Carnaval

Last weekend was the infamous carnaval. In Ecuador, this holiday is marked by water balloons, water guns, and espuma (foam... or in many cases, shaving cream). Jackie, Krysta, Sarah, and I decided to spend our 4 day weekend in Tena... a town about as far east as you can go before you are in the middle of the Amazon. We experienced all that the "oriente" has to offer... rivers, wildlife, food, HOT weather, etc. Between relaxing in hammacks, exploring caves, and dodging water balloons, we also had one heck of an adventure. We got lost in the middle of the jungle. The story goes as follows:

We take a bus from Tena to go to a small town on the river. From there, we hop in a canoe and ask the guy to take us to our jungle lodge.

We go down the river for awhile and he takes us to the opposite bank. We get off and start following him into the jungle. Then, he disappears. We wait around for awhile to see if he comes back, and he does. Phew! So we follow this guy into a different part of the jungle. He suddenly stops at a trail and tells us to follow it straight for half an hour. Then he leaves to go back to his canoe. So we follow the trail, hiking in the woods with our huge backpacks... until it dead ends into the river.

We backtrack to try to find a fork in the road, and we find one! But it leads to an abandoned shack in the middle of the Amazon rainforest... creeeeeeepy. So we head back to the water to try to flag down a canoe.



So a man in a canoe comes to us and tells us that we were on the right path, but we needed to wade through the water. He says the lodge is less than 30 min away. So after a rest, we head back the way we came.

We wade through the water (start humming gospel tunes).



We walk another 30 minutes and finally get to A SIGN for the lodge!



And a man with a machete who tells us to "sigan recta" (continue straight).

So we do... and find yet another abandoned building. 2 hours after we got out of the canoe, we find the jungle lodge. After finding out that it's not all it's cracked up to be, we decide to head back to Tena.


We wait 2.5 hours for a camioneta to come close to the lodge to pick us up. We find a truck who says he'll take us to the closest town for $1 per person. We're in!!



We pile into a utility truck and after picking up 12 people and 10 100lb bags of corn, we go over the rickitiest metal SWINGING bridge known to mandkind. I'm hysterically laughing to keep from crying (and I love hights).

From the town we catch a bus back to Tena in time to watch the sunset.

El Fin!!

Retiro Numero DOS

This past weekend, we all ventured to Riobamba for our 2nd retreat. To say it was a fail of a trip, may be fairly accurate. The reason we decided to go to Riobamba was to go on the train that takes you to the "Nariz del Diablo" or "Devil's Nose". It weaves through the Andes mountains while you sit on the roof of the train, taking in the sites. When we arrived in Riobamba, we went to buy tickets only to find that they were sold out until the end of February. So we just walked around the city... in the pouring rain. We all were soaking wet. Sarah got sick. It was a mess. In order to salvage the trip, we decided to go on a hike the next morning. We woke up to an overcast day and horrible hiking conditions.

Plan B: We hopped on a bus to go towards Banos, where the active volcano of Tungarahua is currently errupting. We didn't go all the way to Banos, but we went to a neighboring mountain and got a great view of the action. It was really neat to see the smoke billowing out of the volcano (my seismology-loving, ex-geology major side came out for sure).

Group shot at dinner

In the camioneta on the way to see Tungarahua

We've got cows

Tungarahua in all it's glory (best picture I have... sorry)

The weekend just goes to show that even though things don't always go as planned, ecuador is an adventure por siempre!!!

I'm FAMOUS!!!

Well, I'm famous amongst a few people who surf the World Wide Web and read the MPI Ecuador Blog (Open Hands and Dirty Feet). I wrote a guest blog yesterday, so make sure to check it out!

Click here to read my guest blog.

As always, thanks for staying tuned!

In my famous panama hat with the famous Ronald McDonald

What do you mean by busy day?

I know you have heard of the elusive "business" that consumes so many of my days. Today I decided I'd let all my readers know what exactly I mean.

My schedule today:
6:45am-- Rise and shine
7:15am-- Leave the house and catch a bus to Rumiloma
8:00am-9:00am-- Morning Women's Exercise Class
9:15-- Catch a bus home to Conocoto
10:00am-- Arrive home and jump in the shower
10:30am-- Leave the house and catch a bus to Sangolqui
11:00am-1:30pm-- Shop for the soon-to-be kitchen in our "Centro de Manna"
We ran around between 3 different stores to buy everything from bowls, cutting boards, and
forks to an oven, a table, and pans. We hope to have everything installed and the kitchen by
the end of this quarter, so we can start cooking classes as soon as possible.
1:30pm-- Load the camioneta with all of our goodies
1:45pm-- Unload all of our goodies from camioneta and into the third floor of our Centro
2:15pm-- Catch a bus home to Conocoto
3:00pm-- Arrive home and print the quiz and "Song-of-the-day" for Adult English Class
3:45pm-- Leave the house to make copies for Adult English
4:00pm-- Catch a bus to Rumiloma
5:00-6:45pm-- Teach Adult English (emotions, present simple of "to be", sentance structure...
our class is AWESOME!!)
7:00pm-- Get in a camioneta to go home
7:30pm-- Arrive home, grab dinner, and immediately start our Spring Break meeting (over
dinner)
8:30pm-- Have a nutrition "pre-meeting" to get ready for the meeting we're having with
Alinambi tomorrow morning about the nutrition program
9:00pm-- Write tomorrow's guest blog for Open Hands and Dirty Feet

PHEW. 3 hours of transportation, 3 visits to the library, and 2 meetings later.... I'm going to bed.
Sweet dreams, world wide web.

Nuevo Nombre

We have officially changed the name of the workspace formerly known as the "Biblioteca" (library) to the "Centro de Manna".

Don't worry, we still have a library, but we felt that calling our whole space the "Biblioteca" was limiting. Out of the space we rent, we run the following:

Public Lending Library
Teen Center
Art Classes for Kids
Children's English Classes
Adult's English Classes
World Studies Classes for Kids
Women's Exercise Classes

We are in the process of building a kitchen to host cooking classes, and we also hope to open up a preventative health clinic on the third floor.

We have essentially 6 different rooms on two different floors of a building from which we run most of our programs. Therefore we felt like calling the whole space a library was misleading (women got confused when I would say we had exercise on the 3rd floor of the library). So we have officially changed our name to..... (drumroll please)...... "Centro de Manna". After many discussions, we decided that "Community Center" was too presumptuous (since all of our programs are still run by gringos), and since most of the community members recognize the name Manna, "Centro de Manna" was the final outcome.

Rest easy, now that you know the new lingo. Hasta la proxima vez....

We're baaack

This past weekend, we hosted a "Celebration for 2010". We wanted to host an event for several reasons. One of these reasons was that we wanted our community members to know we were back from break, and it certainly got our point across. Monday we had an influx of people at the library, and it's been packed everyday since. We also wanted to hold an event where members of different communities could come and meet each other. Your "barrio", or neighborhood, is a big deal in Ecuador. Many community members don't intermingle. It was very exciting to see so many people, but it was even more encouraging to recognize people from different barrios in the same setting and making connections.

Our celebration activities consisted of the following:
Face paint
Balloon animals
Tug-of-war
Water balloon toss
Egg races
Soccer games
Raffle
Bingo for adults
Mini-exercise class
Booths for local organizations
Local food vendors
DJ
Graffiti artist
Live music

Yep, it was quite the event.

One of my favorite parts was the mini exercise class. We held a class on the soccer field to introduce people to our women's exercise program. Although it was nerve-wracking to teach a class in front of so many people, I think it was a good way to show people what a typical class was like.... and it was a lot of fun!

Overall it was a successful event, and I'm ready to get full swing into programs this week.

Kerly is one of my favorites

Facepainting was popular... Look at that line!


Setting up our tents on the field

Home Sweet Ecuador

Back, rejuvenated from break, and ready for 2010! I got back into the country last night, and I'm already starting to feel like I'm back at home. Was it because I was greeted by barking dogs and an upset stomach this morning? I think it's the smiling faces, spanglish, and laughter shared around our full dinner table.

I got to spend some quality time with family and friends over Christmas and New Years. Now I'm ready to start programs and dive head-first into time with the community members.

My new program schedule for this year:
Monday-- Women's Exercise (measurements and Yoga)
Tuesday-- Geography for Kids and Women's Exercise (Tae-Bo)
Wednesday-- Women's Exercise (morning "Mezclada") and Adult Beginner's English
Thursday-- Women's Exercise (Aerobics)
Friday-- Front desk of Library

Lesson planning, shaddowing, and organizational duties will also be taking up my time. Not to mention I'll also be busy with planning and organizing our Spring Break groups. I'm so excited about what's to come. Stay tuned!