Burning the Año Vejo

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New Years tends to be a time of reflection. People think about their accomplishments and failures of the last year and make resolutions for the next. In Ecuador it is tradition to reflect upon the past year by making an “año vejo,” or old year. Traditionally año vejos are dolls made out of old clothes and things from the previous year and are filled with paper. On New Years Eve people burn their old year at midnight as they bring in the New Year. Though people still make the traditional dolls, it has become much more common to buy your año vejo. On the streets the week of New Years there are thousands of papier-mâché dolls lined up in the form of famous characters and political figures. Some of them take months to make and are two stories tall.

I spent New Years at the beach house of an Ecuadorian friend and we burnt our own año vejo. We had a papier-mâché doll of an Ecuadoran cartoon character and we filled it with fireworks. It burnt with pops and explosions. We toasted our Champaign glasses and welcomed 2012. I had a wonderful night celebrating a traditional Ecuadorian New Year with my friend and her family. And I think burning the año vejo has become my favorite Ecuadorian tradition.

I’m ready to put 2011 behind me. It was a year full of ups and downs. I had an amazing road trip to Alaska, my sister got married, and it was a ski season with record snowfall. But the year was also filled with a fair bit of illness, anxiety over my uncertain future, and challenges coping with my return to Peace Corps. So, besides burning a papier-mâché doll, what can I do to put this year behind me as I prepare for the next? This is a question I keep asking myself. If look back one year ago, there are startling similarities to where I was then, to where I am now. I still don’t quite have my footing and I can’t say I am entirely happy. But there is one difference, which I think is a pretty important one. I know I want. I want stability.

I think having a place to live will a do a lot to literally put ground beneath my feet, and my house is scheduled to be ready later this month. The rest is up to me. If I want stability I have to keep myself busy and active in my community. Restart the projects that got put on hold when I lost my housing and do things that inspire me. I need to look at 2012 as a blank slate full of possibilities.

There is a lot to come this year. I started the year by going to the beach with my friend. It was a beautiful day and in the evening sun I went for a swim. In the ocean waves I thought about the fireworks and the burning dolls of the night before. Ecuador is a remarkable country, which is something that I always need to appreciate, especially when times are tough. I don’t know what the next year holds, but I’m sure it will be very different from 2011.

Searching for a Home

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“How’s life in the homeless shelter?” my sister asks. That’s what my family back home calls the place I am living. They started calling it that when my dad confused community center for homeless shelter and it kind of stuck.

“Honestly, it’s alright. But these last few weeks haven’t exactly been the easiest,” I tell my sister.

After nearly three months living in my community, I needed to move out of my host family’s house. I was only sleeping a few hours a night and it was affecting my health. That and my host father, who had been away since my arrival, was due to move back in to our already over crowded house. So I packed up my things and left, the only problem was that I didn’t have anywhere to go.

I temporarily moved into the community center while I began my search for new housing. I say temporarily because the community center is not exactly ideal for me to live in for a year and a half. In the center I have only a small cement room. There is nowhere to put a kitchen and no shower. When I first moved in, I would sit on my bed and stare out through the bars on my widow at a 12-foot-tall barbwire fence and it made me feel trapped, which felt even truer when I thought about my limited options.

Peace Corps told me if I didn’t find something soon they would have to change my site. I think they were trying to be helpful, but when they told me that I couldn’t stop crying. “Bu— bu— bu— but don’t you understand. I—I— Can’t change sites again. I just can’t do it,” I tried to stammer with as much dignity as a grown woman crying in front of her bosses can muster. But rules are rules and when it comes to security, Peace Corps doesn’t have the slightest bit of flexibility.

There are a few options in my community, but none of them meet Peace Corps security standards. So I went door to door, asked people to make phone calls and made an announcement at the community meeting. Nothing. My work got put on hold and I started to get depressed.

It’s been a while since I’ve felt really settled and at home. I haven’t lived anywhere longer than six months since I was a teenager. I’ve traveled, transferred schools, studied abroad and worked here and there. I have always loved the adventure of going place-to-place and meeting new people but when I got sick, adventure for the first time felt exhausting and I started to think that there was more to life. I yearned for a place to call home— a place where I could have stability and independence, a place where I could stick around long enough to make lasting friendships.

December 12th marked three months since I’ve arrived in Ecuador and 25 years since I was born. When I got here I gave myself an artificial deadline that I would have my own place by my birthday. That didn’t happen so instead of having a house warming party, I went to stay the night at a friend’s farm. My friend Mimi invited me to a celebration of her and her husband Jim’s land that just happened to fall on my birthday. Their over thirty hectares is full of primary forest, and agro-forest where they cultivate fruit trees. They have been there for over twenty years. They raised their kids there. But now they’re worried that their land and their home will be damaged by a hydroelectric dam that is planned to be built down stream from their property.

Despite the imninent threat, their was no sorrow looming over their celebration. They invited friends from all over the province, and had a delicious potluck. After lunch we took off our shoes, felt the earth between our toes and chanted earthly hymns written by Mimi. We took a walk down to river where the dam will be built and we swam in their swimming hole. To finish off the celebration we drank wine and ate a wonderful, homemade birthday cake.

Before I arrived at Mimi and Jim’s I couldn’t stop worrying about not finding housing. I found myself planning my return to Colorado, thinking that I just couldn’t stomach moving to a third site. But soon after I arrived at Mimi and Jim’s my worries moved to the back of my mind. Seeing how they dealt with their worries really put things into perspective, and I started to remember a few of the reasons why I came back to Ecuador in the first place. Because it’s beautiful and there is so much to learn about the way of life here.

Mimi and Jim have a beautiful home built out of wood taken from their land. The house is two stories and on the bottom floor there are no walls. They have a huge library full of twenty years of National Geographic Magazines, a set of encyclopedias, and ecology and philosophy books. There is a workstation for drying seeds, most of which are huge and have alien shapes. They have a wood burning stove in the kitchen where they cook delicious food, almost all from scratch. They age their own tempeh and make their own chocolate rum balls for desert. Now that I know them, it’s hard to imagine them living any other way, (though they both did grow up in urban cities in the U.S.)

For Mimi and Jim the forest is home. Their lives are seamlessly woven into the natural world that surrounds them. Even with the looming possibility that their home will be forever changed by the hydro-dam, they are infectiously positive and creative people.

Leaving Mimi and Jim’s I felt more at ease about my housing situation and, as luck would have it, just a few days later I found someone to rent me a house. It’s been used for storage the last few years and needs quite a bit of work, but it has walls, a good roof, running water, and working electricity. It won’t be ready for a few weeks, but just knowing that I will soon have a home, and I will not have to leave my community, has lifted much of the sadness and bewilderment I’ve been feeling in the last few weeks.

I know I won’t be in this home forever, though I feel more than ready to grow roots somewhere. If nothing else Peace Corps has shown me that. Some of life’s greatest adventures can only unfold when you live somewhere that you’re deeply connected to. I may not have that now but it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the adventures that are thrown at me. So for now, I live in “a homeless shelter,” and I do my best to laugh about it.

It feels like Thanksgiving

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“It’s because there are no seasons. Winter isn’t coming. That’s why it doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving,” I joked.

I sat around a table with another volunteer Sarah, two of her British friends, and half-a-dozen Ecuadorian women and their kids. My plate was piled high with mash potatoes, vegetarian gravy, stuffing, green beans with almonds, sweet potatoes with marshmallows and cranberry sauce, (though the cranberry sauce was made with black berries and the sweet potatoes were purple). We had just finished saying what we were thankful for and we were ready to dig in.

All day Sarah and I theorized about what we were missing; why didn’t it feel like Thanksgiving? Was it a lack of millions of Americans or the absence of fall colors and Black Friday shopping adds? We laughed and talked about how much we missed fall and winter. But the truth is, it did feel like Thanksgiving, and it was one of the most fun celebrations I’ve had since I was a kid.

I got up the day before at 6 am to go shopping in Quito, and that afternoon, as I piled my bags of groceries into the back of a cab, I couldn’t help but wish the cab driver a happy Thanksgiving and explain how the holiday came to be. “English people,” (I’m not sure how to say pilgrims in Spanish), “arrived in America. The Native Americans shared a meal with them and the holiday celebrates this meal.” The taxi driver looked confused so I continued. “But that is only a children’s story. Really the Europeans arrived in America and killed all the Native Americans.”

The driver gave a look of comprehension. “Yes, yes, yes. Just like the Spaniards did in Ecuador.”

I agreed, and then made a note to myself that I should not be allowed to give any lessons on American history to anyone until I spend some serious time with Wikipedia.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. In my family we wake at ten o-clock, which is early for us, and cook all day. We make food for at least twenty people, even though we never have more than eight at our table. Our guests include friends, family and anyone we know that doesn’t have a dinner to go to that night.

Even though we cook all day, dinner is never ready until at least nine. We are highly inefficient in the kitchen and spend far too much time chatting with our dinner guests, who have come to expect a late dinner and bring plenty of appetizers and wine. No one complains because the food is always delicious. We have all the traditional foods, vegetarian versions of traditional foods and a few things that are tradition in my family, like my sister’s butternut squash, curry soup.

This year my family didn’t host Thanksgiving. If they had there would have been two empty chairs; one for me and one for our close friend Mrs. White, who has shared Thanksgiving with us for as long as I can remember, but recently passed away. So instead my family went skiing and ate prime rib.

Hearing about my families Thanksgiving made it easier not to be homesick, well that and Sarah’s four delicious homemade pies. I couldn’t have been happier to be in Ecuador, sharing my favorite holiday with friends, new and old.

After dinner we stayed in the restaurant, drank beer, and listened to one of the women’s husbands playing guitar and singing traditional Ecuadorian music. He sung wonderfully entertaining songs that all fell into one of two categories; “music to cut your veins to” and “for those of age 18 and over.” It couldn’t have sounded more different than the classical music my family listens to, as we guzzle our after dinner drinks on Thanksgiving, yet it definitely felt like Thanksgiving.

Returning to Theatre

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“How where they,” a friend asked after my students preformed for the first time.

 

“So, so— But I think they did excellent,” I said.

 

I studied theatre in high school and college. I worked in great spaces, with lights and scenery, striving to achieve artistic precession. It’s been years since then and today my production was far from precise, yet I couldn’t be prouder.

 

I started working with a group of students just one week ago. I offered to prepare them for a festival in the nearby community and I was surprised how many showed interest. At least 15 youth showed up to our first meeting. We played theatre games. They moved around awkwardly laughing with embarrassment, but as far as I could tell they enjoyed it. None of them had done theatre before and they were eager to try it.

 

They reminded me of when I was in high school and how much I loved theatre. Theatre made me confident and is how I met all of my friends. We rehearsed together or built sets everyday afterschool. I still remember clearly some of the weekends painting backdrops or school nights we stayed till midnight practicing lines. Back then; there was nothing I wanted to do more than theatre.

 

I lost the love and joy I had for theatre sometime in college. It was a combination of finding other interests and a bad experience working for a professional theatre over one summer. I eventually quit it completely. I would sadly think back to my memories of being in a dark theatre free to create anything and would consider looking for opportunities to get back into it, but I never did. Partly because I felt like there was little point because I thought I would never be able to do as great of theatre as I did in college when was studying it full time. But in the middle of a volleyball court, far from any dark theatre with a stage and seats, I finally did stumble back into it, and it was great. In seeing the joy in the faces of my students they reminded me of something I had long forgotten. Theatre at its core is not about artistic precision. It’s about passion.

 

Last week I worked everyday with the kids. The group whittled down to just eight students, ages eight to twenty-one. We didn’t have auditions and not every student was easy to work with, but I wanted everyone to have the opportunity to perform. When at times I became frustrated with students misbehaving, I would think to myself that, just maybe, theatre will do for them what it did for me, and that makes it all worth it.

 

Doing theatre in rural Ecuador is not exactly easy. Starting rehearsals on time feels like an impossible task. For starters “on time” is a relative term here, and then there’s the fact, many of my students work and don’t come home from the farm until their work is done. Also finding an appropriate rehearsal space is a challenge. At my university I once had a director stop a rehearsal because of an annoying buzzing sound. I fight to keep my students focused with loud music blasting and donkeys walking through our rehearsal space. And then there are the limitations of the students themselves. I gave a larger part to one of my more timid students thrilled he was willing to take on the challenge. I told him to memorize his lines before practice, but when he showed up I realized not only had he not memorized them but also he really struggled to just to read them. He is 15 and sometimes I forget that a lot of these kids are cutting sugar cane all day and hardly go to school, if at all.

 

So rehearsals were sometimes wild and unfocused, but in the end we had a short play about nature and the elements that was written mostly by my students. They put together costumes from what they had at home and showed up early Saturday afternoon excited to perform their piece. The venue was a volleyball court in the center of the nearby town. All morning communities presented short dances and by the time my group was introduced the audience was restless. It was loud with chatter but my students continued on just like they were in rehearsal. The blocking wasn’t perfect and some of them forgot lines here and there, but they were out there, and they did it. When they finished there was little applause but I clapped louder than everyone, ready to burst into a standing ovation.

 

I want to continue working with these kids. They are opening the stage doors for me once again, but this time it’s not about striving for perfection; it’s about simply doing. In time I hope I can teach them confidence, discipline and creativity and perhaps reawaken a passion for theatre in myself.

A Bitter Sweet Visit

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My cat was waiting in the windowsill and balloons spelled out my name across the front door. I called through the window and my host mother came running. The door flew open and she hugged me tighter than she had ever hugged me before. After over year I was finally home, at least that’s what it felt like. The rest of my host family soon filled the living room. Some of the kids had even stayed home from school so they would be there when I arrived. We took pictures, hugged, and ate arroz mariscos (seafood rice). It felt so good to be back. I had never expected that it would take me that long to return, nor that my return would be condensed into just a weekend visit.

I left my coastal village in October of 2010. I had been sick for two months and I just wanted to go back to my hometown and heal. Doctors told me that in a couple of weeks I would start to feel better and that I would be back in no time. So when I left I packed only a small bag, waved goodbye to my host family and said, “see you soon.”

My recovery turned out to be a very long and trying experience with a few unforeseen complications, and by the time I was physically better I was emotionally weak. I couldn’t decide whether or not I wanted to go back to Peace Corps, and Peace Corps couldn’t decide if I was medically fit to return. It took until last August to get the clearance and the courage to finally do it. My time living in a little costal village of Ecuador seemed like a lifetime ago, far overshadowed by the difficult months I had just overcome, so when my doctors suggested I avoid living in a costal climate I didn’t protest. It was decided— I would return to Ecuador, but I would have a new home.

I live in the serria now, but when I sat down for lunch with my old host family on the coast and stuck a fresh crab claw into my mouth, it sure felt like I was home. For six months I ate three meals a day at that table and since then very little had changed. I ran my fingers over the tablecloth and the place mats. I felt the weight of my cat on my feet. I looked up and saw the smiling faces around me. It felt like I had never left, and that I would never want to leave.

That wasn’t always the case. Just before I got sick I took a beach vacation. I remember walking down a beautiful beach where a volunteer had recently quit. I was full of jealousy that she had been placed in what I considered an ideal vacation spot and I had a hard time understanding why she quit. I started to daydream about having a site change and being moved to that very spot. Things weren’t bad where I lived, but I was board and frustrated. I was approaching the five-month mark. Things were no longer new and exciting, and I had yet to start any projects. In my fleeting daydreams, the beach seemed like the solution to all my problems.

Things changed when I got sick. I spent three weeks in Quito visiting doctors and staying in a windowless hotel. I had a lot of time to think and the change of scenery did me some good. I ached to return to my village and I made a list of the things I wanted to do once I got better. Though I was sick, I felt re-energized. I thought back to the volunteer who quit her service after three months of living on the beach. Maybe I was the lucky one after all. Maybe I had the site to be envied.

As you have probably figured out I never got to do any of the things on my list.  Never did I regret it more than when I was sitting at the dinning room table seeing the faces of my host family for the first time in over a year.

After lunch we started going through my old things to ship to my new site. All my things were carefully packed in boxes and plastic bags. Almost all my old furniture had been moved but my hammock still hung across from my bookshelf and it felt like my bedroom. Packing my things was harder than I expected. Sending them across the country felt like putting the final nail in the coffin that contained my life there. This was not my home anymore and it never would be again.

On the final day of my visit my host family and I took a hike to some nearby waterfalls and swimming holes. I had always wanted to go there, but I never made it in my six months living on the coast. Back then I thought I had all the time in the world to do those types of things. We climbed up a waterfall that was three or four stories tall. My friends and I crept our toes over the edge and looked down at the deep pool bellow. I backed up, took a running start, and jumped. The water hit me with a hard smack that sent a stinging sensation through my whole body. I plunged deep into the dark water, kicked hard and popped out like a cork. My friends applauded and laughed. I knew then that I didn’t have all the time in the world to spend in that place with those people, and that if I was going to jump now was the only time I had.

I’ve learned a lot in the last year, but the lessons came at a heavy cost. I sometimes think about what life would have been like if I had never been sick. I like to think I would still be living on the coast, crossing off all the things on my list, but there is no telling, and no point in wondering. You play the hand your dealt, because who knows what you will miss out on while you wait for better cards.

I’m trying to appreciate all the wonderful things about my new site and do everything I can today. I know now that two years is no time at all and that there is no telling what the future holds. It’s not easy. I have to adjust to a new family, a new community and a different way of life and its hard not to compare it to Las Mercedes, a place where I had six months to adjust. I know things will get easier. Every week I get a little more comfortable with my new life. I have a good host family in a hardworking community. The more I see of the surrounding area, the more I like it. Like most of Ecuador, it’s really beautiful here.

As I was packing my bag to leave my old home I left a small box of clothes and things because to taking everything seemed too final. I know I can’t live there, but I’m not ready to leave it completely. I told my host family to save the box for me and that I would try to come down around the holidays. I told them about my new site and invited them to visit. They talked about it and I really hope they come. And in the mean time I’ve got a new list to make, and plenty to do at my new home.

I’m back

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I’m back. I’m a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. Let me take a breath as I try and process what exactly that means.

I arrived in Quito almost three weeks ago and, unlike the months of training I had my first trip to Ecuador, when Peace Corps held my hand as I slowly integrated into Ecuadorian society, I spent just two days in Quito before I was kicked out of the nest landing head first in my site. It’s a big adjustment going from my pillow top mattress, hardwood floors and the beautiful quiet of mountain living to living with six other people in a wood house that shakes every time someone takes a step.

So far I think I am adjusting well. The one thing that I can’t seem to adjust to is the same thing that drove me to insanity at my last site; noise. I’ve already talked to my host family and they want to build a house on their farm for me, which is about a 35-minute walk away from the pueblo and void of competing stereos, screaming children and dogs fighting. Until then, I just have to do my best to keep from going crazy. I’m doing things differently this time around. For example, when I awoke at 5 am to my neighbors music pounding in my ears and vibrating my bed, instead of biting my nails and banging my head against the wall I put on my flip flops and marched next-door.

“I am trying to sleep, can you please turn down your music?” I asked.

“Oh, you want to sleep late? You must be very tired,” she replied.

Late? The sun had not even begun to rise by the time I crawled back into bed.

Aside from the noise, I like the village where I live. My host family is kind and they have made subtle adjustments to make me feel more comfortable. For example, I cringed that raw meet was left on the wood countertop and then vegetables for our salad were prepared there after. My host brother poked fun at me saying that Americans are too clean and we don’t have immune systems (true enough), but I awoke the next morning to find him organizing all the fruit and veggies in containers and scrubbing down the countertop with bleach.

My host mother and brother have also started to eat more like me. Every evening the three of us cook together. My host mother cooks a chicken soup and a plate of rice, salad and meat for the bus drivers that sleep in the bus outside of our house, while my host brother and I make a cream of vegetable soup along with a few vegetable dishes for us. I tell them that they can eat chicken, and it does not bother me, but they simply say that they want to eat what I eat which has lead to some very good meals; a fusion of Ecuadorian food with a health conscious, slightly neurotic, vegetarian flair.

I’m determined to make this experience better than my last. I didn’t come back to suffer through a year and a half of my life and then proclaim Yes! I survived Peace Corps! I came back to learn, make friends, enjoy my life, and hopefully contribute something positive to my community. I don’t think it’s going to be easy, I learned that much from my first experience, but I think that it’s all possible here.

So here is a small glimpse into the little village I live in, with its population of 116 people (and what seems like 200 dogs). It sits on a knoll surrounded by thick, green, farm-covered hills. Trails cut through the hills like veins leading to sugarcane plantations, waterfalls and bamboo cabins. Almost everyday it is a comfortable 75 degrees and in the evening (and sometimes during the day), the whole village is consumed by clouds. In the moon light mist pours in through my window and the cracks in the wall. It is beautiful here.

For the people life isn’t always easy. Everyone works hard in their farms and they make very little money. But from what I can tell in just the short time that I have been here, people are happy and they like what they are doing. I think I can learn a lot from them and I hope I can be happy and healthy here.

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Month Zero: Back to Ecaudor and I’m Scared

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My plane ticket is booked. I’ve already packed. I’ve said goodbye to my family and see you soon to my former host family in Ecuador. I’m going back to Peace Corps and for the first time since I started traveling when I was 17, I am scared of the adventures that lie ahead.

It’s like getting back on a horse after it throws you off. Ecuador knocked me off my feet big time. For eight months I battled with my health. I would get better for a few days, I would push myself too hard and then the toxoplasmosis surface. It was like that all winter. Being sick made me depressed, and being well made me anxious. I felt like my life was out of my control and going in a direction I never intended it to.

When I get to Ecuador, I will move away from the coast so I’m not worried about dengue fever. I have antibodies so I’m not going to get toxoplasmosis again, but I am still scared. Last year was hard, and I don’t want life to be hard anymore. I want life to be challenging and inspiring, but hard, no.

The hardest thing in the last year was having so much uncertainty about the future. At first I didn’t know if I could go back because it took months to get my medical clearance. And then, at the end of July, when I finally got the go ahead from Washington, I didn’t know if I wanted to go back. I couldn’t think about anything but Peace Corps. Would going back mean living in conditions that already proved to be too much for me, or would it mean getting to do all the things that wanted to do the first time but couldn’t?

My friends and family encouraged me to stay home, but said they would support me either way. I asked for advise from everyone I met, including my best friend, a homeless man, and a tarot card reader. Just a few weeks ago I went to see a professor from college and she gave me the only advise that I needed. She told me that if I can’t stop thinking about it, I should just go. I called Peace Corps the next day and asked them to book my ticket. I think that was my decision all along. I just needed a nudge to make that first step.

Once my ticket was booked everything felt better. It was a huge weight taken off my shoulders. I started getting ready to go and taking advantage of all the things I neglected this summer because I was too anxious about my uncertain future. The last two weeks have been amazing. I’ve hiked a lot, slept under the stars in the new moon, gone trail running and spent time with my family. I love the Colorado Rockies, and I think even though I’m sad to leave my mountain paradise, it needs to be this way. I’m not running away anymore from the hard things that have plagued me the last year, but rather saying a sad so long and running towards the unknown that awaits me in Ecuador. And yes it’s scary.

I took traveling for granted before. I had a fearless addiction to adventure. Now I think it’s probably healthy to be afraid when jumping into the unknown. It keeps me from doing some of the crazy stupid things I dream about, like hitchhiking from Denver to Patagonia. And it makes me humble. There are no guarantees that this time will work out any better for me than the first time, but there were no guarantees then either. The difference is I accept it and think it’s worth the risk.

I’ve put up some pictures of my last two weeks in Colorado, and the photos of my new house/bedroom that my program manager in Ecuador sent me. My new site is in the cloud forest a few hours from Quito in a village with around 100 people. When I first saw the pictures I almost told them to cancel my plane ticket. Remember when I said I don’t want life to be hard anymore? But Peace Corps is what you make it. And I may be scared, but I’m also excited. Next week I’m going to meet 100 new friends and who knows what we will be able to do together.

So I’m starting the counter back at zero. Wish me luck that I make it to 18.

Month 10: It’s a New Year and a fresh start

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Christmas lights are coming down and the snow is melting from 2010’s last storm. It was a year of challenges, travel, sickness, and things left unfinished. It’s finally 2011 and it’s time to move on.

What does the New Year hold for me? Good health I hope. On New Years Eve while people toasted the coming year and threw back glasses of Champaign I downed my last dose of medication hopefully putting the toxoplasma gondii in their place for good.

My friends and family keep asking me if I’ll be returning to Peace Corps in 2011. For now my answer is yes, I think so. I want to go back because I feel completely dissatisfied by my first Peace Corps experience. I was there for eight months and looking back, my few accomplishments seem small. I integrated into a community, became part of a wonderfully warm family and experienced the richness of Ecuadorian culture but I didn’t learn as much as I thought I would, I didn’t push myself as much as I could have, and I didn’t contribute to my community like I wanted to. For the most part I stumbled around in the dark trying to figure out where to start.

When I first got sick I felt like I was on brink starting projects and getting things moving. And when I got medically separated I thought I would be back in few weeks, healthy and motivated, ready to get started again. Now it’s been a few months, I’m still not healthy and my doctor recommends I find a new place to live because I have a high risk of developing complications if I get dengue again.

On Christmas day I called my host family to wish them Feliz Navidad and tell them I will come back to visit one day but I wont be able to call their village my home again. It broke my heart to hear them tell me that they are almost finished building my house, and that the girls in my environmental club are always asking about me, and the tomatoes I planted from seeds in my first month are finally ripe, and my cat is pregnant, and they all miss me very much.

I hung up the phone and cried, wishing I was still there and that I had never gotten sick.

Now I face the decision; do I go back to Ecuador, start fresh at a new site, and hope that I get the things out of Peace Corps that my last experience was lacking? Or do I move on and look back at it as an experience that was difficult and didn’t quite work out how I imagined it. After all, sometimes that’s the way life is.

I want to try again, because I think if I had stayed longer I would have had a wonderfully fulfilling experience. But first I need to get my physical and mental health back. To do that I’m going to finish something I started last year. Last year I started working as a ski instructor but left mid-season to join Peace Corps. If my health is good enough I’m scheduled to start back in a few weeks. I’ll get to spend everyday outside in the Colorado Rockies sharing my love for skiing with a bunch of kids. A few months of that should heal my aching heart and broken down sprit.

Month 9: I thought Peace Corps would be easy.

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Last November I was living at my mom’s house, with no job, no school, no boyfriend, and no income. I did have one thing however; a nomination to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in Latin America. It’s been a year since then and suddenly I find myself in an oddly similar position, except I have no nomination, just a few peoples’ word that when I get better I’ll get to go back.

I’m home in Colorado recovering. I was medically separated in October because around mid-August I got sick with toxoplasmosis and dengue fever (I know, again right?). It’s a longer recovery than anyone, including myself, expected. It’s been hard. Especially the time I spent at my site sick, unable to work or do much of anything. Its funny. I had zero expectations for Peace Corps except for one maybe. I didn’t expect it to be hard. I have international experience; I’ve done over a dozen home stays, taken fifty-hour bus rides, lived without electricity, and made friends around the world. What could possibly make Peace Corps so hard?

I was at my site for 6 months and the hardest thing for me was not being good at my job, or even really knowing what my job was. I’m used to being good at what I do but with Peace Corps it’s really hard to be good at anything in your first few months, at least that was my experience. One of the coolest and hardest things about Peace Corps is that they drop you off at your site and leave you to figure out what to do, which can take months or maybe even years.

Just before I got sick I was finally finding my place in the community. My home stay family was building me my own house, and we finally finished building a fence to keep the geese out of the garden we started. The girls in my environmental club were excited about our meetings and we had big plans for the future. My counterpart organization applied for money from US Aid to do a crab population study and it looked promising. I still had a long way to go, but it was finally starting to feel like there was purpose in me being there.

Nine months ago I was packing for Ecuador jumping in blindfolded without looking back. Now I’m at home looking back at my last nine months wondering if I should go back. I flip through photos of my host family and little nine-year-old Roxanna. I see beautiful Ecuador and Quito the city surrounded by snow-capped volcanoes. I see the mountains and the mangroves and I miss it.

I thought about going back a lot when I first got home, but now I mostly just think about getting better. It’s been a rough few months and no matter what I do I just want to get back to living and loving life.

Month 5:When there´s no coffee houses

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A few weeks ago I went up to Cuanca to spend the night. The bus ride up passed through a cloud forest completely submerging us in fog. When we emerged the sun cleared the steamy windows and it was like I was in a different country. Mountains thick with vegetation that had waterfalls running through them like veins surrounded us. Bellow was an ocean of clouds, which gave me the odd sensation that the mountains were floating.

When I got to Cuanca I couldn’t stop staring open mouthed at the beautiful architecture and clean streets. I’ve gotten so used to seeing garbage that its absence feels oddly strange. It was wonderfully sunny and so I enjoyed a few hours strolling around the downtown.

I happened across a small flower market. I asked one of the vendors if I could take her picture. She smiled and we started chatting. After a few minutes she carefully picked out one of her plumpest red roses and gave it to me. This is why I love Ecuador, I thought to myself.

Ecuador is truly beautiful. When I was in Cuanca I admit I had tinge of jealousy for the Peace Corps volunteers that get to enjoy the beauty and modern comforts of the sierra. As I descended the bus ride back to coast I noticed the garbage and all the half built cement houses and thought of Cuanca, but then I noticed the tropical vegetation glowing in the pink sunset and it felt good to be going home to my little coastal village.

Since my trip to Cuanca I’ve tried to take notice of something beautiful every day, whether it be a butterfly flying over me as I backstroke up the river, or the smell of fermented cocoa as they dries, or a man carrying his giant chow dog on the handlebars of his bicycle. It helps to notice these things especially on those days that feel less than exciting.

Having been her over five months, this month was the first time I ever felt bored. The excitement of being somewhere new has worn off and it’s defiantly a learning process figuring out how to fill my time. It’s not exactly like Denver where when all else fails you can at least go out and get a cup of coffee. There aren’t coffee shops here. In fact there isn’t even a single restaurant in my village.

As the weeks pass my days slowly get fuller. It isn’t the USAid meetings or working on my census of the 140 families in the association of crab fisherman that make my days feel fulfilling but rather things like taking the kids to the river and teaching them to swim or going running through the cocoa and banana plantations.

I don’t live in the most comfortable city in Ecuador, or the most beautiful village, but I like my small little village off the Pan American highway. There doesn’t appear to be anything special about it. It looks like any other coastal village except it feels like home.