La Gente

Ecuadorians have a number of gestures which I find amusing and useful. Here is an explanation of a few of the ones I´ve figured out.

The first of which is a hand shake as if you slammed your fingers in a door, arm is bent at the elbow, hand is shaken up and down between the collar bone and the navel. This gesture indicates "what pain" or "what trouble," and is usually done by the listener in a conversation as an act of agreement or empathy with the speaker.

Another hand motion also starts with arm bent at the elbow, forearm parallel to the ground at waist height, and hand in a Barbie type position with thumb pointed up and index fingers extended. The gesture is made by rotating the wrist back and forth from left to right, right to left. This indicates a negative response. For example when I asked my brother if it was still raining, I got this gesture to indicate that it wasn´t. When I was looking for my lost wallet and came home empty handed, my brother gave me this gesture to confirm that the wallet wasn´t found. When I asked to use the printer at an internet cafe, I was given this gesture to indicate that the printer wasn´t working.

To indicate a thief or the potential of being robbed, the arm is again bent at the elbow, forearm parallel to the ground at waist height, fingers are curled one at a time as if grabbing the handle bar of a bike and then the wrist is turned away from the body and the arm pulled toward to you to indicate something being taken. I´ve seen this used in conversation to indicate that they thought people from a particular town were thieves, and also when I was being warned to be careful when running an errand in a certain Quito neighborhood.

My favorite gesture is pointing with the lips. This is done by puckering up in the direction you wish to point without turning your head. Learning to use this one has been fun.

I heard recently that amongst the people in my community I am referred to as the Grandota. Which means big, twice. -ota is used on the end of words to make things bigger like -ita is used to make things smaller. Gran already means big, thus Grandota sorta being big squared. This amuses me because at 5´8" I don´t consider myself exceptionally tall, but perhaps my perception is bit warped having played basketball for so many years. Here I am definitely tall and the term is used affectionately, both to distinguish me from the two other volunteers I am working with and because many people find my name hard to pronounce. Someone once said it sounds like "reina" but with a "d." Reina means queen. I am often just called Queen and I don´t mind a bit.

Lovingly,

The Reigning Grandota

A recent soccer tournament in town

My little sister Catrina. Her dad walked up behind me right before I took this and her face lit up.

Truly Thankful

From left to right: laundry station complete with view of estuary, shower, and part of the bathroom. Backyard wildlife.

The estuary I cross to get home during low tide. (My house is in those trees.)

I spent Thanksgiving with a group of Peace Corps Volunteers that had arranged a potluck in a town about an hour north of Estero. The original plan was for the three gringas in Estero Del Platano to make fish tacos, drink boxed wine, and have smores on the beach for dessert. The actual plan was better, complete with pumpkin pie and me being uncomfortably full, as Thanksgiving should be.

During the usual round of "what are you thankful for" I expressed my deep and sincere gratitude toward my mosquito net. Mosquitoes being the least of which I am thankful for protection from. The houses in Estero have roofs made of palm branches and the walls typically don´t reach the ceiling. Every evening when the lights go out the creatures of the night begin to scurry. I´ve taken to wearing earplugs just so I´m not wondering about the sounds and their proximity to me in the safety of my net (and because we have a rooster that crows whenever he feels like it). The bats I find to be the most annoying. They make high pitched screeching sounds and seem to enjoy doing flybys very near my head. Every morning I also wake up to a healthy pile of bat poo in the same place atop my mosquito net. Thank goodness for the net. I woke up this past Sunday morning to a very large dead rat on the floor. Apparently my family had put some poison out, I´m just glad he didn´t die some place hidden...

My room, ironically missing the net because my host mom took it out to be washed.

Craving things from home, I was inspired to make cinnamon rolls on Thanksgiving morning. Normally these are a dish my mom reserves strictly for Christmas morning, but since all the ingredients are easily and inexpensively available here, I thought I´d give it a go. All went well until I encountered my family´s oven (and I´m lucky they even have a oven, most people don´t). Rolls that should have taken about 20 minutes to bake took about an hour. Fortunately the flavor was right, almost like moms. My family was very pleased and I´ve since been further inspired to bake. Saturday I made a cake with my 12 year old sister, but ended up getting a lot of help from other cooks too, including my host father (and they say Ecuadorian men don´t cook.) He was so excited about the cake that after I copied it in Spanish for a neighbor, he copied it from her. Despite the cake taking almost 2 hours to bake, it was moist and delicious. I´m thinking I´ll try sugar cookies this week.

Helpful cooks from left to right: neighbor girl that just showed up whos name I don´t know, my brother Edwin (10), and my sister Wendy (12).

My host father Efrin showing his niece Selina the proper way to stir frosting.

A Saturday morning spent picking up trash in town.And plalying on the beach afterward.And me teaching kids how to throw the disk, of course. :)

With Much Love,

Dayna

The first two weeks in Estero

I arrived in Estero Del Platano about 8am after a 6 and a half hour night bus and then an 1 and a half hour ranchero ride (an open sided but covered truck with benches in the back to sit on). There was some confusion about where I would be staying so I checked in the onlyhotel in town and promptly took a nap. The next day I moved in with the family that I had stayed with when I´d come to visit for a weekend a month before. I was expecting to share the one bedroom in the house with my 12 and 14 year old sisters, but while I was away they doubled the size of their house, giving me my own room. The house used to be on stilts, with three rooms upstairs (living room/parents bedroom, kitchen, and one bedroom) but they finished the bottom of the house, moving the kitchen, living room and parents room below, so the upstairs is now the bedrooms for my two sisters and brother (who´s 10).

The upstairs that leads to my room (and you can see a bit of the new down stairs).
My 12 year old sister Wendy and 13 month old sister Katrina in front of the house. The house is actually outside of the main part of town, down the beach and across and estuary (that´s where the Estero in Estero Del Platano comes from). When the tide is low, I only have to wade across ankle deep water, but when the tide is high it can be as high as waist deep, so I you have to time things. Two rivers feed into the estuary, and there is a canoe by which at a point inland I can holler across the water and my brother comes paddling across to fetch me.

My new home taken from the bus stop across the estuary.

I spend my mornings doing laundry, running errands, or studying Spanish and my afternoonsworking in the taller (workshop) with the artisans. Sometimes I´m in the workshop in the mornings too. My first Saturday in town I went into the jungle to catch freshwater shrimp with some locals and the Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) that lives here.

Saturday night was the celebration of Saint Cristo Rey to acknowledge the beginning of advent. One of the community leaders said some very nice things about the volunteers that have come to his town and then invited us to help hold the ribbons off the saint during the procession through the town. The service started at 7:30, the procession started at about 9. We got back to the church around 10:30, and then after more scripture reading, at about 11pm, they served some of the best hot chocolate and cheese sandwiches I´ve ever had.

After the procession but before the hot chocolate:

This Sunday I played in women´s soccer game representing my town. We hardly had enough people to field a team (we were pulling women out of the stands on to the field) but we managed to win 6 to 0. I can´t say that I helped much with the scoring, but I did help with intimidation by my mere physical presence. :) Dad always did call me a brute.

That´s me in the middle if you zoom in.

The work that I came here to do is, as expected, not as simple as it originally sounded. The PCV and I hired a professional to come in and do some group development exercises. He´s been nice enough to let us help with the planning so that we can learn about the process. This appeals greatly to my interest in organization behavior so I´m pretty stoked about the whole thing.

Happy Thanksgiving and my love to you all.

Dayna

Taken from a hill to the north of town with the city behind me.

Taken on the beach on the way to my house looking back at the town, and the hill where the previous photo was taken.Pig digging for crabs on the beach.

Estero de Platano

Tonight I´m getting on a bus for Estero de Platano, a small town on the coast of Ecuador (and hour south of Atacames which is an hour south of Esmeraldas if you want to find in on a map). I will be volunteering for the next three months in this community of about 600 people. One of my tasks is an economic assessment of the community for future sustainable development projects by the foundation I´m working with but additionally (and what I´m most excited about) I¨ll be working with a group of local artisans, helping them organize as a business to sell their goods in local markets. Unfortunately the closest internet connection will be about an hour bus ride north so my already slacker blog postings are unfortunately going to get worse... but we are going for quality here right? :)
My love to all, Dayna

The Galapagos

Where to I begin to explain the awesomeness that is The Galapagos Islands!

After 7 weeks of intensive Spanish classes, I decided to treat myself to a trip to The Galapagos Islands. I chose to do a land based tour rather than the more traditional boat tour largely because it´s cheaper (and included a bunch of free activities), but also because my money then goes to people who live on the islands (hotels and restaurants) rather than the owners of the boats who are often not even from Ecuador. My small attempt at Eco tourism.

All of my photos (warning, there are a lot of them) can be viewed here: http://picasaweb.google.com/dayna.erickson/Glapagos# (and yes, I did spell Galapagos wrong in the album title, but I can´t figure out how to change it in Picasa, anyone know?)

Here are some of my favorites though. A narrative of the trip will follow next time I´m at a computer.

I´m off to catch a bus!

Lovingly,
Dayna

Taken while snorkeling.

Sunset on Isabella Island

Male Magnificent Frigate (only the single ones puff up their throats like that, trying to get chicks.)

Blue Footed Boobie!!!!

A tortoise having lunch.

Tortuga Bay

One of many friendly Sea Lions.

I love this guy. He looks like ET... or ET looks like him since I think he´s older.

Otavalo - Long Over Due

After the aforementioned bus ride I arrived in the town of Otavalo at about 9 in the morning and found the famous market. It was early enough yet that it wasn´t flooded with tourist so I was able to pleasantly wander around at my leisure.

This photo doesn´t really do justice to the magnitude of the market.

A few hours later I called Anna, a friend from college, who was living in a town nearby. Anna started a foundation http://www.tandanafoundation.org/ that among other things does volunteer medical vacations in the highlands of Ecuador. This happened to be the last weekend of her last medical trip for the fall, as well as the weekend in which the Tandana intern (who had been living with a family in the pueblito of Quinchinche for the past 7 months) was being made Godmother to two of the children in the family with whom she lived. When I called Anna, the baptism ceremony was about to start, so I took a cab to the church and quietly slipped in the back.

The godmother/godfather role is very important in Ecuadorian society. As Ecuador is primarily a Catholic country, the godparents are expected to have a major role in helping to guide a child´s spiritual life. They become coparents in effect, (actually comadre, and compadre).

Lindsey, La Madrina (Godmother) in the middle with the two boys infront of her and the family around.

After the ceremony, we went to the family´s home to begin the traditional two day celebration, but on the way there Anna made sure we stopped at her family's house to pick up a number of plastic grocery bags. It was a one room house, about 30 by 15 with a dirt floor. Normally one side of the house held the kitchen and the other side of the house was occupied by the parents bed, but for this special occasion the kitchen had been moved out to the guinea pig shed (and the guinea pig cages were moved outside) and we coudldn´t figure out where the parents bed went. In their place a number of wooden benches had been set against the walls and a large table had been created with a sheet of plywood and a couple of sawhorses. The first course was a chicken soup with potatoes. This was a bowl of soup fit for a meal, not just a course and before we were done, the second course arrived, corn colada (the consistency of runny hummus) and fried "cuy" which is guinea pig. Half way through my colada I´m full and wondering what I´m going to do because I know there is another course coming and it´s rude not to finish your food. The third course is "seco," a dry plate consisting of a grain, usually rice, but in this case a type of white jumbo sized corn kernels that I can´t remember the name of at the moment, and meat, lots of meat. The heaping plate is put in front of me and I have no idea how I´m going got manage because I´m already uncomfortably full when I notice those around me pulling out plastic bags grocery bags and subtly putting food into them under the table. Everywhere around the room I see greasy grocery bags stashed next to purses and coats. Apparently is it less rude to take your food home with you than to not eat it.

Anna, Lindsey and I with our Colada and Cuy.

The family then began to present Lindsey, La Madrian, with the traditional gifts, baskets of food and alcohol. Given that this family is very poor, we were glad that Lindsay lives with the family so they´d have to help her eat it. Another tradition is that all the alcohol has to be consumed before the end of the party. How this is done is La Madrina, or someone she designates on her behalf, goes around the room, from person to person, with a single plastic cup offering them a drink. The guest has the option to say no thank you, take the cup and drink, or first instruct the person serving the beverage to drink a glass before drinking one themselves. Now, the person serving the beverage can not refuse the drink if instructed to drink by the guest. Since Anna and Lindsay didn´t particularly like beer, I had the privilege of serving the beer. It was a tough job.

La Madrina with her godsons and all her baskets of food. The outfits the boys are wearing were provided by the godmother, as part of the tradition.
After all the guests had eaten, which happened in shifts because the table could only accommodate about 14 at a time, the party started heating up. Anna had arranged for a band of traditional musicians to play. The maternal godparents, not knowing there was already a band coming, had arranged for a DJ to come as a surprise, so we had both. At first there seems to be a bit of a turf war going on but by the end the DJ helped amp the band so all was well.

Abuelito getting his groove on, the paternal grandfather to the godsons, and the cutest little old man ever.

We didn´t stay until the end, but I’m told the party raged well into the night largely due to some homemade cane alcohol that was later brought out.

The next day a group of us hiked to a local waterfall. The two girls in the photo are scholarship recipients from Anna´s foundation.

This one´s for the Whiman Magazine. Those girls are 19 and 22 if anybody's wondering.

My Love to All,

Dayna

Deep Thoughts by Dayna Erickson

As far as I can tell, the Spanish language does not have a good translation for the word "compromise." One definition is "arreglo" which is agreement or "llegar a un arreglo" to reach an agreement, but that´s not exactly the same thing. Another definition is "transigir" which means to give way, to make concessions..."avenirse a transigir" to agree to concessions...in other words to loose.... not exactly a compromise....I´ve also heard the word "transar" used which means to trade, "compromiso" is a false cognate that means commitment..."comprometer" or "comprometerse" means to compromise but it´s to be compromised, to put in jeopardy or to put in danger...hmmmmmm.... perhaps this is an indicator as to why doing business is so different here.

Top Fives

Things I Love About Quito:
1) Fresh squeezed juice every day.
2) Speaking Spanish! It´s just so much fun!
3) Getting long interesting e-mails from my brother.
4) Ecuadorian sense of humor. (watch Que Tan Lejos)
5) The Chocolate!

Things I "Don´t Love" About Quito:
1) Having to constantly walk with purpose in order to avoid being robbed.
2) Keeping my money in my bra in the event that I am robbed. (It´s really uncomfortable after awhile)
3) Being charged $60 per month by bank of america for international
withdrawals (this is not really Quito´s fault)
4) Frequently being asked if I'm single by strangers; taxi drivers,
bus drivers, the woman in line at the grocery store....
(I know it´s a cultural difference, but it gets old.)
5) Not picking up the Spanish as fast as I would like.

Things I Miss About Home:
1) My favorite jeans and comfy sweater (I finally broke down and bought jeans)
2) Having coffee with my dad in the morning.
3) Peanut butter
4) Having beer options. (Here it´s Pilsener or Pilsener.)
5) Throwing toilet paper away in the toilet. (The plumbing can´t handle it.)

Daily Life

Sorry for the delay in posting. I didn´t realize how many people were reading this until I received a lot of concerned e-mail. Thanks for all the love and support.

The food here is great! And fortunately (knock on wood) I haven´t experienced any "problems." My host mother makes me breakfast and dinner. Breakfast consistently includes, a hard boiled egg, a croissant type roll with jam or cheese (or both), a glass of fresh homemade juice, a banana, and a cup of warm milk with either chocolate or instant coffee (or both). I haven´t been able to figure out why a country that grows their own coffee prefers to drink NesCafe. I understand that it´s cheaper and they'd rather sell than drink a very profitable crop, but it is just not the same. The fresh juice is my favorite. My host mother makes it every day in the blender and often with a strainer too. Orange, passion fruit, guava, tree tomato (which is more juice like than traditional tomato juice), and a number of other delicious fruits that are native to Ecuador that Í don´t know the names of. By far the best is the ¨mora¨ juice which is the Ecuadorian equivalent to the blackberry.
The discovery of blackberries in Ecuador inspired me to teach my host mother how to make pie (because my favorite pie to make is Blackberry Sour Cream). Since a recipe of pie crust is enough for 2 or 3 pies, we also decided to make apple pie. Due to the challenges of baking at high altitudes and my substitution of corn starch for yucca starch (pronounced YOU-KA, it´s kinda like a potato), the blackberry pie unfortunately turned out a bit runny (my Ecuadorian brother called it pudding), but the apple pie turned out great, and made me very popular amongst my siblings. My Ecuadorian mom loves the ¨masa¨ (pie crust) so much she wants to use if for empanadas... I can´t wait to try them.
Carmen (my host mother) and I with the apple pie.

Just like mom makes....

Lunch and dinner are about the same and always include hot soup. Fortunately my host mother enjoys cooking, particularly cooking soups. After the soup course there's a "dry" plate usually including rice, potatoes, some kind of meat, and some sort of vegetable or salad. It is very common to have rice, potatoes and pasta all in the same meal... Ecuador is not for the Atkins inclined.

I have to do laundry once a week because, well to be honest, that´s how much underwear I brought. My family has a great washing station in the back yard that includes a washer and dryer, and a number of clothes lines. Because things dry very quickly at this high altitude and because of the cost of electricity, the dryer is actually only used to store the dog food.
The weather in Quito is different from the rest of Ecuador and it´s currently winter. It will be sunny and warm (mid 70's) in the mornings, by noon it´s usually cloudy, and by about 2pm it´s pouring down rain. Nights are cool, in the mid to upper 50´s. If laundry is done on a week day, someone has to be home to bring it in before the rain starts.

Thanks to my wonderful brother I now have a new camera. It would have been 50 bucks for me to pick it up form the post office but because the woman felt bad that I was replacing a stolen camera I didn´t have to pay...:)

Me at school:

And it came to pass in those days....

Last Friday night I went to a Vietnamese Restaurant called Uncle Ho´s to watch the US Presidential debate. Word got around among the American Expats in Quito that it´d be on a big screen TV. I arrived a little late and the place was packed. Wall to wall people, even folks sitting on the floor. (For the Portlander´s this place is about the size of the inside of the Tin Shed... oh man would I really love a blue cheese burger from the Tin Shed right now...) The TV ended up being about 28 inches, but it was bigger than the one that appeared to normally reside there. The debate was interesting and I have to admit I´m glad that´s about all of this race that I´ll witness.

Honestly, I find Ecuadorian politics more interesting these days. They voted on the new constitution last Sunday. Because voting is mandatory, they stop selling alcohol three days before and election in hopes of ensuring that no one votes drunk. With the vote on a Sunday, it made for a slow weekend. I caught a 7am bus to Otavalo on Saturday to spend a weekend with a college friend who lives there (that story in another installment). ¨Catching a bus¨ is a lot more interestingthan it sounds. First of all, you can get on or off a bus anywhere, there aren´t exactly ¨Bus Stops¨as we know them, except for at bus terminals going to far off locations, but those are really bus starts and even these buses stop if someone along the route wants on. Well they don´t stop exactly, more like slow way down, so the expression of catching a bus is literal.

Because the main bus terminal is in the south of the city, I live in the middle, and I was heading north my host mother suggested that I take a cab to the street where the bus would pass by. No problem I though, except this street turned out to be their equivalent to a highway. Awesome. When the bus listing my specific destination came tearing around the corner it wasn´t even in the slow lane so I figured he didn´t see my international "I want to get on the bus" (similar to the international "I want to get a taxi") signal. But he did and right in front of my eyes the driver muscled through two lanes of traffic to the far lane where I had to run to catch up with him (on
the side of a highway) and jump on. Phew.

Something you should know, everyone had to return to the city they were from (or the place of their last known address) in order to vote. This reminds me of the Christmas Story in Luke chapter two where a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; because he was of the house and lineage of David...can you tell that I had to memorize that at one time? Any way, needless to say the bus was crowded. I got one of thelast two seats on the bus and as we proceeded along we picked up people regardless if there were seats. Now these aren´t city buses with bars to hold on to. These are old tour buses, in fact this is probably where tour buses go to die. They have great big tall seats, curtains (often with additional valences and pom-pom fringe added) and NOTHING in the isle for the people to hold on to. I had an eye contact only conversation with a traditionally dress woman bracing herself against my seat and the one in front of me. She´d roll her eyes after she got clobbered by peoples bags getting on and off the bus, make faces when we´d hit a large bump or fly around a corner. It was one of the funnest conversations I¨ve had in a long time, probably because I understood every word.

The new constitution passed, by the way, by a vote of about 70%.

I´m now off to watch the vice presidential debates with a bunch of gringos at a place called Finn McCool's. I expect it will be entertaining.

Love and Hugs,

Dayna

Juice and Sugar

My host family has two young yellow labs which make me happy. When I first arrived I heard their names as Jugo, which means "juice" and Asucar which means "sugar." I proudly told my Spanish teacher about los dos perros a mi casa called Juice and Sugar. I told my cultural tour guide, an Ecuadorian university student about Juice and Sugar. I´ve played with the dogs for a week calling them Juice and Sugar.... Turns out it´s Ugo ( a very masculine man´s name) and Suca (slang equivalent to Blondie or Goldie).... boy was I embarrassed. My Spanish teacher and I had a good laugh over this and now neither one of us can keep a straight face anytime juice or sugar comes up in conversation.

Suca

Ugo - Suca´s 8 month old son.

Quito: Week 1

I arrived safe and sound in Quito last Sunday night. Sunday morning when I returned to the airport in Cabo San Lucas at 6am I was advised that the Houston airport was still closed. After much deliberation they put me on a flight to Dallas and told me I´d have to figure it out from there. Fortunately when I arrived in Dallas and hiked over to the Continental terminal they were able to put me on an American Airlines flight to Miami and then on to Quito. Thanks to a number of phone calls placed by my family, there was someone waiting for me at the airport when I arrived.

I have to admit, arriving at an airport and seeing someone with a little sign that has my name on it is one my favorite things. The idea of having a personal driver for just a few minuets makes me ridiculously happy. I think this was one of the best things about traveling on business. One time when I arrived in Vietnam, the driver, complete with cap and gloves, after getting me settled in the back of the car, made a phone call, nodded his head a few times, hung up the phone and then handed me a plain brown envelope. I felt like Jane Bond! Turns out my boss was treating me to a spa day (one of my top 5 favorite gifts ever) but in that moment some of my spy fantasies were fulfilled.

But back to Ecuador.... My host family is great. They are an older couple with three grown children (28,26 and 24) who also live in the house. I have the garden room which is actually part of the garage converted into a nice room with a bathroom. Most of my interaction is with my Ecuadorian madre Carmen. She prepares my breakfast and dinner, and I wash the dishes. (Dad, you´d be so proud.)

My room, standing in the bathroom. Door in/out of the room on the left.

The other half of my room, standing on the bed. There´s a shower in the bathroom to the left. Door in/out of the room on the right.
It´s about a 20-25 minute walk to school in the morning depending on traffic. The elevation of Quito is at 9200 feet and in a great big valley. The city is long and skinny running north and south. I live on the west side in about the center and the school is on the east side in roughly the center as well. After 4 hours of intensive Spanish lessons in the morning (just me and my profesora) I have an hour break for lunch and then I meet up with Christian, who is my cultural guide in Quito for two weeks. We spend about 3 hours each afternoon going to churches, parks, museums, botanical gardens and other places of interest in Quito... all the while speaking in Spanish. I return home around 7 to have dinner with my family and then do my home work. I am asleep between 10 and 11 each night because I am absolutely exhausted from thinking in Spanish. I don´t believe there has ever been a time in my life where I´ve had such a regular bed time.

Some of the places I visited on my cultural tours:

View of Quito to the south taken from the top of the Basílica del Sagrado Voto. The hill in the middle is El Panecillo, a monument to Virgin Mary.

Taken at the Oswaldo Guayasamín museum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswaldo_Guayasam%C3%ADn

From the top of the TeleferiQo which is a tram ride you can take up the mountain just on the edge of town. This is at 13,123 ft.

The politics in Ecuador are very interesting. They are voting in a couple of weeks on a new constitution. Voting is this country is compulsory and it is an all or nothing, yes/no vote. While then new constitution has some wonderful advancements in terms of social programs, education, equality and the like, it also puts a lot more power in the hands of the president. It has been interesting talking to people about the coming vote and what they are going to do. People are very opening about discussing which way they are going to vote and why.

In 2000 Ecuador switch its currency to the US dollar in an effort to stop the out of control inflation they were experiencing throughout the 90´s. I believe they chose the US dollar because their main export is oil and oil prices are published in US dollars. The conversion from the sucre to the dollar was a significant change for people, particularly the middle class. Those who had a lot of sucre suddenly found it worth nothing. I asked my host mother about this time and she suddenly became very serious telling me that life has been much harder since then. Before the conversion they had two cars, now they can¨t afford to have any. They depend on their daughter (a lawyer) who has a car, when they need to drive somewhere. Before the conversion she owned a big store selling linens with 5 employees. Now she has a very small store with only one employee that she has to have worked in her house part time because there is not enough work at the store, "People don´t have the money to buy nice things anymore." This is evident as I look around her kitchen. Everything is well taken care of, but old and worn. She rents out two rooms to students like me for extra money. I am one of three foreign students at their house at the moment (the other room is a double). Ecuador in general is also a lot more expensive now ranking around the third most expensive South American country. My host mother told me that she use to be able to buy a bag of beans for the equivalent of 50 cents. Now, 8 years later, the same bag of beans is 2 dollars. This puts things in perspective for me as I enjoy my large $1.80 sandwich for lunch each day (thinking it was such a deal).

Me and a friendly Boa at the Vivarium in Parke La Carolina.

Hugs,

Dayna