We love our family!!

Adam and I had an exciting mail week! We received two packages- one from Susan & Paul, and the other from my parents. In total, we received a lot of goodies including 3 bags of beef jerky (1 down, 2 to go!), hot cocoa with marshmallows, Korean ramen, FISH SAUCE, tylenol pm, dental floss, ribbon, maifun noodles and...we admit it...we loved this...Snickers bars! We scoffed at the other volunteers who received American candy bars in the mail during training, but when Adam opened the package at his work and his colleagues saw the Snickers bars...guess who didn't want to share? Haha. Thanks mom, dad, Susan and Paul. Postage is expensive so we appreciate this 1000%.



Other than that, no real big updates since yesterday. Though I did find out that they DO sell tofu in Loja! At one of the mercados, apparently Eri, the Japanese volunteer that also works in my office, saw "queso de soya" so tomorrow I am going to the mercado to see for myself. I am sooo excited! Susan, send me your mapo tofu recipe!!!

This morning, I also went out with some of my colleagues to a classroom of 8 year olds where we talked about children's rights and made origami. It was a lot of fun, and I can say "doble aqui" pretty easily, which means fold here. After we were done with the class, we didn't have a ride back to the office (which is pretty common...there is one driver for a lot of people and so sometimes he drops us off and can't pick us up). So we walked up the dirt road to the main road where we stopped and had a snack of fritada (fried chunks of pork that is YUMMY) and mote (it's essentially flavorless large corn kernels. Susan, I don't think you'd like this kind of corn...it's like eating nothing). All along this street there are a bunch of tiendas that are selling fritada. You know it's fresh because the pigs are hanging out in front...

Eri, the JICA volunteer in my office, with some fresh chancho...poor thing!

Abandoned on the dirt road. These are three of my colleagues that work in the Centro de Proteccion de Derechos. Good thing it wasn't raining at the time and the bus stop was less than half a mile away and we had a belly full of fritada

Adam is currently in San Lucas, a small pueblo about an hour from here, at a community meeting so he should be home in a few hours. Tomorrow we plan to run errands all day and then we have a community meeting in the evening, before we hopefully head out to visit a volunteer in Vilcabamba! Finally, a trip out of Loja that isn't work related!