Family photos

Sorry I haven't updated in so long! Here are some pictures to hold you over...


Melany sneaking some frosting at Monica's birthday party
(I decorated the cake!)

muchachos

with Mirely and Melany, this is when the kids took over my camera

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the following series is my favorite-




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pretty girls

typical brother-sister shot

a neighbor

me and Kevin

Monica blowing out her candle

Melany, Siomara and Angelo at my house

Monica with Jaime and his family on his mom's birthday

Angelo's self portrait

and his picture of his sister

Monica singing at her school's fiesta

The tortoise and the hare

Saturday June 5 was the day of the environment. Humberto, who works with Costas y Bosques for EcoBiotec, planned a minga and charla in the town near me where he’s working. He asked me to come and give a talk. So we went in the morning and picked up trash in the streets and on the beach. We started out with about 6 people but more joined as we went. Then Humberto showed a video about sea turtles and I gave my talk about endangered species, sea turtles and trash, and how we can reduce the trash in the streets. I wrote a little poem about turtles and trash since I’ve found that people are more inclined to learn something if it makes them laugh and it rhymes.

Other than working I’ve been running on the beach lately, which is combined with tide pool gazing and beachcombing. There are a series of rocky points along the beach with sandy stretches or flattened rocks in between. At a few of the points the sea has carved arches out of the rocks with caves into the cliffs underneath. I’ve found crabs, snails and some small fish in the tide pools but not the abundance of animals I remember from the beaches in Manabi. Today when I was looking more closely at a new area I found one big chiton and thought that was more like I remember, so I searched a little more and found one sea hare grazing around in a pool. Sea hares basically look like big snails without their shells, only cuter. I was so excited to find it that I crouched down and said hi. Which is silly, of course, since the sea hare would clearly only speak Spanish.

Doing

So what have I actually been doing lately? Mainly working at the colegio and escuela, going to various types of meetings, hanging around the house with my family, eating seafood and fruit, going into town to run errands, reading, and (occasionally) running on the beach. When I go to the escuela the director sends me to one or two of the classrooms (one classroom per grade, kindergarten, or grade 1, to grade 7) and I teach them some combination of the next lesson in their science books, a charla on an environmental topic, and some English. I’ve gone into grades 7, 5, 4, 3, and kindergarten so far. The 7th graders have been the most fun to teach and the 3rd graders have been the hardest since I can’t get them to stop talking or stay in their seats. But they are cute. At the colegio (grades 8-10) I sit in on the science and English classes or hang out with the teachers and help with their lesson plans. This past week was the colegio fiesta. Monday I went for a flag ceremony where they presented sashes and diplomas to the 10th graders. They had me sit at the head table with the school director, some of the teachers, my counterpart the Junta president, and my sister who’s now the president of the parents’ group. I helped hand out diplomas. On Thursday I went to the fiesta celebrating when the colegio was founded. They had me sit at the head table again and whenever someone goes up to talk they address the people at the head table first, so they say like “Good afternoon Gonzalo Alava, President of the Junta Parroquial, Ramon Ruano, Director of the Colegio, Monica Luna, President of the Padres de Familia, Kiki…” This always makes me laugh, partly because they don’t know my last name and Kiki just sounds so informal after all those intros, partly because they are unclear of my title, and partly just the way they say it, like they are as amused as I am that I’m sitting at the head table. But I don’t think I’m supposed to be laughing at these times.

Last week I went to a meeting with Nazca and some people from Conservation International. I got put on the team of people from my Junta to work on informational signs in my town and two others for the reserve. We started in my site yesterday by repainting the bus stop and adding the name of the reserve on the wall with a board to post information and announcements. Later in the week I went to a 2 day meeting with my USAID counterpart Cristobal and other people from the Costas y Bosques program, people from Ecolex which works with USAID here, from SocioBosque the payment for conserving forest program, and from the Ministry of the Environment. They were giving presentations to people from the town councils of each town around here. Reyes, the other volunteer working with Cristobal, was there too on Friday. The meetings were good and I learned some stuff although a lot of the Spanish went over my head. But I think just being there to meet everyone was important for me and at the end on Friday Reyes and I sat down with Cristobal, the two Ecolex guys, and two guys who work with Costas y Bosques to plan what they have going on in June. So I’m getting to work! The meetings were at a hotel on the beach that’s about a 15-20 min drive from my town, one of the closest places to me. It’s a gorgeous location and the owner, Judith, is from Vancouver and has been there for 18 years. I met her when I got there on Thursday and she said she’s always happy to have foreigner neighbors and I told her I would come back to visit, which I’m definitely going to try to do. She seems very nice and like she would be interesting to talk to, she said she traveled a lot before settling in Ecuador and she’s known other PCVs.

Mother´s Day

I should mention Mother’s Day, since it’s a huge holiday here, and since I have pictures. They had Mother’s Day parties on two different days at the colegio and escuela where the kids gave their moms presents they made and sang songs and ate sandwiches and cake and played games. My host mom’s mother, who they call Abuelita, lives with us, so my mom’s brothers and sisters and some other extended family all came to our house that weekend to visit. Actually there are 4 generations of women living at my house- Abuelita, Esperanza, Monica, and Melany. We spent all day Sunday eating and toasting and singing and drinking and dancing. Everyone said they were happy I could be there for the holiday and made me feel like part of the family. Monica and her brothers Alfredo and Rafael spent hours trying to teach me to dance to different Latin music. It was a lot of fun.

Kevin and Melany with their Abuelita

Melany and Monica


the children

grandchildren

great grandchildren

salud!

women of the house

party at the school- jardin

Melany giving her mom a gift

and her son Sebastian

Monica singing with the park guard

Me entiendes?

Some people are easier for me to understand than others, which depends on accent, talking speed, word choice, and conscientiousness of talking to a nonnative speaker. Aka, in my case, someone who doesn’t actually know Spanish. I was talking to a man the other day who was careful to make sure I was following the conversation, which I was for the most part, and frequently ended sentences with “me entiendes?” “Do you understand me?” This man may have been a little bit drunk, or maybe it’s just the way he talks, but throughout our conversation he kept repeating the same ideas to me over and over. This was probably a little annoying to the other people at the table but for me it was great- each time he said the same thing I understood a little more clearly the words he was using. When he started into the same thought for the third or fourth time I didn’t think, “Oh come on you already said that. Move on!” I thought, “Ooh I know this part! This is where he talks about the difference between relationships in Ecuador and the US.” I felt a little like a kid watching Teletubbies, when they show a clip and then say again! again! and show the same clip a second time. And yes I would compare my language skills to those of a toddler, thanks for asking.

Fauna

My mom asked me if we have any animals at the house, like cats or dogs. I said we have chickens. Not that we have chickens in a coop or out in the yard, but that we have chickens frequently wandering through the house and getting up on the tables and counters. At first this seemed strange to me, but the cats at my parents’ house are always up on the table, so really what’s so different about chickens? Mom asked where the chickens actually live and I didn’t know but have since realized that there’s a hole in the wall that goes to a covered space off the kitchen where the chickens spend the night. They come in the back door when it’s getting dark and into their room and my host mom shuts them in with a board. Earlier this week I noticed one of the chickens nesting in a box in the kitchen and she hatched 8 brown and yellow chicks, which are super cute. In a related story, we’ve lately had a couple of bats that fly around the kitchen and bathroom at night, which doesn’t seem to faze anyone. It’s a good thing I’m not afraid of bats. And they aren’t very big- not much bigger than the butterflies and moths that also fly around the house.

I went to visit Katie the other day, another NRC volunteer who just finished her service in a town near mine. It was her last day at her site and I went to meet the family she’s been living with and a girl in high school who Katie helped to get a scholarship that I’ll be taking over for her next school year. We were sitting outside her house watching a donkey get loose from its post and a man chase it down the road. Katie observed that there are a lot of donkeys in her town and asked if there are so many in my site. I said no, I’ve only seen one or two, and she said yeah I guess your town is more urban. “Yeah we only have one donkey, it’s quite the metropolis.” We both burst out laughing, and then Katie sighed and said that’s the kind of thing people aren’t going to understand back home. She’s probably right.

There are many fruits and other crops that grow in this region, and they also produce cacao. There is a lot of agriculture in Katie’s town, my town concentrates more on fishing. When I went to visit, the girl’s family gave Katie and I a bunch of fruit and avocados. And then Katie’s mom gave me some bananas and a ball of chocolate from the cacao stand by the house. I brought it home and my mom made hot chocolate with fresh milk and sugar. Some of you (mainly Mollie) know that I’m on a continuous quest for great hot chocolate, and this was definitely up there among the best.

First days

Today was my first day back at my site. Well I got here yesterday but slept all day to recover from the trip… and the past 3 weeks with the group. I’m living with my new host family now- my host mom Esperanza, her mother, her son Alfredo, her daughter Monica (34), and Monica’s kids Kevin (12) and Melany (5). We live in a 2 story house, on the first floor there’s a living space, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom and on the second floor there are 3 bedrooms including mine. The house is about a block from the beach. We have electricity but no running water.

Esperanza took me to meet a couple neighbors and store owners and introduced me as her new daughter. Then I helped her cook lunch. In the evening I went for a run down the beach and discovered that in one direction there are mostly flat rocks with tide pools. I ran back towards town into a beautiful pink sunset and then Kevin met with me and we ran passed town the other way. After dinner my mom and sister decided that since there wasn’t much water in the tanks we should go bathe in the river. I knew from my site visit that it’s common to bathe in the river here but this was my first time. So I walked down with them in the dark and we stripped down to our underwear and waded in. It occurred to me that it’s a good thing I’m not an overly modest person, but then what kind of PCV would I be if I was?
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Today Monica took me around town to meet people- the doctor, the people at the health center, the woman who works at the Tenencia Politica, and the directors and teachers at the colegio and escuela. My counterpart, the president of the Junta Parroquial, came with us to the schools too. Everyone was interested in what I’m doing here and had suggestions, which is great. At the schools they want me to teach English, which I have no experience in so for now I’m going to try to sit in on the classes taught by the current English teacher and see what he does. But today the director came over and said the English teacher isn’t here today, can you go talk to the class? So I went in there and Kevin was in the class and I knew from him that they’d learned animals and fruits, so I had them tell me what they know and went over how to pronounce the words. I think it went okay for a surprise teaching session. In the afternoon, following my policy of doing whatever comes along, I went with Monica to a funeral in another town. It was very different from funerals I’ve been to in the US since it mostly took place outside and everyone walked behind the pallbearers from town up to the cemetery. They stopped along the way at a bench on the beach and the futbol field and other places that the man had liked to visit.
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Tuesday I went back to the escuela and talked to the director some more and sat in on the English teacher’s class where she had me help with pronunciation. Wednesday I went to the escuela and sat in on English class and then went to the colegio for the teachers’ meeting. First I talked to them about what I could do at the colegio- help with environmental education and English, but just observe classes at first, and start a school garden. Then I stayed for the rest of the meeting, most the which I didn’t know exactly what they were talking about except that an analyst had come that day and said they needed to fire one of the 3 contract teachers, which they did by drawing names. I’m not sure what would have happened if the English teacher got fired but it wasn’t him. In the afternoon I went with my mom to wash clothes in the river, another first. On Thursday I went back to the colegio and went with the science teacher to her classes since it was the day she teaches environmental ed. She is very nice and I think I will enjoy working with her. So those are the main points of what I’ve done this week, I’m still finding my way with almost everything but it’s nice to know that I have a starting point with the schools.

What I learned

Peace Corps language training was great for helping me feel comfortable speaking and understanding Spanish, even though my Spanish still needs a lot of work. The technical training helped me learn about the management of natural resources in Ecuador and gave me some good contacts of people working on the coast. But I think that two of the most important things I got out of training were:

Good friends. I became really close with a lot of people in my training group over 2 months. Since we saw each other all the time and went through some crazy experiences together it’s not surprising that we would feel connected so fast. Now that I’m in my site it’s really comforting to know that there are a bunch of people in Ecuador I can call or text whenever I want to talk to someone familiar while everything here still feels so strange. There were times during training when I could have been studying Spanish or doing something else “productive” but I really think that investing time in getting to know the other volunteers is going to help me the most in the next 2 years. We had a training in volunteer resiliency in which we had to think about what we can do to manage the stress of being a PCV and stay in country to complete our service. And my resiliency plan is largely my friends. [And my friends at home too! I would love to get some phone calls in my site. Or come visit starting in August :)]

Accepting never knowing what’s going on. And I don’t mean this sarcastically. I think I learned a level of patience and acceptance during training that is going to be very important in my site. Peace Corps keeps us in an enforced state of uncertainty going back to the application process, not knowing where we’re going or when we’re leaving. Even after getting to Ecuador we didn’t know where our sites were going to be for a month. And on a daily basis during training we felt like we didn’t know what was planned. Many of you know that I’m not exactly a fan of setting plans in advance, but this was a whole other level of uncertainty that actually stressed me out a bit in the beginning. But after some time I learned to just let it go and go along with whatever was happening at the time. As cliché as it sounds, I feel like I was living more in the moment and not worrying about things coming up, because I had no idea what those things were. And now that I’m in my site, at least in the beginning, I’m living in a state of not knowing what I’ll be doing from hour to hour, which is partially due to a lack of understanding things people tell me and partially due to the unstructured nature of just getting to know how things work in my town. Even when I have a place to be at a certain time, as I have most days this week going to the schools, I have little idea of what I’m going to be doing there. I’m not sure in writing this if it sounds stressful or just carefree, but for me it’s a combination of both and for now I’m happy to go along and see what happens.

Earth Day mustaches

After tech trip we were in Quito for a week, which was a bit crazy and a lot of fun. We got there Friday and Saturday we had all of our final evaluations in the morning and then the afternoon and Sunday free. We had more training Monday-Wednesday and went into Old Quito to the church and main plaza. Thursday was our swearing-in ceremony at the Ambassador’s residence and it was also Earth Day, which was fitting for the NRC and Ag programs. At some point during training the guys decided that they were going to have mustaches for swearing-in, and 16 of the guys did it, more than half. So basically they all stopped shaving and then in the week leading up to swearing-in they started shaving to different degrees and showing up with all kinds of combinations of facial hair. They all looked rather dashing of course. Then finally at the ceremony they were all down to mustaches and Parmer, our Country Director, shaved to a mustache too and it was kind of the theme of the ceremony with mustaches coming up in all the speeches. And for some reason that’s difficult to explain it felt really important that we had this running joke going on involving most of the group. And now we’re PCVs!




Caria-crew

Tech trip

At the end of training we had our technical training trips, for which we were divided up by program and then by the region of Ecuador we’ll be living in- coast, sierra, or oriente. All of NRC was together for the first few days. First we spent a day in Cotacachi where we learned about indigenous group organizations, small business, and a botanical garden. Then we continued on to Armenia near Quito where we stayed for 3 nights in a seminary. We spent a day and a half learning about Escuelas Verdes, an environmental education program, and an afternoon at a watershed conservation project. Then the sierra and oriente groups split off and me and the other people with coastal sites, Jess, JRex, Lauren, Laurel, David, Ross, Reid, and Reyes, went to San Vicente in Manabi where we stayed for 2 nights at a hotel with a pool, which was good times. We visited a mangrove reserve and learned about the mangroves and community-based ecotourism. Then we went to Bahia to see what the city is doing to be more eco-friendly. Our guide said he needed to stop by the school to feed the turtle and I was thinking a little turtle in a tank, but no, the school had a fully grown Galapagos turtle living there as a mascot. Then we hiked up into the dry forest reserve overlooking the city and down to the beach.

The next day we left for Tabuga and a private forest reserve named Lalo Loor, which is run by the Ceiba Foundation. I hadn’t put this together until then, but Ceiba is the foundation that Joe and Catherine started, our two visiting professors from the BU tropical ecology semester in Ecuador. I was impressed by what they’ve done there. The reserve has a visitor center that is really well done and then trails into the forest. We stayed for two nights at the volunteer cabin that’s a hike into the forest and has dry compost toilets and no electricity, so we spent those nights around the campfire the guys made. The first day we learned about the reserve and the SocioBosque program of paying Ecuadorians to preserve their forested land. In the afternoon we went on a hike. The next day we went to Camarones and learned about permaculture and agroforestry.

After Lalo Loor, we traveled up to Esmeraldas to Same, which is near my site, where we stayed at basically a beach resort for 4 nights and finally got to go swimming in the ocean :) We learned about the USAID Costas y Bosques program, about field schools for farmers, about integrated farms and cacao, and about working with coastal communities. The next day we went to Caimito to see some farms and pruned cacao trees. And on our last day we went to Cabo San Francisco and met with the people who work for Nazca on managing the marine reserve, saw the catch the fishermen brought in, and learned about the marine ecosystems in Ecuador. Then the next day we went back to Quito. We had all gotten sick, bug bites, sunburns, injuries, or in some cases all of the above on the trip (I had a brief disagreement with some stairs, and a large bruise) and were a bit of a mess when we got back. We were promptly informed by the other two groups that we were the stinky kids in class. Apparently two weeks of sweating on the coast followed by 8 hours of sweating in a bus does not make for good smelling volunteers.


mangroves




at the school in Bahia


Bahia


in Same


me and Jess

Semana santa and a full moon

After my site visit I was back in Cayambe for a week living with my host family. We had 3 days of class and then a few free days. It was the last week we had living with those families and also the last week of the 6 of us living in one community. There was a full moon and it was clear out all week so we hung out on the roof of Regan’s house for a few nights. One night I was the first person on the roof and there was a fantastic view of the snowcap on Mt Cayambe and as I was sitting there the moon rose from behind the mountains. Another night the 6 of us were coming back from Cayambe and we’d missed the last bus so at Aaron’s suggestion we took a bus to a nearby town and hiked for half an hour or so over the ridge to our town. Coming over the hill we had another gorgeous view of the mountain and the moon. There’s nothing like a hike with 5 friends in the dark complete with attack dogs, steep hills, and a river crossing. Later in the week I went on a hike to some waterfalls with Jess and her host brother and sisters. They let me ride their horse on the way up. The first waterfall was an easy walk into the woods and then the real hiking began. We climbed and scrambled through the woods and water to 3 or 4 more waterfalls. This was when I was starting to get really sick with the cold and cough I’ve had for about 4 week now- fun. But it was a good time and the waterfalls were beautiful and well worth the hike.





I also spent a lot of time with my family. It was the semana santa and the first Sunday I went with them to Palm Sunday mass. Everyone gathered at the end of my road with their palms and the padre came and blessed them with water. Then he got on a horse and we proceeded up to the church. Going to mass was a good experience but complicated a little by the fact that I don’t know what to do with myself at Catholic mass even if it was in English. On Thursday I helped my family prepare the finesca, which is a traditional soup made with 12 grains. Easter Sunday was my last day with my family and everyone sat down to dinner together, which isn’t common, and my sister made a little speech about how it was a special dinner because it was my last night and wishing me well at my site. It was very sweet and they are a wonderful family and I already miss them.

Si

In one of my favorite David Sedaris stories he describes living in France without speaking the language and saying yes to whatever people say to him and just seeing where it leads him. Which I think is a good policy, second to actually understanding what people say to you, and I realized I’ve been doing that here. The general pattern is that someone such as my host sister will say something I don’t quite catch and then follow that with a question like Do you want to go? or Do you want to see? And I say si. The other day this lead to me watching my family put a ring in the nose of one of their bulls. And later that day it lead to me letting my mom “clean” me with an egg, which involves her taking an egg, in the shell, and rubbing it all over me to draw out whatever was making me sick (I’d been coughing all week). My cold wasn’t better the next day, but the massaging effect of my mom doing the cleaning did make me feel happier. That and how nice it was of her to be taking care of me.

Hot springs

From a while back- Today a bunch of us went to some hot springs way up in the mountains. We all met up in Jamie’s town and his host parents and another guy drove us up in two trucks. Well first of all, on our way up to Jamie’s our bus broke down so we got out and started walking and then Jamie’s parents came and picked the 4 of us up. On the way to the hot springs I rode inside one of the trucks and it was a scenic ride, we went way up into paramo level above the tree line. And we were driving on these winding dirt roads on the side of the mountain. So when we got to the end of the road we got out and hiked down a bit to where the hot spring was. It was hot water coming out of the ground through some rocks and down into a partially manmade pool, big enough for all of us to sit in about half of it. We had brought beer so we sat in the pool for about an hour and a half and drank beer and talked. It was an amazing time. The spring was kind of in a crevice in the mountain so there were rocks and trees behind us and then it looked out onto more mountains. On the way back I rode standing in the back of the truck, which was a little like a roller coaster. The snow-capped mountain had come out from behind the clouds and we had a fantastic view- it was much closer than we’d been before. When we got back into town we went down to the soccer field to watch the game and have a picnic of the food we brought, which for my group was bread, peanut butter, bananas, and animal crackers mmm. Then we came back to our town and I went home to shower and wash my clothes. The mountain stayed clear of the clouds all day and at sunset the light hit the snow and it was glowing. Naim called me to see if I was outside to see it, but I had already been telling Carmita to look at how pretty the mountain was since we were in the backyard hanging my underwear on the fence to dry.


Cayambe from my backyard


Carmita

Site visit

I don’t want to give a blow by blow of my week so I’m just going to highlight the great things about my site-

I’m right on the beach, claro. There are only a few buildings actually along the beach and then the town goes uphill from there. I can hear the waves from my room, which is what I consider sufficiently close to the ocean. The town is in sort of a cove next to the point and the water stays shallow for a long ways out and is very warm. At low tide I can walk along the beach to the point and there are rocks and tide pools along the way with some big crabs and other creatures. I saw an octopus out there the other day. I’m told that in the summer there are humpback whales in this area. Fishing is the main industry and I think there are 30-something boats, the main catch is dorado and tuna. There are 100 families living here, a few tiendas and restaurants, political offices, a health center, a school and a high school. My counterpart in town is the president of the Junta Parroquial, or town council. My other counterpart works at the USAID office near Atacames on the Sustainable Coasts and Forests project, and Reyes is working with him as well from another site. There are a few other PCVs in the area but I am the first volunteer at my site.

The people I’ve met so far have been very nice and after a couple days I felt like they were really taking me in. I’ve primarily met my counterpart and his family- his wife is great and 2 of her sisters and their families live here too. The secretary for the Junta Parroquial is also friendly. I’ve been spending a lot of time at one of the restaurants, an open air restaurant that’s on the beach, which has been a good way to talk to people and see what’s going on. The woman who runs the restaurant is super chevere and I found out that she is going to be my host sister when I move here in April. I’m not staying at the house this week because it’s not ready but I met my host mom and she seems nice. I’m staying at one of the sister’s places- she has a couple rooms on the first floor. Which is another reason I’ve been at the restaurant, because I’m eating all my meals there.

The marine reserve here is new- it was established in 2008. I am really excited to see what marine reserve management looks like for the fishing communities that live by the reserve, and from the beginning. I have read and written a lot about how it works, from Boston or DC, but seeing what happens on the ground is one of the experiences I was most hoping to gain in Peace Corps. [This is starting to sound like one of the 800 essays I wrote to get here.] There is a German guy living at my site who works with the reserve for Nazca. And there was a meeting here the other day (at the restaurant) of people involved with the park- a guard, fishermen, presidents of the councils from a couple towns. So I will hopefully be getting a firsthand look at how it develops- and figure out my role in working with the community.

Also, if you’re reading my blog, please become a follower! I want to know who’s reading it. Or if you’d rather remain anonymous, that’s fine too, stalker.

My site!

I´m at the beach!!! Start planning to visit :) I´m in the Esmeraldas province southwest of Atacames in a small town of about 500 people. And it´s near the Galera San Francisco Marine Reserve. (And I think of few hours north of Mompiche, for those of you who were there with me.) We leave tomorrow (Sunday) for week long site visits, so I´m going to wait until I actually go there to give any more detail. But I´m super happy with what I´ve heard so far. There are 4 other volunteers in Esmeraldas- April and Amber are inland and Steven and Reyes are also on the coast. Reyes´ site is close to mine and we have the same counterpart (boss). And there are some current volunteers in the area too. Our projects, as well as some other people along the coast in Esmeraldas, Manabi and Guayas, are broadly under USAID, which is exciting and I´ll talk about that more once I know how it works.

We found out our sites yesterday- the way they did it was they made a huge map of Ecuador and the provinces outlined in tape and then with rose petals. They called our name and sites one by one and then we walked down a rose petal path by all the staff and facilitators and then went and stood on the map at our sites, so we could see where everyone is and who will be near us. It was very well done and a lot of fun. Then they gave us some more info about our sites and projects and then cultural information about the part of the country we´ll be in- either the coast, sierra (mountains), or oriente (rainforest). The other 5 people from my community now are all far away, which is sad, but they´re spread throughout all 3 regions so I´ll have cool places to go visit :)

Also, my apologies for not posting any pictures yet, I´ve been having trouble getting it to work. Someday…

We’re number 3!

We had a bbq Friday with all of the trainees and staff plus a bunch of current volunteers. The bbq centered on a soccer tournament between the groups living in each community. Each group got tshirts made- ours say Azadon por supuesto on front and on the back have our names and Mucho gusto, which is another running joke in our group. My name on my shirt is Kiki because that’s what my family back home calls me (as well as anyone who has met Mollie, apparently) and I told my host family they can call me Kiki since Carrie is difficult for them to pronounce. So they call me Senorita Kiki, which I love. And my group calls me Kiki now too, which is even funnier because one of the dogs at Regan’s house is named Kiki after Kiki Perez who is a news celebrity here. But anyways, our team won our first 2 games in the tournament. In the third game Cara, who was playing goalie for the other team, got hit in the face and her nose was bleeding pretty badly but she recovered- she’s a rock star. We ended up losing that game but we came in 3rd place out of the 11 teams. Yay!


reinas


our reina Regan and Naim


Aaron Pablo and Lincoln warming up


Jess and me


me and Naim