Adventures with Adam and Emily

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Heading home!

I'm lucky I'm in love with my best friend

Lucky to have been where I have been

Lucky to be coming home again!

Hope you enjoyed that little bit of Jason Mraz! After much reflection, Adam and I decided that it was time for us to head home. In Peace Corps acronyms, we decided to ET (early terminate) for many reasons (those good ol' itchy hives, the amount and type of work we were doing, fit with our jobs and community, family, etc.) but we can say with confidence that we had a great 15 months in Ecuador. We are leaving the Peace Corps with lifelong friends, great memories, amazing experiences, over 5,000 photos, and knowing that we were able to make a difference in some small way. Adam and I joined the Peace Corps because "life was calling" (a little Peace Corps phrase for you) and now life is calling us back home to be with our families. Fortunately we have been able to wrap things up with our friends, colleagues and the kids we worked with in Loja...our last few weeks in Loja were spent saying our goodbyes, having coffee, eating cake, and taking photos (of course!). We will be flying into Albuquerque tomorrow to be with Adam's family, and then off to Ridgecrest shortly after!

In a future post, when we have a little bit more time, we'll share a little summary of the things that we learned and experienced in our time in Ecuador, but until then...and like always, here are some photos!!

Adam and I with all the kids at the orfanato on our last day with them. Celebrated with cake (or in Ecuador, "key").

My last day at the Centro de Protección de Derechos. More cake!

Stacia and our despedida with some of the volunteers in the cluster. Yes, we spent all day cooking a Thanksgiving feast of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, gravy, pumpkin pie, carrot deliciousness, and of course, Jason's wonderful cockaputzy! And we happily ate turkey "moistmaker" sandwiches on the bus ride to Quito.

Ethan!

Adam, Stacia, Justin and I

Adam and I on our last day in Loja visiting Vivi and Luis (who were so wonderful in our last few days, especially when we ran into problems with our landlords)

Adam and I with Adam's counterpart Gloria on our last day

If you have never been to Loja, you don't know my country!
We were planning to make a t-shirt that said "If you haven't been to Loja, no conoce mi País"...maybe with a voice bubble coming from the mouth of the Virgen del Cisne. We'll have to leave that task to another Loja vol!

Jason seeing us off on the Loja bus to Quito. We will miss you Jota!

We spent a few days in the office in Quito but were able to go spend the weekend with our host family from training. It rained in Puruhantag so Edwin's truck got stuck in the mud. Here are Pacha and Mica with the two girls from next door hanging out while all the adults are pushing the truck (headlights in the background!)

Pacha and Mica had to participate in a parade with their school (very common in Ecuador) so we watched from the sidelines.

Micaela with her xylophone. At the end of the parade (two hours later) her arm was all cramped from holding her xylophone! Poor thing!

We also went with Magy and the girls to Tabacundo's makeshift "Plaza de Toros" (bull fighting ring) Adam and I weren't willing to go to the second floor (by climbing a flimsy homemade ladder) because the whole thing was made up of planks of wood, cardboard, and wires. Though Magy and the girls were scared of staying on the ground level in case the bull came charging. Safety first!

Inside the bullring...kids were running around everywhere!

I gave all of my cute Sanrio stickers to Pacha and Mica and they had a great time putting them in their little sticker books I made them.

Adam and I with Edwin, Magy and the girls for one last visit.

Adam and I at the office with the Tiffany and Tom, like the good ol' training days.

If you have any questions about our decision to head home, feel free to ask! We had our "period of reflection" as all of our close friends know, and it resulted in a decision that we are feeling really good about.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Daytrippin' in Podocarpus

And while I am posting, I might as well update on our past week and post up some photos from our day trip to Zamora to visit the Podocarpus National Park. Last week was pretty much the same as always- Adam went to the UTPL to visit with some of the engineers up there, had a few meetings at CASMUL and the Tourism Office and I did the same ol' same ol', though it was sad going to all the centers without Eri!

On Monday I finished the scrapbook for Eri and then she came over and had dinner at our house (I made meatloaf and mashed potatoes since she enjoyed that the last time we had a potluck). The next day I went to the Centro Comercial without Eri. It was fine but the kids and I all missed her. Then I met up with Eri on last time for coffee and empanadas de verde at a friend's house while Adam made lasagna with Stacia and Liz. On Thursday I did an origami workshop at a school and had to play Eri's role of standing up in the front demonstrating while some of the CPD staff went around to help the kids- we made dolphins and Santa Claus...I have to go back to the center 2x this week, so we are going to make pistols, boxes, frogs and the kusudama.

Here are a couple page samples from the scrapbook I made Eri. The cover said La Gran Aventura and it was over 30 pages. It was a bit of a last minute crunch because the guy binding it for me didn't have it ready until 3pm and I was still short 10 pages! Yikes!

When the weekend came, Adam and I were glad to take a day trip out to Zamora since we hadn't been up until now. Plus it was nice for Adam and I to spend some alone time since we had volunteers crashing overnight at our house since Monday. We enjoy having volunteers over but sometimes it is nice to have our own time, just the two of us.

This is a row of ants walking along carrying leaves back as food. We saw tons marching along on the trails.

Cascada Poderosa (Powerful Waterfall)

And we saw tons and tons of gorgeous butterflies of all colors and shapes and sizes. I couldn't capture them all but I got a few shots!

View of Zamora from their riverwalk

Ok I have to run. A mosquito is buzzing around my head hoping to get a drink!! I can hear it buzzing!

Trip to the coast and Adam's 28th!

Even though Jason has gorgeous photos on his blog to show off our fun weekend in Puerto Lopez, I decided that I should share some here as well. My photos aren't as crystal clear as Jota's...but that is why I will eventually purchase the same lens. =D

I've mentioned that on the busses there are often people that come on selling various products. Some just come on and yell what they have..."Pan de guineo!!!" (banana bread) or "Helados helados helados!!" (ice cream ice cream ice cream) or "Fresas uvas fresas uvas!!" (strawberries grapes strawberries grapes). Other times we get the nice, long sales pitch. Our bus trip had tons of people selling all the above (we enjoyed a couple slices of banana bread and I was tempted by some of the other sweet treats) and most special of all- manteca de culebra (snake lard!). The price says $2.50 but he was selling it for the special bus price of $1! Cures coughs, colds and muscle aches!

I love looking out the window when riding the bus on the coast. Although the views in the sierra are gorgeous (rivers, gorgeous green mountains, cows on the hills, windy roads), we get a different view on the coast- passing homes made of caña, people selling coconuts and coconut juice on the highway, and hammocks hanging).

When we arrived in Puerto Lopez, we weren't expecting muddy roads, cloudy sky and chilly weather!

But that is what we got! For some reason we were envisioning hot and sunny weather...clearly we didn't read the guide books or talk to the other volunteers who live on the coast to find out what weather is like in August!

We stayed at the Hosteleria Mandala and got the Pulpo (Octopus) Cabaña. Janet and Jason stayed next door in the Seahorse Cabaña! Fun!

All around Puerto Lopez (and a good chunk of the coast) there are motorcycle taxis. One of our mototaxi drivers had so much gel in his hair, it didn't move at all when we were driving on the highway...impressive!

This was right outside our hotel. The sign says we were 5565.17 km (3458 miles) away from Los Angeles...that's a long ways away! (From LA to Loja, it is 3653 miles)

Our meals in the coast consisted of a lot of seafood, since we don't get it that often in the mountains. Here's Janet with her yummy grilled corvina!

We also got to see some of the fisherman bringing in their catch. The frigates were flying all over waiting for the opportunity to steal a meal from the open crates.

On our walk along the beach, we found a ton of sand dollars. There weren't starfish like when we visited Stefanie a year ago in her site in Palmar.

Jason getting his morning coffee and Adam hanging tight in the hammock

Funny story- this guy is sanding his boat and Jason suddenly said, "What your step." We realized that he was getting his electricity by connecting his wire (which was running across the road) to the power lines using hooks (maybe coat hangers?)