Program Update

I realize that once again I have had a vast lag time between my posts, and once again I truly apologize. I have come to the fruition that I have neglected to talk about the strides we have made in my current programs. Here is an update on two of my current programs, micro finance and children’s art.

MICRO FINANCE

We have had several goals for the past two quarters. The first was to legitimize the micro finance program. I say legitimize because it wasn’t a program that necessarily met every week due to the fact that it is autonomous by nature and the program didn’t have the weekly obligation of planning for classes. The second was to build a relationship with our partner organization Esperanza y Progreso del Valle, better known by the PD’s as EPV (a small micro lending organization). And third, to build off of last year’s PD’s work in hopes of developing a small business class.

Brock, Jack, and I have worked diligently in order to realize the goals we had set before us. We now meet every Tuesday mooring at 9am to plan our business class, yes we have gotten this off of the ground as well, and to look for ways to improve our partner organization, EPV. With the help of last year’s PD’s we have developed a 6 week micro emprezas class (small business class) in cooperation with EPV. The guiding principal behind this class is to expose current and aspiring business owners to basic business practices. EPV’s responsibility for the class is to talk about their lending processes in order to educate individuals on the benefits and protocol of taking out loans. By default, this class has strengthened our relationship with EPV. Brock, Jack, and I have each shadowed their organization in hopes of better understanding day to day operations. Jack, the only Spanish speaker out of the micro finance group, sits in on board meetings in order to add outside input. Although this program got off to a slow start, we have now been progressively moving towards establishing this as one of our strongest programs.

CHILDREN'S ART

You may ask yourself what am I even doing teaching this class? My artistic abilities are subpar, or to be more accurate, nonexistent. Well, because I wanted to. I’m happy that I did, it is my only program in which I interact with the children of the communities we serve (except for our public lending library in which I work 2 days a week, but it is not technically my program).

Sam, Zoe, and I work on this program together. I’m the constant “profe” attending class every Friday at 4pm, while Sam and Zoe alternate weeks. In all honesty, it has given me a great appreciation for art and has been an extremely enjoyable experience thus far. Creative thinking seems to be lacking in the Ecuadorian school system. Because of this I find it very important to provide an art class for the communities that we serve. When giving the opportunity and encouragement their creative imaginations are unleashed.

We decided to structure the class to incorporate art from around the world. We started off with the United States, where we built Native American tipis and made corn out of toilet paper rolls and gum balls. We are currently focusing on Asian art. Thus far we have made Chinese lanterns and constructed a Japanese garden using construction paper and egg cartons. Accompanied by each art project is a brief lesson describing their culture importance and relevance. This makes the class fun, creative, and educational. It's a triple threat :)

Happy Holidays everyone!

Culture SHOCK!

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I´ll start off by saying I know the pictures of the new house and Sanquolqui market are unrelated, I just wanted to share them with you all.

What seemed to be a seemingly normal, well to do week, ended as one of the craziest weeks in my 20+ year existence. As I’m sure many of you know we were in the midst of a governmental overthrow. Quite the shock, it’s something you don’t experience within the U.S., and on top of this our fearless leader (our boss and go to persona within Ecuador) was in Nashville, TN attending a conference.

We were first caught wind of this early Thursday morning when one of our partner organizations got in contact with us via my phone (which Sam answered) telling us not to leave the confines of our house. Confused by this, we sought more information. The initial report is that the police were on strike i.e. no police force in Quito and the surrounding valley (where we live). Because of this and being inhertinley Gringo (i.e. targeted because the belief is we have more money), it was presumably unsafe for us to leave our house. This proved true when we found out that both of the local grocery stores (just down the road from us) were looted and 3 banks in Quito were robbed before noon.

Later that evening we contacted some friends who informed us of the complexity of the situation partaking around us. I’ll explain the situation as best I can, although I undoubtedly cannot truly understand or portray the intricacy and governmental turmoil this country has struggled with for years. It in fact was not just a police strike but a political move inspired by the opposing political party. This political party misinformed the police on a new policy regarding the benefits and compensation of the police force. They convinced the police department that they were receiving pay cuts and their benefits were being eliminated. However this was not the case, as the president, Rafael Correa, tried to explain in a speech to the police. The police berated the president with words, bottles, and tear gas. Due to the injuries received during his speech, the president was forced to receive medical care at a hospital in Quito. It was here that the police kidnapped the Ecuadorian president in hopes of forcing him to sign a new agreement with the police. His savoir came in the form of the military. The military was forced into a shootout with the police, which resulted in two dead officers and the freeing of the president.

I wasn’t quite sure how to feel while all of this was taking place. I’ve never been in such a precarious, unsettling situation, especially one in which I truly did not understand. Was the overthrow going to succeed? Were we going to have to be evacuated? Were looters going to try and rob our house because the police force were on strike? (although Brock and I had adrenaline pumping through our veins, a sledgehammer, and a large pick axe, all in all a pretty good combination to deter intruders).

By the next day, Friday, many things seemed to be back to normal. Some of the police force had returned to work, the city seemed to be unscathed and unaware of the previous day’s events, and we were allowed to walk outside of our doors again. However, we were required to stay in the surrounding Sanquolqui area (the town in which we live).

I guess the good news was that we inherited a 4 day weekend and I acquired an authentic Ecuadorian soccer jersey and a cross necklace by two random people at a bar in Sanquolqui. Apparently they aren’t used to seeing Gringos in the area, for most Gringos are tourists and frequent the Mariscal (gringolandia) in Quito. Oh, and work is going well. Talks of work just happened to be trumped by the events of the week. If you would like more information about the police riot in Ecuador check out this article:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/09/30/ecuador.violence.archive/index.html?iref=allsearch

Until next time,

Luke

I thoroughly apologize between the vast lag time between blogs. The past few weeks have been extremely busy and I unintentionally left my blog on the backburner.

I’ll start off with my visit to Canoa, a beach on the Pacific coast of Ecuador. The beach was beautiful and tranquil. By comparison it is one of the more laid back beaches off the coast of Ecuador. The beach front is lined with hostels, beach front tiendas (where I had the best pina colada of my life), and a variety of restaurants. It was a very relaxing weekend and one in which I encountered my first steak dinner since I have been down here. You tend to figure out what your priorities are when you splurge to spend half of your weekly stipend on a single dinner. Well worth it!

Work has been increasingly more time consuming. Not only are we on the cusp of starting our programs we also are in the process of moving to a new house. For those of you who don’t know, we have a house and an apartment (with access from the roof of our house via a “hobbit” door). This hobbit door although convenient has been the bane of my existence the past few days. We have had the daunting task of filling in the doorway instructed by our ringleader, Brock. Luckily Brock has had experience with this before and guided Sam and I through the process. I officially spent all of my free time outside of the library covered in concrete. The good news, we got our deposit back in full.

As far as programs go, I’m involved with four. I’m working with our agriculture program, children’s art, micro finance, and cooking class.

For agriculture we work with one of our partner organizations, Anamisi. Anamisi consists of two people, Christian and Laura; they run a small organic farm as well as give English and computer lessons. Our main goal here is to strengthen their organization in any way that deems necessary. We also want to expand the knowledge of organic farming and the practice of raising animals such as cuy throughout the surrounding communities.

Children’s art is in place in order to encourage the creative thinking of children. From what I have seen and gathered from past PD’s, creative thinking is lacking in the school systems that surround the area. It is also a very enjoyable class for these children and educates them on different styles of art and artists from around the world.

If you aren’t sure what micro finance is, Wikipedia it, that’s what I did. Our main objective for the time being is to start up a small business class with one of our partner organizations, EPV, a small lending organization. This will be in place to teach aspiring business owners practical business principles. We also hope to branch off from here to start another class for current business owners, in order to refresh their skills and build upon their business knowledge.

Lastly, cooking class. What does a typical Ecuadorian meal consist of? I’ll tell you, the same thing, seriously, the same thing, over and over. Rice, a small portion of meat, and perhaps a little serving of vegetables all served with a glass full of fresh juice. The food is good if you can handle the lack of protein (I can’t!). The problem is the typical Ecuadorian diet doesn’t have much variety. Because of this a cooking class has been organized in order to provide variety to the Ecuadorian diet. The idea is to give healthier cooking options all while widening the variety of foods used in Ecuadorian households. However, the past week and the current week haven’t been especially healthy. Last week was pizza. Can you guess what we are making this week? Cake, yup, we are passing on the states obese epidemic to Ecuador. I’m obviously joking; these are just a few things that they wanted to learn how to make. The goal is to mix these recipes in with some of our own, more healthy options.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be blogging at a more frequent pace from now on, promise.

Hasta lluego,

Luke

Weeks 2 & 3

Alright, so I decided to put weeks 2 and 3 together so I could catch up on my weekly blogs so inherently it's going to be another long blog. If you have a problem with that get over it because you can’t do anything about it J

I will start off with my living situation. The end of week 2 marked our move to our house in Conocoto and the end of my home stay. I was actually a bit sad to move out. My host family was amazing and I will definitely miss Alexandria and Daisi, I had a lot of fun with them. Enough with the sappy nonsense and now on to our house in Conocoto. It’s a huge PINK stucco house filled with 16 people, awesome. Things are a bit crowded at the moment but the old PD’s (program directors) are trickling out of the house one by one. By August 7^th we will have the house to ourselves which is definitely bitter sweet. Right now they have all 9 of us new PD’s (program directors, remember) crammed into a 3 bedroom apartment which we have access to via a makeshift hobbit doorway on the roof.

Now onto work. We have mucho mucho meetings to solidify our organizational roles and program responsibilities. They have been very helpful in determining our responsibilities and goals. Nothing is set in stone as of yet but I believe I will be working with our micro-finance program, children’s art (stepping outside of my box there), possibly healthy cooking class, and I will have a role within our agriculture program. As far as organizational roles go (meaning roles to help MPIE internally run efficiently and effectively) I will be helping with grant writing, which I am very excited about, as well as in-kind donor relations. For example I will be updating our wish list to reflect our program needs as well as recording in-kind donations (non-monetary donations, so specific items programs need) and sending out thank you letters.

Sweet, things are finally falling into place. But it hasn’t all been about work these past two weeks. First let us talk about the food. If you know me well you can attest to how adventurous I am with food. It just so happens that right outside of my home stay resides a park, and in that park is a street food market with a fantastic array of Ecuadorian food. What did I eat from there; well I’ll tell you but don’t get squeamish. Let me just start off with saying that grilled cow intestines are amazing. Great flavor if they are prepared correctly with the consistency of calamari. The most interesting dish I tried comes in the form of a soup. The official name is soupa de treinta y uno. It starts off quite normal with a nice broth with potatoes and beef. However, there happens to be more ingredients that make up this typical Ecuadorian dish. I had no idea what these strange looking pieces of meat? were until the next day via my Spanish teacher. Here is a list of what I ate that day, which happened to be delicious: cow lung, cow heart, cow intestines, and cow stomach. If you ever swing by Quito and are around the street Floresta stop by and try it out, you won’t regret it. Oh, I also ate guinea pig. A GIANT guinea pig. Cuy (ku-ey) is the proper name in Ecuador. This wasn’t at the food market I previously talked about but at a restaurant. It is a typical dish here in Ecuador and you can find it at many restaurants. They cook it in its entirety, gutted of course, on a huge stick over an open flame and it is fantastic. Don’t kid yourself you would like it. Do you like bacon? Then you like cuy. Point proven.

The highlight of my trip thus far from an entertainment stand point is attending a La Liga soccer game. La Liga is Quito’s best soccer team and as of last year South America’s best team. They won the South American cup last year which is a cup that includes South America’s best teams. We were fortunate enough to attend a game against their arch rivals, Barcelona of Guayaquil, another Ecuadorian city close to the coast. It was an amazing experience and as far as enthusiasm and atmosphere goes it has topped any professional sporting event I have attended in the states. They were lighting freaking flares in the stands, ya that’s right flares. You know what you use to attract airplanes when you are lost? Ya, those. Tall boy beers, Flares, and ongoing team chants makes for a great game. Oh, not to mention our pre-gaming in a convenience store parking lot before the game. Am I still in college? Hope everyone is doing well. Until next time.

Your South American Gringo

Week 1

Alright, this blog was supposed to be up after week 1 but that just didn’t happen. I’m hoping this isn’t a habitual thing, but I am one of the world’s biggest procrastinators. Anyway, this is the rundown of my first week in Ecuador.

I didn’t know what to expect before taking on this adventure. Those of you close to me can attest to the nervousness, anxiety and stress I took on in the closing weeks of my departure. Many thoughts run through your head when you are leaving everything you know and the people you love for over a year. Primarily, did I make the right decision? It is an important question but one that I couldn’t answer and a decision I couldn’t take back (I’m bounded by contract). Nevertheless I made it and I am happy to announce that the stress and anxiety have dissipated, and the menacing question in my head has been answered. I have absolutely made the right decision.

I arrived the night of July 10^th around 11:30 en la noche. I didn’t know what to expect. It was not only my first time out of the country, but I was being picked up by my Ecuadorian home stay family, all of whom supposedly only speak Spanish. This should have been a bit terrifying for a guy who only knows a few key Spanish phrases, most important being “mucho cervaza por favor.” I’m just kidding, but seriously, it’s important. However, I wasn’t nervous. I can probably attribute this to our orientation in Miami. By the time it came to completion I felt great about our organization, Manna Project International (MPI), and the people I will be working/living with for the next 13 months. Each of us come from different backgrounds and bring a bit of diversity and intelligence to the group. They are fantastic people to be around and we all get along very well.

So now a brief synopsis on my current living situation and the family I am staying with. My living situation is quite unique but awesome. I live in a small apartment complex owned by my amazing and very kind host family. On the bottom floor they run a gym. Saaaweet! I’ve taken advantage of that a few times. I stay on the second floor with the grandmother/mother. Across the hall are the remnants of a failed helado (ice cream) business. On the third floor reside the son and daughter of the grandmother I live with. Meri, whom Brock lives with (another PD in MPI) has two daughters Alexandria and Daisy. Alexandria is 14 and Daisy is 13. They love to be around Brock and I and the feeling is mutual on our end. They are energetic, fun and just plain awesome girls (when they aren’t cheating at the card game Uno). We have a lot of fun with them, they help us with our Spanish homework, and are a great asset in practicing our attempts of Spanish (which always seem to come out in Spanglish) because they never hesitate to correct us “Gringos”. Meri’s brother (forget and can’t pronounce his name) dwells across from them. He also has two children, Nicolas who is about 8 months and a 2 year old daughter Emelia. Once again, amazing kids. Emelia is full of life. She is always laughing and absolutely loves me (can’t blame her) and Nicolas walks around in his stroller/walker (not sure what you call it but I hope I had one when I was his age) like Fred Flintstone.

Now I’ll move onto the day to day activities of week 1. Spanish from 8:30-12:30 Monday through Friday. Yup, that’s four straight hours of one-on-one Spanish with a teacher that knows absolutely zero English. It’s painful, but I have already gotten a lot out of it. After class we usually go back to our home stays to eat lunch then regress to the Spanish school for meetings. The purposes of the meetings are to give us more information about the programs we will be taking over. Nightly activities have also been abundant. We have been going out to various restaurants and bars throughout new Quito which has been dubbed “Gringolandia” where we absolutely contribute to the nickname. I could go on forever about other things such as my trip to our host family’s other house in Cayambe trip where I rounded up a rooster with my hands in order to put him into his coop. But in all honestly I’m sick of writing this first blog. It’s much longer than I expected but they won’t all be this long I can assure you of that. I hope to have another one up the middle of this week. Thanks for reading and hasta lluego.