In a village

Hello, i had this whole blog entry written and on my jumpdrive and it came up all boxes. I´m in a village without any cell phone service much less internet for another week, so I came to the closest biggish town to call my parents and they didn´t pick up the phone so I will probably never talk to them again. Oh well.

Catching up a little

Cotopaxi, taken from the bus window coming back from Baños

My amazing Quito host family, Pepe, Ligia and Doris

I´m in Cuenca now and its amazing, I love it. It´s an awesome colonial city and the countryside around is it is sooooo beautiful. I´ve been visiting different villages for the past three days with a couple guys from an organization that coordinates a network of the region´s micro-credit institutions.

Tuesday was my favorite - we went to a tiny village called Guel and the actual cooperativa was not that wonderful since the woman wasn´t that cooperative, but in the afternoon I went on a walk by myself while they worked, and it was one of my favorite times in Ecuador. I started walking down the dirt road and fell in step with these two indigenous women weaving Panama hats (they are actually Ecuador hats, Panama was just a distribution center) and a little boy with a few sheep, so I walked with them for an half hour. They were so nice and cute. The older lady asked if I would take her to the US so I told her I would take her in my purse, so in case you´re wondering when I get home who that elderly indigenous lady in my bag is, remember this. And it was just perfect weather, perfect light, and the road goes along about halfway up a big hill and then there´s a valley and a mountain on the other side. There are tons of little farm plots right up the mountains at crazy angles. Later I met another lady making a hat and a woman herding some cows thought I was scared of them (they had horns so I was a little) told me they wouldn´t hurt me and laughed at me. The soil there was red, like Prince Edward Island.

Yesterday I went to a tiny town called Jadan and did pretty much the same thing. I interview the director in the morning and walk around in the afternoon while the guys I´m with finish working. Jadan was really cool. A lot of the houses are still made of adobe dirt blocks and there were tons of animals tied up everywhere. I walked some of the not-road paths that they use to walk between each others farms and got very muddy. They were renovating their church.

Today I went to an indigenous village in Cañar and they have a really cool cooperativa so I might go live there next week if I can. They were white hats with puff balls on them and the women wear the skirts. It´s a higher altitude than the other places and has lots of fields and pastures.

One of the ladies I met in Guel, about to weave a hat

Good Friday Procession

Some random pictures since i can´t see them before they go on!!!!!!!!

My host sister in Los Chillos

Stairs I climbed up to get to the top of the Basilica

Cafe on the plaza I ate at, Shrimp, yum.

Another door for Daddy

Plaza of San Francisco

Viernes Santa

Today I went to the Good Friday procession with lots of people that look like purple Ku Klux Klan members in the historic center in Quito.

Favorite picture from the costa

This is a picture I took on a fishing boat visiting an island on the coast during my village stay!

Sorry I haven´t written anything in a long time. 1.) my jumpdrive broke so i couldn´t write at home and post it later and 2.) there is too much to do in Quito to spend much time in an internet cafe, even though there are tons. I just bought a new jumpdrive so i´ll try and write more now. I´m leaving for Cuenca to do my final project this Saturday!!!!!!!! I will be filming a documentary on an awesome little microcredit organization outside of Cuenca, which is supposed to be an amazingly beautiful colonial city, so I´m pretty excited.

This one is my other favorite from the coast.