From Principal: Saturday, April 25, 2009

Today was my fourth full day in my village, and I left for the first time for a couple hours. I visited Chordaleg, where they make silver and gold jewelry. This morning I went to a cooperativa meeting about how to govern a cooperative and legal things they have to know. They prepared lunch for everyone, so that was the first real meal in four days, which was nice. I’ve been eating stuff from the little shops like bread and potato chips. A couple days ago I made marmalade with the cooperativa and got to bring some home, so I’ve been having a lot of bread and jam. It’s blackberry-apple and they had to make it really sweet to satisfy the sanitary certification people for a reason nobody understands. It’s very very pretty here even if I’ve been kind of moody and really exhausted. Yesterday after lunch (bread and jam) I walked down to the river and got out on a rock and read for a while. 

From Principal: Wednesday, April 22, 2009

I’m going back to writing entries on my computer, putting them on my jumpdrive, and posting them when I can get to internet.

I decided to spend the next week and a half in a little town to make a documentary on their micro-credit organization (cooperativa), so I’m staying here in Principal, close to Sigsig and about an hour and a half from Cuenca. It’s really small and gorgeous, right under an inactive volcano called Fasayñan. It actually has a hostel since there are some awesome hiking trails around, so I’m staying in the hostel – it’s called Hostal Anabel. I was looking at some hiking info and they look amazing, some are to mountain lakes and to the top of the volcano, I’m definitely going to try and do as many as I can. Some are overnight hikes, so I can only do those if I can borrow a tent and sleeping bag, and I have to hire a guide or it’s not allowed. The hostel is empty besides me, which is perfect for me for now, and it will be fun if some other guests come. Evidently there’s been an American Peace Corps volunteer living here for the past two years, so I’m going to try to find her soon.

When I first decided to move from Cuenca I was really excited since it seemed like such a good idea for my project and the place is incredibly beautiful but then yesterday I was kind of depressed about it. Cuenca is amazing and it’s a lot of fun to be with the other students from my group working there. There are five of us in Cuenca, so we met up almost every day. Three of them are living in an amazing colonial mansion hostel for $10 a night, with indoor and outdoor courtyards and wireless and a kitchen, right in the colonial center, called Hostal Macondo. I’m going to live there with them for the last week while I’m editing the documentary and writing, which I’m very very excited about.

Anyway, once I got here last night I got pretty excited again, but it’s still kind of hard to imagine how this will work. I went to the cooperative this morning at 8:00, like I thought I was supposed to, but they told me this woman I’m meant to talk to wasn’t there yet so I should come back at 11:00. I’m still a little confused whether they’ve ever had a foreigner working with them before - I’ve heard they have a while ago, a European student collecting information for a thesis. And I’m worried about becoming a nuisance rather than any help, so I’m going to be very careful about that. I hope I can start filming soon, but I want to make sure everybody’s cool with it first.

By the way, I can’t find my camera battery charger so no pictures for a while. I’m pretty sure I just left it in my Quito room somehow, but that was pretty stupid. So I bought a $22 Kodak automatic camera with film!!!!! I was going to just get a few disposables but this will be cheaper overall and I’ve always liked film more, even though I know digital makes a lot more sense. I hope it works all right, we’ll see. I can develop them in Cuenca and scan them when I get home.

Also, I don’t get cell-phone reception here, which tells you how remote this is since everywhere in Ecuador has cell-phone reception since everyone has cell-phones. I think there is a phone booth place that I can call from. I’m pretty sure there are no internet cafes here, but I can take a bus to the nearest town (about 45 minutes) every once in a while. The church here has a loudspeaker on it, and it seems like they communicate with the town with it, so who needs cell-phones or internet?

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.