mascotas favoritas
MacGregor y Lina
I posted this entry during my last computer class as I was trying to teach my students how to set up a blog and write entries. Congress recently voted for Santo Domingo to be its own province, so we are no longer part of the Pichincha province. The computers I was using for my computer class are the property of the Pichincha province, and apparently the prefecto of that province doesn´t want us to have any of the Pichincha province´s resources, so those computers are probably going to be removed soon. Thank goodness my computer class ended just in time! A couple of my students set up their own blogs, and I added links to their blogs on my homepage. Oh, and the title of this blog means "Favorite Pets". Lucy came up with that. =)
The above picture is of my friend Jenny´s cat, MacGregor, snuggling with my cat Lina. MacGregor stays with me whenever Jenny goes on trips, and he and Lina are the best of friends and very cute and mischievous when they are together.
LA ESCUELA
This is a picture from the annual community festivities for the Virgin of La Asuncion. The night starts with a parade through town of the decorated trucks of some of the families and the elementary school. This is the elementary school´s truck/float, with their candidate for the beauty pageant, and some of the little girls in the kindergarten class. The girl on the left in the white dress is one of my favorites, Sylvia. She started jumping and waving when she saw me, which is why her pigtails are flying behind her. I love getting a reception like that. I don´t think I get that kindof reception anywhere else. Maybe I can get Pierre to wear pigtails and jump up and down at the airport when he sees me for the holidays =) Next to Sylvia is Vanessa, another one of my favorites. I don´t know who the other little girl is. The pageant contestant is Ruth.
Vanessa is a great little helper in the garden. She´ll work with me long after all the other kids have left. And she has learned the rules of the garden, like don´t step on the seed beds, and don´t throw trash on the ground. Last week we had a minga (work day) with all the kids to clear the weeds from the garden. I was nervously watching some kids swing a machete and absently stepped on one of the seed beds. Vanessa immediately yelled at me "No pisan en las camas!" which means, don´t step on the seed beds. She made me so proud! I was happy that one of the girls worked with the machete, and I made sure the boys gave her a chance to clear some weeds. The kids let me use a machete for about 30 seconds, then probably decided that I had no idea what I was doing and promptly took it away from me. Oh well. No one was injured and all the weeds were cleared, woohoo!
I usually never bring my camera into Santo Domingo, but there are some times I really wish I had it on me. Recently, I saw some graffitti on the side of a building that said "Wu-Tang Clan". Most of the graffitti in Ecuador seems to be politically related, as there always seems to be some election going on. But I was happy to see that somewhere in Ecuador, there is some person who is so into the Wu-Tang Clan that they felt the need to tag the name on to a wall. That graffitti is already gone, before I got a chance to take a picture of it. Bummer.
My kids´ club seems to be going well. I bribed the kids with stickers, Zero Coke, a postcard and a bookmark to help me pick up trash around town last Saturday. Perhaps it is not the best idea to give kids soda at 9:30 in the morning, but they were really excited about it. And some of them seem genuinely interested in learning English. One girl, Jennifer, who is in 5th grade and is more knowledgeable than me about Ecuadorian botany, showed me her little binder where she keeps all the worksheets and things I give them. I thought that was really cute.
Does anyone have any idea what the jaguar shark from the movie the Life Aquatic looks like?
Kiss from a mosquito
Even after living here for a year and a half, some things still continue to surprise me. Last week, a mosquito bit me on my lip. As Trent would say, What the fart? I didn´t even know a mosquito could bite me there. My lip swelled and stayed that way for about a day, which was rather embarassing. My friend Lucy told me that I better not tell Pierre that some other creature kissed me. Of all the things. . . I would have preferred a frog! Miles said my lips looked really “full.” This is only the second time since I´ve been here that some bug did a number on my face and made me look a little deformed. When I first got to my site, I was being lazy and didn´t put up my mosquito net. One morning, I woke up with a swollen face. Something had made a bite mark trail across my face. Just another time that I felt like hiding in my house all day.
After my lips returned to their normal size, I went with Maggie back to La Esperanza to visit our host families from training. I haven´t been back since we swore-in as volunteers, but I had promised my family that I would visit before I finished up my service. Last week seemed like the perfect time since we were both in town for a Peace Corps meeting. We visited Maggie´s family first, and met her host sister´s new baby, who was adorable and smily. Then we went to my family´s house. I was pretty nervous, because I was afraid they were going to give me a guilt trip, or the whole thing would be awkward. But it was fun, and I´m glad I went. My host mom at first couldn´t believe that it was me. She kept saying, “You´re not Ariana.” Then she said that I was much smaller when I lived with them. Which is a little bizarre because I haven´t gotten any taller and I think I weigh about the same or a little less than when I was in their house. Maggie says maybe I just seemed smaller then, since everything was so new and kindof scary. I told them about Pierre and our wedding plans, and that I was planning to move to New York City and sell empanadas in the park and make babies. My host mom and I had this little joke when I lived in her house that I should go to the park and sell empanadas. I´m not sure why she thought that was so funny, but she thought it was funny again when I brought it up. I am not really planning on making babies as soon as I get back to the U.S. I figure I still have a few more years of freedom before that!
Maggie and I were staying at another volunteer´s house, but we didn´t want to offend our host families by refusing to stay with them. I learned that Maggie and I should figure out our stories before we start fibbing. First, we told our families that we were staying in Ibarra because of our meeting. That was just a bad lie, since La Esperanza is closer to our meeting place than Ibarra. Then I tried to salvage our story by saying that I just didn´t want to carry my backpack around with me when we were traveling, so my backpack was already in Ibarra. My lying skills and/or Spanish proficiency completely failed me, and my host mom had no idea what I was talking about. She said, “Your backpack is on a bus by itself to Ibarra?” Um, no. Anyway, I think she knew we were lying, but didn´t make us feel too bad about it.
My school garden is doing well! We´re going to harvest some more vegetables next week. Some of the kids know more than me about gardening, so I feel like we are learning together =)
I have recruited my Thriller dance team; Miles is MJ since he is tall and a boy and already knows how to dance like MJ. Maggie is the damsel-in-distress and Katie, London, me and maybe Trent are the zombies. I know that doing the dance now would be completely unoriginal after the Pinoy dance performance, but I am obsessed and want to learn it. I´m not sure where we will perform it. Maybe as a welcome to Ecuador dance for my family in January? I have plans for another, different dance with the same dance troupe, perhaps for our last Peace Corps meeting. We´ll see how that turns out.
Calendar Girl!
Four of my wildlife photos made it into the Peace Corps Ecuador calendar! Woohoo! I got one month, June, plus two small inset photos and a small photo on the back cover. I haven´t seen the calendar yet, but I think they used my pictures of a snake, an ocelot, and some frogs (of course!). They used a picture of Trent in a Tsachila skirt for August. I think everyone is going to get the same Christmas present this year. . . a PC Ecuador calendar.
I stopped trying to teach English in the elementary school because I couldn´t control the kids. (I´ve never been able to control kids. I think my 15-year-old cousin Cassie once bossed me around.) I´ve started a weekend ecological/art/English kids club. We had our first meeting on Saturday, and 12 kids showed up, which made me very happy! I would have felt very unpopular if no one came. The kids are much better, and we can actually do some activities, rather than me yelling the whole time. I´m so excited about this, and I have lots of ideas for fun things to do, now that I don´t have to worry so much about behavior issues. I think I am really, truly, finally happy with my Peace Corps service and being here, which is a nice change =) But I am not going to extend, and Pierre and I are very aware of how many days I have left (less than 200!).
One of my students is going to be in the elementary school beauty pageant, and each contestant has to perform a dance. Her mom asked me about American dances, and I got all excited about teaching her a routine from a dance movie. I showed them the dance from Napoleon Dynamite and all the dances from Footloose. I couldn´t figure out how to turn on the Spanish subtitles, so I had to explain to them what was going on: "In this scene, Ren is so angry that he just has to dance. And there also happens to be gymnastic equipment in the warehouse." I even made them watch the video of Pierre, Cassie, Alyssa, Sasha and I doing the Napoleon Dynamite dance. I was going to move on to Michael Jackson videos, Flashdance, and maybe Grease, but then their dvd player broke, thus crushing my dreams of teaching Belkis a sweet American dance. That really would have been the apex of my Peace Corps service. Oh well.
In my free time, I am busy trying to add to my goodreads list and Trent and I are trying to get through the first 5 seasons of the Gilmore Girls. Cassie, Jamie, and Shannon should be very proud of me!
MacGregor y Lina
