Nicaragua Update

I promised an update on my trip to Nicaragua, and here it is. I had this half-completed and saved as a draft for the past month. Better late than never, right?

My trip to Nicaragua was great. It was so exciting to see good friends from college and to enjoy some poolside relaxation. It was a great encouragement to swap stories and talk about how Manna can improve as an organization. I got to visit MPI Nicaragua's communities, and I attended most of their programs. I got to compare our Women's Exercise and English classes. It gave me several ideas to try in our communities. Even though our community members and cultures are very different, I think some activities and teaching methods can be applied to both sites.

One of my favorite parts about my visit was helping out with their Child Sponsorship program in La Churreca (the city dump, where a large number of people live and work). We got to give oatmeal and powdered milk to kids in the program. I also enjoyed their Intermediate English class. They had several tables filled with students and a PD doing one-on-one help at each table. It was super interesting to see how successful some of Nicaragua's programs have become in 5 short years.

Our Mini-Hokie Reunion

All in all, it was a great trip, but I was excited to get back to Ecuador and the work I've been involved in. Ecuador has truly become home, and we have nowhere to go but up.

Ecuador today, Nicaragua tomorrow

Sarah Scott and I are leaving the Manna House at 7:00am tomorrow. Why, you ask? We are hopping on a plane to go to Nicaragua. We are doing a site exchange for a week and celebrating MPI's five year anniversary.

We'll stay at the Manna house for the week and see how programs are run there. I'm very much looking forward to learning how to improve our organization as a whole and programs here in Ecuador based on attending MPI Nicaragua's programs and experiencing how Manna runs in a different country. An huge added bonus is that I'll be able to spend quality time with Leah and Hemby. ALSO, Tim Buttril and Kristen Walker will be in Nica for the week. It'll be great to spend time with some of my beloved Hokies. I'll update when I get back November 28th! Until then, I send my love and prayers. Happy Thanksgiving!

p.s. The following pictures are from my FIRST trip to Nicaragua in 2006. This was the trip that made me fall head over heels in love with Latin America and redefined my goals for the future. I can thank that trip to Nicaragua many years ago for leading me to where I am now. So in the spirit of the holiday, this a tribute to my thanks for that initial trip to Nicaragua and where God has so faithfully led me over the years.

It's Electric.... Boogie Woogie Woogie

New development in Ecuador: no power. Ever. Ecuador is in the midst of it's worst drought in over 30 years. We are supposed to be in rainy season (rain every afternoon), but we've had maybe 10 days of rain since arriving in July. Since most of Ecuador's power is hydroelectric, we are in the midst of an energy crisis. This means that every day we have a power outage. Our neighbors helped us out by showing us the website that posts the time of the scheduled outing the night before. Therefore, our outages are planned, but inconvenient nonetheless. Our house in Conocoto is on a different schedule than the library in Rumiloma, so we are usually without power for 8 hours a day. This makes holding classes/planning for classes/updating my blog very difficult. But again, learning flexibility is one of the joys of living in Ecuador. Hasta pronto.

Canoa y Cankles

This past week, there were 2 Ecuadorian holidays. On Monday, it was Día de los Difuntos (Day of the Dead) and Tuesday was Cuenca's Independence Day (Cuenca is an Ecuadorian city). Aside from eating the traditional snack of Colada Morada y Gua Guas de Pan, that meant that we had a 4-day weekend and some time to get out of the sierras and head to the beach. Saturday night we boarded our night bus, and that's where our adventure began.

Colada Morada y Gua Gua de Pan (Dia de los Difuntos Tradition)

This bus was about 4 sizes too small for my tall gringa legs. As soon as I scooted into the seat, my knees were permanently pushed into the back of the man in front of me. He didn't seem to mind, because he reclined his chair... all. the. way. Being a night bus, the seats reclined almost horizontally. So while my legs were permanently cramped in the space in front of me, this stranger's head was literally in my lap. Let me paint a picture of the rest of this 8-hour trip. Air conditioning: broken and stuck on freezing; fluorescent lights: randomly flipped on and off; techno music: blasting every 2 hours. Krysta and I snuggled up and tried to sleep as the time slowly creeped by. YAY night bus! Once we arrived in Bahía, we got on a water taxi that took us to San Vincente, only to get on another bus to take us to Canoa, our final destination. We made the trip and were in our hostal all before 7:30am.

View from one of the hammocks at our Hostal

Canoa is a quaint beach town with sand streets and little shacks on the beach. Each shack sells ceviche, cocktails, and fresh juices as well as blasts their favorite song, trying to overpower the noise coming from the other shacks a mere 15 feet away. It's a mixture of sun, sand, and reggaeton.

Canoa is nothing but a little fishing town

We had a nice relaxing weekend reading, napping in hammocks, kayak surfing, collecting shells, and doing a lot of nothing. It was a much needed rest, and we had a blast exploring a new part of Ecuador. We left late Tuesday night on another night bus (not half as bad as the first trip, minus the swollen ankles I had from not moving and increasing altitude), and were back in time to work on Wednesday.

Our budget trip had us eating tuna out of the can
for lunch. Mmmmm.

Halloweeeeeeen

Halloween is not quite the same if you aren't in the streets of a neighborhood amongst hundreds of small Disney Princesses or Monsters pleading for candy. However, when you've got flour, Halloween candy sent from Momma Booe, and a cape (Krysta brought her Wonder Woman cape to Ecuador so she would be prepared for Halloween... maybe that explains her 50lb and 70lb bags?), it almost felt like home. Krysta and I spent the afternoon making Halloween cupcakes and listening to Thriller on repeat. That's about as good as you can get, if I do say so myself.

Our masterpieces

My scary face for Halloween

We're proud bakers

BOO(e)

That's NURSE Haley, to you

I'm a nurse! A couple of weeks ago I started shadowing a doctor at clinic. In Ecuador, after finishing medical school, new doctors are required to spend 1 year at a rural site. My doctor, Andres (or affectionately Andresito, since he's only 25), was the only one at his rural clinic (or subcentro, as we call them), so when several us expressed interest in shaddowing at the hospital, I was assigned to be the nurse at the subcentro in Jatumpungo, because Andres needed help. Excuse me? Jatum-what?

After explaining no less that 12 times that I am in fact NOT a nurse (university is much more specialized here, so they don't understand how the US degree system works), I made my first trip to Jatumpungo and fell in love. I'm working alongside Andres every Wednesday to help see patients and make house visits in the rural community. I do a lot of administrative work with paperwork and all, but I've learned how to do a lot of physical examinations of patients as well. Ecuador has a motto of "hear one, see one, do one", so Andres has taught me about and allowed me to do tasks I wouldn't be allowed to do until after finishing nursing school in the states. I've taken vitals, checked breathing patterns with a stethascope, written prescriptions, etc. My favorites were giving charlas (mini-lectures) to elementary school kids in the area about Tuberculosis and giving Hepatitis B shots to middle schoolers. I was so nervous giving shots, but the histerical kids forced me to keep my calm. It was so exciting to have hands-on experience like that.

At one of the schools, I was referred to as "Doctora Haley" by one of the teachers. Not yet, Se
ñora Suntaxi... but nurse just may be appropriate.

oops...

Dear Blogging world,
Please forgive me for the lack of posting in the last month. Life has been crazy as usual. I've been teaching an average of 9 women per exercise class. I have been shaddowing a doctor at a rural clinic every Wednesday. Children's English has kept me on my toes, while test making for Adult English has given me a new respect for teachers. Life in the house is chaotic, as usual. I spent a week with Dave, who came to visit and experience life "Manna Style". And I've been a slacker at updating my blog. Please accept my apology with a few annecdotal stories and pictures from Dave's visit.
Much love,
Haley

Fútbol!! I played in my first soccer game (EVER) last weekend, and I still have bruises on my legs to prove it. The best part of the game was not being as tall as the goal, or getting schooled by intense Ecuadorian ballers (whoever told us this was a non-competitve league, was SORELY mistaken), but when I got a yellow card. Why, you ask? I wasn't too aggressive, I didn't talk back to the ref, and I didn't kick anyone. I picked up the ball. I bent over and picked up a soccer ball as it rolled towards me. Despite my lack of soccer skills (what can I say; I'm a basketball player), we tied 3-3 against the toughest team in the league.

Listening to small Ecuadorian children (ages 4-9) trying to pronounce English words continues to be something I look forward to week after week. I always get a kick out of the enthusiastic "APPLAY!!" One of my favorite stories from Children's English arose out of our alphabet lesson. We asked the niños to give us an example of an english word that starts with the letter. With every letter, we would get responses in spanish or with the wrong letter (for c, one kid yelled "HORSE".... maybe because "caballo" is horse in spanish? who knows). When we got to "W", every kid raised their hands. Sarah and I looked at each other and were excited that the kiddies knew a word. When we called on them, in a loud unison, they all screamed, "WHISKEY"!

Soccer Times

A few of us recently joined a soccer league. Now, if you know anything about my previous experience with soccer, you might be laughing.... as it is none. Never ever played before, and I joined a county-wide women's league in a South American country. Am I insane? Yes.

We had our first practice several days ago, and BOY was it a day worth blogging about.

First thing in the morning, Sarah, Jackie, Krysta, and I hopped on a bus to meet Bibi at our field (about halfway in between our house and Quito). Once we got there our "coach" took us on quite the route to her house, because she wanted to see how the gringas play. After scooping up no less than 17 pounds of poop from her backyard (they have quite the collection of dogs), she through some tires down in her back yard, and we were off. She was having us run drills and yelling that our kicks were too hard, too soft, or just bad! All the while, a crowd had formed in the backyard to watch us while listening to Lady Gaga's new hit, "Pokerface" (where am I?!?!). Frustrations were rising on our end, as we were assured that this was a non-competitive social event.

An hour later, we were scrimmaging with other women on our team. We showed our loud mouth, nazi-esque, abrasive woman just how gringas can play, as we ran around aggressively and it showed that we were some of the best players on our team.

Of course, we didn't look as good as Liga (a pro soccer team from Quito of which we've become avid fans), but give us some time.

LIGA Game!!

mmm.. footlong hotdog with mustard, mayo, ketchup, tomatoes, onions, potato chips

The crew after the game

As far as our Ruminahui team goes, looking forward to jerseys and our first game next weekend!

A new month, a new outlook...

I let having a lot to do and being busy get the best of me. During the last several weeks I've worked tirelessly from the moment I wake up to when I go to bed. I've worked and worked, and my to-do list just seems to get longer. With this job, you get out of it what you put in, and I want to see our programs succeed. I want to build relationships with community members and organize documents so future years have a good resource for programs. I want to be effective. However, all of those statements are about what I want. Today I ate my breakfast on the roof and settled my soul. I read my bible and realized that I need to not be so self-focused. I need to set boundaries with work and decide what's important. God has led me here for a reason, and I need to let him work on me and through me.

So here is to starting out the month of October with a new mindset. One where I take every day as it comes, and rejoice in the time I have to be here, in Ecuador.

p.s. There is a cow mooing outside of my window. Typical

Was that a puma or is your stomach growling?

Our first retiro, or retreat, was this weekend. All of us somewhat sluggishly got in a van at 6:30am on Friday and headed to the north bus terminal in Quito. From there we caught 2 buses, packed into the back of a truck for a 30 minute ride into the forest, and hiked over a mile into the woods to get to our hosteria. I guess you could say we were a bit secluded. We stayed in cabins and the shut of the electric generator at 10pm promptly. We sat around a fire and played lots of Phase 10 and Catch Phrase. We laughed and enjoyed some great canned figs and peaches (this past statement is dripping with sarcasm... for some unkown reason, Ecuadorians love their syruppy canned fruit for dessert. It is gross). AND, we hiked, and hiked, and hiked.... and hiked.

The first day we arrived, the girls strapped on some rubber knee-high boots and headed into the virgin forest while the boys napped. We hiked for 2 hours, while we sank into mud, forged a river, battled vines and fallen bamboo, and tripped a lot. The next day, however was our hike of epic proportions. We left camp at 9:30 and returned 14km later at 5:00pm. Our guide had a machete to clear out some of the brush (and probably to defend us if we were to encounter a puma). We saw some beautiful birds and a 3-foot long worm, but we missed the larger animals. Although we saw some fresh tracks, the tapirs and oso de anteojos (relative of a panda bear) must have been scared and hiding just beyond us in the dense forest.

I'm not the most coordinated of people, so tripping was a problem on said hike. Imagine the setting from Apocalypto, you can't see past the trees and moss and ferns that grow like a wall on either side of the 3-foot wide path. It wasn't a pretty sight to watch me trip to gracefully avoid roots, rocks, and cut-down bamboo while lugging around in heavy rubber boots. My best fall left me with some scars on my face, as I fell face-first into a tree. Glad my parents decided not to call me Grace; I would be a walking contradiction. Our time in the cloud forest was relaxing and a team-building experience (pulling each other out of mud pits). It was great to be in such raw nature and enjoy the tranquility of God's creation. The retreat was also a well-needed break from the business of work. Now we're back into the swing of things, yet I feel as if I'm taking on my tasks head first with a renewed spirit and in awe of the beautiful country which I call home.

Our cabinas

Pretty

Excited/Nervous for our day-long hike

Those are some cute boots, Krysta

Guest Blogger

Every week we have a guest blogger on our MPIE blog, and this week it happened to be yours truly. So check out my post and leave comments; we love knowing who follows along. Also, the Manna Blog is updated daily, and it's definitely worth the read to see how we're doing as a group. I'll post back here very, very soon... promise.

My Momma Taught Me Right!

Dinners in the house are quite the ordeal. Everybody in the house really enjoys cooking, so we have had quite the assortment of food, and DELICIOUS food at that. However, we are cooking for 10 (11 when Bibi comes over), so it takes some planning and a chunk of time (everything we make is from scratch). Two of us are assigned to making dinner a night. On Friday night, Chet and I decided to go cajun, and we used my mom's recipes passed down from her daddy. Jambalaya and Bread Puddin'... YUM! It was a hit. Thanks mmd; your food never steers me in the wrong direction. Love you.

Work, work, work, play, work

Sorry for the absence, but as the title implies, I've been a busy girl recently. I've had several 12-hour days in the past 2 weeks.

Women's Exercise classes are up in running in the new space, although attendance leaves something to be desired. I think that the craziness of school starting is partly to blame, not to mention the fact that it takes awhile for Ecuadorians to get used to foreigners (and realize that we all don't have swine flu). In the meantime, I'll be patient and perfect my routines with our one regular, Susana.

This week several of us have been spending the mornings at Aliñambi, a school/orphanage, taking growth measurements of kids. We are measuring arm and trunk circumference, weight, and height, and we ask questions about their eating habits. From the information we gather, we hope to implement some sort of nutrition program for the community and school. This is very preliminary, but incredibly exciting nonetheless.

Lastly, Adult English classes have started this week. We are holding classes every Monday and Wednesday from 5:00-7:00pm (I'm only teaching on Wednesday, because I have an exercise class on Monday). Chet and I are teaching on Wednesday; Chet and Krysta are the teachers for the Monday class. We have enjoyed lesson planning thus far and look forward to how our class pans out.

This past weekend, us girls went into Quito for the day and had a blast at the Basilica. Check out pictures below!

Scared sitting at the top of the Basilica with NO railing

Is it just me, or are the colors brighter here?

Living on the edge

Hasta la proxima vez!

Cleaning Day

This post is dedicated to the one and only, Mr. Jim Booe.

In preparing our new space for Women's Exercise, I had to clean the paint off of the windows in the library.

Those are some dirty windows...

Thanks to my many years working for Booe Building and Remodeling, I was prepared for such a daunting task, and I knew EXACTLY what supplies I needed for this endeavor. So I headed to the hardware store across the street to buy razor blades and some window cleaner.

Look at the progress!!

What a difference

Thanks, pops, for the preparation. You always said that cleaning windows was a job that always needed to be done. Maybe I have more of a future in window cleaning than I anticipated?

You can see out the window!

Casualty = cut finger with blade (I have paint dust all over my face)

Spanish lesson for today:
Hardware store = ferretería
Razor blade = estila? (still not really sure. I made the guy repeat it like 10 times, but the word he gave me isn't in the dictionary.... hmm)

The Big Move!

Today we did it. The Women's Exercise Program, here more commonly referred to as "Clases de Ejercicios para las Mujeres", has officially moved to the third floor of the library. This move took a lot of careful planning and discussion, since the Ecuadorian culture isn't something we have the firmest grasp on yet. For example, women may not attend classes at a new location because it is too far away from their house (change of location = 3 blocks). So after much deliberation, we decided a new location would bring more positive changes than negative. This decision also meant that today I called 50 out of the 125 women who have signed up for classes at some point to inform them of the move. My brain was such mush from the monotonous phone calls that I put on two different socks when changing for tae bo.

A couple highlights of having exercise classes on the third floor:

• the space is more than double the size of the community center we've been using
• we can network within the library members and have a central hub, from which all of our programs are run
• it is our own space, so we can leave equipment in the building (rather than lugging a scale, 3 blood pressure cuffs, 2 stethascopes, 4 binders of paper, speakers, and yoga mats to the community and back weekly)
• we can decorate the walls with nutrition posters and health information, so the space will slowly transform into a center for health/ preventative health clinic
  
• we get to see some awesome sunsets while doing sun salutations or tae bo routines

Needless to say, I'm excited about the move and what it means for this program. Also, I am pretty darn fluent at explaining where the library is, when classes start, and what to bring to class (eerily similar to how I can recite in my sleep proper flossing techniques in spanish thanks to our open clinic last weekend). Yay specialized spanish skills!

Hasta la proxima vez...

Ay caramba

So it's been awhile since my last post, but in my defense, life in the Manna house has been crazy over the past couple of weeks. Last week was emotionally and physically exhausting, and I still have my mom's voice ringing in my ear "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". So that's what I did. But now that things have calmed down, I'll give you a quick recap so you get a glimpse into the joys and challenges of living in Ecuador.

Last Monday, 3 of us were walking home from our Women's Exercise program when we were mugged a block away from our house. We are all safe, but it was a scary reality that as Americans, we are targets. We are taking the proper precautions to stay as safe as possible, but please continue to pray for our safety, as the economic crisis has drastically increased the crime rate in our small town. Last week I also found out about the death of two Tech students. This saddened me so much because I wasn't able to be there to mourn with my bible study girls. It is tough to process such difficult situations without those who understand the pain the Virginia Tech community has had to coninually endure over the last few years. On top of that, we also saw one of our campers beaten by his father. It is a weird dichotomy to accept cultural differences that we can not change, yet to remain opposed to such injustice in the world. Later on in the week, half of the PDs had parasites, and the oven blew up in Dana's face. It was an eventful week to say the least. I'm happy that this week has been more boring.

On a happier note, programs are going really well, and I love working for Manna more and more every day. Last weekend we hosted a two day open clinic. I gave a lecture on dental hygiene for kids while they were waiting to see the doctor. It was quite popular amongst the kids, and they were so excited to learn how to floss! We saw a good amount of people at the clinic, and we were able to solidify some relationships with community members. Women's Excercise is also going swimmingly, and I really enjoy seeing familiar faces in classes. I have even seen improvement in some of the women already!

From here on out, I promise to update more frequently. Until next time!

Spanish lesson for the day: ¡Qué bestia! = What a beast!
Example: The oven blew up? ¡¡Qué bestia!!

Glimpse Into Life in the Valley

Here are a few pics from the last month. Enjoy!

My bedroom

View from our roof

Living room in the Manna House

Otavalo market

Krysta and I are intense with Ecuador bracelets

The boys are excited about their jerseys

Relaxing after cleaning the library

Graffiti artists liven up the Teen Center doors

Eating snacks on the library roof during summer camp

Gisela and I

Iori making a mess

Teaching kids about solids and liquids

Krysta and Esteeven excited about the pool

Paola in her oversized swimsuit and swim cap

Girls loving the green water and make-shift fence

Until next time!