Precious Pristinos

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February 25, 2011

This week has been one of ups and downs, though at the moment I’m back in the ups. The downs were bad, but fortunately relatively short-lived. It is 9:30 Friday night. Friday nights mean nothing to me anymore, seeing as we have ‘school’ every Saturday morning at 8:30 just like every other day of the week and since I really can’t be out late ever. Tomorrow we are doing a sort of potluck. Each language group is bringing a dish to share; half are bringing American dishes and half are bringing Ecuadorian dishes. My group made an Ecuadorian dessert dish called pristinos. They are awesome. They are pieces of fried dough which you then drizzle molasses syrup stuff on. Again, they are awesome. My host mom Zoila helped us make them. Our dish is definitely going to be the best. Boom.

Ok, so there are 2 main groups within the volunteers: AG (Agriculture) people and then NRC (Natural Resource Conservation) people. The two groups often do different activities. I am in NRC. Within these groups, there are different language groups depending on skill level. Within NRC, I am in a language group with Paige and Bevan. On Thursday, we had to go to a local school and do some sort of presentation on an environmental topic for 45 min – 1 hour, in Spanish of course. We decided to do ours revolving around water. I was pretty nervous for it because we did not have much time to prepare at all and I am still not comfortable with my Spanish speaking skills… especially to do a presentation entirely in Spanish…. But it went really well! I was SO relieved. The kids totally got the message, timing was good, and we even understood them too for the most part.

The day continued to be a success as we returned to the training center and built a small tree nursery, which is more complicated than I thought! But a great hands-on, physical activity. Hopefully they put down some roots and grow grow grizzow.

The next day was awful, not due to anything in particular per se. Communication was not at its finest and frustrations were running high. The most important part is that I got over it.

Today went back to being a really good day. We even got to do some recycled art projects to learn about environmental education through art. It was great. I made a bird feeder out of a plastic bottle, a wallet that I am actually going to use out of an old juice carton, and some homemade paper.

Next week is our first tech trip. AG and NRC are each split in 2 groups, so there will be 4 different ones in all, each with about 10 volunteers. Our group is going to an area called Tena for the week. This area is located in the Oriente, and for those of you not familiar with what the Oriente is… I’m going to the jungle! We leave Monday morning at 6 am and don’t return until Friday evening. I am unsure of what we will be doing, but I am very excited! It is going to be extremely hot, extremely humid, so sweaty, so muddy, So BUGGY. But hey, it’s the jungle.

Before ending, a few more things to note:
- I am going to have Such a tan face and forearms. Yay?
- You can’t flush toilet paper down the toilets here. All toilet paper goes into a waste basket next to toilet. This is difficult to get accustomed to.
- Many, if not most, restrooms do not have toilet paper in them. If a public restroom does, it will be as you walk into the restroom and never in each individual stall.
- There are no clothes driers.
- The ice cream here is amazing. My favorite flavors are coco (coconut) and mora (raspberry?).
- I put my nose ring back in. And I don’t have to worry about covering my tattoos. Both are reliefs.
- Believe it or not, I have found some friends among the volunteers. No good Ecuadorian friends as of yet. That will be more once I go to my site in 2 months.

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Comments

[Gent]

U SSIM
Hola mi hermana.... Gracias por las updatas! Espero que tu estando un buenisimo tiempo! amores y abrazos!! let me know if you need translating... lol XOXOXO