mother's day festivities

Mother's day is a big deal in the schools here. It's an all day program, complete with dancing, class presentations and games. I went to two of the mother's day programs, one down where I do the shampoo making and one here in town. One of the games involved pushing one of the moms in a wheelbarrow while she tried to thread a pen through a keychain that was hanging on a rope across the courtyard. The first couple of tries they didn't do so well but then they got the hang of it and started winning more. Each of the grades recited a poem or sang a song for their moms and then presented their (very cute) homemade cards. There was also a soccer game with the moms which is the only time I've seen women here playing soccer. After all the organized stuff there was a dance which went on till the wee hours. I have some pics but forgot to bring my camera so hopefully I'll get them posted next time I'm in town. This was an impromptu trip due to the fact that my bosses were visiting me to do the one year check up so I hitched a ride back to Latacunga with them (anything to avoid the early morning bus ride). We have a new coutry director so it was nice meeting her, as well as meeting the new ag program manager.

less frequent postings

I haven't posted as regularly the past couple of months because the phone lines in town have been on the fritz, and therefore the dial up internet. So I've only been able to post when I've been in Latacunga, which I am at the moment getting some shopping done. Things have been pretty slow because some of the members of the community group have gotten jobs working a ways away and so we haven't been able to have many meetings lately. I've helped plant a few more gardens, but it's heading into the dry season so we probably won't do much more with that for a bit. The shampoo group has branched out into making celery shampoo which is supposed to be good for dandruff (the results are still out on that). My english classes are going alright, the other week we used the song "Fridays I'm in Love" to practice the days of the week. The kids enjoyed the change of pace although I don't know how effective the song was in teaching anything.
Mateo (the youngest kid in the house) has developed a fascination for maps and wants me to repeat the names of the countries over and over. I have a world map in my room that luckily has the names of the countries in Spanish becuase I don't know those very well. He is especially interested in Australia and the fact that there is only one country on the whole island.

Holy week and elections

Well, I´ve finally added some new pictures. The reason for the delay was that I had loaned my memory card to the daughter of one of the community members. She had to make some recordings of herself teaching a literacy class and then make a CD of that. It ended up taking longer than I thought, which means I didn´t get any pictures of holy week. Oh well! The pictures are from a political rally this past weekend, as well as my decorated house. The others are from a Saturday morning when I was letting the kids take pictures around the yard.

Anyway back to Semana Santa (holy week) which was more like holy 3 days. On Maunday Thursday there was a mass which followed the normal schedule except that there were 10 guys up front who all had one of their feet washed by the priest. On Good Friday was the Via Cruces, a reenactment in 10 scenes of Jesus' week from Palm Sunday to the crucifixion. The scenes took place at various points around the village square. The only problem was the lack of microphones which made it hard to hear especially since some of the actors were a bit shy and quiet.

Plus it was pretty cold and rainy, which I guess was good since it put you in a sadder frame of mind for the proceedings. I felt bad for the Jesus actor and the other 2 guys on the crosses since they were basically striped down to their boxers which had to have been pretty cold (I was cold wearing my winter jacket). The easter service was Saturday evening as opposed to Sunday, and about 10 kids were baptized that day too (I think people wait for a special holiday to baptize so there was a wide age range in the kids). So that was holy week in my town.

The political rally was not real different from ones at home, except for the fact that between speakers a song would be played and all the canidates on stage would start dancing. I think this is a tradition that should be started in the states, it would make the debates more fun. Anyway the canidates all got up and talked about how they were going to improve the roads and the schools and give lots of money to the local women's groups for training. What was more interesting were the hecklers in the crowd who would yell out things like "you´ve been saying you´ll build that road for 20 years and it hasn't happened yet!", and other things along those lines. I guess politics is the same everywhere, they promise all kinds of things and then when they get into office they just try to make as much money as possible for themselves. We'll see what happens after these elections.

Election time

So we're heading into the local election season here in Ecuador. There's still a month left, but things are getting pretty busy. There's been a couple visits from candidates here in town and everywhere there are posters and signs. It seems like whichever party you support will come to your house and put up signs and even paint the side of your house. I meant to get a photo of the side of my house all decorated but didn't get around to it before coming into town. Luckily the party my host family supports is the Pachakutik (I think I spelled that right) party which means "rainbow" in Kichwa. So the side of my house has a very pretty rainbow painted on. It's the party supported by a lot of the indigenous people here. One thing I noticed is that pretty much every house has a sign supporting one candidate or another which begs the question, who are they trying to convince to vote for their party? I mean if everyone in town is already supporting a party then who is left to try to convince? I don't know if I mentioned this fact before in my blog, but when you vote you have to go to wherever you got your cedula (gov't issued ID). This means that a lot of people have to travel since most people get their cedula where they were born and then never change the address (I don't know if it's hard to get it changed or why they don't bother). A lot of people from my town have moved to the coast or various cities, so they all have to come back to vote. Plus voting is required or else you can't get a loan or any sort of gov't help (social services etc.). You can get around it if you pay $50 but most people don't have that kind of cash laying around. Well I hope you enjoyed my voting in ecuador 101 essay. =)

slow weeks

So not much new going on here. I finally finished reading all the Harry Potter books in spanish, it only took me a year =) This isn't really much of an accomplishment, since I already knew the story so if there were parts I couldn't understand I just skimmed over them. When I started out reading I was good and looked up all the words I didn't know but then I started getting lazy.
It's dried up a bit here which is nice. My clothes are all nice and dry, always a plus. The roads are a lot more manageable too.

Flag day and more bus woes

It's definitely the season for bus adventures. When I was coming back from town the last time there was a pretty bad mudslide. My bus was one of the first to arrive after it happened but as you can tell from the pictures it got pretty backed up with cars and people. A tractor came to try and help, but it didn't have any shoveling attatchments. All it did was drive back and forth over the slide to try and smooth it over a bit. No one had any tools in their cars either so not much could be done. One of the buses decided to gun it and try to make it over, but that failed spectacularly. So now instead of there just being a mudslide, there was now a mudslide with a bus stuck in it. They tried tying the stuck bus to another bus to pull it out. I don't know how long it took to get the bus unstuck because at this point there was a bus on the other side of the slide that was turning around and heading towards my town. A couple of other people and I traversed the slide and hopped on that bus. Unfortunately that only got us halfway home because that bus was only going to the next town. Luckily there was a group of french tourists going my way so we rented a truck and I got home only 3 hours after I was supposed to. The bus I was originally on arrived maybe two hours after I did. So I didn't save that much time but how was I to know? Sometimes the slides don't get cleared for a day or two. The kids that go to high school in the larger town an hour away have had two "mudslide" days off from school when the road was blocked. It's interesting the difference in travel problems between here and the states. At home you just have to worry about stop and go traffic, but rarely is the road totally impassable (and even if it is there are usually detours). Here I've never been in a bad traffic jam, but when the road is blocked there isn't anything you can do or any other route around it.

The other pics are from the swearing to the flag day at the primary school. Feb 27th is the anniversary of the Battle of Tarqui when Ecuador won its independence from Gran Colombia. On this day the oldest grade all have to come forward one by one and take an oath and kiss the flag. The other grades go forward as a class and say something akin to our pledge of allegiance. It's all very regimented and militarisitc. The youngest kids got to sit down on the steps but all the other kids had to stand at attention for about 2 1/2 hours through all the speeches. I don't know how they did it cause at that age I would have had troubles. I had brought a magazine with me which the little kids enjoyed. Only 5 years old and already reading New Scientist! =)

Carnival

So we're getting into carnival time here in Ecuador. This weekend is when there will be the most partying, but all of Feb has been a party for the kids. How do they celebrate you may ask, well it involves chucking water balloons and shooting squirt guns at eachother (and any innocent bystander in the vicinity). This would be fun if it were warm and sunny out, but since most days are cold and gray I don't find this tradition particularly appealing. As if it weren't hard enough to get your clothes dry after washing (and getting caught in the rain) now you have to deal with wet clothes due to water balloons. Oh well, one more week and I won't have to worry about it =)