Palabra

The sun was shining through the windows of my bedroom early on Friday morning and without looking at my alarm clock I knew what time it was. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday a pig is roasted (with a flame thrower) right out front of my apartment around 8am. It only takes a few minutes from the start of the process until my house is filled with the aroma of bacon and usually a few extra flies. Bacon cologne?
Fridays are my favorite day in Baños by far. Every corner has a pig roasting or some other kind of food cooking over a grill. The spas always seem to play their music extra loud on these days and it gives it the feel of fun beach town. Didn’t bring your bathing suit? No problemo, you can always rent one... Forgot your favorite floatable toy? No worries, we got them too.

I have become good friends with the one of the local tienda guys, Jaime, who I had thought was his brother until after being here a few months. He has shown me house, a 2nd floor apartment on a dirt road surrounded by farms. This is typical for here in Baños. What was not typical was the flat screen-surround sound set up in the living room, the flat screen in the bedroom and the two person Jacuzzi style hot tub with a small flat screen TV. Jaime has done well for himself and has spent some time living and working in Nashville Tennesse. He also showed me the article that crowned him Nashville’s best waiter in 2008. Easy to see that he would win, he is friendly and is always in a great mood.

His father, brother (who also runs the tienda) and mother all run a pig stand on Fridays. It is by far the best pig in Baños. Best part is every once and awhile I get free lunch from them. Nothing like good food for free!

One morning when I opened the door of Pricilla and Cheesesteak’s pen I was angrily greeted by the later. She strutted right up to my feet and gave a few sharp pecks and walked away. My first thought was “maybe I will eat sooner than expected.” Then
I noticed the water trough had been knocked over and was bone dry. When I refilled it the pair of them ran right to it and drank for quite some time. These two seem to be much smarter than the other three chickens I have. They are of a different and dumber breed and have even gotten stuck in the food dispenser a few times which has kept me baffled to this day on how they could do that.

I recently gave up on growing out my beard for two years. After 6 months the beard had run its course and drove me mad. My community found this hilarious. The most common greeting I received began with a good laugh and a phrase similar to “you look so much younger.” Padre Vicente saw me and almost fell over laughing “you look like a fifteen year old boy.” Well, it is true I do look younger, but 15?

Well the whole thing helped me to achieve one of Peace Corps unofficial goals. Provide the locals with entertainment.

My homemade hard apple cider experiment yielded an ok first batch and far better second one. The current fermenting batch at the Baños Brewery is a Cranberry Pomegranate Hard Apple Cider coming to a bar nowhere near you. I might keep this batch for myself!

This past weekend I went to Saraguro which is about 2.5 hours south of Cuenca. Jamie, another PCV, organized a fiesta to get together and have some fun. The main event was a sheep roast (in actuality it was a ram, and we didn’t roast it, it was cooked over a stove) on Saturday. Jamie hails from Texas, but his family is from Mexico so he wanted to share some of his culture (and food!) with fellow volunteers.






It was an interesting yet long process from the moment the throat was cut to the actual eating the meat. However, it was well worth the wait. The sheep tacos were to die for!

The first part Sunday was spent recovering from eating too many tacos and the consumption of copious amounts of cervesa. Afterwards a bunch of us hiked to some spectacular waterfalls and enjoyed the scenery.

Apartment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgtAOUQ-D-g


Enjoy!

Gringo Garden

Things I find funny:
1. One of the older women in my town wears a be-jeweled pink hat that says “White Culture.”
2. Walking to work trying my best to avoid the mud puddles in the dirt road only to fall in one.
3. Naming the local dogs, making up personalities and their back stories.
4. Moo-ing at a cow and having an old lady see me do this and just stare with an expression of confusion.
5. Being the town’s goofy white guy.

So for those of you who have not heard, I can now add chicken farmer to my resume. I now have 5 chickens that I keep at my host family’s house. I also started a small garden, with some things I like and others I hate...
There is a fruit here called “tomate de arbol” and it’s pretty sour and my least favorite fruit ever. I told my host mom I wanted to plant “tomates.” She gave me instructions on where to go in the market and who to buy from. As directed I went to the market and found the right section. A nice lady came up to me and says “tomates?” Strange, I guess she reads minds. (I later found out that Isa had told her a bearded gringo wanted tomates) So she hands me the plants, 4 for a $1. The leaves seemed to be bigger than I remembered, but I paid the dollar and left.
While planting I looked at the leaves of these tomate plants and then at the tomate de arbol ones Isa has. Fuck a duck. I had just planted 3 of these damn things. Oh well, someone else can have the pleasure of eating them.
Garden de Gringo has:
Lettuce, Tomate de arbol, garlic, wax beans (not my idea), radishes, carrots and rosemary. I am going to plant tomatoes, onions and broccoli as well in the near future. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to let me know!
I have also moved out of my host family’s house and into my own apartment. It has a mudroom, bathroom, kitchen, to bedrooms and a little outdoor patio. The larger of the bedrooms is going to serve as the man-cave/brewery. The place is coming along but still needs a stove and fridge. So for now it is peanut butter sandwiches and street food (yummmmmm).

La Gallina

Hey everyone, this is my first attempt at a video blog!

It is me and Isa (my host mother) killing, preparing and cooking a chicken, enjoy!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj4Kr0T3-BE

(Copy the link into your browser to watch)

If you find that gross, check out this article Rick sent to me about chicken nuggets...

http://www.dietsinreview.com/diet_column/10/chicken-nuggets-made-from-pink-goo/

Keep on bloggin'

So as some of you may know I went back to the US for the holidays. I think the biggest shock was the cold! Woo wee was it cold! It was nice to see everyone, friends and family. I did not feel culture shock of any kind that I noticed. What I did feel was an immense amount of appreciation for all we have as Americans. But mostly I felt very lucky to have such supportive and great friends and family.
10 days went very quick and the next thing I knew I was back to work on the other side of the world.

April fools in Ecuador falls on the 6th of January, which is also my birthday. My host family was nice and bought me a small cake to celebrate the occasion. However they had a fun surprise for me. As I blew out the candles they instantly relit to roars of laughter from the family. This went on for several minutes and I have never seen them laugh so hard. I am sure my face expressed my embarrassment and frustration. Finally I just grabbed the candles and dunked them in water and that was that.

As if the trick candles were not enough… Isabel offered me a piece of gum after I had eaten my piece of cake and I should have known better. Sure enough it turned my tongue black as the night. This was also hilarious to the family and I could not help but laugh at myself. Laughing at myself has become a very important part of my life.
This time of the years is also the festivals for the Virgin Guadalupe here in Baños. It is a pretty exciting time to be here. There are frequent parades and lots of fireworks throughout the days and nights. One of the traditions I participated in was the trek behind the idol of the Virgin. Each barrio (neighborhood) decorates the street with balloons and palms to welcome here.

The trek is about 10 km and the streets were filled with people. Isabel called it a “rio de gente” (river of people) and that is what it looked like. It was estimated to be about 2,000 people.




Another fun aspect of the festivals is the plaza central has tons of little tent restaurants set up. Some serve different kinds of shish kabobs (these are great!). The most common one has sausage, green pepper, onion, hot dog type meat, steak and potatoes served on a plate with it.

Other places are a little fancier and have tables to sit at where you can order the typical two course meal. It is usually soup with a side of mote (boiled corn) and the second course is rice with beans and some kind of meat. The typical soup for this festival is sheep liver, intestine and heart soup. It is not too bad but it takes some getting used to. The limes served with it definitely increase the flavor and make it much more enjoyable. It has taken some time but I am finally starting to enjoy some of the food here I did not like originally.

Several carnival games and rides are also set up in the center. The Ferris wheel looks terrifying. I am not a big fan of heights, but this Ferris wheel in particular scares me. It looks very rickety and to top it off it is set up on the side of a very large hill. My imagination ran wild and I pictured it detaching while I was riding it and rolling down the hill all the way to Cuenca. So I passed on the opportunity to ride it.
Sorry it has been so long since I last updated! I am trying to get back on regular blog schedule.

Justin Bieber seriously injured while not playing Beach Rugby

December 11-12, 2010

Sometimes in life, hard work goes unnoticed and worse, unappreciated. This weekend, that was
not the case.

We left around 11pm-ish Friday night to head to Manta for the Beach Rugby Tournament. Half of the bus belonged to us and the other half belonged to the other Cuenca rugby team. Like always, I slept for most of the ride.

Around 7 am at our hostel with a beach front view! Awesome! The weather was a little overcast and the heat of the day had not yet arrived.

While everyone got settled in I went in search of some fruit for snacks in between games. Like most things here, it turned into an adventure.. One of the Christians on the team joined me for the walk. The streets were pretty empty of cars and traffic which is not too strange for a Saturday morning. We followed the directions of walking 6 blocks and turning left away from the beach. When we did so, I found were all the people in Manta were.
The streets were lined with tent and other type of temporary store fronts selling everything. The scene reminded me a lot of the Italian market in Philadelphia but with wayyyyyy more people and cars and bicycle venders. Of course not expecting to find this treasure I did not have my camera. Within seconds we found a banana vender and then a orange vender. The orange vender tried to give us his worst oranges but we were having none of that and made him empty the bag he had filled and start over. In total I was nearly run over 6 times and most near misses were from bicyclists.

Around 10 am we all piled back into the bus to head to Tarqui beach where the tournament was being held.

The brackets were decided and one of the teams in our bracket was the Quito team that won the 7’s tournament this past weekend. It was not going to be an easy road if we were to win.
The first game we played was a bit lopsided in our favor. The next two games were barely won, by a margin of 4 points in one game and against the Quito team we won by 2.
We were all ecstatic to make it to the finals which happen the next day!




Before heading back to the hostal for some much needed food, we all went for a swim in the ocean. The water was a perfect temperature and there were some good waves. We even got to see some surfers in action.

My night was spent hanging out with some other PCVs who were in town for the weekend. We ate seafood at a beach shack and later sipped some beers on the beach.
Sunday…
The team was all warmed up and ready to go. Their energy and focus was clear, they had to win.

The Nomads are a much taller team, each one of their players had a good few inches on the players on my team. They also have a few foreigners on their team (French, English and American) who grew up with rugby.

The Nomads were the first score but they missed point after. Shortly after the Aguila’s answered back and made the extra points. 7-5
Late in the last half with the score tied 12-12 one of my players was sent to the sin bin for “being too rough” for two minutes with only a minute left. This was not good. The

Aguilas were visibly tired but needed to hang on for just another minute.
Sure enough they held out! There was some confusion on how to play out the game out. Most people wanted to do overtime/sudden death. However, the rule book states that each player on each team (only using the players that were last on the field) will have the opportunity to kick an extra point. The team who makes more of these kicks wins. Basically a hockey style shoot out. This was a surprise to everyone. But I had confidence because our best kickers were out on the field. But it was going to be tough due to the rather fast crossing wind.

The Nomads were up first and their kick was off. Christian V, was up for the Aguilas and his kick was good. The Nomads answered back with a good kick. Our next kicker missed and so did the Nomads’. Then Juan barely squeezed one through the uprights making it 2-1. The Nomads’ next kicker made it, shit, 2-2. It all came down to our last kicker Christian C. If he made this, the Aguilas would be champions. If he missed it, well, no one was really sure what would happen.

He lined up for the kick and struck the ball well sending the sand under the ball in the air. End of end the ball split the uprights. I could not believe. Christian fell to his knees and the Aguilas rushed to join him in celebration! Camera men were everywhere snapping shots, this was the moment the Aguilas had been training so hard for and it was finally here.

As each one of them received their gold Ecuadorian Olympic medal, I could see the pride in each one of their eyes.




These days, I will never forget.

December 4th, 2010
We packed the 24 passenger bus full to capacity with people and rugby gear. The excitement was evident despite it being 11pm and a 7 hour bus ride waiting for us in the near future. This was my first game with the Aguilas Rugby Club of the University of Azuay.
We finally arrived at the field in Quito at 10:30 am ready to go! Rugby is usually played with 15 people on a side; however this was a 7’s tournament. Most teams entered two teams in the tournament and so did we.

I was very nervous because this was my first game ever as a coach. The guys on the team had put in a lot of work over the last few months and I wanted it to show on the field. Sure enough it did, the first team we played suffered a 29-0 loss at the hands of the Aguilas. The rest of the day had its wins and losses for our team. Overall the Aguilas took third place which is really good! The team has only been around two years; where as some of the other teams have players who have played their whole lives.

I was proud of the guys and how they played. But I was even more proud when one of the referees came up and asked if we played a lot of 7’s. I told him we did a lot of work to prepare for this tournament and they have worked very hard. He told me the hard work showed and that the team looked much better than when he last saw them play a year ago. I felt like a proud father.



The Aguilas were happy with the day as they should have been, but it was clear that they want to win it next year!
This coming weekend we are off to Manta for a 5’s tournament on the beach. Should be interesting, because I have never seen rugby played on the sand before! Some other PCVs are coming down for the weekend as well.

Sunday December 5th, 2010
I had to leave Quito the night before to arrive in Baños in time for the inauguration of the Home for the Elderly "Dr. Luis Yunga." Brad Mattan, the previous PCV in Baños helped secure a grant which provided significant funding to this home.
The event had a large attendance and the Bishop Luis Gerardo Cabrera Herrera was there as well. Several moving speeches were given and the elderly even prepared a dance routine. The ceremony was concluded with the cementing of a cross and two doves to the top of building. I took about 200 some pictures but do to time restraints and internet connection (and your time) I have only included the top few.






Monday December 6th, 2010
Today was my first day of giving my nutrition charla to elementary school kids. The school is in the same area where Isabel has her plot of land, Nero. Don Iban was nice enough to give me a ride out to the school. He insisted that I do not wear my seatbelt. We will not need those since we are not driving in the city.
I sighed and accepted the fact that I would never feel safe in an automobile here.
We arrived at the school and I must say it was very nice. I hadn’t set my hopes to high though, because it is in an impoverished area. I spoke with the head master and he gave me a quick tour of the grounds. I was to begin with the first grade glass.
I am very happy the markers were washable. The kids had a blast drawing vegetables, fruit and what healthy person looks like. They also had a lot of fun drawing on me and my clothes.
It was interesting to see the dynamics of the class, the boys were all very involved and the girls were very shy. Some spent the entire hour just staring at the marker and paper. No matter how much I tried they would not draw anything.
The second grade class had a lot fewer kids, but was much harder to handle. They were much happier running around punching each other and drawing shapes on their faces. Some even ran out of the classroom. I had officially lost control of the class after about 5 minutes. So

I decided to try a new teaching method. No more mister nice guy. You will draw fruits and vegetables and like it! Well. I was not that harsh, but I definitely showed signs of agitation and they could sense it.
They finally listened to the frustrated gringo and sat down. Then they had some fun drawing and writing their names after awhile.

It is amazing what a one year difference can have.

Since there is no real bus system I had to hitch a ride back to Baños in a camioneta (truck). The unfortunate thing with hitching a ride is you never get exactly where you want to go. At the end of the ride I still had a good 2 mile walk.

I enjoyed it