Cotopaxi field trip

Here´s the update from my trip last weekend to Cotopaxi that I haven´t written about yet:

As I believe I´ve written before, I live with about 15 other volunteers in a huge house in Salasaca. This number fluctuates because there is no minimum time you must spend here to volunteer; people have stayed from 3 nights to 6 months or more. Last week about 12 of us had developed a great dynamic and decided to travel together to Cotopaxi National Park, a national reserve that circles the Cotopaxi Volcano. After having traveled solo for so long I was a bit apprehensive of traveling with 11 other buddies together to do the same thing for two whole days. But my nerves calmed themselves within moments when we departed from Salasaca, hopping on the back of a pick up truck, a means of transport you become quite accustomed to in this country. We must have been quite a sight the whole weekend; we bartered, made decisions, and ate all together. We then loaded on the bus to Michachi, the funny sounding named town very close to the entrance of the park. Another great thing about traveling with this particular group is that as backpackers with very little money, we seemed to try to out do each other for finding the best deal. So we made it almost a competition to see who could barter down the best price for room and food. We ended up finding a cute little hotel for $4 a night -- and it wasn´t that bad!

Anyway, Saturday morning we awoke with Cotopaxi looming somewhere above our heads (exact location was always a mystery because of the perpetual thick cloud covering) and loaded onto another truck that climbed up the winding hills between verdant farm land and dropped us off at the entrance of the park an hour later. Paying 10 bucks per person to enter the park (oh, by the way, Ecuador is on the dollar), we walked for a while before realizing it was a 3 hour hike to the base of the volcano. With that in mind we hailed the only other truck we could find to take us to the base and with in half an hour we were holding onto the sides of the truck hoping the wind wouldn´t whip us out. Unfortunately even the base, at about 4,000 meters, was colder than most January days in NH or VT. We were throwing snow balls and everything, but were ready to leave within 5 minutes. When we rolled back down the hill we were ready for the bagged lunch we brought followed by a nice long walk through another part of the park.

So, all in all it was a great weekend. And this weekend will find me enjoying Salasaca for all it´s worth before I leave for the South on Friday.

I can´t not write about Salasaca because it´s THIS amazing...

Teaching in such a place gives me a new sense of responsibility unknown to me in my previous traveling experiences. I wake up every morning thinking about what I will plan to teach, and thinking about how the students will respond to what I attempt to teach them. Schedules have changed from my first two weeks here; summer school is no longer in session and I am teaching two English classes for high school students. And the eagerness that these children bring to learning is in itself a reason to wake up in the morning. I don´t know how keen these kids are in other subjects, but I daily get to stand in front of 5 twelve year olds who are awake and ready to learn, an anomaly in the world of middleschoolers as I learned from my months of substituting back home. And the past couple of days these students have been asking for class to end a half an hour later...such a gift!

And I continue to be enamoured with Salasaca, Ecuador, the town I´m living in. Every day I walk down the road to school and am greeted by a number of smiling faces, some dirty faces of young children, other toothless grins of older women, others with thick, leathery skin gained by decades working in the fields under a relentless sun. Salasaca is a unique place in many ways, from their interesting history to the ways they treat the world and community. Prior to the invasion of the Spaniards, when the Incas where the conquerors of this land, the Salasacans were pushed out of Peru and exiled to this area. So they share the Quechua-Andean lifestyle, diet, and dress. Their language, the common first language for most Salasacans, is Kitchwa not Quechua. Shielded by the towering enclaves of the Ecuadorian Andes, this town has grown up solitary and continues to hold strongly onto it´s cultural identity. Wearing long, thick, black skirts with a flowy white blouse covered by a vivid wool shawl, the women usually don't leave home with out their sigsig, a drop spindle type instrument they use to spin outrageously thin yarn. And that yarn is in turn given to the men to weave into intricate wall hangings, shawls, or ponchos, the latter of which most men wear over their street close; long, sweeping black ponchos.

And last night my fellow volunteers and I were invited to a going away party for the brother of Fabiola, a women who works with this school and cleans the volunteer house. Nights here drop like thick dark blankets leaving the earth dark, cold, and damp within moments, so the family sent a truck to pick us up. Huddled together in the back, we zig zagged through corn fields and up windy hills to Fabiola´s parent´s house, who ushered us in to their property. Houses here pop up from the ground in clusters, not in one cohesive unit like back in the states. So, the kitchen house, the bed rooms, and other buildings sit huddled together surrounding the common outside area (think court yard of dirt) where the family does their daily chores. Fabiola´s father and brothers are weavers, so their looms dominate their home, and have the biggest room dedicated to them, which was the only place big enough to house the hungry volunteers. Anyway, soon after marveling at this place, we were fed our feast: Chocolo con queso (corn and fresh cheese), potatos with hot sauce, chicken, chicken soup, and, for us lucky ones, cuy (guinay pig). It was lovely.


Ok, I know I need to post more info, I´ll try to give you all a detailed update on my weekend soon, I went a socialized with volcanoes!

Vistas under volcanos

I am enchanted with settled life, the lovely monotony of getting to know the landscape of a certain place so well that your eyes can expect what they will see every morning. At first glance this place is spectacular; when I first arrived I had difficulty telling the difference between the vista I saw out of my eyes and a professional photo you´d see on a postcard. But seeing these views everyday, these mountains that tower over the valley, has given me the time to investigate it´s beauty up close. I see the verdant, dusty green valley that tumbles beneath the volunteer house and know that almost every house I see bellow has a donkey or cow lounging behind it in the shade and a large garden that the wife works on while the husband is at work in the city or selling his crafts at the market. I notice how the frequent, small eruptions of Tungurawa, the active volcano near us, effect the weather the following day, usually leaving us with little sun and thick cloud covering. And I count the number of home made kites that swim in the air overhead, hanging on tightly to the string their creator, usually a young child, uses to steer it.

The longer I stay here the closer I get with the volunteers I live, work, and spend most of my day with. There are about 12 of us in total, and we have come to live pretty communally together, a welcomed relief from the solitary lifestyle I am accustomed to from traveling solo. A herd of us are from the States, we have a strong Australian and New Zealand representation, a few Europeans and two South Americans whose patience I test daily with my efforts to communicate in Spanish. We cook dinner together every night, always giving me time to sweetly reminisce of living in Slade (the coop I lived in in college). We have actually instituted a small competition to increase the quality of the meals -- who ever wins the vote of best meal at the end of the week gets a free beer. So, to that end, I have been eating very well the past couple of days. Pasta with thick, creamy tomato sauce, burritos packed with all sorts of ingredients; I enjoy having a welcomed reminder of food from home.