and by men I mean males ages 4-100) would descend upon the ring and attempt to throw a string around the bulls haunches in an effort to pull it back in. Then everyone played tug of war for a bit until the bull was safely back within the gates. Until the next bull came out, and they repeated the whole routine again. My favorite part of the bullfight was watching the men react to it. The Ecuadorian men seem to generally be reserved, especially in public. But here, they were not afraid to show a little emotion. In fact, their unabashed amusement at the bulls’ antics was what made watching the fight so fun for me.
After the fight was over, we kept walking around the festival and stopped for a bit to have some drinks and chat with the kids from school and our friend Manuel. Finally, when we were all exhausted we fell into bed and awaited our utterly relaxing Sunday of lounging around the house.
August 5th, 2011
Olivia’s Travel Tips: DO bring enough socks to last you two weeks, or else you may find yourself sporting Ecuadorian pairs emblazoned with phrases such as “pretty lady” and “sexy me.” DON’T wait to register for classes until you are in the jungle with internet access a la 1998.
MIERCOLES SIGNIFICA FUTBOL
Wednesday night was the most wonderfully unexpected night here in Arajuno! At around 4:30 we took the bus over to the house of a friend of the Project. His name is Manuel, and he lives with his son Brian in the coolest house ever. You simply walk off the road down into what looks like a tunnel in the bushes, but it leads down into his home, which is really nice, especially compared to the other homes in the area. Manuel is a pretty prevalent member of the community, and is highly devoted to making sure that his people are as educated as possible. In order to meet this goal, he opens up his house once a week to everyone who would like to come and learn English.
This week there were about 10 people there, so we set up some tables on his little patio and worked by the moonlight and light from strands of bulbs hanging from the trees. It felt very cozy and personal. I worked with a man named Masias. He is 40 years old and has two daughters who currently attend high school. Initially, he was really shy about speaking English with me, and really would not respond to anything unless I translated it into Spanish for him. He kept hitting his head and calling himself a cabeza del galllo (chickenhead…), which was more than a little strange. After a while though, he opened up, and we began translating some phrases together. Once we both got bored of that, we had the chance to simply start chatting about our lives. Perhaps I should have tried harder to speak more English, but hey, I wanted a chance to use a bit of Spanish too!
It turns out Masias and Manuel own about 100 acres of the jungle, and they have this dream of building another house like the one we live in so that they could house English-teaching volunteers just like Arajuno Road Project does now. It was touching that these two men thought that our project was worthy of imitation and that they were saving up a lot of money towards meeting that goal.
As it grew darker we started wrapping up evening class and then, when I assumed we would hitch a ride home, Manuel told us that his friend was coming to pick us up and bring us to Triunfo. Everyone else seemed to know this, but I was pretty surprised and curious as to what we were going to be doing.
Apparently, “Wednesday means futbol!” in Triunfo, and that, along with socializing and grabbing some dinner was why we were going into town. (I am realizing now that the word town is a bit mis-leading. When trying to picture the size of this place, imagine making an “OK” sign with your fingers. Now, close one eye and hold the circle up to your open one. You would be able to see the whole town from this circle.) I was surprised to see that this little strip of convenience shops that looks, frankly, nothing but dusty and deserted during the day, comes alive at night. It seemed that everyone in the community gathers on Wednesdays for the weekly soccer game. We stopped and grabbed some empanadas and beers (legal in Ecuador-woohoo!) and brought them over to the stadium to get ourselves some seats.
It may sound strange that such a small, poor town has an indoor soccer stadium…and, well, it is. I don’t mean to make it sound like they’re playing at Gilette or anything, but there is a pretty large, clean, well-lit stadium that is open to the public for however long the game lasts. That’s more than I can say for Cochicuate!
I felt so at home during this soccer game. As we sat on the bleachers, all of the kids from school and their older siblings would come running over as soon as they spotted us and start chatting. Some made brave attempts at English, whilst others vastly over-estimated my Spanish skills and forced me to resort to the ever-appropriate smile, shrug and nod. We joked around for hours about everything from movies, to life in the United States, to their love interests and little siblings. I felt more and more comfortable expressing myself in Spanish because they were more than willing to try and puzzle out what I was trying to say.
It was altogether an excellent night, and I really did feel like I was a member of this tight-knit community.
August 3rd, 2011
FIRST FEW JUNGLE DAYS
Olivia’s Travel Tips: DO wear plenty of bugspray, especially if one is not actually fully vaccinated against Yellow Fever. DON’T put toilet paper into South American toilets…this may or may not clog the sewage system of the whole house that you are living in.
So, my first few days of living in the jungle are behind me! It’s been surprising, hilarious, and a bit terrifying all at once. First off, a bit about the house. It is located 5 hours from Quito and about 2 hours from the nearest city (although really, city is a generous term for the place) of Puyo. The area we are in is centered around this long road called Arajuno that was created originally by people living there, but that in recent years had been paved (again, generous terminology here) by the oil company that drills here. Our house is right off of this road, and is really right in the jungle. At night, you can hear owls, monkeys, frogs, and all types of insects. I was recently told that there were even some jaguars roaming about. More on that later…
The house itself is pretty simple, but definitely has everything that we need. It is made totally of wood so it blends in as much as a house can into dense trees and is arranged as a bunch of rooms that all open out onto a central courtyard. There is a small porch that runs along the inside perimeter of the house, above with are hanging many, many hammocks that meet my napping needs with ease. Five bunk rooms are furnished with a mixture of bunk beds and mattresses balanced on wood planks that are balanced on cinder blocks. I got one of the double mattresses and have ingeniously rigged a mosquito net system that, while heinous and incredibly inconvenient, does get the job done. There is also a kitchen, lounge, and office that all are used as their names would imply…
As for the people, there is quite the interesting mix! Everyone is super nice, and have all been here for at least a month, and so were clearly extremely excited to have someone new to entertain them for a bit. Jessie is 25 years old and is the house coordinator. She is from Florida, and is actually dating a man that she met when she first came to this very house. He now lives in Puyo and brings water filtration systems to indigenous tribes. I actually cannot think of a more romantic story than this way of meeting each other!
Agnes and Phoebe are my roommates. Agnes is 21 years old and is the sassiest of Latvians. After spending a year studying abroad in the States, she sometimes slips into this mixture of Latvian, British and Kentucky accent that is both wonderful and extremely difficult to understand. She is definitely not afraid to say what she’s thinking, and although her English is perfectly fluent, she does not seem to understand sarcasm, which can lead to some unfortunate misunderstandings. Phoebe is a 28 year old Special Education Teacher from Oxford, England. She is one of the more peculiar people I’ve ever met. With fingernails that extend about 2 centimeters past the nail bed, and a habit of eating roughly 4 bars of chocolate and 3 bags of chips, or “crisps”, per day , Phoebe can answer any and all film trivia questions and has a special spot in her heart for Star Wars.
Lastly, Jeff is the other American in the house. He’s going to be a senior at California Polytechnic Institute and is majoring in International Business. He came here because it was a cheap way to see new and interesting parts of the world. Unfortunately, he is sometimes not SO into the whole volunteering part of the volunteer project thing. His most redeeming quality is that he is an excellent chef-so his nights to cook are always wonderful.
Kelsey is the “teaching coordinator” which means that she does a lot of the lesson plans and makes sure that we’re adhering to the curriculum. She is from Scotland, and has spent a ton of time travelling the world. She spent a year teaching in Spain and always says that it was the best year of her life…perhaps some inspiration for me in the future??
I do really like everyone in the house. We obviously spend a lot of time together, and they are all really interesting people who have a lot to say. They all are also really experienced independent travelers, which I really admire. Seeing as though I frequently get lost travelling the streets of Wayland, MA when I have several friends in the car, I don’t think I’ll be attempting too much of that, but I suppose I can always dream big!
TEACHER! TEACHER!
Teaching school has been tons of fun! Getting there has been a bit of a challenge, as there is no working car at the house anymore, so every morning we take a little 30 minute hike up a hill to wait for a bus. Once we get to school though the kids will run right up to us and extend their hands for the ritual “Good morning, hello teachers” that they have been taught to do. It is very sweet and a nice way to start the day.
School each day consists of an arts and crafts project that we use to introduce some new vocabulary words, then some sort of physical game that uses them again, followed by a serious English worksheet, and finally we get to just play a fun game like soccer or tag. This is still the summer session, so things are pretty relaxed.
This week, the theme was “day and night,” so we taught words like “sun”, “moon”, “day”, “night”, and for the older kids we talked about different verbs that you would do in the day and others that you would do at night. The schools are all in extremely poor condition. They are often just simple buildings composed of several rooms that contain little to no furniture. It seems like they have occasionally tried to liven things up a bit, but the efforts have been few and far between so they generally seem a bit sad. Everything is pretty dirty, and most of the kids seem like they probably only own a couple of pieces of clothing and don’t get to bathe that often. It feels really good to be able to bring the arts and crafts supplies that they would otherwise never get, and also to just be able to give them the sort of individual attention and affection that I suspect they do not get much of at home.
OLIVIA HITCHHIKES (BELIEVE IT OR NOT)
After school on Tuesday the other volunteers decided to take me to the waterfall. I didn’t really know what I was in for, but I packed my bathing suit and went along for the ride. Turns out the ride included hitchhiking in the backs of random people’s trucks. I, naturally, was petrified at the prospect of this initially, but when it dawned on me that the alternative was being left on the side of the jungle road, I said a couple of prayers and climbed in. After a couple of minutes, I was so enjoying the view and feeling of the wind on my hair and sun on my face so much that I nearly forgot I was engaging in what was ultimately a stupid and reckless activity. Well, whatever.
Once we got to the little, little town called Triunfo we got out and walked about 5 minutes off the road and came to a little trail into the jungle. After following it down into a sort of canyon for about 8 minutes we came to the most beautiful waterfall that I have ever seen. We were at the bottom of this jungle valley area just surrounded in all directions by lush jungle and soaring trees. This humongous waterfall came out of the side of the valley and fell down into a pool that led into a river that curled off into the trees. We lounged in the sun for a bit and then took a dip in the pool. It was so beautiful, and it was experiences like that definitely were a huge motivation for me to come to Ecuador. I was so happy to have found it, and so happy to be getting along so well with these people who I had just met. A really wonderful way to start my time in the jungle.
August 1st
FROM QUITO TO PUYO TO ARAJUNO
Monday was my big travel day from the capital city of Quito to the remote village of Arajuno where I will be spending the next 2.5 weeks. I woke up at the hostel and took a 45 minute taxi ride to the Quitumbre bus terminal. This was the first time I had a good chance to see Quito. It was really cool. All of the buildings are built all over these huge hills, and there are no skyscrapers so I was able to see a lot of the city at once from the car. I got to Quitumbre, figured out how to buy a ticket, located the right bus, and began my 5 hour journey to Puyo.
WEIRDEST BUS RIDE EVER
So when I first boarded this bus, I assumed that since we were travelling a really long distance, the passengers who were on the bus originally would be the only ones who would be on the bus. Not the case. The bus driver actually kept on stopping the bus (sort of, he mostly slowed down to a roll) and motioning for pedestrians to hop on. They were more than happy to join us, and soon the bus became quite crowded. It seemed like the driver was also allowing the people to simply accept whatever money they happened to have, which was really thoughtful. There was also a sort of co-pilot character, a boy who seemed like he was about 17 years old. This boy would periodically open the doors to the bus and simply hop off of if. He would then disappear for several minutes, only to reappear on the bus a mile or so down the road. Where was he going? Hopping into other cars? Catching other buses? Running rather quickly? Your guess is as good as mine. Although my initial instinct was that he was behaving QUITE recklessly, I also appreciated that he was able to have a bit of fun on what would otherwise be a pretty boring job.
More to come about the actual Arajuno Project!!
July 31st
GETTING THERE
Olivia’s travel tips: DO weigh your luggage before you get to the airport. DON’T wear your cute new shoes for 11 hours of travelling before testing to see if they give you horrendous blisters.
Sunday was my first official day of the adventure! I set off for the airport with the fam at 8 in the morning, and upon checking discovered that I would have to pay 100$ in overweight baggage fines unless I could somehow transfer about 20 pounds of luggage into another little duffel bag I had packed. Unfortunately, the only place to do this little re-organizational activity was on the floor of Logan International Departures gates. It took me a couple of tries, but I was finally able to get both bags under the weight limit. Woohoo! After that little snafu, the rest of my flights were pretty unremarkable, thanks to Brie and Lauren for chatting with me during my 5 hour layover in Miami!
So for those of you who don’t know, the plan was for me to spend the first 2.5 weeks of my time in Ecuador living in the Amazon Jungle and teaching English classes. I had arranged for someone from the program to meet me at the airport, and was expecting for someone to greet me at my gate holding a sign with my name on it. I was under this impression because my Welcome Packet said “you will be greeted at your gate by someone holding a sign with your name on it.” My bad. When I got off the plane, there were plenty of people holding signs, but none of them had my name on them. I took a couple laps around the lobby with my 100 pounds of luggage, backpack and pillow, and finally had to go to a corner and have a quiet panic attack. By this point it was 11 o’clock and I was exhausted and terrified at the prospect of being stuck in a strange airport with all of my possessions and no way to contact anybody. Luckily, a guy who was occupying the same corner sensed my distress (the tears and shallow breathing may have been a tip off) and offered to let me use his cell phone. He was another American who was travelling around Ecuador for work, and was at the airport to pick up someone else from his company. He was very kind, and let me use his international cell phone several times before I was able to sort out the whole taxi situation.
MY RIDE WITH AN INTERNATIONAL DRUG DEALER (PROBABLY)
A taxi driver eventually approached me and told me he was sent from the Arajuno Road Project to pick me up. I went to his taxi, and found two women and one man inside of it. I was placed right across from the man, who was quite the chatty Kathy, and who I also suspected was an international drug dealer. What led me to this conclusion? First of all, when I asked him what brought him to Ecuador, he replied that he was here on business, and specifically to “schmooze with some dealers and see what kind of prices I can get out of them.” Oh dear. Secondly, he was sporting the look that seems reserved for men in questionable professions. His slicked back hair, gold chain, and sunglasses that would have been weird even had be not been wearing them at 11 o’clock at night really were quite the look. When I expressed that I was a little concerned about altitude sickness he advised me to ask for a cup of herb tea should I feel sick, but “don’t ask what’s in it-seriously!” Haha, it’s cocaine! As my new friend Terry warned me, “you can’t take that back to the states!” I think I’ll leave the cocaine tea to gentlemen such as yourself.
After my 10 minute ride in the taxi, I was delivered to the hostel, where I promptly crashed into bed.
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