Hi everyone,
Yay, finally back with another post! I didn´t realize it had been so long since I last wrote...but I´ve been back in Quito for over a week! The rest of our Loja trip was great; we had fun exploring the little town of Catacocha, which is much more beautiful than Paty had ever made it sound. Nearly all of its buildings are historical and it has beautiful views into the valleys all around the town. The only bad part was the bus ride--two and a half hours each way, with scary roads and extremely loud Japanese action films blasting inside the bus. But it was worth it! Seeing Nick and Phoebe´s NGO office was also really cool, although the morning we went in there, this woman who works there got her laptop stolen out of the office...and apparently Gabriel saw the culprit as he walked in the door, but, of course not realizing that he was a bad guy who was about to steal a laptop, didn´t give him a second thought until this woman discovered her laptop was gone. So Gabriel got to go on a little tour of the rest of the building and the street outside, in the hopes that he would spot the thief, but no such luck. Besides that, though, it was a rewarding day...we finished compiling this entire booklet, with photos and instructions, on how to construct a wood-burning stove. Nick and Phoebe think it´ll be a big help to pass out once they can get it published, so that was a satisfying way to thank them for their week of taking us around and showing us what they do.
We flew back to Quito the next morning, bright and early, and got back to Gabriel´s house by 10. I stayed on at Gabriel´s house until last Saturday morning, because his birthday was on Friday. We all went out to lunch--his whole family, me, and Lily. That was fun. Then the next morning was his MOM´S birthday, so I gave her my present (a little plastic man from CVS, who grows grass out of his head that looks like green hair...it might sound weird but I was sure she would like it and she did!!!) And then they took me and all my stuff over to the apartment.
It took a few days to totally get the routine over there. It´s unpredictable; some days the house will be full of people until past midnight, and other nights I´ll get home and nobody´ll be there, or if they´re there, they´re already asleep. But I really like everyone there. It´s two Ecuadorian guys, Daniel and Francisco (nickname Lobo), and one Czech girl, Pavla. They´re a little more laidback than what I´m used to, but that´s fine; it´s also relaxing in some ways to go home at night without feeling obligated to start up excited conversations with everyone who´s there. My room is really nice, with huge windows looking out over the city and a private bathroom and shower (which now and then, like this morning, decides not to provide hot water... but in general it´s fine). The neighborhood is really nice and quiet, and there´s also a patio up on top of the apartment where we can go any time to read or write or whatever.
Most of all, it is great starting my own life here and not feeling dependent on Gabriel to figure out how my day´s going to go. I love leaving the house in the morning and making up my own mind about everything I want to do (maybe this seems obvious, but after spending a lot of time staying at Gabriel´s house over the last year, I had sort of forgotten that I could in fact negotiate Quito on my own). Either way I´ve been seeing Gabriel a lot, but I´ve also had time to do other stuff. The night before last I went out to dinner with Nicole (Macalester), who´s in Quito until mid-August, and that was great!
So that´s about it. Mom´s been asking me to take pictures of my apartment and my roommates, so I´ll do that soon and get them up here! In the meantime email me and let me know how you are! Take care
PS--Haha, okay, well I just realized I hadn´t even mentioned the title of this post. I´ve been looking for a job!!!! Looking really really hard!!! And I´m sure that something will eventually pan out, but it´s been a little hard in the last few days--I´ve left my resume in maybe 10 places--travel agencies, restaurants, cafes, bars--and am just waiting to get some calls back. Hopefully it´ll happen before too long.. Okay, more later.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Hey everybody!!! I´m finally back with an update after a really enlightening, fun, rewarding week. The only problem is that this keyboard is ridiculously sticky, I feel like I´m mutilating each key in an attempt to get the letters to register on the screen. But, unimportant!!!! Okay, so. This last week was truly amazing. Early Monday morning Gabriel and I left our hotel here in Loja, and went with Nick and Phoebe (our friends and the NGO people) in the Jeep their organization had loaned them, out into the most isolated part of Loja province, and one of the most isolated areas in all of Ecuador. That entire week, we stayed in a hotel in the tiny, beautiful town of Amaluza, and every day we went out from this town to tiny communities high in the mountains, where we gave talks and workshops with people called ¨promotores de salud¨--really any community member who has taken an interest in the health of their 
community and decides to come to the talks. Nick and Phoebe gave Gabriel and me a specific project for the week, which was to develop the idea of installing wood-burning stoves in people´s homes. Many to most peoples in these small communities (when I say small, I mean like 50 to 100 people) cook over open fires in their homes, and some people have gas stoves. Neither of these, as it turns out, are as convenient and efficient as wood-burning stoves. Open fires fill the house with smoke, use up lots of firewood (and there´s already deforestation problems in some of these communities), the pots can overturn and food is wasted and people can even get severe burns, AND, there is more possibility for food to be contaminated when it is cooked on the ground. This can contribute to people getting certain parasites which can lead to epilepsy. Epilepsy is actually a huge problem in these communities, with about 1% of Loja province´s population having seizures. The construction of wood-burning stoves is hopefully a way to ease the increases of epilepsy among these populations, because once a person gets epilepsy, a rigorous treatment is required and it´s really hard to administer the medicines and make sure that people are controlling their seizures. Nick and Phoebe told us about numerous cases of children having one or two seizures at an early age, never getting the pills they needed, or failing to take them regularly, and as a result being mentally retarded by the time they´re young adults, due to so many seizures, each of which is devastating to the brain. SO. These stoves are a place to start.
So, on Tuesday, Gabriel and I worked all day in Amaluza with a family there who had heard about the possibility of building a stove, and wanted to try it. The amazing thing was that we were able to build the stove entirely out of recycled materials that they had lying around their house--mud, old bricks, pieces of plywood, some cardboard, and some old iron strips that they
took off some other aparatus to use for this. Oh, and a chimney out of tin roofing material. We worked from about 8:30 to 4 (I mean, this wasn´t just me and Gabriel slaving away, it was mostly one construction worker they´d hired, and the father of the family), and by the end of the day, we´d built a stove!!! They haven´t used it yet because it needs about 8 days to dry out, but we´re hopeful it´ll turn out to work!
Anyway, having had that experience on Tuesday, Gabriel and I were able to help Nick and Phoebe in their workshops from then on, doing a special presentation each day on the values of wood-burning stoves, showing the promotores de salud pictures of the constr
uction process, and assuring them that they really COULD construct something like this if they put their minds to it. People were really, really interested, which felt rewarding. It was especially cool that the men seemed just as taken with the idea as the women, because we were told by this woman (an amazing woman named Doña Carmen, whose been using her own home-built stove for 15 years, started a women´s association in Amaluza, and is currently working on helping campesinos legalize their land) that wood-burning stoves can really contribute to a boost in women´s self esteem, because it becomes a family project, and a recognition of the fact that the kitchen is important, women´s work is important.
Seeing all these tiny communities was fascinating. You would never know they were there, you have to drive up these absolutely terrifying dirt roads to get there, but then once you´re there, and you see all the houses and farms, you realize that there really are people who make their lives there, and for whom Amaluza, a town of maybe 2,000 people, is the ¨big city.¨ Once I get to Quito I´m looking forward to trying to put some pictures up of the roads we ascended to get to these communities; I was telling Gabriel, at least half of them time we wound our way up these roads, all I could think about was the look on Mom´s face if she could see where I was, haha. But Nick was a very responsible driver and we had absolutely no mishaps.
We came back to Loja on Friday, spent Friday night here, and then Saturday morning spontaneously decided to set off for Zamora, an hour and a half long bus ride up into the
mountains and down the other side (also not the most relaxing ride in the world). Zamora is a fairly small city in the cloud forest/jungle. It´s not the most amazing city, but it´s right at the entrance to the Parque Nacional Podocarpus, where we went yesterday morning. We hiked around to all these waterfalls, tested one of those bridges, what are they called? Swinging bridges? You know what I mean. There were beautiful butterflies and stuff too. So yeah we spent the morning there and then took a bus back to Loja, and once again stressed out due to our bus traumas, but then got smart and played 20 Questions for an hour, until we were once again safe in Loja. Last night we hung out with Gabriel´s college friend Andrea, whose hotel we´re staying at here, and that was really fun. Today I think we might go to the zoo with her and then watch a movie tonight. Then tomorrow Gabriel and I are taking a day trip to Catacocha, 
Paty´s hometown. Wednesday we´re going to go to the NGO´s office here in Loja with Nick and Phoebe and see what that´s all about, and then Thursday morning bright and early we fly ¨home¨, to Quito that is. in a way I´m excited to be back in Quito, but wow, this has been an amazing trip.
Sorry if you´re tired of reading now!! But I hope now you have a clearer idea of the kind of stuff we´ve been doing. I´m great and I miss you all!!!!! Write!!!!! Love, sara
community and decides to come to the talks. Nick and Phoebe gave Gabriel and me a specific project for the week, which was to develop the idea of installing wood-burning stoves in people´s homes. Many to most peoples in these small communities (when I say small, I mean like 50 to 100 people) cook over open fires in their homes, and some people have gas stoves. Neither of these, as it turns out, are as convenient and efficient as wood-burning stoves. Open fires fill the house with smoke, use up lots of firewood (and there´s already deforestation problems in some of these communities), the pots can overturn and food is wasted and people can even get severe burns, AND, there is more possibility for food to be contaminated when it is cooked on the ground. This can contribute to people getting certain parasites which can lead to epilepsy. Epilepsy is actually a huge problem in these communities, with about 1% of Loja province´s population having seizures. The construction of wood-burning stoves is hopefully a way to ease the increases of epilepsy among these populations, because once a person gets epilepsy, a rigorous treatment is required and it´s really hard to administer the medicines and make sure that people are controlling their seizures. Nick and Phoebe told us about numerous cases of children having one or two seizures at an early age, never getting the pills they needed, or failing to take them regularly, and as a result being mentally retarded by the time they´re young adults, due to so many seizures, each of which is devastating to the brain. SO. These stoves are a place to start.So, on Tuesday, Gabriel and I worked all day in Amaluza with a family there who had heard about the possibility of building a stove, and wanted to try it. The amazing thing was that we were able to build the stove entirely out of recycled materials that they had lying around their house--mud, old bricks, pieces of plywood, some cardboard, and some old iron strips that they
took off some other aparatus to use for this. Oh, and a chimney out of tin roofing material. We worked from about 8:30 to 4 (I mean, this wasn´t just me and Gabriel slaving away, it was mostly one construction worker they´d hired, and the father of the family), and by the end of the day, we´d built a stove!!! They haven´t used it yet because it needs about 8 days to dry out, but we´re hopeful it´ll turn out to work!Anyway, having had that experience on Tuesday, Gabriel and I were able to help Nick and Phoebe in their workshops from then on, doing a special presentation each day on the values of wood-burning stoves, showing the promotores de salud pictures of the constr
uction process, and assuring them that they really COULD construct something like this if they put their minds to it. People were really, really interested, which felt rewarding. It was especially cool that the men seemed just as taken with the idea as the women, because we were told by this woman (an amazing woman named Doña Carmen, whose been using her own home-built stove for 15 years, started a women´s association in Amaluza, and is currently working on helping campesinos legalize their land) that wood-burning stoves can really contribute to a boost in women´s self esteem, because it becomes a family project, and a recognition of the fact that the kitchen is important, women´s work is important.
Seeing all these tiny communities was fascinating. You would never know they were there, you have to drive up these absolutely terrifying dirt roads to get there, but then once you´re there, and you see all the houses and farms, you realize that there really are people who make their lives there, and for whom Amaluza, a town of maybe 2,000 people, is the ¨big city.¨ Once I get to Quito I´m looking forward to trying to put some pictures up of the roads we ascended to get to these communities; I was telling Gabriel, at least half of them time we wound our way up these roads, all I could think about was the look on Mom´s face if she could see where I was, haha. But Nick was a very responsible driver and we had absolutely no mishaps.We came back to Loja on Friday, spent Friday night here, and then Saturday morning spontaneously decided to set off for Zamora, an hour and a half long bus ride up into the
mountains and down the other side (also not the most relaxing ride in the world). Zamora is a fairly small city in the cloud forest/jungle. It´s not the most amazing city, but it´s right at the entrance to the Parque Nacional Podocarpus, where we went yesterday morning. We hiked around to all these waterfalls, tested one of those bridges, what are they called? Swinging bridges? You know what I mean. There were beautiful butterflies and stuff too. So yeah we spent the morning there and then took a bus back to Loja, and once again stressed out due to our bus traumas, but then got smart and played 20 Questions for an hour, until we were once again safe in Loja. Last night we hung out with Gabriel´s college friend Andrea, whose hotel we´re staying at here, and that was really fun. Today I think we might go to the zoo with her and then watch a movie tonight. Then tomorrow Gabriel and I are taking a day trip to Catacocha, 
Paty´s hometown. Wednesday we´re going to go to the NGO´s office here in Loja with Nick and Phoebe and see what that´s all about, and then Thursday morning bright and early we fly ¨home¨, to Quito that is. in a way I´m excited to be back in Quito, but wow, this has been an amazing trip.Sorry if you´re tired of reading now!! But I hope now you have a clearer idea of the kind of stuff we´ve been doing. I´m great and I miss you all!!!!! Write!!!!! Love, sara
Sunday, July 6, 2008
first little while
Hey everybody! Actually, I´m not sure who ¨everybody¨ is... it might be just you, Mom and Daddy. Haha, but anyway, I´m finally starting this blog, so... post comments, questions, keep me motivated to keep writing!
I got to Quito about a week ago, and things have been going really well ever since I flew out of Raleigh; it was the best flight down to Ecuador I´ve ever had (really smooth, not stressful), and seeing Gabriel, his parents, and my exchange host mother Paty in the airport was GREAT. Then the next day, Lily arrived, not even 24 hours later, and that was wonderful; I still think it hasn´t quite sunk in that she´s here in Ecuador with me! Of course, not really ¨with me¨...after the first 48 hours or so we dropped her off with her new host family, who she´ll live with for the next three weeks while she works with an organization in Quito. But either way we´ve already gotten to hang out a few times, and it´s so cool to be able to call her up without paying anything!!!!
Gabriel and I spent a few days last week just hanging out, walking around, catching up. We also went over to my new APARTMENT several times to meet my roommates and drop off a bag of clothes. The apartment is really, really nice. It´s spacious and disorderly (a good sign), and even though there´s not a lot of furniture (they all seem to be on pretty tight budgets) they´ve definitely improvised, with slabs of wood draped with cloths to make tables and a few beach chairs scattered around the living room. Oh, and my room is great, so much bigger than I expected! It´s also got a beautiful view of the mountains and part of the northern part of the city. It has a private bathroom!!!! The only bad part is that they say it´s the coldest room in the house, because it´s up against a wall where apparently the wind blows all night. Get ready Lisa and Julia!!! haha. But, I mean, we´re talking ¨cold¨ like maybe 45 degrees...we´ll bundle up and be fine. Anyway, the best part of all is that my rooommates (housemates, I guess I should say) seem like really great people. They´re not that talkative at first, which was a little disconcerting--I was running up eagerly to hug them hello and they were sort of standing there stiffly. But after talking with them for a little while they loosened up, and the good news is that the girls who live there (one is Pavla, who´s from the Czech Republic and is wonderful, and the other is Camila, one of my housemates girlfriends, who doesn´t really live there, but practically) are both great, really talkative and sweet. One of my biggest complaints about my exchange year in Ecuador was that it was really hard to make friends with girls, so I think I´m off to a good start this time!
So then, yesterday, Gabriel and I got on a plane and flew to Loja, the southernmost province in Ecuador. Gabriel has these adult friends he made in Idaho who are now working for an NGO in Loja, going around to small communities and addressing health issues, specifically epilepsy. We´re going to be working with them in a tiny town for this whole week, and then next week we´ll have more time to explore around the area, which has a ton of cool places to go, like Zamora, a jungle province with huge animal reserves and cool towns to explore, and Saraguro, a predominantly indigenous area north of here with an apparently very distinct culture (sorry, I don´t actually know anything about it yet, just that it´s supposed to be interesting, haha). Anyway, the best part of this whole trip is that one of Gabriel´s good university friend´s parents own a hotel here, and she talked with them and they agreed to put us up for FREE for these two weeks. It´s not quite the luxury hotel that we were for some reason expecting (it´s actually amusingly non-luxurious, I´ll try to take some pictures and put them up here), but it´s free! So that´s all good.
Anyway that´s about it for now, I´m glad I finally started this blog and I´ll try to make some good updates in the next few weeks! Thanks for reading, yay!!!
I got to Quito about a week ago, and things have been going really well ever since I flew out of Raleigh; it was the best flight down to Ecuador I´ve ever had (really smooth, not stressful), and seeing Gabriel, his parents, and my exchange host mother Paty in the airport was GREAT. Then the next day, Lily arrived, not even 24 hours later, and that was wonderful; I still think it hasn´t quite sunk in that she´s here in Ecuador with me! Of course, not really ¨with me¨...after the first 48 hours or so we dropped her off with her new host family, who she´ll live with for the next three weeks while she works with an organization in Quito. But either way we´ve already gotten to hang out a few times, and it´s so cool to be able to call her up without paying anything!!!!
Gabriel and I spent a few days last week just hanging out, walking around, catching up. We also went over to my new APARTMENT several times to meet my roommates and drop off a bag of clothes. The apartment is really, really nice. It´s spacious and disorderly (a good sign), and even though there´s not a lot of furniture (they all seem to be on pretty tight budgets) they´ve definitely improvised, with slabs of wood draped with cloths to make tables and a few beach chairs scattered around the living room. Oh, and my room is great, so much bigger than I expected! It´s also got a beautiful view of the mountains and part of the northern part of the city. It has a private bathroom!!!! The only bad part is that they say it´s the coldest room in the house, because it´s up against a wall where apparently the wind blows all night. Get ready Lisa and Julia!!! haha. But, I mean, we´re talking ¨cold¨ like maybe 45 degrees...we´ll bundle up and be fine. Anyway, the best part of all is that my rooommates (housemates, I guess I should say) seem like really great people. They´re not that talkative at first, which was a little disconcerting--I was running up eagerly to hug them hello and they were sort of standing there stiffly. But after talking with them for a little while they loosened up, and the good news is that the girls who live there (one is Pavla, who´s from the Czech Republic and is wonderful, and the other is Camila, one of my housemates girlfriends, who doesn´t really live there, but practically) are both great, really talkative and sweet. One of my biggest complaints about my exchange year in Ecuador was that it was really hard to make friends with girls, so I think I´m off to a good start this time!
So then, yesterday, Gabriel and I got on a plane and flew to Loja, the southernmost province in Ecuador. Gabriel has these adult friends he made in Idaho who are now working for an NGO in Loja, going around to small communities and addressing health issues, specifically epilepsy. We´re going to be working with them in a tiny town for this whole week, and then next week we´ll have more time to explore around the area, which has a ton of cool places to go, like Zamora, a jungle province with huge animal reserves and cool towns to explore, and Saraguro, a predominantly indigenous area north of here with an apparently very distinct culture (sorry, I don´t actually know anything about it yet, just that it´s supposed to be interesting, haha). Anyway, the best part of this whole trip is that one of Gabriel´s good university friend´s parents own a hotel here, and she talked with them and they agreed to put us up for FREE for these two weeks. It´s not quite the luxury hotel that we were for some reason expecting (it´s actually amusingly non-luxurious, I´ll try to take some pictures and put them up here), but it´s free! So that´s all good.
Anyway that´s about it for now, I´m glad I finally started this blog and I´ll try to make some good updates in the next few weeks! Thanks for reading, yay!!!
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