Four months…wow sorry it has been a very long time. I promise that from now on I will keep this blog more up to date. So last time I wrote was my parent´s visit, since then a lot has happened. First and foremost, it has been rainy season. This means lot of things. It means that it pours almost every night and sometimes all day. It means there are tons of random swimming holes, creeks, springs, and waterfalls that weren’t there during the dry season. It means flooding. And it means no running water. So the kids were on vacations from the beginning of February through the start of April. Thus, I went swimming with the kids almost on a daily basis in numerous different spots. There are a ton of super cool spots to swim. My favorite is a waterfall that is in the middle of dense jungle vegetation. You have to hike back through quite a few different farms and then follow a stream in the forest until you can hear the waterfall…it is super pretty. So with all the rain people are still working in the fields and harvesting random crops. My phone actually broke by harvesting cacao in the middle of a downpour…whoops. The rain has caused some flooding. The grounds around the hostel in Buenos Aires got flooded and so did the entire lot of cacao that I planted with Pepito….bummer. It took out Bucay´s intake structure for their tubed water (this is the water that we steal before it gets to the treatment plant). Thus, I was completely without water for about a week. I had to go to neighbor´s houses to ask for water to bathe with because they have hookups to Cumanda´s water. After a week I got fed up with no water, so I tapped into the Cumanda water distribution network. The hose just happened to run right by my house so I made a little connection and then duct taped all the random plastic hose pieces I could find around my house to get the water from the connection into my wash tank. It doesn’t look pretty, but I can now fill up my wash tank to have water for the house. This means still no running water but definitely better than no water whatsoever. It has been about 2 months now like this, but the rainy season is supposed to be over soon so maybe I´ll get some running water again.
In the middle of March two of my friends from home, Eric and Rudy came to visit me for a week. I went up to Quito to meet them at the airport and from there we headed to the Amazon and the city of Tena. I took them out to the eco-tourism place with the monkeys on the beach where I had been before. We actually spent the night at Kamak Maki in the middle of the forest. We hung out with Lucas (the monkey that peed on me the visit before) and he caused quite a bit of mischief. The boys had brought me some candy bars from the states, and Lucas decided to steal my last Snickers bar, pound it on the ground a bunch of times, eat a little bit, and then wipe his dirty little chocolate hands on my pants…that little jerk, but so darn adorable. We went for a hike in the jungle and went to see a really pretty waterfall and then we went tubing down the Napo River. We stayed in Tena that night and then went to check out the caves of Jumandy the next day. After the jungle we headed down to my site. We got to my house at night and were greeted by a pile of bat poop on the floor, cockroaches on the walls of the kitchen, and a baby tarantula in the kitchen sink. Both of the ‘outdoorsy’ boys were immediately disgusted, freaked out, and I think genuinely scared that they had to sleep in my house for the next couple of nights. It was pretty hilarious. Over the next couple days we just trekked around Buenos Aires and Cumanda. We visited the best swimming holes, ate lots of fruit, swung on some Tarzan vines, and just hung out with members of the community. The last day a friend of mine took us about an hour outside of Cumanda where we repelled down a cliff off the dirt road to get to a super pretty waterfall. The next day we went up to Riobamba to walk around and show them a little bit of the sierra. And after that we went back up to Quito to see them off on the plane back to the states. All in all it was a great visit with them and as usual Buenos Aires enjoyed seeing some more Gringos in town.
Ok, so workwise. I am finally a real engineer here! It just fell into my lap, but I am now working for the water company of Cumanda. This is actually the same company that I am currently stealing my water from. So I work there three mornings a week and I am their only technical person, which is awesome. Basically that means I am in charge of any and all things AutoCAD, all the calculations, and checking of other calculations. So the main project for the company is potable water and sewage system for all of Cumanda. Most of the plans for this are already done, so I am just looking them over and doing other random sketches and calculations for that. So that part is kind of cool, but the best thing is that all the little communities in the county of Cumanda who don’t have water, or who need help fixing their water supply can come into the office to ask for technical help. Well, since I happen to be the only technical person that means me! I get to go out and help all the little communities. I have only been at the company for about a month, but I already have a project to help improve and update a system in a community of only 16 families. So I am super content in that regard. As far as other work in Buenos Aires goes…there isn’t all that much. I started a big wormbed with the Escuela de Campo so we have some worms and some humus. I have cooking classes every Friday (they just want to learn basic ‘American’ food, pizza, hamburgers, tacos, cookies, breads, etc.) and I am starting up English and recycling again at the school. But really Buenos Aires doesn’t have all that much interest in me, so better that I focus my energy on the other little towns that actually want help with water.
Other than that, I have just been hanging around until I go home to visit! I leave May 30th and I cannot wait. It has been over year and it is time to get back for a little bit. I will have pictures to post at some point in the future but no promises on that. But I do promise to write more often…so stay tuned.
Random Thoughts:
• On Palm Sunday, I passed a catholic church on the way to the market. The priest was outside blessing people with holy water. The water was held in an empty vegetable lard tub and he was flicking the water with a paint brush.
• Lycra (spandex) leggings in every neon color you can imagine are the hot fashion item here. A woman wearing Lycra with wedge heels is what all the men want.
• I put on black Lycra capris to go running one day. Never again. There were numerous comments about my beautiful ‘yuccas’ (my large thighs that remind them of the white tuber that they eat) and my curves.
• I bought two bunnies on Easter. One died a couple weeks later, so I bought two more. I now have three bunnies. I think I might be crazy.
• I ate lots of Fanesca for Easter…a soup that has just about every grain, starch, bean, and vegetable that you can imagine in it.
• I got super sick one week with strep throat…turns out they don´t sell Penicillin in Ecuador so I had to make due with a weaker alternative drug, that didn´t work. A woman in town told me a home remedy and after a few days of gargling a mixture of chamomile, potato, lemon, and dragon´s blood I was all better.
• During rainy season all the venomous snakes want to come into my dry house. An old lady in town killed two large ´X´ snakes (I don´t know the English name but here they called them X snakes because the pattern on their back is like X´s) in front of my house, I half killed a coral snake in the hinge of my bathroom door, a man passed by my house dragging along a 5 foot long ´X´ snake to extract the lard, I found a dead ´X´ snake while swimming in the creek, and I almost killed a baby snake while walking to the store one day. Oh and I saw a long neon green snake eating a tree frog in the banana trees behind my house one day…that was actually pretty cool.
• I had my mid-service conference at the end of April…one year in site! It was great to see everyone and learn some new stuff in the conference. We also had our one year medical check-up; complete with stool samples…no parasites for me.
• It is the beginning on orange season….yes!
• My cat gave me ringworm on my face.
