Forays, soirees and playing in the woods

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Hello all,

First off, to anomous, yes I am in fact still alive - hope that is not the source of any anguish back home. Secondly, as a heads up this entry is a bit long.

Ment to post an update last weekend, but a quick trip to Quito ended up taking longer than expected and I only had time to chat with the other volunteers before collapsing into bed for way too little sleep before waking up early to pack and head to Ucsha.

I buzzed down to Quito to run with the Hash House Harriers, ¨a drinking club with a running problem.¨ The night before I crashed at a friends place, and sat on a couch (first time in 3.5 months for that) ordered a pizza and watched a bit of the NCAA tournament. This brief forray into normalacy, with a plain night in was just what the doctor ordered, and suprisingly refreshing. The following morning anything resembling normalacy came to a screeching halt, as myself and two others where the ¨Hares¨and as such we set up the day´s run, which consists of leaving a trail of baking flour marking the route. Along the way, we also set a handful of false paths, and of course a beer stop. So, I soon found myself the amusing situation of walking through an enormous city park in Quito, with a backpack on my chest containing 5 pounds of flour, dropping a handful every 50 paces or so. Needless to say, we received more than a few odd looks and several polite inquiries. Afterwords, I was covered from head to toe in flour, appearing as if I had emerged from a heck of a night indulging in an expensive Columbian habit (barring the purple backpack, along with my running shorts and shoes). However, the Hash went as planned - other than a temporary misplacement of four participants and a brief encounter with the police, who threw us out of the road for drinking beer on the street.

As for life in the community, nothing wild and crazy to report, but here´s what I´ve been up to. First, funny little things. Last week I tromped to the bus stop in Angla (when I told an ex-pat in Quito that I lived about half an hour past San Pablo, he replied ¨wow, you´re really in the middle of nowhere!¨) carrying a sack of potatoes for another teacher, when I plopped the sack down and sat to wait for the bus, a gentleman next to me performed a quick double-take and promptly asked ¨where did you come from?¨Even better, another volunteer recently went to a child´s baptism, and curiously noted a sack resting on the ground at the front of the church, later she was very suprised to see this sack walking away in the midst of the service.

In the school, I´ve pretty much given up trying to gossip with the teachers in Spanish for two main reasons. One, they don´t know how to slow down when speaking, and more importantly, I really can´t get myself to care about the other teacher´s new shoes. Instead, I just play with the students. I have quite a bit of fun, and am happy to have found a place immaturity is a benefit.

A couple of weeks ago I scooped up a first grader and lifted him above by head, not realizing that every kid in the school would also want a turn. I soon found myself surrounded by a scrum of youths yelling ¨a mi, a mi, a mi¨and I spent about an hour picking kids up. Funny with the little ones, starts to get trickier with the fourth graders. With the biggest kids, I gave up and threw them over my shoulder and spun them in a circle. Also, the kids in my family really like this, so I do the same with them. This pattern repeats pretty much daily, and today I had to carefully extricate myself from such a pack in order to make it to my bus on time.

Also, the walk home from school takes about 20 minutes on a dirt path leading through through an idyllic woods. Plenty of trees, which are spaced for enough apart to allow one to see quite a ways, and to be able to run through them. Also, the understory is well manicured by the various flocks of sheep we always end up walking through on the way home. As such, the scene is set for interesting experiences and occasionally the walk takes about 45 minutes due to impromptu games of keep away and leaf fights (not too complicated, pick up a pile of dead leaves and throw them at the person nearest you).

Recently, for no particular reason, I woke up in an atrocious mood. Walking to school through the forest to school with a pack of kids the day after a rainstorm, I quickly found myself the target of the classic branch pull trick. At first, I grumpily ignored it (fortunate for me, I happened to be wearing my rain coat), however, I couldn´t resist the laughing kids and soon found myself tearing through the forest with the kids, trying to get them wet. With size and weight on my side, my tactic turned into grabbing ahold of a kid, and holding him under the tree I was shaking, thereby getting myself as wet as the target. Needless to say, we all showed up to school dripping wet, but smiling and laughing.

However, even playing with the kids oftentimes I am stuck with standing around with a puzzled look on my face. Waiting to go home one day, I spotted a group of 4 first grade boys racing across the playground, nothing exceptional, but when they came back they promptly took off their shirts and shoes and and again raced through the mud, this time half naked. I still haven´t a clue as to why. Also, I recently visited some students after school and played games, which usually included me staring at kids running in various directions, trying to figure out what is going on.

Also, at school, things stay interesting. I made a brief foray into teaching computers (why they had the native Spanish-speaking volunteer teaching English and the native English speaker, with atrocious Spanish, teaching computers is beyond me). The lesson for the first day: the Shift Key. However, during free time the next day I noticed a student monkeying around with a computer and unsuprisingly, afterwards it didn´t work. Thus after one day, my career as a computer teacher ended. Another fun twist, one day the teacher of the first and second grade (you get two grades for the price of one in a class here) didn´t show up. As such, I was handed 33 kids and asked to entertain them for an hour. The next day, ditto, however this time the door to the classroom was locked and the kids sat in a line outside the school. I successfully managed to entertain the kids, an am fairly confidant that no job in the future will be able to suprise me with a ¨can you do this?¨task.

Life in the family keeps on keepin´ on. One of the dogs recently killed a chicken (when I asked why, my 10 year old host brother looked at me like I was stupid and said ¨because he wanted to eat.¨) so I´ve actually gotten meat for a couple of meals, which is unusual. However my first meal in the community shrank my desire for meat with my meals, dinner consisted of soup, and as the guest of honor I got a chicken foot, with scales nails and all (in case you´re curious, I have no idea how to eat a chicken foot, there´s isn´t much meat on them) and the heart and lungs. Made a valiant effort at the foot (really odd to eat, because you hold the foot as you gnaw away, so it´s like you´re shaking hands with dinner) and scarfed down the lungs as quickly as possible. Proud to say, I´ve yet to have a meal that I had to turn down (knocking on wood as I write this). However, my brother visits in a couple of days and is a notoriously finicky eater, I´m flat out curious as to what his reaction will be to whatever he receives. As for the rest of my meals, hmmmm . . . rice, potatoes, soup with potatoes, rice, soup with rice, some tomatoes, rice, soup, onions, soup, did I mention potatoes?

Other than eating and sleeping, I´ve also begun teaching my 18 year old host brother (I have 8 host siblings ranging in age from 20 to small enough to be strapped on the mothers back) ¨English for tourists¨ or more accurately, ¨English for making money¨ for a couple of hours every day. Interesting change of pace from 25 kids, but a bit more challenging in that we move through material at a voracious pace. However, it´s also excellant practise for my English because he is patient enough to correct my numerous errors. However, last night he and his mother argued that learning Spanish and Kichwa is easy, but learning English is difficult, and wouldn´t agree that if one speaks English his whole life, English is easy, but makes learning Spanish (not to mention Kichwa) slightly tricky. I´ve also been asked if my English is better than my Spanish, it is, but only slightly.

As for the weekend, need to get my passport stamped in Quito, visit a friend, then my brother shows up on Saturday and we´ll travel Ecuador for a week. Talked to him yesterday, and mentioned that in reponse to my host Mom´s inquiry as to what he eats, I told her ¨everything,¨ (which is really funny if you know how picky my brother is) then told him about my first meal in the community. There was a brief pause, and he said ¨why did you do that?¨ and I laughed and told him that I can´t wait to see the look on his face when he gets a chicken head in his soup. He had a response, but I don´t think it´s suitable for this website.

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Comments

[anonymous]

Glad to know you are still kickin', with all of the nasty food you have been eating it does make one question your return home.