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.
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. 
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. :)
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. 
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.
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.
Pig digging for crabs on the beach.
Tortuga Bay
I love this guy. He looks like ET... or ET looks like him since I think he´s older.
A few hours later I called Anna, a friend from college, who was living in a town nearby. Anna started a foundation 
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.
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.
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.
My Love to All,
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