Carnaval and other Summer Sunshines!

   I only have three more months in this country and with my new family, I am prepared to make the absolute most of them. I have done more things, it would seem, in the last month than I have in my whole exchange that I am so grateful for that! Things are continually surprising me and I am still constantly learning. Although this exchange has been a challenge, the experiences and life lessons I have pulled out from it have been all too worth it.

  To start us off, this last weekend was "Carnaval". I tried asking my family what the point of Carnaval was, but no one could really give me a straight answer, "It's just something we do every year to celebrate right before Lent!" they would answer, right before they would hurl another handful of flour at someone's face. In order to gain a little more information, I consulted the ever useful internet. 
   According to historical stories, the basic celebrations common to Carnaval celebrations was popular in Ecuador before Catholicism arrived in the country. It is said that the Huaragans Indians,  from the Highlands of Ecuador, celebrated the coming of the second moon of the year with a festival in which they threw flour, flowers and scented water. This celebration was once thought of as pagan and was later integrated with the Catholic celebrations. Today, Ecuadorians celebrated by surprising passersby with buckets of water, water balloons, flour, eggs and colored powder or paint. People run the streets with white on knowing that colors and water are coming soon! 

  These are some pictures of people around Ecuador celebrating. Each city does it differently and in the highlands they put on the masks and wear the beads and parade the streets. Much like the Mardi Gras we're familiar with. 
   In cities such as Ambato, the celebration is called Fiestas de las Flores y Frutas or Festival of Flowers and Fruits but the celebrate the same as everyone else. The north of Ecuador is heavily influenced by Afto-Ecuadorian culture and they celebrate with African inspired music and celebrations. 


   Here in Machala, the festivities were fairly quite. No one comes to Machala to celebrate, most people leave the city, but a few of us ended up staying. My dad's family from Riobamba came down and spent the weekend with us. It was nice to have a full house (There were over 20 in our house the whole weekend) and it was even better to have a quite house afterwards! The first day we had a dinner at our house to welcome all of our guests. Meats were prepared and beer was consumed. The beer of choice here is Pilsener, as advertized to the right, "the beer of the Ecuadorians". Let me you, it tastes just terrible. But every country has their specific taste, I suppose! 

   I stayed at my friend's house during the nights as there was not a space in the whole house to sleep! So after the BBQ on the first night, I headed over to my friend's house. I woke up early the next day because my dad wanted me ready by 9 am. It was going to be a long day. Lucky for me, Latins love running late and I wasn't picked up till almost noon. 
   We headed out to a town called Pasaje, where my mom's family lives and got right down to spend our last day of Carnaval. The second we stepped onto the property, we were soaking wet and everyone stayed wet until about 9pm. The rules were: 1. No Bathing 2. No Changing and 3. No whining. I kept breaking the first two rules, so I got buckets of frozen water on me. Oh what are you going to do! So per tradition in my family, a small pig was killed for the event and my uncle was busy in the back of the house getting that prepared. It wasn't till a little later in the party that I ventured back and despite being here for 6 months now, I was still shocked by what I saw. 
   Three of my aunts were sitting around a small table cutting something up. Two of them were taking knifes hacking at the pig's head (sorry to you vegetarians!) and the other Aunt was cutting up, the ears, liver, stomach, kidney and various other innards. Don't worry though, we saved the intestines for another special project. I kept my Exchange Student mind open and I ate everything they gave me, sometimes with a mask on of approval and sometimes with actual liking. I will say, there was one piece of mystery meat that I ate that was especially delicious, the liver however, mm, yeah... Moving on! 
   Meanwhile, in the front of the house, more guests were arriving and people started getting bored with water. I was gone for about an hour in the back helping out and while I was gone people had gone to the nearby market to go pick up some fun. We served lunch (the cut up innards, plantain chips, and a pork broth. It was great!) and then as if almost planned, the war began. They had these soap dispensers that resemble silly string cans called Carioka and those were never in short supply. Also added to the list of goodies bought for our war was paint, oatmeal, flour, cornmeal, and eggs. Yes, eggs. I got several eggs cracked on my head along with who KNOWS how many handfuls of flour to the face and hair. 

My dad got her with paint. You can see in the background that there were more victims.

Water refilling station

The Walk of shaaaaame!

My new mom and I covered in Carnaval!

The culprit and the victim!

My sister and aunt and I, pre-oatmeal

Remember the intestine? haha

   Those intestines were used to make homemade sausage, another family tradition. I can't remember what the sausages were called, but they consist of rice, spices (delicious ones), mixed piggy meat and blood all stuffed into wrinkly intestine. Yummmm. No actually it was very, very good and I was honored to be apart of the stuffing process. In the picture is my aunt filling them. Before I decided to get elbow deep in blood, I thought I should capture the magic. 
   Overall, Carnaval was pretty fun and it was a great break from sch-- just kidding. I'm not in school. HA. It was a great way to cool off in the summer sun. You can really get in touch with a culture by really experiencing their holidays and weird traditions. I am so eternally grateful for the family I have been blessed with and for their patience with teaching me as much as they can about their patria or homeland in the short amount of time I have here. 


   In other news, I have taken up a teaching "job" here. I currently teach about 35 children from the ages 8 to 11. For those of you who really, really know me, you are probably laughing. And for those of you who don't know, I am not a kid person. I always feel so awkward around them and I never know what to say. If you ask me, the older generation is where it's at! But anyways, I teach everyday for 2 hours at a church about two blocks from my house. A couple of weeks ago, my mom and I went and visited a lady from the church about possibly getting a few of the neighborhood kids together to learn English. I had unlimited free time and these kids could really benefit from learning English, so the lady organized a little course at the church for anyone in the neighborhood and I was to come in on the next Monday (February 13th) to talk about, or at least that's how I understood it. I showed up just before 9am on that Monday morning and faced nearly 100 little faces looking up at me eagerly awaiting to be taught. 
   You can imagine my shock when I walked into the room. They all met up in a small library, no bigger than a small bedroom and it was there that I walked into another notch on my challenge belt; another steaming spoonful of beef. At first, I was scared and frustrated. Mostly frustrated, I must admit. When I talked to the lady, I had mentioned that I might, might have two friends that would like to help me out but from when I had told her that to the present, they had lost interest or gone on vacation. Scared, because first of all, I don't like kids and here I was being put in charge of teaching ONE HUNDRED OF THEM and second of all because I have absolutely zero teaching experience. But after an afternoon of, literally, freaking out, I was back to "normal" and the teaching resumed. 
   God doesn't present challenges that we can't overcome and I was forced to take this beef by the spoons. Now we have a schedule and an actual curriculum made day by day. It's interesting how you can go from not knowing a single thing, to it becoming a natural habit. But I guess that is life. This teaching gig has been a challenge and a half, but it is one that I am willing to see though till the end. More on my teaching as it progresses! 

Lastly, I got a cute little package from my dad. He's just the sweetest! A little Valentine's day treat and stickers to hipsterfy my Klean Kanteen water bottle. It was a great surprise! We're at 85 days left till I make the big trip home! The Galapagos is in less than a month and our last trip is in April! I have a feeling these last three months will just fly! 


Until the next post, 
 Marlee Chavez

Gira a La Amazonia 2012

   This time two weeks ago, I was crawling through the trees and leaves and learning about the culture and medicinal plants. I was swimming through historic and rich rivers full of piranha and a world of unknown creatures. I was interacting with indigenous residents and learning about their culture. All of this is because this time last week, I was in the Ecuadorian Amazon Jungle, and what a trip of a lifetime it was! 

Day one: We left our local Rotary Club, in Machala, just before 5pm and off we went. It took us a good 12 hours to get to our First destination: Quito, the capital city. We made many stops along the way, including the picture of us with the giant pineapple! I'm still not entirely sure why the town had a giant pineapple in it, but we stopped none the less.... But anyways, we took two 15 seater vans but despite the amount of room, we had a lot of trouble finding comfortable sleep. We were in those vans from 5pm to 6am the next day when we finally arrived in Quito at the airport that would take us to our first stop in the Amazon. 

The Giant Pineapple! 

We were SO. TIRED. 

The Group on the Plane

FINALLY leaving! 

The first River shot we could manage

   Day two begins when our plane touched down in the Oriente. We landed in Lago Agrio (or Sour Lake) at about 9am and our day was off and running from there. The tour guides from our Camp picked us up at the airport and away we went. It was two hours from the airport to the entrance to our camp and along the way we saw a toucan and incredible nature! We finally arrived to a big... hut of sorts... and ate our lunch. I had originally thought we were staying at this giant hut, but it turns out that our lodge was another 3 hours away by boat. So after lunch, we loaded up in the boats and headed to our lodge.
   On the way to our lodge, we saw more toucan, an anaconda, and even a couple families of monkeys! Going through the jungle felt like a real life version of the Disneyland ride Jungle Safari in Adventure Land. I kept expecting a motorized hippo or crocodile to come up out of the water. While there were no hippos, we did see some crocodiles, but we'll save that for another day! The trees, river, animals were all astounding and to think that I wasn't just on a ride was what kept surprising me. This was the real life and I was really experiencing the Amazon Jungle!

When we finally arrived to our lodge roommates were quickly chosen and cabins divided. My group included my two best friends Maria and Deborah. They go to school with me and it was easiest to share a cabin with people you know really well. We were in the Toucan cabin at the very far end of the lodge.

Every bed was equipped with a mosquito net to protect us!

My friend Alyssa and I in our dining hall

A little place for relaxation

   After a quick minute of relaxation, we were told to change into some long pants for a night hike thought the jungle. Equipped with our flashlights and our brave faces, we ventured into the dark jungle in search of bugs and nocturnal animals. What we found was plenty to make your skin crawl. I'm not a fan of the dark in general and being in the jungle in the dark nearly brought me to tears! I didn't take any pictures that night because I had forgotten my camera in the lodge. But like I said, the creatures we saw were enough to make your skin CRAWL.

       Day three was our biggest day. We went for a long three hour hike in the jungle where we learned what plants could be used to save our lives in the event that we get stranded in the jungle. Up hills we hiked and through mud we trudged. It was really something to be able to experience the Amazon jungle from the very heart of it. It was gorgeous! We saw a lot less animals than in our boat because our group was pretty loud, but all is well- we still had an incredible experience! 

There was a vine that we could swing on,
so much fun! 

The group mid way through the hike. Behind us, you can
see that there is a hole in the tree that we could crawl in

A tree that produced wax that the indigenous
used for candles

Finally done! And OH oh oh so tired! 

   After hiking we enjoyed a nice, refreshing lunch. A quick change into our bathing suits and were off into the boats again, only this time were fishing for piranha! Armed with 2 kilos of raw beef we set out to catch us some dinner. Except for I'm kidding, we released all of the fish we caught.

First catch of the day! Germany- 1 Rest of the World - 0

Our tour guide, Luis, showing us how to take the hook
out of the fish, which we weren't allowed to do because the
teeth were too sharp!

A good view of those sharp teeth! 

All of us were standing, made me so nervous! 

   Most of us caught fish with the exception of a few... I was one of the few. I felt a significant tug one time and in my excitement, I flung it over the boat. Oops! When I ran out of meat, my "fierce" determination to catch a fish lead me to attempt to catch a fish with a caramel candy. Safe to say my efforts went without positive results. After fishing we headed to a close by lagoon and met up with the other group we were with and went swimming in the lagoon while we watched the sunset! We even went skinny dipping! If the water wasn't as muddy as it was, there would have been no way I would have done it, but HEY, how many people can say they've been skinny dipping in the Amazon Rain Forest! After swimming we got back into to the boats and hunted for crocodiles. We ended up finding a lot of them, a lot more than I had originally expected. Our crazy tour guide practically hugged one! 

Some friends and I with amazonian mud on our faces! 

There he is! The crocodile liiives! 

    Another day over and yet another great day afterwards! Our fourth, and final full day was a trip into a local village to learn about the local culture. We got to hear their language, called Pinecoco and they showed us how to harvest yucca and make a nutritional bread with it. Later in the day, the village Shaman came and talked to us, giving us some of the history behind being a Shaman, or a witch doctor. He was getting to the age of training other Shamans to take his place and he told us that the road to spiritual enlightenment is one of challenges and pain and only a small handful of the men who train actually make it. It was a very rewarding day and a great learning experience!

Arriving into the Village

A local woman chopping the excess
yucca tree

Just an average boat ride in the Amazon... 

   Our last day was a pack up and head home day. Before we left, we all got up at 5am to watch the sunrise. The sky was full of clouds, but was was something wonderful to see the jungle emerge from the fog. We left the lodge at about 10 and left in the plane around 5pm. We stayed a while in Quito and enjoyed the cool weather. It was about 50 degrees in Quito which is the coldest weather we've been since we've all been here. It was so refreshing! We all slept the majority of the way home, only waking up once! Right before we all went to sleep, though, we passed "El Mitad del Mundo" or the Middle of the World. I'll be back there later and I'll make sure to take lots of pictures! 

  

   In other news! I have switch families and and I am so much happier! I look forward to getting to know them and getting to see Ecuador with them! Additionally, I received my itinerary and will be land in PDX at 10:10PM on May 20th! See you then, friends! 

Lastly, I got my email for the Galapagos and I will be heading there the 16-20th of March. Funds are increasingly low on my end and any financial help that you all are willing to give would be much appreciated. I am especially tight financially being that I will be heading to Western Washington University in the Fall. Let me know if you would like to help! My personal email is marlee.chavez@yahoo.com I look forward to seeing you all soon and in the meantime: MORE POSTS TO COME (: