Class Is Now In Session!

Alright so starting in Feb (who knows when this will post) I am starting to teach classes for juuust about every group we have established in the barrio. For starters the niños or the younger kids, will be getting art clases, English (ugh hate it but they want it so fine…), possibly some dance and self esteems. For the jovenes, or teenagers, I’ll be teaching, English, self-esteem, leadership, Health & AIDS/HIV and maybe some dance in there too. I plan on doing a lot of projects and service learning as we call it in the Peace Corps to help develop leadership and cooperation skills for the jovenes. For the Mujeres De Lucha I’m going to be teaching classes on communication, accounting (Dios mio!), and motivation. I’m even going to be giving some charlas on health and exercise to the ederly group or the adultos mayores.

There clearly aren’t enough days of the week to fit this all in, but its going to work out some how. Right now the kids are on vacation so I’m going to work with them at least 3 days week. The niños in the morning and the jovenes in the afternoons. The Mujeres are going to be basically the weekends i.e. Friday and/or Saturdays and the adultos mayores whataever day I leave open to come see them.

I most nervous about my Spanish! The Mujeres and I have come up with our own way of communicating. Since they are so sweet they let me get by with some pretty messed up Spanish and they never correct me. It only becomes apparent when Im speaking to ANYone else. They cannot understand me usually…(this is why I need a tutor) and I’m like right…only Mujeres get me cause they let me get by with madness. So when I have a group of teens that CERTAINLY would rather be outside playing soccer on their school vacation than listening to self esteem charlas….bad Spanish is only going to make it worse. Oh sure I have games, activities and what not to spice it up, but teens are the toughest crowd. Since I want to work with youth now and in the future there is no time like the present to just jump in there and do my best. I know there is no way we can spend two months together in class and me not learn anything and them not learn anything. We will both surely gain something from the experience, so I just have to keep that in mind at all times.

When school gets back in session around April I’m hoping that maybe I can still get one day with the jovenes afterschool or something. You know as a youth group kind of thing. There is an existing group of jovenes already, but it has come to my attention that there are some teens in the community that are def excluded from this group Not good for self esteem. My dream is get all of the teens working together cause there is really no need for strife man. My thought…build a garden together and the byproduct will be new friendships formed. Vamos a ver. Wish me luck!

Reconnect. Lucky for you all I’m not in that much of a writing/babbling mood. Just wanted to report that Reconnnect, which I was calling DisConnect since we were all separated, was actually a great event. My CAT Tools, a presentation we were all freaking out about (and another reason I was MIA Dec/Jan), was not all that impressive, but we got through it. It was great seeing the volunteers that I don’t get to ever see and it was just fun switchin up the schedule and spending time in Cuenca.

Oh mama, Cuenca is my new love. It was BEAUTIFUL. Nice, clean, great sites to see, safe, you name it. We didn’t get to spend too much time in the city, but I definitely want to go back to Cuenca. Maybe during a family or friend visit? Hint, hint


Reconnect would not have been half as special or beneficial if it weren’t for the fact that I invited my counterpart. It was optional for our counterparts to come, and once my presentation wasn’t really coming along, I figured, I wouldn’t have her come and only embarrass myself. I also figured since she takes care of about 5 kids In her house there was no way she could leave for 4 days. But when I gave her, her invite letter she was ALL about it. During our meetings in Cuenca we had exercises in how to plan events from beginning to end which was great for her to see. Plus, I just love spending time with Lottie and this event brought us closer. We butted heads on some ideas, which was great, because we were able to strengthen our communication skills. She was all about participating (a little too much if you ask me, cause that meant EYE had to participate vs daydreaming hee hee) and everyone loved her. So that was special and amazing. Since Peace Corps paid for our counterparts I was really happy to get Lottie out of the barrio.

All of the volunteers were going to get together in Riobamba after to really Reconnect, but we weren’t allowed to due to strikes going on. That weekend ended up being a fun time though anyway…even though my apartment didn’t have water the whole time...but that's another story...


See Short and Sweet. Besitos xoxo

Apartment Pics.Totally Out Of Order, But Totally Here! Disfuta :)

Alright I was going to narrate my apt pics but that takes forever and I still haven’t put these up….so here is a tour of my place. The pictures are going to have to speak their 1,000 words. Oh but stay tuned for Apt Upgrade pics as I plan on having more than a bed and fridge one day

xoxo

Part III-Just in the (Saint) Nick of Time

So by the time this posts but it’ll probably be February and I’m still talking about Christmas. I just felt I needed to explain why I fell off the map! So Where was I my feelings, heart and cooked eggs were all over my floor? Lol Yeah, let’s move on. Just like I did. I was tempted to “call in sick” to work, but the truth was there was no time for pouting, feeling low and sulkin. There was some Christmas to be had and joy to bring to the barrio. However, I can’t remember everything, but the whole next day everything was going wrong. To the point where I thought I was on a bloopers show or something. I mean foolish stuff, like I was trying to help one of the ladies open a frozen soda. Since when I was twisting off the top, slowly put surely, the soda would rise and I would stop to give it a sec. She’s like no all you do is cut the side and dump it in

a pot. She’s explaining this as she’s sawing a way on the side…and FIIIIZZZZSSSSPPPPAAAASSSHHHHSSLLLLAAAAT. The pressure filled soda bottle spews cola de manzana (APPLE soda…come on now..) Alll over my face, shirt, jeans…everything. It was very Three Stoogies. Even though the lady cutting away didn’t get sprayed and everyone else ran for the hills at first spray. But since I was front and center I got is straight to the face…So As if the mosquitos and flies aren’t unbearable usually, try dippin your body in your least favorite soda flavor and sit in the baking sun. But I digress ;)

Anyway, since it was getting ridiculous I needed to change my vibration. So prayed about it and asked God to allow me to have a heart to heart with Mary in the Universal language of Love since was simply not happening in English or Spanish. (I also had been waiting for a possible apology, but it became clear that wasn’t coming…) So in my heart to heart prayer it was revealed that she dislike me at all, and actually likes me and even has love for me. She is hurting inside too, cause she is just as stressed and worked as me, And she really, really misses her best friend. I can relate to all of these things, and in that moment I felt released, forgiven and I forgave. You can’t be walkin around with a heavy, scorned heart during Christmas week! It’s just not right.

As I said before I had been putting my neck out there trying to meet people..”Hi you look rich, or like you have connections, would you like to donate..anything…to the Mujeres De Lucha?” was prreeetty much how classy I was coming at that point. So one of the guys that I met had a friend that is Ecuadorian and “well connected”. We had talked a few times on the phone and I finally met him. What a great guy, we’ll call him Jay. We bonded instantly and he even had a woman in his office that lived In Cristo De Consuelo so there was a real tie. I love it when I talk to people and explain all that the Mujeres are up against and how they are trying to help, and they start banging there heads up against the wall, cause then I know they get it and that they care. Well Jay was doing that. We sat for hours, talking and trying to problem solve. Now usually being a volunteer that is all about making the Ladies sustainable, I’m talking long term all the time. However, this time, I was like…yeah yeah, that’s nice about getting something going for the comedor…but we can talk about that in…say January. What we REALLY need are some Toys for the niños. He too informed me that they had donated everything weeks back and had nothing. However, he was so drawn in by our projects that “he’d see what he could do”. I mean what CAN you do at the 11th hour. I think it was 3 days before the party.

Did I explain how the gift giving portion of the party? We block off the street and hang out eating, playing games and having a good time. Then the chairs are set up in the street facing the Comedor where there is a table with gifts. The kids are called up one by one to receive their gift. The catch? The only kids that have presents are the ones with a Padrino/Madrina or maybe their parents…but that usually doesn’t happen. What happens to the Majority of the kids that don’t have either or. They.just.watch. How sad right? I was trying to see if we can change that since we were clearly not going to have gifts for 200 kids and who didn’t want to hear my Christmas Charla on the real meaning of Christmas hee hee. Things are done the way they are was basically what I was continuously told…entonces, bueno. The gift giving program was going to be what it was.

Let’s just get to party day shall we? I had invited all the Padrinos that live in Guayaquil. That includes, people that work at the U.S. Conuslate Office, Chamber of Commerce and The Colegio. I had my big gift for my hijado and didn’t want to walk by myself through the barrio. I called Mary hoping she hadn’t left without me. I call…she’s already there…turns out she had been there since 6 or 7 or something way crazy early time. So I get there people are running around like crazy. As I suggested we just combined the Adultos Mayores and the Niños for one grand party. Since I had told the Pardrinos to be there in the morning of course they were all on time…however…since the party was really starting “ya mismo” by the time we really were gonna get started was hours away. So most of the Pardrinos had to leave before the kids even came. I’ll have to explain “hora Ecuadoriana y ya mismo” at some point since it effects our quality of life here.

So we were setting up presents in the Comedor and tensions are runnin high. Folks are cookin in the kitchen in the back, setting up presents in the front, setting trays of food, making lists and checking them twice. Once my hosting/tour duties were over, I kept asking can I help with anything..feeling more in the way than helpful. Was I got waved away by by homegirl one too many times I was like. Alright, remember you have joy in your heart. Just go outside, mingle with the Adultos Mayores and if you are needed they know where to find you. So I tell Mary I’m going outside hit me up if she needs me. So I’m just talking with the elderly folks who are so sweet and so cute and I was so glad I made the decision to just go out side (cause I couldn’t handle the heat in the kitchen..ookaaaay?)

So I’m talking and enjoying the company, when Mary appears outside of the door of the Comedor and stands and stares for a minute. I look at her like “looking for me? I’m over here…need anything?” She looks at me but just sits down outside of the Comedor window. So I get back to my convo, ever so often checkin in on her across the way. She gives me a few weak smiles but doesn’t come over. I think to myself that I forgot that I just had the heart to heart on the cosmic level. Here on Earth she may still be a bit disgusted with me and my incompetence. Oh well my heart is healed so I just keep on with my viejitos. Eventually she walks over to one of the grandmas and I say something about her looking like a model. She really does she’s a mother of two and has got it going on! She’s one of those hot mom’s. I just don’t know how to explain to her what a MILF is and I don’t think it’ll ever be appropriate soooo I just call her a model. She laughs and then flags me down and tells me we have to go to the Tienda to go get some sodas. I was like sweet, staying positive works. Today is going to go smooooth as silk from this point on.

So we are walking making small talk, turn the corner into the area where the Tienda is…give besitos to the two ladies watching the store, start to enter the doors of the Tienda…and all of a sudden Mary covers her face and starts WAILING!!! At first I didn’t know if she was laughing or crying or WHAT. She sits down in one of those stackable chairs and is crying her eyes out! I was completely caught off guard and totally Shocked! I just start hugging her and asking whats wrong. The way she is sobbing though I am ALLL too familiar with. I replayed the whole last 10 min in my head and totally get it. She comes outside, stares…sits (trying to hold it together my guess), weak smiles at me (probably debating to tell me, would I understand? I don’t understand anything), finally comes to get me, cause she’s gotta get outta there and maybe I will understand…and then the release. Something Clearly happened in the hot kitchen of the Comedor and that’s the only part I don’t know. Dee one of the ladies at the Tienda is batting Mary’s hands from her face saying “Stop crying, you’re a Mujer De Lucha we don’t cry” while I’m like, “Let it out, it’s okay, here take a tissue, drink some water…oooohhh * hug * let it out, it’s okay”.

Now at this point I’m SOOO thankful that I had my heart to heart. If I hadn’t. If I had been walkin around feeling victimized and bruised I would have probably been feeling like, “you see? This is how it feels, not so hot right?” (which would have been stank and ugly and small of me) but instead I was in a place of totally and complete empathy and compassion. I saw that we are SO in the same boat. We both come everyday to help the Ladies, but we don’t live there. She leaves her family everyday, the same way I left mine. She works while she’s in the barrio and while she’s home, she goes to school, doesn’t even have to work, and while she doesn’t ask to be thanked for ALL of her hard work, she doesn’t show up at 6 and 7 am just to be criticized all morning long for the work that she’s doing. Work that honestly wouldn’t be getting done if it weren’t for her. I felt all of this before she was even able to stop her gasping, hiccupping cry to start talking about what was bothering her. I guess or hearts were stayin in communication. It was something. The two ladies were totally not hearing it. There was so much going on it was hard for me to understand any words, but they were walkin around, pontificating saying stuff, like “yeah life is hard, but if I cried everytime life handed me lemons…” that kind of thing.. . I just kept providing, hugs, water, tissue and attention. I didn’t know what to do. Plus when she did talk some in between sobs, of course I had NO clue what was being said. You know you can’t understand English when people talk and cry, so in Spanish I was lost. But again, words would just provide the details. I was already pretty clear in general what was going on.

Usually I wanna be the one to counsel and console, but since I don’t have the words in Spanish and I wasn’t catchin all of hers, I couldn’t be there for her like I wanted to. The ladies who speak her language but were not…speakin her lanuage….were of no help to her either. I suggested she call her best friend the volunteer before me, cause She would be the perfect person who would completely understand, has been there before, and would completely be able to talk to her and have one of those “I know, RIGHT!?!” sessions. Again, since my I had laid my Ego to rest days ago, I was able to suggest that instead of feeling slighted by the mere idea of it, let alone mention it. So Dee and I took the sodas to the Comedor while Mary made her phone call. When she came back to the party she was as good as new. Judging by how everyone was acting when we went to the Comedor they probably have NO clue that someone up in there sent Mary away sobbing somewhere. Ah my life! At least someone gets it.

So the kids start coming, we try to keep the ca-razy kids away from the ederly who are not tryin to have screaming kids all up in their grill and I think it went well. I was trying to just sit and digest everything that happened. When Lottie looks at the HUGE group of wild kids and then at me and says “Don’t you know some games or dynamicas (ice breakers)?) I’m like Uummm if I knew to have some prepared in Spanish maybe, buuuuuuttt… “Great, KIDS! Gather round Jennifer she has some GAAAAMES FOR Youuuuuuu”… Yayayayayyyyyy!!! So super duper panic time. You are not a Peace Corps Vol though unless you have had this moment over and over. Whitney a stellar volunteer says she keeps notecards with dynamica ideas cause it’s inevitable someone is going to call you out when you least expect it. It’s always in that moment your mind goes completely blank.

I come up with some good educational dynamicas, some that allowed me to learn there names, but after awhile, they were getting antsy and while the adultos mayores have bad nerves…so do I…so I thought running around was going to drive the viejitos crazy, but I had to. So we played duck duck goose or pato, pato..______ I have no idea what the word was, but it was the same game so that worked out well. Oh the craziest thing though. The person doing the duck, duck, ducking, has to close there eyes!! So I was walking ALL over the place lol…it was a mess but so much fun.

Food was great (food which I was eating well past New Years) There was rice, chicken, oooh and the cake there was cake and it was delish. There were balloons, group games the works. The party was in full swing and I was feeling better. I had been in communication with my new friend Jay so while everything was goin well…I still had some anxiety about if he was going to be able to come…and would he have toys?! The ladies KEPT asking too, but I didn’t want to call and bug him, as I know he’s someone that is going to be helping us with some long term projects. I didn’t want to feel so fixed on toys and material things, but it meant so much to the Whole barrio that the kids had something….that it put us all on pins and needles. The Director of the Colegio I work with wasn’t able to come, but he sent a car load of ice cream for the kids which was incredible and so fun. Suprises like that made it feel like Christmas. Lottie makes the call that we can’t hold anymore. We gotta line the chairs up and start the present presentations. She looks at me like, I know you were keeping hope alive, but this is life in the barrio and that’s just the way it is. So Mary has her official clip board with the names of the kids with Padrinos and is trying to get everyone seated and quiet. I’m just sitting idoly by like…I have NO clue how this is about to go down.

All of a sudden another car pulls up outside of the gates blocking of the street honking… at the same time I am getting a call from Jay, “Hello!?” , “Yeah, I think we’re here…yeah, yeah there you are…” So I run to go welcome him. I’m glad the ladies are going to get to meet the group that I wanting to help the community….and then….Oh, wait…What’s ALL THIS!?!?

TOYS!! Toys, Toys, TOOOOYYYSSS!! Toys filling the backseat, the ladies are holding them in their laps in the front seat. Jay goes around and pops the trunk, toys spilling out into the street!!!!!!!!!!!!! FELIZ NAVIDAD TODOS!!!!

Top 5 moments of my life I think. Sooooo freakin happy. The toys were really great too! Toy cradles, doctors kits, baseball bats, Pelotas (balls), muñecas (dolls), books, games everything! RIGHT on time. I mean RIGHT.ON.TIME. A Hollywood crew couldn’t have timed that more perfectly for a season finale moment. It was incredible.

I took Jay and the ladies in to get some food and introduced to everyone. The Mujeres were giddy with delight. Mary had gotten the kids quiet and first the Padrinos/Mardinas presented their gifts and then one by one Jay and his team presented the kids of the community with their gifts. They were so grateful and it was the perfect moment. There was no one left out and everyone got something. I even got some Spanish and English kids books so that I can teach my classes later on this year. It really brought the Mujeres back together on one accord as well. It made all the drama seem worth it…well almost. Drama free is usually the way to go We were sent home with montons of food. Some of which I still have in my fridge.

Walking home, Mary and I had an out loud heart to heart. She explained exactly what happened and we vented about the difficulties of working in the barrio. Just as I suspected we are so on the same page with our challenges. She was also like, even though the ladies are working Christmas Even and Christmas, you need to not go back until the 30th (which is the day we were doing our own personal Secret Santa lol late…) so I was happy about being given a mini-vacation, because I needed it. We exchanged Feliz Navidades and even I love you’s. I’m all about going through the valley with someone if it brings you closer together. So the drama if nothing else served that purpose and for that I’m grateful.