Hello all,

THis is a link to a Map one of  my brilliant companeros made...shows where we all will be for the next two years.
 ttps://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=z3kcB0jc1I6I.kFTcpSP1DEMw

We got our site assignments last week...I'll be going to Portoviejo...an hour from Manta which is on the Pacific.  From what I can tell, its a pretty non touristic town...very Ecuadoran..lots of fruit and veggies grown there.  I will be living with a 62 year old woman and her daughter, as far as I know at this point.  They want us to live with a family for the first 6 months at the minimum and after that we can live alone in an apt. or house or whatever we can find that Peace Corps will approve.  I'd like to find a family that I am compatible with so I can stay with them.  I know it will have a beneficial affect on my Spanish if I do that so that is my  plan at this point.

I am leaving on Wednesday moring to travel to my site to visit for a few days...I'll meet the family and visit the school and the teachers where I'll be working.  If time permits, we can visit the beach and get acquainted with the town.  Below, you'll see some pics of some of the other trainees who will be in my town, or nearby.

We had a few days off for Semana Santa, Easter week so I got to do a little touring around 

 I bought a little book on this cathedral when we were touring it;  its referred to a the Basilica here in Quito.   Learned it took 100 years to build it....the founder got asassinated and it took a long time after that to get the interest and funding together.  Its huge..quite impressive. 

underground burial crypt for "heads of state."

Picked this picture to show the gargoyles ...hummmm...what are they all about? There are tons of them on this building.

 

One of the "tombs" located all around the inside of the basilica....this one has the Nicaraguan flag with the Ecuadoran flag...don't know the significance...just interesting.

One of the many pretty plazas in the historical district of Quito.

I just love these places. They often look so shabby from the street view and then you go in and find these beautiful interior plazas.  This was a private home at one point..now, a restaurant.  The only sad part is that they were built by the Spanish occupiers many years ago.

Just a photo of the pretty stone road way..  some are paved  with asphalt but this is in the historical district and they have tried hard to keep as much as they can of the historical portions.

This is Calle Chile in the historical district, no cars here and the road is paved with ceramic tile.

This is the catholic church in our town, Nayon.  Semana Santa, Easter Week, is a big deal..lots of masses and processions.  The processions have various purposes....the big one is on Good Friday when Jesus carries the cross through town, escorted by Roman Centurions and Cucuroochoos...the people in purple robes and hoods.  More about them below.

This is Jesus and the others.  The procession lasted 3 hours and went from the church all the way down to the river at the bottom of town and then back up again, stopping at the 12 or  14 stations "of the cross."  Not sure about all these details.  The cucuroochoos have something to do with members of the congregation who are walking to repent for their sins....have to read up on this.  Some of them beat themselves on their backs as they walk in the procession.

I joined the procession for its cultural value.  I found another old lady and walked with her and we had a nice chat.  Times like that give me faith in my Spanish.  It was a nice experience.  I have no idea how much she understood of what I said..I know there was a lot she said that I did not get but did not want to  irritate her by asking.

This is the family I have been living with for two plus months.  Really nice people.  Too many people for the small space but it seemed to work for the most part.  The two daughters and the mom ( and the two perritas) are beside me, I am doing this with a selfie stick ( Christmas present from the Greenes) Hernan, the father is behind me and Carmen is next to him.  She is the sister of Juanita, the mom and has just started living here...not sure what the circumstances of that are.  Lots of mysteries.

This is Juanita and Hernan...they do actually seem to love each other.  So sweet.

We got a presentation from the relatively new ambassador....Chapman, I think.  He actually seems like a really good guy.  We are having our swearing in ceremony on April 12 at his house.  This picture was taken at the main Peace Corps office in Quito.  We don't go there much since we are still trainees but once we become full fledged volunteers, this is where we will have our most contact.

We took this group picture right before the Ambassador left.                                                      

These three great young folks, Marvin (from N. Carolina), Brooke (from West  Va.)and Delia ( from Vermont) are all going to be in Portoviejo with me for the next 2 years.   Brooke will be at my school and the other two will be at another school nearby.

Abby and me with our language teacher, Paulina.  She was in this get up to celebrate our site assignments.  I think she was trying to look indigenous.

This photo is out of place.  I was behind this couple in the procession.   That sweet lady carried that umbrella the whole three hours ...carried it over that man's head...............ack !!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the whole group that is assigned to the costal area of Ecuador.  The coast runs from the Andes west to the ocean.  I will be only an hour from the ocean but some in the costal region are a few hours from the ocean, right up next to the Andes.

Took this in Otovalo.  These are the outfits the indigenous women wear as everyday clothing....and it looks beautiful.  I'm just not comfortable taking photos of them so this was an easy way to capture their clothing.

A little lunch group in Otovalo...notice the great table.  Its probably some tree from the Amazon....too late now.  :(

That's all for now...going to bed.

Love and thanks again for paying your taxes.
Pat

Hello all,

Another week closer to learning where we will be for the next two years.  Things have gotten a lot more interesting since we have begun going into the schools and actually teaching..or at least helping with the English classes.  I have some interesting photos.  PC took us back to Otovalo and they had arranged for us to visit an indigenous medical facility..where they fuse ancestral/tribal medicine with western medicine.  Earlier in the week, PC  took us to visit the Asemblea National...basically their seat of government.  I have some good photos from there and especially a huge mural spreading across the whole front on the assembly chamber, by Ecuador's famous artist Guayasamin.  Its sort of a collage made up of a series of paintings depicting various parts of Ecuadoran society and culture.  He was from an indigenous tribe  ( died in 1999) so a lot of his art shows the oppression they have suffered.  There is only one reference to the USA and that is in the form of a CIA malevolent looking face.  Scary.  It looms over  their legislative chamber.

This is a series of pictures I should have included last week.  The handler is displaying one of the two bald eagles they have.  He released them and they flew out over that small hill you can see in background...they did not come back right away but he was not worried. I guess they always come back...they are not native to the Andes.  They also have a captive Andean Condor..my picture is not too good.  They are huge and endangered.

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In this photo you can see the CIA painting but you can also see the Andean Condor with its wings spread.  They are not red in nature...the red means something but I can't recall.  The mural is beautiful and incredibly large.

THis is  series of photos from our trip to tour the Asemblea Nacional.  You can see the painting depicting the CIA.  Our guide was a very well versed and proud indigenous young man who did a great job...all in Spanish so I missed some but was able to get a whole lot.  His Spanish was very high quality.   The photo of him with his hands raised is when he was explaining the painting with the hands raised to the sun symbol....the artist, Guayasamin,  depicted many of the situations of the indigenous people.  You can see how big Quito is and this is just in one direction...we were sort of in the central of the city so it is HUGE!!!    Also, the picture of  two of my companeros and me shows that we were missing our teacher, Paulina,  that day.  We were on the roof of the Asemblea building where they have some interesting displays and great views of Quito.

THis is a diagnostic procedure at the indigenous medicine place.  That lady rubs a live guinea pig all over the patient and when the guinea pig dies they slit it open and examine its innards to determine where the disease was in the patient.  They tried to convince Mattie that she had back pain but I don't think she gave' in.  Anyhow, the poor little guinea pig died for nothing.  They eat guinea pigs here, they call them cuy, and they are somewhat of a delicacy.  I don't know if they eat the ones they use for diagnosing or not but....I'll bet they do. 

First this lady squeezed the pee out of it, then she skinned it.  I hope it was dead by then.  Ick, sad....This little lady seems to be the cuy expert......curadora I think they called her.  The also have a procedure where they rub an egg all over you to draw out the bad energy.   Then they crack and egg and examine the yolk and white.  They saw that little red spot in the one they used on one of our trainees and said it meant something about his energy.  I muttered to myself...yeah, it means the egg is fertilized !!!  duh....I think....

Our group was respectful but not thrilled.  In the background you can see some of Otovalo...really a pretty place..high in the Andeas so the weather is cool...very nice.  The kid in the blue jacket graduated from CU Boulder.  The other elder trainee, Linda, is in the picture.

We've been back two weeks from our site visit...I went to Otovalo, a little north of Quito and had a good visit with the volunteer who is already there working in a school.  We went to school with him one day but then toured the area the other two days.  That was not Peace Corps' intention by sending us there but its how things worked out.  Peace Corps keeps telling us to be flexible.....so we were :)

That was two weeks ago.  This past week we started working/observing in schools here in Quito, three days a week for three weeks.  It has been exhausting, primarily for me because we have to get up at 5, be on the bus by 6 and at the school by 7:40 to teach classes until 12 and then back on the bus to get back to the training center to start classes again there at 1 ( which is impossible) until 5.  They did figure out the impossibility and have made some adjustments to the schedule but its still exhausting.   But...the good part is that the students just LOVE us...its amazing.  Even with all their exposure to technology, and they all seem to have a lot of it, they still love to hear us speaking English...its so darn cute.  And, we are working with high school kids....so cute.

I'll take more photos next week but I have a few to post here.

Two of the sweet street dogs in Otovalo...they followed us around a while.  At least they had each other.  This is Abby and Frank...Frank is the current volunteer there and Abby is in my training class.  He showed us all around and we went to his school with him one day.

Frank and Abby

We went to a Birds of Prey rehab center.  They display their birds as a fund raiser.  This is a bald eagle that they later brought to the amphitheater and let it fly ......it disappeared for a while but came back.  The trainer said they can't release them, even in the US because they are too tame.  They were gifts from the US or Canada.  There are none in the wild down here.

This is a little hawk they let fly around and snag bits of meat out of the air. 

This is a lagoon in an old volcanic crater....very touristic...we went for a boat ride on the water..pretty.

There are a lot of indigenous in Otovalo and I am too shy to take photos of them when they are looking so I snuck this one of this man on a bus.   A lot of men wear those hats and long braids.  I'll try to get some photos of the women and children...beautiful dresses and other clothing.   The old men and women are very interesting looking.  Some photos after i get my nerve up.

One of the many darling young women who are in this training with me.  She is from California but her family is from Afghanistan.  We have so many interesting people and stories.  Shows how diverse the US really is.  We were on a bus on our way to the bike trail. 

In another couple of weeks we will find out our assignments for the next two years.  Once we get those assignments, we'll know more about our futures and I, for one, will feel a lot more settled.

Here we are....ready to go.  It was a small but powerful group. Linda in the blue is my peer, a little younger.  She walked part of the trail.  Hope to get her on a bike soon.

A view from the bike trail.  It runs thru an area an Cumbaya along an old railway.  Actually, very scenic for the most part.

Views from the bike trail.

This is Brooke, she went with me today.  She's from West Va.

More bike trail views.  This is from a little park located beside the trail. 

A little birthday celebration for the daughter who turned 20.

THiis is a hostal in Quito...very unusual looking from the outside.  No idea about the inside or the price.

I found this dark beer...if you look real close on the the label it says Cacao...chocolate.  But it does not have a chocolate flavor at all....just a good flavor...1.50 a bottle.

He is not dead or injured...he sleeps there....crazy...and the cars drive around him...so far.

 I saw this from a bus...I looked at it and looked at it and finally figured it out.  In Spanish the letter "i" has our "e" sound so it, " Beemer parts."   duh. 

One of the beautiful dogs we have to walk past every day on our way to class.....He's just gorgeous and so so neglected.  He needs to be rescued.  He probably has a family but.......

We noticed these two electrical arrangements when we were waiting for our bikes today...amazing and it all seems to work...for the most part.   And, this is in Cumbaya...one of the upscale neighborhoods !!!! Can you imagine looking out of your window at this during an electrical storm ?  I guess that's  why they are all so religious.

 

 

Thats all for now,
Love, me