A very Ecua Christmas

On Christmas Eve I went with my scholarship girl, Janeth, to her school's Christmas program. It was dominated by elementary school kids lip synching to poppy Christmas songs, but also featured some lively renditions of Silent Night played on their recorders.

The costumes were fantastic. There lots of pretty little angels, and cutie kids dressed as sheep and cows and chickens in the stable. The shepherds even had goatees.... although this poor kid below is going to have his on for at least a week, as it appears he applied it himself... with a sharpee marker. My favorite part, hands down, was the LIVE baby Jesus. (see here in lower right hand corner). No baby dolls for this crowd! Nothing but a real screaming pooping hungry live baby for this show! I had my hands full with my own baby (okay, not really, it is my friend Silvia's daughter). I somehow successfully held the baby while eating a plate of bbq chicken, rice and yuca with a flimsy plastic spoon. Quite a feat, I must say.

Here I am with my crew.

By the time I got back to the apartment after all the festivities, Jer got home and our friends Casey and Roger had come over for a little Nochebuena Christmas Eve dinner. I was pysyched to be able to hang out with two of my bestest Peace Corps pals for the holiday.

The next morning we had a Christmas Day breakfast extravaganza which featured bacon, a rare and expensive commodity here in Ecuador (which is weird, considering how much they love other pork products). After gorging on good food, we headed out to take a hike on a trail about a 10 minute busride from our house. It was a nice day and we encountered exactly 0 people on the trail. As we hiked along, we stumbled across the perfect little place to take a dip.

So we did.


It was our very own beautiful little swimming hole in a bend of an emerald green river...surrounded by steep hillsides swathed in in ferns. It was awesome.

So, all the sadness about being away from family for Christmas was washed away by the refreshingly cold current of the river. So as past Christmases seemed to blend and blur one into another in our memories, we all agreed that we would always remember Christmas 2008 where we played in the river in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Joy to the world!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas blogstalkers!



So, what am I doing this Christmas Eve? Actually, Jer and I have competing activities. He has a dinner with his co-workers and I have accepted an invitation to attend a high school Christmas program with my scholarship girl, Janeth. When I say scholarship girl, I am referring to the Peace Corps Ecuador Gender and Development (GAD) scholarship program that I was raising money for earlier this year.


A little about Janeth: Janeth is an orphan whose father, Amo, was an important Waorani leader who died under mysterious circumstances when Janeth was just an infant. (Amo was featured prominently--and photographed--- in the book Savages by Joe Kane). Janeth lives here in Puyo with her aunt. Her family is from Tepapare, my favorite Waorani community. Janeth is the first Waorani girl to receive one of the GAD scholarships. The funds cover her school matriculation, supplies, transportation costs, uniforms and misc. other school fees (there seem to be quite a few).

Here is me helping Janeth with her English homework.

I have really enjoyed mentoring Janeth and helping her with her English homework (and wow, is their curriculum horrible here!). A great ripple effect from this is that now that because Janeth has a GAD scholarship, her aunt is now able to able to sponsor another student (Janeth's cousin) in order to finish high school---whereas before she couldn't afford to pay for both.


My work with GAD has definitely been one of the most rewarding parts of my service. So, on this Christmas Eve I give thanks to all my friends and family who have supported me and Jer in our decision to serve in Peace Corps and thanks especially to those who so generously donated to the GAD scholarship program. Thanks!

I was recently working on a fact sheet on the scholarship program, so I will recycle some of it for additional blog content:

Peace Corps Ecuador’s Gender & Development (GAD) Committee aims to enhance gender equity in all sectors of Ecuadorian society. In collaboration with host-country counterparts, we promote the advancement of women in their homes, places of work, and communities. We assist our fellow Peace Corps Volunteers in their efforts to implement sustainable, gender-inclusive development projects.

In 2008, GAD provided more than 60 scholarships to financially underprivileged, yet highly motivated Ecuadorian women so that they can finish their high school education. Working in partnership with Club Kiwanis Chuquiragua in Quito, GAD Ecuador's scholarship program is one of only a handful worldwide. Scholarships are awarded to girls entering their last three years of high school based on good grades, economic need, and leadership potential. The financial assistance that GAD provides for these young women is vitally needed, as high school is not free and a mere 56% of Ecuadorian women receive their high school degree. Poor Ecuadorian families sometimes choose to send their boy children to school before their girls, thus the scholarship program is an important tool in combating this inequality.

The Peace Corps Ecuador Gender and Development Committee also organizes an annual three-day Leadership Conference for all the girls currently receiving scholarships. The conference brings girls from all corners of Ecuador together for leadership training as well as sessions on small business development, self esteem, and sex-education among other important topics.

Camp ALMA (Spanish acronym for Activism and Leadership for Ambitious Girls) is organized bi-annually for non-scholarship girls nominated by the GAD committee as well. It consists of three-day retreats that enhance leadership skills and raise self-esteem through outdoor adventures and group activities.

I had the opportunity to help out at the last two camps and it was a really rewarding experience--as much for me as for the girls. Whereas summer camps are part of every American girl's childhood, they are not common here in Ecuador. The girls absolutely loved it.

So, that's my blogpost for the day. I didn't want anyone to think that after my last few posts that I traveled more than I worked. Not true. It is just the travel tends to be more fun to blog about... Anywho, if anyone is interested in making a donation to the GAD scholarship fund and camp, please let me know. Happy holidays!

I give up

So I have decided to just give up trying to blog about my Inca Trail trip. As much as I loved, loved, loved it, I just don’t have time to blog about it. I think I would need a solid week of doing nothing but writing to capture it all and do it any justice. I do not have said week, so I just give up. Plus I figure that the few people that read my blog (Mom, CTgoBucks) also read my hubby’s and mi sis-in-law’s blogs and they and are thus likely not interested in reading the third iteration of the same story (then again, who doesn’t want to hear the story about the iguana who power pooped on my brother’s head). But, really, read their blogs. And check out the full photo documentation of the travel extravaganza which includes Guayaquil, Salinas, Puyo, the Banos-Puyo Bikeride and Otavalo in addition to our Peru trip. The photos are awesome. An employee of the month prize plaque awaits anyone who looks at all 900+ photos.

Expectations

I will admit that I was very anxious about hiking the Inca Trail. As we loaded up into the minivan that would take us to the trailhead, my stomach churned and my palms started to sweat. I had flashbacks of my failed attempt at climbing Mount Quandry, one of Colorado’s famed 14’ers where I was sucking wind so hard I had to turn around. Plus, I was moderately intimidated by my super-sporty sis-in-law who regularly engages in adventure sports including a 24 hour bike race, a 12 hour desert hike and various other hard core outdoor activities. I was just worried I wouldn’t be able to keep up. I didn’t want to be “that” girl who was holding everyone up. Also rattling around in my head was the voice of someone who described the Inca Trail as “a death march.” So, as you can imagine, I was nervous. I love hiking…but I don’t do death marches. So, in preparation for what I thought would be a most unpleasant four-day debacle, I decided that I was going to shift into the auto drive mental mode that I have found that keeps me alive (and mostly sane) on my many marathon fustercluck trips to the jungle. I would push through it. It may not be fun, but I would get through it.

Then, as were queuing up in the intense Andean sun to go through the first checkpoint, something changed. I got this burst of adrenaline. The first few hours of hiking were cake. Then I cruised up the first big hill on pace with the rest of our group (Jer, my bro, sis-in-law and guide). At the top, I recovered quickly while hikers from other groups were gasping for air. We kept moving on and cruised right past them. We didn’t bother to take a break, because we honestly didn’t need one. The pace was great and we kept cruising. We were hiking so fast, in fact, that we were the first group to arrive at the designated lunch spot where the porters put up mess tents and cooked up a steamy hot meal. We actually had to wait quite a while because we got there so fast. On the following days our guide later had to amend the meal plans in order to accommodate our fast pace. It turned out we were one of the fastest and fittest groups he had hiked with (or so we say in the retelling of this story).
So, as per usual, I totally overfretted the hike. What I thought was going to be a death march ended up being one of the coolest experiences of my life. It may have been helped by the fact that I thought I would be miserable and instead was euphoric. The psychology of expectations.

So, we later decided to apply this lowered expectations theory to our bus ride from the Ecuadorian coast (over the Andes) and down to the jungle. I told Tom & Hannah that they were going to HATE the night bus…that it was going to be really hot, then really cold, really loud, uncomfortable, scary, incredibly long and overall miserable. I tried to make them have such dismally low expectations that they would think that the bus ride was actually good because it wasn’t actually that bad. (How’s that for some psychology?). Well, this little mind trick almost worked….were it not for the fact that Hannah had stomach issues, we had to get off the bus twice for security checks—including an intimidating full body pat down, and the bus route was not direct (we thought it was…and instead stopped in Guayaquil and Ambato) so instead of taking approximately 9.5 hours, the total trip took 12 and included all of the other qualities I previously described. So…the bus ride was pretty miserable, as expected. Which, I argue, is better than expecting a luxury ride and instead get a typical Ecua bus experience. Right? Cuz THAT would have been even MORE miserable. Like I said, it is all about expectations.

Am stuck in an office now. Wish I was back on the Inca Trail...

vacation from vacation

O-H-I-O representing!

I need a vacation from my vacation. I know, rough life. Two once-in-a-lifetime trips done back-to-back. Machu Picchu and the Galápagos. (Thus the gap in blog entries.) Until I get caught up on my blog writing, I will punt you over to La Chaser's blog for her take on the first part of the Machu Picchu trip.