Birthday weekend!

It has been an interesting—well, week since the last time I updated. I’d really rather be sleeping right now or reading “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War” but feel like I owe all of you an update.

I turned 22 last Thursday the 16th here in Ecuador (though I personally have a belief I would have turned 22 no matter where I was in the world). Throughout the day there were three different cakes consumed in my honor, a new record! We nine PDs had all signed up for a cooking class in the afternoon, so that morning in language school we were each given an ingredient and told to go to the market with our teacher (the school is a 15ish minute walk from the Santa Clara Market). I was told to buy 10 tomatoes de arbol (Tree Tomatoes) which are a delicious and fairly unique fruit I’ve had the juice of several times. I like them much more than their fake vegetable cousin, the American tomato. During the 11am break, we had a huge cake as a snack for 30 or so people. That afternoon we took a fieldtrip to the Guayasamin museum. Guayasamin is Ecuador’s most famous artist, and boy is his art depressing. I encourage you to google him and see some of his art. He used his art for a lot of political and social commentary throughout Latin America, but it is all very dark, and, on a personal note I disagree with his view of the world. There was only one painting in this huge permanent museum devoted to him that I liked. On the way back home I got lured into the hostel where a lot of the current PDs stay in Quito (it is cheaper to grab a $7 room than take a $8-10 taxi and spend so much time commuting). Holly (another current PD) was waiting there with another cake! This was probably my favorite of the three. It was made from an “imported” American white cake box with homemade chocolate frosting and sprinkles. Holly had made it in Conocoto and bussed it in on her lap all the way into the Mariscol in downtown Quito. Cake number three was a smaller pineapple cake at dinner with my host family. Then I did my homework and went to bed. It was a good if perhaps not overly exciting day.

Friday was the real celebration. My teacher was sick on Friday, so I spent two hours being taught by Luis, the director of the school. I learned a future tense (conjugation of Ir + a + infinitive verb) and the past preterit for regular verbs, some pretty important stuff in my opinion. In the afternoon we went and lounged at a park for a while, but the best part of the day was the evening. We ate at a restaurant called Crepes and Waffles for my birthday, and it was incredible. A little pricey as far as food goes in Ecuador (entrees were 5 or 6 dollars) but worth it and it is apparently the place to go to fix a salad craving for the next year. We ended the evening with the 10pm showing of “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.” The theater was huge and new, and while we did not pay for VIP seats (apparently with recliners and a wait staff) we still had great seats that leaned back a little. The movie was in English with Spanish subtitles.

This Saturday we went to a town called Mindo, which is about an hour north of Quito in the Cloud Forest. The travel plans made for an early morning on Saturday. I was packed and out of the house by 7 and at our chosen meeting spot on 10 de Deciembre (one of the major North-South streets in Quito, close to our school, named after an important historical date) at 7:45. We taxied and then took the MetroBus up pretty much to the north bus terminal. Here things got interesting. We got off across from the MegaMaxi (a mall) and waited on the corner of the road for about an hour. Finally a bus to Mindo came by, and after Mark chased it down we all got to climb up a ladder into a window at the back of the bus (they wouldn’t open the door). We were later told that they have started sealing the doors at the station with tape so they can’t pick up people along the way, but that obviously doesn’t do any good. It was a little under two hours into Mindo driving through some of the most extreme I have ever seen. We were in mountain passes the whole time. These mountains are steep like the Rockies (probably even steeper, with narrower bases) and thickly forested all the way up to the top. It made for a very interesting drive. At first glance, Mindo looked like a sleepy little pueblo barely larger than its town square. That was more or less the impression I still have of the town, even after seeing that it is in fact bigger than I first realized. The hostel we stayed at had several freestanding houses that were constructed almost as tree houses, with several different levels and rooms shooting off on all sides. Rumor has it everyone except Krysta spent the afternoon napping and reading (Krysta spent the whole time reading). Despues de our siestas, we took a tour at “the chocolate factory” next door. A couple from Minnesota has recently opened a rival hostel and is also making their own chocolate. We got to see (and taste) the whole process, from popping open a pod to fermenting the seeds to grinding, separating, and finally sweetening. If you ask me, chocolate tastes terrible until they add sugar and a little milk at the very end, which was eye opening. This hostel did sell the best brownies ever made with their own chocolate, though. Other events from the weekend include eating pesto pizza at an Italian restaurant (I don’t expect to have that again in Ecuador unless I go back to Mindo) and making friends with some locals who were drinking and salsa-ing in the town square at night. The first part isn’t technically legal, but they only had minimal problems from the local police.

Sunday Mike, Mark, and I spent some time just wandering around Mindo’s outskirts. We did not make it to any of the waterfalls, which it is known for. We also only saw a couple of humming birds. We did meet plenty of mosquitoes though. I learned an incredible trick to repel mosquitoes: eating a tablespoonful or two of brewers’ yeast with B1 in it. Apparently it bonds with the alkalines in your blood (or something) and repels mosquitoes naturally! It doesn’t taste all that great, but I think it works wonders. We also got to enjoy some of the cleanest air in South America in Mindo—I’m told this is the case because of all the conservation efforts centered around all the different types of humming birds that live there. Mindo is in a region called the cloud forest, aptly named because, while it doesn’t rain as much as the “rain forest,” a forest has still sprung up because of all the moisture it absorbs from the surrounding clouds. It also rained both afternoons we were there.

On Monday we went to the teleferiqo, the ski gondola that for $8 ($4 if you have a censo, or foreigner card from the department of immigration, like I do) will take you up to the top of Mt. Pinchincha for beautiful views of Quito and the surrounding area. Well, the views are beautiful if it isn´t cloudy. We couldn’t see a thing. It was a total waste of an afternoon; I’ll have to go back. It was a valiant effort, though.

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week were exciting for very different reasons. On Tuesday Erik went to the hospital for what can only be described as “food poisoning from Mindo.” Poor Jackie also suffered, but did not go to the hospital because of it. I was spared, because I ate at a local place offering a trout almuerzo. Apparently everyone else ate at a Mexican restaurant. We all think it was probably the homemade ice cream only Jackie and Erik ate, but they both felt bad for most of Monday and spent most of Tuesday throwing up. I got to go see Erik in the hospital during my lunch break. Eulalia, our madre, called and asked if I could come and sit with Erik because she had to run to the bank. The Clinica Pinchincha is very new and very clean (I believe it’s the second best hospital in Quito) but it is not quite as private as an American hospital. I took Ian Flemming’s “From Russia with Love,” a James Bond thriller. I walked into Erik’s semi-private curtained area, said hello, and then explained how whenever I was sick when I was younger my Mom would read to me, and thought he might like the same treatment. Erik, still feeling sick and bored out of his mind, was very excited by the idea. I spent the next hour reading aloud, which is much harder than I had previously thought. Bibi, our new country director, relieved me and everyone except Erik and Jackie headed out to Conocoto to have our first of what will be many, many talks with the current program directors about what exactly they do and we will do. After Duncan explained the microfinance program and the library, I got pulled aside by Eliah to work on the community surveys while everyone else got to take a tour of the library and play some ping pong. Don’t get me wrong, I volunteered to be in charge of the community surveys. Two years ago MPI spent a ton of time administering community asset surveys to everyone in their surrounding communities, to find out who has what skills and what other things people want to learn, in the hope that we can use the assets the community already has (i.e. having a local carpenter teach a class about carpentry rather than some outsider) to strengthen the community. I have some experience with data sets in general and this is the kind of thing that seems like it’s a real chance to practice some developmental economics. I will have to learn how to use SPSS, a new statistical package, but the more skills like that I have the better.

Wednesday was also programmatically exciting. After the PD talk of the day, Duncan held the Microfinance interest meeting, which consisted of myself and Erik. So that will officially be one of my tasks for the next year, which I am super pumped about. Dunc and Eliah spent a lot of time last year trying to get the microfinancing coop, EPV (Esperanza y Progreso del Valle, or hope and progress of the valley) incorporated with a larger Ecuadorian microfinance network, sadly to no avail because of the size (too small) and (lack of) transparency of EPV. But, there are a lot of really exciting opportunities for the microfinance program to grow for next year, and I can’t wait to get started. I already have one major idea, which I will keep secret for now. But regardless, I am excited that I will 100% be working on the program that interested me most and have a long transition report to read (and a computer program to learn how to use).

Chao (the proper spelling and the ONLY way Ecuadorians say goodbye)

Chet

Song of the blog: “New Millennium Homes,” by Rage Against the Machine