It appears as though the jungle caught up with Susan last night. I felt sorry for her, she made quite a few trips to the toilet. Luckily for me - she purchased some matches last week and she probably burned through a whole box trying not to kill the two of us with her noxious fumes. I am sure she´ll be really happy that I am sharing this info on my blog, but what the heck, this is supposed to document my experiences in Ecuador - and last night was an experience. Today I visited more schools with Bolivar to provide [View Full Entry]

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Wow, I am ever so busy planning this ¨Festival of Water¨ here in Puyo. Every day this week I am going to different schools to meet with teachers. My job is to arm them with information about the topics of water, water conservation, water quality & quantity, and so forth so they in turn can help their students develop a project to present at the Festival. The first school I visited is right by my apartment. It was pouring down rain and I walked there at 8:00. I met the principal in his office - he remembered me from last week [View Full Entry]

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The other day, as I was walking through the market in Puyo, one of the vendors was selling used golf balls. Now, I thought about the irony in this - 1st the nearest golf course is in Quito about 5 hours away (there are only 4 in all of Ecuador and they are all private) , 2nd they were used, so where the hell did he get them (must be from the one of the four courses in Ecuador), 3rd who did he expect to sell them to? 4th at 5 cents a piece how could he possible be making any [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday was a day to enjoy. I really had absolutely nothing that needed to get done. I thought about building a bed frame and made all the necessary calculations - then decided, that I didn´t want to spend the day indoors doing that - afterall, today was one of the first sunny days in a while. I got up, had some breakfast (yogurt and granola), then proceeded to wash my clothes, sheets, and towels. I used some string I had to put up some makeshift clotheslines on the roof - I would have gone into town to get real clothesline first, [View Full Entry]

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Alright, so I have a funny story for all of you, but sad for me. Last night, I returned to my apartment with a few groceries and a light bulb to replace the one that was most likely stolen by my upstairs neighbour. I put the groceries away, opened up a few windows because it was stuffy, and then went out the front door with a chair to put in the new light bulb. It was about the time that I put in the new lightbulb and labelled the bulb with my name, that I realized the door had accidentally shut [View Full Entry]

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Apparently, while I was at the workshop, Susan met our upstairs neighbors. It was not the best of meetings. Our landlord went out of his way to tell us to use the roof of our building to dry our clothes. Well, we have done this numerous times without any problem. The other day, as Susan was taking some clothes off the line, our neighbor came up and told her that the lines were his and that she should buy her own and stop using his. He was upset because his wife had no place to hang their clothes. Susan replied to [View Full Entry]

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I made it through the taller (workshop) unscathed and with many stories to tell. So, I guess I´ll jump right into the story of my 3-day adventure. The plan on Monday was for me to be picked up on the road near my apartment at 4:30 am. I got out there at 4:25 and waited for Pablo and Carolina, both work for Fundación Natura - Pablo is based in my office at CODEAMA and Carolina is based in Quito. Fundación Natura was the sponsor of the workshop. Now, I knew full well that they would be a little late - Ecuadorians [View Full Entry]

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I made it through the taller (workshop) unscathed and with many stories to tell. So, I guess I´ll jump right into the story of my 3-day adventure. The plan on Monday was for me to be picked up on the road near my apartment at 4:30 am. I got out there at 4:25 and waited for Pablo and Carolina, both work for Fundación Natura - Pablo is based in my office at CODEAMA and Carolina is based in Quito. Fundación Natura was the sponsor of the workshop. Now, I knew full well that they would be a little late - Ecuadorians [View Full Entry]

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So, yesterday I had a good culinary/baking day. I made pancakes from scratch and I baked chocolate chip cookies in our toaster oven. Both managed to turn out pretty well. After my cooking and baking endeavors, we headed into town to catch the end of yet another parade. This was the big one so to speak. It started at 11 and went until 3. We met up with the other Volunteer in Puyo, Katie. She just switched sites this week. She invited us over to her apartment for lunch. She made burritos that were fantastic. The tortillas were made from scratch [View Full Entry]

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Last night Susan and I, as well as two of my counterparts, Karina and Katherina, went to the crowning ceremony for the Reina Indigenas (Indigenous Queen) for our province. There were seven indigenous nations present, but only six had candidates for Queen. The ceremony was supposed to start at 8:00, but that usually means it will start at 8:30 or 9:00 and...that it did. The ceremony had all the pageantry that one would expect for a competition such as this. It is also had a wide display of indigenous inspired music and dance. Eventually, the candidates came out one at a [View Full Entry]

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