Thursday, July 26, 2007

Tsachila dance, a caecilian, muscle men, and our school garden

These pictures are a little jumbled and I don´t feel like fixing them, so bear with me while I jump around a bit! The above picture is from the Tsachila dance Trent, Trisha, Gaby and I did for a Peace Corps youth leadership conference. Trent lives with the Tsachilas, an indigenous group, so he taught us the steps for the dance and helped us with our costumes and face and body paint. Trisha is on the left, and Trent is on the right in this photo.
Trisha, Trent and I were pretty much inseparable during the month of July. We went to the anniversary festivities of Santo Domingo, which included a muscle man competition, a fair with rides and carnival games, and lots of dancing. Here´s a picture of Mr. Santo Domingo 2007!
We were the only gringos at the Mr. Santo Domingo competition. I enjoyed the event, because it was a nice break from all the beauty pageants I have to go to. I´m going to another one on Friday, for the election of the queen of the Catholic church in La Asuncion. We´ll see if they ask me to be a judge again this year!
In addition to attending muscle men competitions together, Trent, Trisha and I also worked together on the garden behind the elementary school where I teach. The kids were great, super helpful and energetic. They prepared the soil for planting, brought fertilizer from home, mixed it into the soil, and helped us plant seeds. Here´s Trent giving seeds to the kiddos to plant.
We planted lots of vegetables, some fruits, and herbs. And just about everything sprouted, which is very exciting!
The little girl in the front center of this photo is one of my favorite students. Her name is Sylvia, and she always runs into the garden to help me out when she sees me working, even if school is over and she can go home. She helped me water the little seedlings today. She just started kindergarten this year. She likes to run up to me and give me a big hug when she sees me =)
We told the kids repeatedly not to run in the garden and not to step on the seedbeds, but some of them still run around and smoosh seedlings. Oh well!
More kiddos planting seeds. The little girl in the front left of this photo is another one of my favorites, Gisela. She is very sweet and will run over to work with me if I´m working in some area of the garden by myself.
Here´s Trent, fixing a hole in the fence. We have been waging a war with the wandering chickens in the neighborhood for about 6 weeks now. Every time we fix a hole, those darn chickens always seem to find another way in. My dad and I also discovered that chickens CAN FLY and therefore can just fly over the fence, making all our efforts pretty much futile. But, they didn´t eat all the seeds, so I am pretty happy about that. But I still hate those chickens.
Trisha working hard in the garden.
Seed beds before anything sprouted. I´ll take some current photos of the garden to show how much has sprouted.
Here are some plants that were already in the garden before we started working there. The Peace Corps volunteer I replaced had already worked in the garden, building the seed beds and maybe working on the fence. So that made our tasks a little easier.
Here are some old photos from March of Trent´s dad´s visit. We went on a short hike in La Perla. Trent´s dad Rocky is on the left and Placido, the guide, is in the middle.
A self-portrait of my face after Trent had decorated it with black marker so that I looked more like a Tsachila woman. I also put some multi-colored ribbons in my hair. Trisha after Trent painted her face. She is also wearing some traditional Tsachila jewelry.
Gaby is in the front in this photo, and I am right behind her.
At the end of our dance, we pulled some people from the audience to dance with us.
Random people dancing with us.
Gaby and her posse! Gaby is a high school student who receives a scholarship from Peace Corps. Every year, she gets an invitation to attend a youth leadership conference for all the high school girls in Ecuador who receive Peace Corps scholarships. The girls are asked to talk a little bit about their local culture. Gaby asked Trent, Trisha and me to perform a Tsachila dance with her. There was no other reason for me and Trent to attend the conference. The Peace Corps volunteer organizing the whole thing tried to get me to help out, but I hid, because I was not there to work, just to dance =) Gaby was the only girl who brought along her own posse!
Trent and I standing in front of a giant ficus tree in La Perla. Or maybe this is a ceibo tree.
Trent and his dad in front of a strangler fig, I think.
We found a dead caecilian on our hike in La Perla, which was very exciting for me because I had never seen one in the wild before. I still have to identify it.
Here´s a better photo of the caecilian.

We found this bat on a strangler fig. The nice part about hanging out with Trent´s dad is that I am now very famous with his family back in South Dakota. I´ve also started emailing Trent´s mom, so I can get to know the whole family before Pierre and I visit them in South Dakota =)

posted by Unknown @ Thursday, July 26, 2007 0 comments

Monday, July 16, 2007

Pictures from Priscilla and Ed´s visit

Priscilla and Ed just got back from a wonderful honeymoon trip to the Galapagos; their pictures make me eager to go to the Galapagos again. I joined them for the first two days of their honeymoon, when they were in Quito. They got some amazing photos of wildlife in the Galapagos, so I thought I would share the link to their album:

http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=86141184471839958/
l=249599827/g=3994560/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

As Carrie kindly pointed out, this link does not work unless you copy and paste the top part in, and then copy and paste the bottom part in, after the first part. I had to separate the url because having it all on one line was screwing up the columns on my blog. Let me know if that works Carrie!

Here are some other random thoughts:

Trisha and I had a successful workday at the elementary school in La Asuncion today. All the kids helped, and they were great little workers. We broke up the soil and all we need to do now is add some fertilizer and fix the holes in the fence around the garden, and we´ll be ready to plant some seeds. I´ll take some pictures when we´re planting and put them on my blog. We´re going to plant vegetables, fruits, and herbs that they´ll then be able to use in the school lunches.

It seems like I will be performing another dance. . . My mentee student Gaby wants to do a traditional Tsachila dance with me, Trent, and Trisha for an upcoming youth leadership conference. We´re going to try to get some Tsachila outfits and Trent is going to show us some moves. Should be interesting. To think this all started with Julia´s birthday dance performance. . . Ever since then, I´ve found a way to make other people join me in some dance performance every year, even if it is only for my family.

I´ve found a new way to torture Trisha. She is a Green Bay Packers fan, so I wore my Bears jersey to a little get together at her house last week. She did not appreciate it, so I think I might wear it every day until she finishes her Peace Corps service =) The jersey is huge, and Lindsay thinks I look scary in it. Which is exactly the look I am going for! It can be my new self-defense strategy in Santo Domingo.

posted by Unknown @ Monday, July 16, 2007 1 comments

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Venomous snakes!






This modified leaf serves as a home for a tent-making bats. These bats make their own roosting sites by biting leaves in a specific pattern to make them fold over, forming a small tent for shelter from rain and predators during the day.

Last night, I went on a hike in La Perla with my friend Trisha and the guide Placido. I finally saw my first venomous snake in the wild! Trisha is my good luck charm. Here are the photos:

The first one we saw was an eyelash palm pit-viper, Bothriechis schlegeliii. Placido was trying to get me to stand closer to take pictures, but I said, no way! Thank goodness my camera has a good zoom lens, so that I didn’t have to get too close.

Both snakes were active, but not very interested in us. I’m glad that they weren’t aggressive or defensive, or seemed inclined to try to strike. The first snake seemed to follow our movements, but didn’t move from the branch it was sitting on. The second one, which was much larger, just slithered away into the underbrush before I could take a picture. I was not going to chase after it either!

The managers at La Perla have started letting me lead hikes on my own. It wasn’t too bad the first two times I did it, we didn’t encounter anything too scary. Trisha and I also got stung by wasps last night. I got stung on my arm and leg. Seeing the fer-de-lances and being attacked by the wasps makes me hesitant about leading hikes on my own again. If another bee or wasp attacks me, I will probably just flip out. And I don’t really want to run across another venomous snake without a guide with me. Don’t need to make my mother worry more than she already does!

According to one study, Bothrops “are responsible for more human morbidity in the New World than any other group of venomous snakes.” (Campbell and Lamar 1989).

My Extractor kit (Peace Corps issued snakebite kit) manual says that every time a person is stung by a bee or wasp, the venom causes your body to build both a greater tolerance and a greater intolerance for the next sting. This tolerance decreases in about 6 months, but the intolerance continues to build throughout your life. So, since my bee and wasp stings occurred within 6 months of each other, my intolerance must still be high, and the wasp stings didn’t hurt as much as they might have. They still hurt, and put me a foul mood. But, at least I know my tolerance is up for the next 6 months! I think I’ll be a little jumpy about any buzzing sounds I hear the next time I am in the jungle, but that is not going to stop me from going to the Amazon 2 more times this year! And I will continue to hike in La Perla at least once a month.

posted by Unknown @ Wednesday, July 11, 2007 0 comments