An Ecuadorian Fiesta in the Andes.

This past Saturday was my youngest host brother´s confirmation. We all went to mass at 9am and it lasted until 11:30am. It´s pretty similar to a confirmation back home. However, what follows is pretty different. My host brother´s godparents drove us back home after the mass. We all sat in one of the rooms in the house which they had cleared completely for the fiesta. First came the soup, which could be considered a full meal with all it´s pataotes and piece of chicken. Then came the actual meal. HA. It was gigantic. It had this kind of corn called ¨mote¨, patatoes with a sauce, a boiled egg, and many piece of meat which included guiney pig. Yes, guiney pig. I finaly had my first taste of it and let me tell you it was probably my last. It had a funky taste to it, not that terrible but I wouldn´t eat it again, especially knowing that I´m eating what is considered a pet back home. Anyways, I didn´t get that big of a plate because I warned them not to feed me so much. It is a costum here to pass plastic bags to guests after a meal, and people just bring whatever they can´t eat back home. Like doggy bags. Anyways, after lunch the drinking and dancing began. Slowly but surely the alcohol kicks in and people start dancing more. I wish I could load videos on here of them dancing but it won´t let me. Let´s just say, as a sober one, it was very intersting to watch. I did dance a bit also but I mostly observed.

So to sum things up, my understanding of the focus of the fiestas here are on Eating, Drinking and Dancing. Quite the party let me tell you.

I´ll try to post pictures of this fiesta and other stuff next time I come to the internet cafe because it´s not letting me today for some reason.

I hope everyone is well at home. I miss you all so much!
Besos,
Marissa

A Typical Day.

On Mondays, Wedenesday and Fridays, I get up at 7:20. I eat breakfast which consists of a piece of bread with jam and fruits. At 8:00 I head to the day care which is a 5 min walk away from my house. I spend the morning there until noon which is when I go home for lunch. My host mom or host brothers usually have lunch ready for me. I normally get some kind of fresh fruit juice (!!!), rice and either an egg, chicken or pasta. I enjoy lunch a lot but I am obviously spoiled to always have it ready for me. After lunch I take the bus (which costs 16 cents) to the hospital where I spend the afternoon until 3 or 4. After that I either head home right away or go into town to use the internet. My host family usually isn´t home before 6 pm so I get bored if I go home too early. We usually start getting supper ready around 6:30 and finish eating around 8:00. After that I usually help my host mom with the dishes although lately I´ve been playing UNO with my host brothers. The first time I asked one of my host brothers if he liked playing cards, he answered that only taxi drivers really play cards so I obviously didn´t taken my UNO game out that day. Now that I have though, they never want to stop playing! After a couple rounds I normally go to my room to read until 9:00, which is when I go to bed. Pretty early, I know, but the sleep is well needed.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I get up at 7:00. I eat breakfast and take the bus to the hospital where I spend the morning with the social worker or if she´s not there I work with a nurse and Janice. At noon I head back home for lunch and then I go to the day care for the afternoon until 3. I´ve started giving English night classes because I felt like I could do more for the community. I teach twice a week from 4 pm to 6 pm. Two other Intercordians come to help me out. I really enjoy doing this although it´s challenging. The kids are great though, sometimes shy but mostly willing to try. It makes up for long days but I like being busy.

Trip to the Amazon (Part 2)

I forgot to mention in the last post that I made a new friend while at the lodge. His name is Toño. He is the cutest thing I´ve ever seen. Ever. We became friends while the group was away on their treck. Slowly but surely he started trusting me and started climbing all over me. He liked stealing our food, drinking our juice and eating grasshoppers. But I still loved him.

Anyways, Sunday morning we already had to leave the beautiful lodge. We went white water rafting that morning though and it was amazing! Scary at times, but lots of fun. When the guide would yell ¨inside!¨, we´d all have to croutch inside the raft and a wave of water would submerse us. We lost one once, she got caught in the wave. But she the guide quickly caught her and brought her back on the raft. When the water was calm, we could get off and float for a while. It was a very fun time! When we were done, we got on the bus and headed back to Quito where we stayed the night again. The next morning most of the group went to tour Quito while me and Janice met up with my friend whom I met during my exchange to Belgium 2 years ago. I hadn´t seen him since and it was really nice to meet up with him and catch up. He took us to the mall because Janice had to order contact lenses. Then we met up with the rest of the group for lunch. After we ate it was already time to head back to Cayambe. We got back here tired and achy but it was all worth it. We had a wonderful trip!

Trip to the Amazon (Part 1)

Last Thursday, 11 out of the 12 Intercordians here in Ecuador headed to Quito to begin our trip to the Amazon. We all met at a hostal where we stayed the night. We went out to eat and then to a couple bars.

Pic on the left: Janice, Me and Alanna.
Pic on the right: Nick, Janice and Maria.

A van picked us up at the hostal the next morning around 8 and we were on our way to Tena. It took us about 5 hours to get there. First off, we stopped at this kind of water park. We felt the heat as soon as we stepped off the bus. It´s crazy how the weather changes here from the coast to the andes to the amazon. There we went into this pitched black cave (with flashlights) and just climbed and swam our way through it. It was really cool! After that we ate lunch in Tena and then took 3 different trucks to get to our lodge. They got sturdier as we went further into the rainforest since the roads got worst and worst. The last road we took has only been there for 5 years. The community around there had no electricity or water before that. About an hour and a half later, we finally arrived. The lodge was very nice, the scenery was incredible. The noise of the bugs was so loud! We did have to kill a couple inside our room. We went to swim in a river close by which was very refreshing. After supper we played cards for a while then went to bed. The next morning was the treck throught the woods. The travel agent here in Cayambe told us that it would be a 3 or 4 hour walk. Then the guide at the lodge told us 5 to 6 hour walk. I was all set to leave until I decided it would probably be best if I stayed at the lodge because of the problems I have with my feet. That was probably one of the best decisions I´ve ever made. They ended up taking close to 11 hours!! My feet would have definitely died by then! So while all my friends were off trecking through the rainforest, I ended up going to a village and making chocolate from scratch. At the lodge there was a Dutch girl doing research for her thesis. She´s doing it on how the new road has affected the live of the people living in that area. So that morning I went with her to the community where she´s been interviewing people for 2 weeks. We had a hard time because some of them were afraid of us and some were just too shy to talk. We finally ended up interviewing one man who was very articulate and nice. On our way back it started pouring rain (even though it´s ¨dry¨ season now), but in the warmth of the rainforest, it didn´t matter, it was actually quite nice! We had lunch then I relaxed on a hammock until Carolyn, the Dutch girl, came to ask if I wanted to make chocolate. Of couse I did! We had chocolate beans which we first grilled and then took of the shell. Then we grinded them twice, the second time sugar mixed to it. We ended up making chocolate sauce, which we then ate with bananas. It tasted amazing, to say the least! After that we played some pool but it was getting pretty late so we started to get worried for the group who was now in the rainforest in the pitch black, with only 2 flashlights for 12 people. Some of the staff went to look for them but had no luck. When they finally got back at 9 o´clock (3 hours after they were supposed to), everyone was fine, exhausted but fine. We had supper and then made a bonfire. It was very nice!

On being a foreigner and on women´s role.

Before coming to Ecuador, I imagine I would kind of blend in with the people since I have dark hair and brown eyes. This brought me comfort because I don´t like to stand out. Well, I was wrong. I definitely stand out here. The people in Cayambe have darker skin, especially in the villages outside of town (which is where I live). So when I walk down the street or hop on the bus, I get stared at like I´m some sort of weird stranger. The kids automatically assume that I´m North American and that I speak english because they´ll yell "Hello!" to me or "Good Morning" when I walk by. The other day a kid asked me "How are you?" when I got on the bus, which is pretty cute but just goes to show that they have no idea that English is actually my second language and probably don´t know that French is spoken in Canada. All of us Canadians or foreigners are the same to them. It´s disappointing, that I don´t blend in, but I guess I should have expected it. I tried to explain to my host family that Canada is very multicultural and people are of all colors, which they hadn´t really realized before. Anyways, I just wanted to point out that the color of your skin can sometimes change someone´s opinion about you, especially in a place like here where everyone looks alike and there isn´t much cultural diversity.

An interesting thing I´ve noticed since being here is the difference in the role and perception of women here compared to in Canada. I was cooking lunch with my host mom the other day and she was teaching me how to make something on the stove. She asked me if I had an oven at home (because they don´t) and I said yes. She said that if my future husband doesn´t get me an oven like her, I´ll know how to cook on a stove. This clearly made me see how they see a women as uncapable of bying herself an oven. The husband deals with the money and that´s that. I haven´t felt that my host is really authoritive in the family. He respects my host mom a lot and I´m pretty sure they make decisions together. But more and more I´m starting to think that this isn´t the case in most families here. I´ve already heard of a few women being hit by their husband, often when they´re drunk, which is a whole other issue (the rate of alcoholism here seems to be very high). My host family also explained to me that one of the reasons why women have so many children here is because their husbands are afraid that they´ll go running off with another man. Their way of avoiding this is to not let them use birth control so that they have to care for more babies and more children. It´s kind of hard to hear and see all this, since women in Canada have so much independence and respect. A single working woman would not be seen here, while in Canada it´s pretty normal. Anyways, I hope to learn more about this subject in the next 2 months. It´s definitely eye opening!

Here´s a quick post with a few pictures of our little trip to the Mitad del Mundo, or middle of the world, last Saturday. I went with 5 other Intercordians and my host brother. It´s just a 10 minute drive away from Cayambe and it´s not all that impressive but it was nice to go somewhere different.

And here´s my oldest host brother in front of the solar monument!

El Centro Infantil.

I´ve been working at the day care for more than 2 weeks now. It´s definitely been fun but also challenging. The kids are too young to really care to learn english so my attempts to teach them have mostly failed. I´ll have to keep trying though. They are very very cute but some are real trouble makers. It´s really interesting to compare the functioning of a day care here and a day care in Canada. I worked at a day care in Fredericton last year so I´m able to observe the differences. For one, discipline isn´t the same. Here if a kid hits another one they just tell him to stop and that it´s bad but in Canada he´d probably go for a time out. I guess they just see it as a way of making the kids stand up for themselves. Also, sanitation is very very different. In Canada, we would disinfect the table a couple times a day and make the kids wash their hands all the time. Here I´ve never disinfected anything, only wiped the tables after lunch. The kids simply wash their hands in water before eating, no soap. Their immune system is obviously stronger than ours and we´d probably be more resistant to colds if we weren´t so obsessed with sanitation. It´s just a different way of doing things. There isn´t any set schedule for activities here either. When it´s cloudy we go play outside in the soccer field but when it´s sunny they can´t stay too long outside because their noses start bleeding from the intensity of the sun. So we often do crafts or drawings.

Something else I´ve notivced during my short time here is that people carry their kids everywhere. They tie them on their back with this kind of blanket and bring them wherever they go. There´s no such thing as a babysitter. The day care finishes around one every day and then they go home with either their parents or a relative. It´s nice to see that they spend so much time with their family. You can also see women working in the fields with their toddler tied to their backs. Pretty incredible!

So I know some of you have tried to post something on here but it says that you need to have an account to do so or something. I have now changed the settings so anyone can comment so you can now do so if you´d like. :)
I hope everyone is well and I miss you all very much!!