Lean On Me

Sometimes in our lives
We all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there's
Always tomorrow

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
Till I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on

My host mother works at a primary school way out in the country outside of Guaranda. She works almost exclusively con indigenous kids that can’t get all the way to Guaranda to go to school. On Monday night my host mother came home from work in tears.  Then she told us a story that changed the way I look at this world and the way that my last two weeks in Ecuador will play out. She had been working with her kids likes she does everyday and a lady came to her classroom door. She was very skinny with four little kids. She told my mother that her husband had left the family to go work on the coast 15 days ago and had left the family with no way to eat or make money to buy food. She and the kids had lived almost exclusively off of water with added herbs she found for 15 days. If she didn’t get any food for her kids, ages 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, and 6 years they were all going to die. She asked my mother if she would be willing to take one of her kids because she didn’t want them to die and this was her last option. Well my mother was not about to let a woman go and give away her kids to strangers, she wanted to help, but her resources were limited as well. She gave the lady everything she brought with her for lunch, but it wasn’t much. She promised the lady that if she came back the next day she would have more food for her. As she was telling me this story my heart was aching out of sadness and I was thinking, “I can help, I have the resources!” I sprung into action. One my good friends form the USA was leaving so I asked her if she had extra food she would not need, she did and I made out with a lot of food, including a ton of canned beans. With some added food from our house like rice, oil, and flour we had a pretty good collection of food that we could give her. But I wanted to do more than give her food, yes that would help for the next couple of days, but in the long run she would be back in the same situation. What could I give her that would not run out and would help her family in more ways than one, animals. If I got my friends and family in the US to chip in some money we could get her some guinea pigs and chickens, these would not only be food but she could sell them more money and they reproduce so you don’t need to buy very many to make a difference. I immediately went to my main means of communication with the US: Facebook. With in 12 hours I had a ton of responses and had raised over $300! This was wonderful and very overwhelming, when I went into this project I was looking at needing $50 maximum and I had just raised 6 times that. I was floored by everybody’s generosity and excitement at being able to help out a family that they didn’t know.

The next day I got up bright and early to head to work with my mom. My sister and I bundled up in many layers as we hopped into the back of a pickup truck to take us more than an hour up into the Andy mountains. We got there and about 15 minuets later the lady arrived with her kids. My mother and the other teacher decided to give her two older kids a space in the school for free and the two littlest ones came with us. We got them bread and hot coffee for breakfast and told them we had food and a proposal for them. We told her about the animals and she was overjoyed. She had always wanted chickens, but could not afford them. This was going to change her life. We then volunteered to help bring her food to her house for her because she had her hands full with two kids. She gladly accepted our offer and we walked for the better part of an hour before we arrived at her house. We got to know her a lot better, her name is Maria, she never had the chance to go to school because she had to work, so she cannot read or write more than her name, she is 24 years old and had 5 kids but had to give one away because she couldn’t support the family. She checked with us many times to make sure that we were sure we would be waiting for her tomorrow if she came down to Guaranda, because the bus was going to cost her two dollars both ways and if we were not going to be there she couldn’t waste the few dollars she had. We assured her over and over that we would be there. When we arrived at her house my breath was taken away. It was a one room house about 15 square feet. It had a table with a very thin mat on it that the whole family slept on, other than that there was a two-burner stove that looked like it dated back to the 1950’s. The whole house was made out of dirt and grass and didn’t have lights, a toilet, or even a sink. She was so grateful for everything and we said good-bye and we would see her tomorrow.

The next morning Vicky and I got up extra early (at least for two teens who are on summer break) and headed down to the bus station to meet her. When we met up she was so relieved that we were there. She told us that she had washed her baby and herself especially in preparation for the big trip to the city. She was very talkative and very excited. We headed down to the market that was practically busy because it was Wednesday to get the chicks and guinea pigs. I had no idea what to look for when buying animals so I let her take the lead on it. She picked out 10 little chicks that were healthy and thriving as well as 5 guinea pigs. We then headed to a near buy store and got chick food, soap, and a yogurt for her little one-year-old because she had not eaten breakfast. The whole walk to our house and the bus station she talked about how happy her kids were and how happy she was because these animals were going to change her life. I told her the one last condition of the animals, when she had a lot and could spare a few she was to give a few to a new family who needed help as well. The she was to tell them to do the same thing and the chain of giving would have started. She agreed and said thank you and was on her way. I will see her one more time on Friday to help her get her official Ecuadorian ID because she had one but her husband burned it because he didn’t want her going to court against him because he abused the family and neglected to give them food. I hope that she will be well and that these animals gave her hope and life. If you are interested in donating money to a cause very much like this project the “Heifer Project” was the inspiration behind all this. 

Livin' life on the loose

Buying the chicks... I let her take the lead on this one. She is the woman in the upper right hand corner. 

 Now to go get the guinea pigs. Is this one nice and fat and health. Another time she make the decision.

The Señora with her chicks, guinea pigs, and her bag of necessities to help her now, a little oil, food, and soap. Her 1 year old daughter is on her back. 

A Wondrous Place

(No lyrics… but from Tarzan!)

Well guys it has been almost a month since I have written and I am sorry about the lack of posts, but life has been crazy and is just flying by. This day in 3 weeks I will be in Quito for my last few hours in this wonderful country I call home and then I will be heading off to enjoy the next adventure, reverse culture shock! No, but really, I am excited to go home and see everybody, but also very sad about the idea of leaving my family, friends, and life here in Ecuador. But you have all heard lots about my thoughts on coming home, so I wont bore you with those. Instead I will tell you of the most fantastic adventure I just had.

Last week I headed off on an AFS (my exchange program) trip to the amazon rain forest. The amazon has been something I have heard about since I was a little kid, about the animals that live there, the different layers of vegetation, and the amazing bio diversity that thrives within the small amount of land. This was a dream come true.

After spending the weekend in Quito doing various things from gift buying to cooking amazing food at our favorite little hostel we headed off at 11 pm on a bus buzzing with AFSers all speaking in different languages catching up on what life had been like for the past few months. The bus ride was about 9 hours long and it was mostly spend sleeping. When we arrived I was so excited and got even more excited when I saw what our form of transportation would be: motorized wooden canoes. We all put on our life jackets and scrambled in. The next two and half hours were spent floating along Amazon rivers. We were fortunate enough to have amazing guides with us through the whole trip so we spotted so many awesome animals and plants that we would have never seen on our own. Just in the first 2.5-hour period in the Amazon we had seen sloths, snakes, many birds, and trees galore. Our hotel didn’t have electricity so everything was lit by candlelight. As well as this it was all built around boardwalks because during the rainy season there would be about a foot and a half of water below the structures. It was a pretty and perfect amazon hotel.

The first day we got up had a fantastic very un-Ecuadorian breakfast and headed out for a jungle walk. Our guide clearly had grown up in the jungle and knew all the ins and outs of the trees and plants that were surrounding us. We ate a leaf of which the extract is used to make aspirin, tasted very sweet “tree milk”, and smoked a branch that is, according to our guide, “jungle cigarettes”. We also learned tons about while some trees grow the way they do and what plats have symbiotic relationships. It was so fascinating. My kid-of-two-biologists in me was really excited and I soaked up in the information. We also had the chance to swing on branches like Tarzan; I was the only girl in our group who was able to do it, thanks to the small remains of my skier arms. After wadding through a swamp to get back to our canoe we headed back for lunch. That afternoon after the typical Latin American “siesta” we headed out to go piranha fishing. They handed us sticks with some string and a hook on the bottom along with a bag of freshly chopped red meat. We spend the better part of two hours sitting there temping the piranhas with our meat and they out-smarted and ate the meat with out getting caught. But by the end of the afternoon we had caught about 5 piranhas. I caught the biggest one of all that was close to a foot long! It had very large teeth and I was told it could eat off my finger if it got to close. Needless to say I kept it at arms length. Then we headed out for a sunset swim in the near by lagoon.  We even got to spot pink dolphins and crocodiles on the way home. It was a wonderful day.

The next day we headed out with a boxed lunch to the nearby indigenous community. We ate some traditional food, and got to visit the shaman. It was cool to see a little bit of what they lived like, but it felt so fake and touristy that it wasn’t my favorite part. The tribe had a pet monkey that liked to play, or in my case try to mate, with the tourists. It was very soft and funny until it started to bite my nose. That was not so much fun, but the other AFSers thought it was just the funniest.  The two-hour canoe ride there and back was amazing as always. That night we did a night walk with candles and flashlights, we got to see a ton of huge spiders and some other super cool night critters. It was a little spooky but also like living the dream, I a mean come on, a night walk in the amazon, too cool!

The next day we headed back to the bus with one last amazing 2.5-hour canoe ride through the jungle.

It was an amazing trip is so many aspects; I got to spend with some amazing AFSers, see awesome animals, eat good not Ecuadorian food, and have a bit of a vacation. We headed back to Quito and then headed out on a short mountain excursion, but I will save that for another blog. Sorry that this was a bit more of a summer of a trip and less thoughtful than normal….. more soon. Love you all.

Livin’ life on the loose.  

Island In the Sun

On and on and in the sun

We’ll be playing and having fun

And it makes it feel so find I can’t control my brain

Life is flying by like I never knew possible. I woke up this morning to realize that today was the 1^st of May, marking my last full month I get to spend in this wonderful country. I have been thinking a lot over the past week or so about how fast everything is going. This dream that has been over two years in the making, from the first conversations bridged with the parentals to stepping out of their hugs and nervously going through airport security to where I am sitting now singing along in my head to my sisters Spanish pop songs and waiting to eat the comfort food of rice and meat. When did the change happen? When did I gain confidence? When did I learn how to speak Spanish? When did I stop caring that I am a tall white giant giraffe here? When did I make my self a life in another country? It didn’t happen all at once and I know there were tears and hard times along the way, but they seem to fad and give way to the wonderful smells, colors, conversations, words, weeks, months, sights, voices, and friends that have and are shaping my Ecuadorian year. Today I realize how much I have changed, how much life is going to be different after this year. This will not just be a year in my life, it will be a marker, similar (I imagine) to the markers of getting married, having kids, going to college, and getting through that mid-life crises that everyone fears. It will and has changed me. What will I be when I get home? Who will my friends be? Where will life take me? I am scared. Excited. Sad. Elated. And every other emotion that one person can hold. All I can say is that the adventure of life is carrying me down its twisting river and I am just trying to hold on while enjoying the view.

With that part done I will do some catching up on what I have been doing lately.

I have been back from the Galapagos for about a week and it was amazing! A trip to never forget.

The first day we got up very early and headed out from Quito (where we had been staying) and headed to the airport. The experience at the airport with all the AFSers was sort of strange because we all felt that it was a semi-practice run for going home and it was strangely emotional. But mostly we were just super pumped to go to the Galapagos. We then took about a two and a half hour trip out to the islands, they are quite a bit farther out then most people think, sort of like Hawaii from the US. When we got there we were immediately hit but the need to get into warm weather clothes as we were dying of heat. The view was amazing and I knew this was going to be a wonderful trip. Then we were shuttled to a boat to take us to the island that we were going to be staying at for the next bunch of days. I along with some other wonderful AFSers (Carlotta and Alicia, love you girls) got the ride up in the top level of the boat with our driver. It was wonderful and I managed to wrap a towel across my sholders the not get to sunburned. I felt like I had just arrived to paradise.  We got there a little bit before the other boat of AFSers so we had time to head to the hotel throw on our swimsuits and go swimming. What we didn’t know though was that we would be swimming with sea lions. They would pop up right next to you and next to you and play around you. It was so cool. After lots of traveling and a long day we headed to bed and got ready for a crazy day two.

The next day was even better then the first. We got up early and started on what was going to be the perfect trip for the inner nerd in me. We walked around the crater of a large active volacano. For me the high light was when it started raining and all the rain was steaming off the craters rocking covering because it was so hot. It was then that you could really appreciate how you were really walking around a volcano. We hiked though mud (fun) and lots of lava rocks. It was impressive and wonderful to see what our earth can do to form the land around it. A hike I will not soon forget. That afternoon we headed out to go snorkeling and had an amazing time floating in the sun and enjoying the crazy warm ocean. The day was amazing even if the volcano provided me with more than a little bit of sunburn, it’s not the first time and not the last. But for the record, I did put on sunscreen, but I am pretty sure that when the Ecuadorian sun and Ellie’s pasty white skin fight I will always loose.

On day three we headed out in a little boat to an island to see more sea lions, seals, penguins (the only ones that life north of the Equator!) and the cool little sea iguanas. It was awesome wandering around and just encountering all this wildlife you are sure you are only ever going to see in zoos in its natural habitat. We were hoping to spot some sharks, but they seemed to evade us. Ohh well can’t have it all. We were all quite excited with the wildlife we got to saw. Then we headed out for a second snorkel trip that was quite like the first, but I enjoyed immensely. I split away from the group a little bit with Alica and we had a good time just exploring the wonderful world under the sea. So much to see and just floating their enjoying life was a great experience of what a lucky duck I am. That afternoon we headed out to the Giant Turtle Center and learned a lot about the process of bringing the almost extinct species of turtles back to life on the islands. They are not only trying to regrow the population but also trying to eradicate the exotic species that have made them extinct like wild dogs, rats, and goats. Quite the endeavor if you ask me, I don’t have a clue how you go about erecting a whole population of rats from an island, but they have done it. Props to them. We also saw a wall build by prisoners who used to live on the island, a lava tunnel, and the “playa de amor” (beach of love). It was a wonderful and activity filled afternoon.

With the end of our stay approaching and day for on us we took a boat back to the island Puerto Ayora where we did some very typical touristy things. We saw Darwin Research Station with some very cool turtles and iguanas. A high light was Lonesome George a poor male turtle who is the last in his species and when he dies there are none left. It was sad and cool be able to see this first hand and also a must see when in the Galapagos. My favorite part about George is there are restaurants and hotels named after him and when he dies what are they going to do?!?! We also saw a facility that mimics natural conditions but is fenced of and controlled to introduce turtles back in to the wild conditions. We wandered around and bought some souvenirs as well as it was the largest city in the islands. The next morning was hopping a plan back to Quito and finishing our wonderful Galapagos dream.

Livin’ life on the loose.

Get Busy Living Or Get Busy Dying

Breathing just passes the time

This weekend I traveled with my host dad to Cuenca. Cuenca is the second largest town in the Ecuadorian Andes (after Quito) and it is more contemporary than any other town in the country. For lack of a better word it is… cute. It is filled with old churches that have the most amazing architecture and wide cobble stone streets. But it also is very western is some ways; there are a lot of restaurants that you can eat real food at (read not rice and meat). There are also a lot more foreigners in Cuenca. I found my self-hearing English more than I had almost all year (minus possibly Otavalo). We left very early Saturday morning and go there about 1 in the afternoon on Saturday. We then checked into our hotel, ate lunch, and headed out to get my host dads chip and bib for the next day. For those of you who don’t know my dad is a crazy runner and about every other weekend travels to a different town to run a different race. Our living room is filled with over 300 medals and 50 trophies. He brings home new trophies almost every time he leaves to run. He is planning on going to run a marathon in Peru in May and has been avidly training for that, but that doesn’t stop him from running as many races as he can before that.  After we got him all checked in we headed on a self guided (read: us walking and looking at things) tour of Cuenca. We went to the central park, some markets, and other old buildings and just enjoyed getting to know a new city. The next day was the race, I am not able to run at this point because of my hip, but I love the race vibe and it was fun to get to wander a bit alone while my dad was running. It was a 15k race and my dad came in at about 55 mins, that is fast guys. He got 4^th in his age group and was quite sad about it because he missed out on the prize money and the trophy to add to the collection, but as he said “it was in gods will”. The race was huge, bigger than I have ever seen, but it was so cool to be part of it, even if I was only watching and going support for my dad. But it had to end and we had to get home, so we hopped on the bus and headed home, to Guaranda. It was wonderful weekend and I have wanted to go to Cuenca since I got here, so it was awesome to get to do that.

  I have been home for about 12 hours and in about two hours I will take off on the trip that I have been waiting for all year… the Galapagos! It was a crazy turn around, but totally worth it, I am so excited. I will be going to these amazing little islands with about 30 other AFSers from the mountain region of Ecuador. I am so PUMPED!!! I cant even put my enthusiasm into words. I will tell you guys more about what we did and saw when I get back on Saturday or sometime then when I get to writing a blog post. Either way I hope that you are all doing wonderfully and love as always.

Livin’ life on the loose. 

When two families/worlds colide.

I love the family
Longer than longevity
Mother tells me what to be
Taller than the tallest tree
I love the family
Sister loves me tenderly
Sitting on my daddy's knee

Crazy. That is the one word to describe life currently. I have such a hard time finding things to write about because it is all so normal now. In a mere two and a half months I will be on an airplane headed back to the states. This fact makes me overwhelmingly sad and excited at the same time. I love it here. I love the family that has taken me in and now calls me their daughter, sister, friend, I love the other AFSers who I hang out with on a daily basis who have helped me get though the craziest moments in Ecuador, I love my house and its crazy number of stairs, I love being able to speak, think, and communicate in Spanish, I even love the seven grain and fish stew that we ate for good Friday. But I know going home will be a good thing, it will be change and it will be a new chapter of my life. This summer holds adventures and fun as it always does, but it will start off bitter sweet for me. I have already shed tears over the prospect of having to go, note to self do not listen to I’m Leaving on A Jet Plane, it holds to true to my situation. 

The US family with Guaranda in the background.

My parents and sister came for a week and half visit a couple weeks ago and it was wonderful but also a lot more work than I was expecting. We started off our crazy family adventures by picking them up in Quito where my whole family decided they needed to be their to pick them up, even though I told them it was not needed. Then I threw them head first into ecua culture by a night at my Grandmothers house in Quito. The next day after a lot of conversations and negotiating we headed off to Mindo, a small town 3 hours out of Quito where we rode horses, went bird watching (saw over 50 species in 2 hours one morning!!!), swam in waterfalls, soared above the Ecuadorian jungle and just had a lot of good catch up time. My Ecuadorian host mom joined us for this part of our crazy adventure and it was then I realized how much I have been just going with the Ecuadorian culture and how much translating of culture (and language) I had to do for her and for my US family. Everything from the fact that we like to eat big breakfasts in the States and smaller lunches to how my family talks about every decision and it is not just the decision of the “man of the family”. It was very eye opening for me and for the others as well. Then we headed back to Quito where we dropped off my host mom who had to head back to Guaranda because she had classes at the university and we headed to a town called Baños. Here we spent some serious family time just chatting, going to the natural hot baths in the morning, eating food that is not rice and meat, and just enjoying each other’s company. After that it was off to my town (Guaranda la ciudad de mi corazón.) where we spent a crazy week with my family doing everything that anybody would ever want to do in my little town. We went to markets, near by towns, statues on hills, families houses, to eat cuy (guide pig), and I, unfortunately, had to go to school some days.  It was awesome to get to show them my life here and very tiring because the easy life I have built for my self was thrown away and I was the host, not the one being hosted, and I had to live up to the standards of Ecuadorian hosting, they are quite high. But it was fun. We finished out the trip by heading to Otavalo a huge market city right out side of Quito that has everything you could possibly want to buy in Ecuador. It was like a huge farmers market but with things not as much food. It was wonderful and I got a lot of my shopping for gifts done there. Then back to Quito and the airport to drop them off and send them back to the states. A wonderful visits that I won’t soon forget. Thanks guys! <3

Now I am just finishing what we would call in the states spring break, but here it is Easter vacation (separation of church and states is no existent here). It has been a very calm week and a half of vacation, I haven’t traveled much but I have been able to keep my self fairly occupied. I spent a lot of time helping teach English classes, hanging out with the other AFSers, helping out in the house, going on errands with my host mom and just chilling. It has been a wonderful break, but tomorrow school starts again. But don’t you worry; I won’t work too hard, the next week I am off to the Galapagos with AFS. It should be awesome.

Livin’ Life on the Loose

Girl and The Sea

Tonight the...

Tonight the hills are watching her as she runs towards the sea.

Yeah, she runs so she'll be free.

And of all the friends and enemies she's made along the way,

They are nowhere in her thoughts as she dives beneath the waves.

Well 6 1/2 months have come and gone since I stepped off the plain in Quito, Ecuador a nervous, scared, excited, and totally unprepared Ellie. But now I have developed a group of friends, a routine and an Ecuadorian life. The feeling is amazing. There were days that I thought that this feeling, of comfort, in my life would never come, but it has and I love it. AFS said that you would feel at home after about 4 months then you would have a down period as you realized that you really didn’t know the culture and the holidays rolled by then you would really understand life and the culture around 6 months here. As much as I don’t want to admit it, they were right. Home is finally a word I can use to describe my life here.

Now, it has been a long time since I last updated. So I am just going to give you an overview of the last bit of time here in the wonderful country of Ecuador. A couple of weeks ago were an AFS event called Intercambio Cuarto (short exchange). This is when all the AFSers change cities for a week and live with a different family to get to know other places, meet other families, and get a little bit of a wider view of Ecuadorian culture. We all picked our cities out of a hat and I’m not going to lie I was a little disappointed when I got Latacunga, a smallish city about 2 hours from Guaranda. It wasn’t very different and not nearly as exciting as the beach or Quito, the nations capital, but I knew I was going to have a good time. Little did I know how much fun it was going to turn out to be. I arrived in my host family’s house early afternoon on Sunday morning. We spent a little bit of time at their home getting settled in, introduced to the family, and getting to know my host siblings for that week. I was living with two kids, an 11-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy. They were very nice and awesome to have around, but I really did miss my host family back in Guaranda, and my sisters and brothers here. The one problem with these short exchanges is we don’t go to school but everybody else in our house normally has to work and go to school. So we were left at home most mornings just entertaining our selves. The AFS programs in the cities were supposed to have stuff for us to do, but the AFS coordinator in Latacunaga was not quite on the ball. But on Monday night I got a call from Alicia, a Belgium AFS student who lives in Guaranda and who I spend a lot of time with. She was kind enough to tell me that all the students from Salcedo, a very near by city were headed to the beach for a couple of days and that I would be welcome to join. Well I jumped on the offer, as I hadn’t had a chance to see the Ecuadorian beach yet. And it was amazing. It started out with long night buss ride, where I was one of the few who was able to sleep, even if I did end up sitting on the floor (some of my fellow AFSers told me I looked drunk, but I stick to the fact that it was worth it if I could sleep). Then we spend three days and two nights enjoying the wonderful town of Atacamas. During the days we slept in, caught a late breakfast/lunch, went swimming, wandered the shops, chilled on the beach, read books, took naps, bought gifts for people at home, and finished out the days going dancing at night. It was a wonderful and very relaxing vacation from real life in Ecuador. I ate way more fruit than one person is supposed to and only got sunburnt once, and it was not very bad. Over the entire trip was fantastic and just what we needed. We were sad to see the beach go, but it was time to head back to Latacunga and Salcedo. After another very long night bus ride home that was made even longer because a road had collapsed so we had to take a major detour we got back home at 5 in the morning. The next day (after a little bit of sleep) we all rejoined our family for a little bit more of daily life. I spent some time at my weeklong host family’s store, and watched a plethora of movies with my 11-year-old host sister. As Sunday morning rolled around we all piled all our stuff back in our suitcases and hit the bus terminal to head back home. It was an awesome week, filled with adventure and fun but I was more then happy to be home with my family and get back into normal routine.

Other than that beach journey life has been quite normal. The days are filled with school, going to the market, helping in English classes, doing homework, cooking, cleaning, skyping, and all the other normal things you would expect in life. I find myself looking at things a whole new way and it makes me laugh some times. I am starting to think like an Ecuadorian, for example when I first got here and everybody was wearing aeropostale clothing I was like “really? Wow, I would not be caught dead in an Aeropostale shirt!” but now the thoughts have changed to “Is that one Aeropostale shirt I own clean, because we don’t have to wear uniforms today and I would like to wear that”. I also now eat meat like I was never a vegetarian, like at least 2 times day.  Seeing a man walk down the street holding live ducks for sale does not make me blink an eye and when my mom makes intestine soup I eat it like a hungry teenager should. My sense of time has gone Ecuadorian as well, ohh it starts at 5, I will get that at like 530ish. I guess you can say perspectives change almost 7 months in a place. But it’s a nice feeling, this trip has been and is amazing and I am so glad I took it on. It was the best life choice I have ever done. I know there are and were some people who thought I was crazy, or not ready, but I am truly proven them wrong. 

Well I need to go and get ready for the day. Today is a special day, in 12 hours I will be waiting at the Quito airport and seeing my dear sister come out of the mass of swarming Ecuadorians, then an hour or so later my two wonderful parents will submerge. I am very excited to see and travel with my family for the week and a halfish there are here. It will be wonderful.

I think of many of you often and send my love your way. Missing is not something that goes away just because you have a wonderful life and family here. You are missed and I will be excited to reunite with you. Love to all.

Livin’ life on the loose.

Party In The G.D.A

(GDA=Guaranda, this is how it is shortened for t-shirts ect.)

So I put my hands up, they're playin' my song

The butterflies fly away

I'm noddin' my head like "Yeah!"

Movin' my hips like "Yeah!"

Got my hands up, they're playin' my song

And now I'm gonna be okay

Yeah! It's a party in the GDA!

Yeah! It's a party in the GDA!

Well my friends… the content of this post, in general, is going to be the same as my last post. Carnaval. That is all that has been going on here in Ecuador and the last week, as been the craziest. It is going to be hard to put it all into one post, but I will do my best. This is going to be more of a list fashion to get you guys more of an idea of the general craziness.

Karioka (spelling???)- This is canned spray foam that was almost constantly covering my body during the past week. You could buy a can for a couple of dollars from anybody on the street and then you could have the joy of covering your friends, family, or random strangers in its white wonderfulness. It was mostly just condensed water that had some other chemicals added to it, if you left it alone for about 10 mins after you were sprayed it would disappear, unless you were unfortunate enough be sprayed with the bubble gum scented or colored stuff. Along with Karioka you could be covered in everything from eggs to buckets of water to baby powder. Before Carnaval I didn’t understand why everybody bought rain jackets, but I never took mine off. Every time I left the house I was wearing it and for good reason too. If not I would have been changing clothes more than a potty training two year old.

Food- As with all holidays here (and in the states); food is a huge part of Carnaval. You would go to a family members house and have a huge lunch than wait a couple of hours and head to another house to eat some more. We never stopped eating. (Given that I was a not allowed to run because there were so many drunk people this has resulted in… well… a little Carnaval tummy.) Fritada was a very common food eaten during Carnaval, this is pork fried in a lot of oil. Also street fair like foods were very common as they were available at every parade and we had parades every day. Some times twice a day, if you made it to one of the near by cities for their parade as well.

Dancing- this was a large part of my Carnaval celebration in many ways. Almost every family gathering had a radio playing that people would start dancing to. And me being the gringa was often pulled in by drunken Uncles to dance with them. But don’t think SHS home coming dancing, think salsa. And let me tell you, even the very drunk uncles out shined me in this department. One time my host cousin took pity on me and taught me the basics so I wasn’t quite as much of a fish out of water, but I was still quite the site. I think my host family enjoyed that quite a lot. The other kind of dancing I did was quite different then salsa. I spend 3 ½ hours dancing down the street in a parade with my school. But the best part is yet to come, I was dressed as ***drum roll please*** a sexy fire woman. I donned a short red dress, kids fire cap that was quite too small for me, black boots, and (my personal favorite) fish net stockings. Yes, it was quite the site. I will try to get some pictures of this up soon so you guys can see me in all my glory.

People- my small town of 30,000 was suddenly akin the Jersey Shore. People came flooding in from all over the country and all over the world. We had people from Colombia, people visiting family members from the states and Europe and many other countries were represented as well. I was always a little confused by the crazy number of hotels that this small, not touristy town had. But I realized that they all open for this week and this week only to hold the crazy flux of people. I saw more gringos this week then I have seen all year combined, they came by the dozens. This was quite a strange site in my very tranquil little mountain town.

I could write for hours about Carnaval but this gives you a taste of the crazy week that I have had. (I have to save some stories for when I get home.) ;)

The one other very notable thing that has happened to Guaranda in this past week was the addition of a new grocery store. I know what you are saying, big deal, but my friends the gringos in town are rejoicing. This grocery store has everything from Kraft mac and cheese to pita bread to real (not iceberg) lettuce. This store happens to be about 3 blocks from my house. It is a happy day for all…

Livin’ life on the loose.