Simply an Update
Life-After (how much time? I normally say, ¨a little over a year¨) 15 months here in Ecuador I definitly feel "at home". When I go out and about, which I do quite a bit, since I am working in about 6 different communities, and I come back to my town, I feel like a load falls off my shoulders. There is something about how everyone greets me by name, and the little kids say Hola! to me repeatedly as I walk towards them and then Chau! as I walk away that makes me feel warm inside.
After cooking for myself for a year, I am now eating exclusively at my Grandma`s house. I decided that since I was only normally at my house for an average of one lunch OR dinner per day and that every other day my Grandma would force me to eat at her house or just drop food off at mine (so I was eating about 50% of my meals there anyway)... that I would just make arrangments to eat there all the time and that would give me permission to chip in for the cost of the food. While I was still a ´guest¨ she wouldn`t let me give her any money for things. But since now I am permanent fixture, she let me buy the 100lb bag of rice for this month.
I also have an awesome best friend who lives in the closest big town teaching English. She is from Long Island. One of the nicest, kindest people I have ever met... In addition to being my best friend, we are dating, which is fun. :) Her name is Marni.
Work-
I feel busy and satisfied with what I am doing... although I always want to do it better and with more love and attention to the relationships that I have, am making, or could make! I am doing a variety of things, which I love.
- Group of Youth - 10 teenagers meet at my house once a week, to plan activities, chill, and cook (generally). My purpose with them is to help them develop their leadership and planning skills, as well as to inject them with thoughts on gender equality and improve their self-esteem so that they will start to think and plan for what they want to do in the future. Right now they are getting started again teaching older women in my community how to read and write (they did it last school year, but stopped for the summer and we are just getting back into the swing of things again).
- Bee project - I am working with 30 people divided among three groups in different communities. I am training them how to take care of bees and produce honey (as I study and learn from others), and I am helping them form Associations in order to be able to grow and sell their product better.
- Tree Nursery - I am in charge of a project to produce 2,000 trees. Mainly this means coordinating between the agency, the forestry engineer, and the three towns-womens groups that are involved.
Other than that, I am trying to pursue a couple of ideas that I have for other things to start and working with a couple of individual families on special cases. It has been a long process but I am excited about stuff.
posted by Steve @ 5:19 PM
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