Waves and waves

Phew! I made it, another trip with VISIONS survived. I have had an up and down past few days. Two days ago we bid our summer participants farewell. I began the second part of my trip travelling. Yesterday in an Internet Cafe I had my hippy bag stolen. The thing that added a little extra salt on the wound was that the place had video monitors and captured the event on tape. I watched the man come sit at the computer stall next to me. I watched him wait and wait until just the moment to grab my bag which was sitting by my side.

There was nothing of any real value in my bag, but a few sentimental pieces, like my journal from the past two year (I only had one page left!!) and my cribbage board that has accompanied me on all my travels in my adult life. I guess losing Jitterbug Perfume wasn´t so bad, but now how will I find out what happened to Alobar.

Getting robbed is just a difficult emotional reaction to process. The largest part of my reaction is feeling so stupid for being so careless. I bounced out of it today. I decided to take a bus to Parque Carolina in downtown Quito. Quito! What an amazing city. I was blown away with how much it reminded me of Logan, nothing really about the city, but the green mountains that surround the city.

I made it to the Parque, asking a few locals along the way. I ran (/slowly jogged) for a bit, and then just walked and enjoyed people watching. The park is enormous and full of life. I stopped and watched some futsol soccer matches. I passed a basketball court and asked to shoot around, that is probably what tipped my energy from downer to happy.

I also had a thought today. One of the things that i lost were my sunglasses. Consequently, as I have been out walking the streets I have been squinting. I wonder if at times I trick myself into feeling in a worse mood then I actually am. What if my face is confusing my sunny squint with a nasty scowl?

The point is, I had a rough day, the but the park and energy of Quito has brought me back to a good place. Tonight I am taking a red eye bus for the coast, and you better believe I am going to take on surfing again!! Wish me luck!!

Galapagos pictures on the way, what a crazy other wordly place, the marine iguanas blew my mind, and so did snorkeling. Snorkeling had life changing impacts which I will have to wait for another day to explain!

My group, Ecuador 2012

volcano uncovered.

waterfall tour of near banos by bicycle, amazing!! what a day off

this is my fearless leader shawn using the plumb bob on the brick wall for the kiosk. i also learned how to use the plomaba and piola to put up brick walls, i think i may have to build a brick something in my backyard.

our maestro italo at the kiosk

this is the kiosk we finished, and the wall i helped put up.

this is where i have been sleeping the past three weeks, i love this simplified version of life.

we took a gondola down to see the waterfall.

and my hermanastra ashley and i had to do a jump shot for the occasion

my coworker vinicio and his amazing sister ruth, beautiful people, i feel like i now have family in ecuador.

these were my two buds in the city of sucre, haha, city, i mean very small village. matthias and judi (who i called juli for the first week ) we had our special handshake, i´m really going to miss them

then we watched a soccer game in sucre, the tiny place where we built the kiosk.

and as i guessed, lupe and i are in fact best friends ever.

We leave for galapogos thursday morning. I had a dream today that i flew home early  and missed it, and then my tooth fell out. Saying goodbye always stresses me out. But it´s been a great trip nonetheless.

We had a marathon travel day and ended up in miami at 1:30 in the morning, i may or may not have dropped my passport and a lady may or may not have picked it up and found me, because i still look like a 19 year kid.

We arrived in Quito after 3 days of travelling, flight cancellations, shenanigans, under the cover of darkness, but the view from our hostel in the morning made it all worth it

Our crew minus Vinicio from the top of the basilica in Quito.

That is my home this month, our dining hall.

We arrived to find the kitchen a mess, we spent hours upon hours making it spick and span.

I´m starting the suspenders trend, one of our participants even asked if we could make visions suspenders, its working....

This is our view from our homebase, volcano tungurauhua, which erupted in 2008 and the tourist town of banos had to be evacuated.

Our guapo group of men, vinicio, shawn, y nico suave

our whole group together at a finca up the mountain. it is incredible here how people farm in the mountains, mostly without machines, i have seen a couple tractors.

one of our projects is at the casa de ancianos, we are building a casa de pollos so the house can have fresh chicken eggs everyday.

our first visit to our tiny town in sucre we came upon a festival of corpus cristi, there were bulls running the streets.

check out this spider, cray cray, we also found a large tarantula in our kitchen, which we removed, i have never seen a spider that big in my life.

the misty mountain roads remind me of ireland. the principal of our school took us on a drive to a small village where one of atahualpas brother lived, it was very cool being so close to history.

He also told us that this old woman was a descendant of atahualpa, we asked how long she lived here, and sha said 4 years, so maybe our friend is just a skilled storyteller, which i´ve always been told, an irishman never let facts get in the way of a good story, maybe the same holds true for ecuadorians.

Inca artifacts gathered in a ´museum´ near this monument. We had to walk a quarter mile along a ditch to get to the persons house who had all of these artifacts, unlike a museum we were able to hold everything.

Quito is enormous, it goes on and on!!!

There are rainbows everyday. This was the most spectacular one yet, on our way to Sucre where we are building the kiosk.

Me and my kitchen, and as Ashley my coworker calls it, my Aguacate dress.

We made Quimbolitos, an Ecuadoran specialty, basically a sponge cake wrapped in a pumpkin leave and boiled.

My buddy Emily Jackeline, Lupita´s granddaughter.

The Quimbolitos!! Cooked.

A night on the town (we were the only ones in the bar) with Lupe my new best friend, the owner and Ashley. I finally feel like a tall person here, I tower over the locals, and Ashley. If only I had played basketball here!

Hola Ecuador

Hello friends,

I hope all is well in your part of the world. I made it down to Ecuador. I am doing my third summer with VISIONS service adventures. My first two experiences were down in Nicaragua. I have told many of you of what VISIONS is and what I typically do. This summer I´m in a new place a new culture and a new home base.

For those of you who don´t know about VISIONS, I will tell you a little. It is a service learning adventure company for American High School kids. They come from all around the country and they arrive not knowing anyone else. We all live in the same place, eat all of our meals together and do significant service projects. This year our projects include finishing a kiosk for a tincy tiny village called Sucre. The hope is that kiosk will serve as a place for local artesains to sell their crafts to the travellers passing through. There is a legend that a treasure exists in the mountains near Sucre, the treasure of Atahualpa, the Incan leader of Ecuador. He was tricked into a peace meeting with the Conquistador and later executed. His general his all of the gold from the Spaniards and to this day it has not been found. Another project is building a chicken coop for an old person´s home up the road from our homebase.

We are staying about 20 minutes away from Sucre in a town called Patate. Our homebase is an Agriculture school. It is more like a campus with a series of buildings and a kitchen and dining area. One component of VISIONS is our ´circle time´ where we all gather in a circle and share our feelings. It sounds a little silly, but when people buy in and share their experiences it is a pretty fantastic insightful experience. Last night we had our first Allyo (community in Quechua) with our group of kids. I couldn´t believe all they were sharing. Because  our trips are an unplugged experience, with no music players, iphones etc, many kids commented on how good it felt to talk with people, face to face rather than chatting, texting. They also remarked on how easy it was to just be themselves and yet still get along with such a diverse crew of peers.

When I come home at the end of these trips I gush to anyone who will listen about how great of an experience it is. As the year goes on those sentiments stay the same, but the reasoning becomes less and less clear. I go to this place, I have to work from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, I sleep on the floor with pretty simple accomodations and I´m constantly around people.  It does not sound like my ideal summer vacation. Now that I am here again I remember why I love it so much. I am present. I go through the day and my mind is in the moment. I spend a day working working working, and when I hit the pillow it feels good to feel so exhausted. I´m very happy to be here.

My co'leaders and I arrived almost two weeks ago to prepare everything for  the kids. This summer I am assigned the task of food honcho. Details have never been my strong suit, and that may be a dramatic understatement. I have been stressed and excited for the challenge of managing food for a group of 30 people in a foreign country. Despite the stress, the benefit  is that I am able to work closely with our cook, Doña Lupe. In Nicaragua our cook Darlín and I were besties.

Our first night in our little village town of Patate we met Lupe. I came out of our bus and said ´You and I are going to be best friends´, and she looked at me with her skeptical stoic stare and I held my smile for awhile until the silence between us became awkward and I retreated to the bus again. Since then we have slowly been getting a feel for each other. Yesterday I spent 5 hours in the kitchen with Lupe cooking a traditional Ecudorian meal (Llapingachos, huevos fritos and chorizo). I am slowly but surely removing the layers of her serious demeanor and we now do fist pump explode everytime we pass by each other.

Please forgive the scattered thoughts of my experiences thusfar, I will put up some pictures soon. Our kitchen has a view of the Volcano Tungurahua the same Volcano that erupted in 2006. But I have only seen it twice in two weeks (it´s always clouded over!)

Hasta entonces!!!