When I´m at the beach, everything is perfect.

Oh Puerto Lopez. I’m now exactly halfway through my second week here, but it seems like so much more time has gone by. I’ve gotten through the original period of shock where everything was just so new and different that I couldn’t quite come to grips with it. Mostly the things that were irksome caught my attention and therefore held me in a state of missing what is familiar and easy to me: home. I let myself drift with this current of negativity for awhile, but then decided (although it wasn’t entirely a conscious decision) that I didn’t want to waste this month of my life in this foreign and intriguing land only noticing the things that were annoying. I wanted to come to know it like I came to know parts of Costa Rica the summer after my senior year of high school and the town of Pucón in Chile last winter term — almost like they were parts of my family and will remain so forever. And now I have. I’ve truly fallen in love with the town of Puerto Lopez and find something else to fall in love with every day. Granted, there are still aspects that annoy me and some town drama, but now, instead of being the only parts of Puerto Lopez I see, they are the undertones, like every city has its negative undertones, perhaps to make the positive aspects stand out all the more clearly. I’ve also realized that I know the town more intimately than anywhere in Costa Rica or Chile, even though I’ve been here for a much shorter period of time. I’m less of a tourist here and more a part of everyday life and that gives me an understanding of what it really means to live in Puerto Lopez which is an understanding I thought I had in Pucón but never really achieved. I don’t feel like my experiences in Costa Rica or Chile are lessened in significance in any way now that I have a more intimate understanding of Puerto Lopez than I ever did with them, since they both changed my life in extraordinary ways, but it does excite me that I’m getting such a deep understanding of how the world spins here in this little town of Puerto Lopez.

Because my mindset has changed, the way I perceive everything here has changed, so I want to re-explain my life in Puerto Lopez since I now perceive it in a much brighter light.

First of all, the people I interact with most: my homestay family. Elsa is my homestay mother. She’s a single parent to my homestay brother Angel (which is pronounced Anhel, for those who don’t speak Spanish) and a very strong one at that. She has raised Angel by herself her whole life, with Angel going to visit his father in another town only briefly every few months up until his father died a couple years ago (tragically on Angel’s 16th birthday…). Elsa does all the cooking, cleaning, housework, and keeps a beautiful garden all by herself while also being a guiding hand for Angel when he needs it. Although now he’s 18 and a little trickier to guide, she still does what she can and influences his decisions in positive ways. She a very talkative woman and sometimes it’s impossible to leave the dinner table for a hour or so, as she talks and talks, telling the life stories of random people she knows or commentary on something that happened in the news or politics. She takes great pride in her cooking (and in all her hospitality) and always looks at me eagerly after she puts a plate of food down in front of me, waiting for me to try it and tell her whether I like it. Sometimes this is a little tricky since I don’t always like the food but I still always come up with something positive to say about it so she’s not offended, It’s usually fine, though, since I have come to like the food here more and more. It’s still very starch-based, for instance lunch today consisted of a creamy soup with potatoes, pasta with fish, white rice, and a fresh fruit salad, but it’s tasty for the most part, especially the soups. I don’t know what it is about Ecuadorian women, but they sure as hell know how to make soup way better than anyone in the States. It has a different quality about it which I haven’t quite pinned down yet, so when I first came to the country, I wasn’t so keen on it, but now I greatly appreciate it as a start to every lunch. Elsa’s fruit salads are excellent too. She chops up about six different kinds of fruit into tiny little pieces and pours naranjilla juice over the top and serves it in heaping mugs. It’s the perfect snack for these hot hot days. I also love a cheese they call “queso chicle” (gum cheese) which is able to be fried up with rice without melting and has a chewy consistency and a rich flavor (Zac and Dad, it’s like Haloumi, the Cheese that Grills!) I’ve also grown an odd liking for crunchy rice. They have an actual name for it here, but it’s basically the scrapings at the bottom of the rice pot of the grains that fry and harden to the bottom. Sounds really appealing, huh? But for some reason, it’s quite satisfying to munch on a little pile of this crunchy rice.

My host mom, Elsa, has many cute mannerisms too. She almost always has the radio on and will do little dances to her favorite songs as she moves about the house, her curvy, big-busted figure bouncing a little with every move. And due to the heat and the fact she basically lives alone with no one around except Angel, me, and the pets, she often gardens and does the housework in a strapless dress that’s too small for her and doesn’t zip up all the way in the back, and so sometimes she’ll explain this to me then say “¡Estoy sexy!” and giggle a little. It’s really cute. She also loves pampering our two pets, a huge black Great Dane named Pluto and a spoiled white cat named Mimi (although Mimi happens to be a male…). Mimi will climb up her body while we’re eating at the kitchen table and try to pluck the food right out of her fingers. Although sometimes she shoos him away, she usually gives in and feeds him whatever he’s begging for. Pluto is less spoiled and will come and just politely stick his big black head on the table next to me and look at me with eyes that say “Won’t you please give me just a little taste of whatever you’re eating?”

Angel, my homestay brother, has really grown on me. At first he was pretty annoying and even somewhat flirtatious, but now he’s purely and wonderfully my brother. This doesn’t mean he always pleases me, he can still get annoying, but we’ve gotten to the point where we tease each other like siblings, talk about some serious things like siblings, playfight like siblings, gossip like siblings, and even look out for each other like siblings. I know that he would have my back if any of the guys in town tried anything on me and the other night when there was a fight in town, I made sure he was out of it and okay. In these sorts of ways, we’re there for each other and I think I’m really going to miss having him around when I go back to the States. He left early this morning to spend his last two weeks of vacation at the festivals in Riobamba, and I must admit that breakfast and lunch today with just Elsa and I were a little lonely without his goofy high-pitched laugh and wide grin. It’s also been really great to have Angel has a brother because he knows almost everyone in town and has introduced me to so many people. It’s quite common that I’ll walk down the street and people will shout hello to me and I’ll have no idea what their names are. I’m pretty easy to remember since I’m one of only a few Gringas (white girls) in the town, but there are so many of them, and sometimes they even look alike, that the learning curve is a little slow. The names can be pretty random too. A few that come to mind are: Walter, Fernando, Jaime, Boris, Jhonny (that is really how it’s spelled), Vacilio, Xavier, Jonathon, Xiamara, Genesis, Daniella, Frisco, etc. It’s quite the odd mix of Spanish names and English names, but of course the English names are pronounced like Spanish, thus the name Boris is pronounced Bor-ees and Genesis is pronounced Hen-ay-sees. And it’s not only Angel’s friends who know my name without me knowing theirs, it’s ALL the kids I’ve worked with so far in the schools and most of their parents as well, which makes at least 60 more people who know my face and name without me immediately recognizing their face or knowing their name in return! It’s both flattering that so many people know me and embarrassing that I can’t remember everyone’s names. I’m working on it though. Each day I remember more.

As I mentioned, besides my family at my homestay there is also the big black Great Dane, Pluto, and the white cat, Mimi. Pluto is less than a year old, but is very calm for a huge dog who’s technically still a puppy. He’s such a sweetie too. He’ll come and put his head in my lap for some petting and is always so happy to see me when I come through the garden gate. Once when I was talking on the phone on the upstairs porch balcony and stood looking out at the view with my hands resting on the railing, Pluto came and stood up on his hind legs and put his paws on the railing and looked out at the view with me. He’s not always so calm and serene though, he does get playful sometimes too. Like when I’m swinging in the hammock and using the broom to push myself back and forth, he’ll come and grab the broom handle away from me and wrestle it to the ground for a good ten minutes in the garden before he is satisfied that it is truly dead. Besides Pluto and Mimi, there is a gaggle of chickens and a rooster as well. This rooster, along with all of the town’s roosters, is completely and utterly insane. Roosters are supposed to call at sunrise, right? Well throughout the night, a single rooster in town, often it’s the one perched on the roof directly over my head, calls out its cockledoodledoo, and one by one all the other roosters follow suit until there are probably about a hundred roosters calling out at absurd hours of the night. One night I stayed up until around 5:00am doing work and recorded that these crazy roosters called at 11:15pm, midnight, 2:00am, and 4:30am. Luckily, when I’m sleeping, their calls don’t wake me, but I still think they’re absolutely loco. In general, the animal sounds at night are quite lively. There are always dogs barking, donkeys hee-hawing, roosters cockledoodledooing, and sometimes horses whinnying, pigs squealing, and cows mooing too. The cacophony of it all is very amusing and in a strange way it’s also reassuring. For someone who can’t sleep when a neighbor is playing music far down the hall in the dorms back at Oberlin, I’m sure doing a fine job with all these country sounds!

Before my mindset changed, I was noticing the little annoyances about the rural quality of my homestay. In my last entry, I noted things like the toilet not flushing and the little bit of dirt that was around the house. Well, the toilet still doesn’t flush and there’s still some dust around the house, but that’s okay! I’m adapting and realizing that I actually live in a rural palace. The house is a pleasant cantaloupe color with honeydew-colored porch railings and sea blue eves. I have the entire upper floor to myself which includes an expansive balcony porch from which I can see the ocean. The gardens are full of exotic colorful flowers and fruit trees and there’s a beautiful flowering bush that reaches all the way up to my balcony with pink flowers that smell like sugary pastries. The air smells like earth, drying weeds, flowers, and aromatic trees and when the breeze blows enough to keep the mosquitoes away, it’s wonderful to swing in one of the hammocks on the patio and listen to the birds sing. At night, the dark sky full of stars over the garden is an amazing sight to behold. There are so few electric lights in the area, that the stars sparkle and shine ever so brightly in their big black orb. Angel has pointed out a few of the constellations he knows to me and I have showed him some of the ones I know, but the sky is different here. The stars are arranged differently and the constellations are not where I’m used to them being, which is both disconcerting and riveting at the same time.

Now to tell about Puerto Lopez aside from my homestay. I didn’t lie when I described it last time. The streets are indeed made of dirt and very dusty, and there is indeed a good amount of litter strewn about, but I made no mention of the wrinkled old men that stand in shop doorways and acknowledge me with a simple but kind nod as I walk by. Nor did I talk about the swallows that line the telephone wires by the hundreds every night along only a single block. Nor did I mention the moto taxis, little covered carts attached to motorcycles with enough room for 2-4 people to sit, which are the main mode of transportation throughout the town. Nor did I tell about the clusters of kids in the dusty streets playing marbles. Nor did I discuss the fact that almost everyone knows almost everyone else and there’s the feeling that the whole town is actually one huge family of uncountable sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents with family feuds and family laughter are mixed together. There’s a shoemaker; a tailor; many little papelerias that sell notebooks, pencils, erasers, glue, and paper; a few pastelerias (bakeries) with different pastries than the ones in Quito; and more tiendas (little grocery stores) than I can count which sell everything from gumballs to liquor. There are also a couple streets in town that are lined with open-air booths that sell a wide variety of things like tennis shoes, soccer balls, swimsuits, handmade jewelry, and lamps crafted from seashells. The street that faces the beach is called the Malecón, and has an assortment of the aforementioned things, plus a large selection of restaurants ranging from typical Ecuadorian fare to Italian pasta to Colombian dishes. Plus, there are the juice bars made of sugarcane and bamboo that line the beach with big bowlfuls of colorful fruits on their counters ready to be squeezed or blended into your drink of choice.

The beach itself is heaven. There is some litter on the dry sand closer to the town front, but it’s pretty clean closer to the water, and whole sand dollars and star fish can be found on a casual stroll along the surf. The water itself is the perfect temperature for swimming and every time I get in that water I feel as if I could swim forever, maybe even circle the earth once of twice. I just swim and swim and think and think and so many of the crazy thoughts dancing around in my head become clear. I always regret having to come back to the shore to continue doing reading for my research project, wishing instead that I could just stay in the ocean forever. Reading on the beach is pleasant, though, and spending some of the hottest hours of the day reading/swimming at the beach is far better than sweating in my room in my house up on the hill. When I’m at the beach, I forget about whatever is wrong in my life and everything seems perfect. It’s a wonderful, even if false, feeling.

I don’t get nearly as much time to go to the beach as I’d like, though. Deirdre, my project advisor, keeps me very busy with stacks and stacks of reading that she’s dug up from the mountains of stuff cluttering her house and I’ve also been doing more activities with the two schools I’m working with, LIDEL and San Alejo. LIDEL is a private school and is supposed to be one of the highest quality schools in the area. San Alejo is a municipal school, which means it’s the cheap public school and therefore supposedly doesn’t have as high-quality education as LIDEL. However, in the short time I’ve worked with students from both schools I’ve drawn two conclusions. They could both be very inaccurate as I’ve only worked with a single class at both schools and only for about a week, but so far, the kids at San Alejo seem far more knowledgeable (or even if they don’t know the facts, they seem to be better able to intelligently think about the matter at hand) than the kids at LIDEL and they seem better behaved and more respectful to their teachers/me. I’ll be able to see if these initial generalizations are correct as I work with the students a little more in the coming couple weeks, but for now, that is how it seems.

When I first went to San Alejo on Monday this week, when all the parents were there on the first day of school, in order to ask permission to work with their kids, it was even more overwhelming than the first day of school at LIDEL. At LIDEL I had talked to the parents in separate classrooms but at San Alejo all the parents (meaning all the mothers) at San Alejo were in a single room so I stood up and spoke to a huge group of them all at once. While I was nervous to speak Spanish to such a large group, especially since I hadn’t been able to sleep at all the previous night for some mysterious reason, I think I successfully got across what I wanted to say. When I finished off my speech with a general question of whether it was all right if I worked with their kids for my project, every single mother in the entire room vigorously nodded her head and enthusiastically responded “¡Sí! ¡Sí! ¡Está bien!” (Yes! Yes! It’s all right!) It seemed like they had waited their whole lives for me to ask them that question and it gave me so much confidence!

In general for my project with the kids, I’ve been giving them questionnaires with general ecology questions like “How does a flower reproduce?”, more feeling/opinion-oriented questions like “Is it important to protect the environment? Why or why not?”, and a space for them to draw their concept of the nature in Puerto Lopez. The results I’ve been getting back are quite interesting. For living in such a beautiful place that draws travelers from all over the world, these kids really don’t get out into nature much (besides the beach), and have been scared away from many of the wonders of the outdoors by town myths like the one that says the burrowing ground owl makes girls pregnant and that the harmless gecko has a deadly stinging tail. The kids are mostly under the impression that every wild animal is dangerous and bad, and every domesticated animal is helpful and good. As for the more feeling/opinion-oriented questions, they usually respond with things that have been dictated to them, like “Es importante cuidar la naturaleza,” (It’s important to care for nature), but can’t explain why. I’ve accompanied the LIDEL students on a couple educational nature walks led by my advisor Deirdre and the San Alejo students will be going on a walk later this week. The kids’ reactions to being outdoors coupled with Deirdre’s lessons and their short attention spans are really a kick to watch. The main point of my research is to see how successful Deirdre’s environmental education program is, so I’m going to give the kids the same questionnaire after they go on the walks and see if their ecological knowledge has improved and/or if their feelings and opinions of nature have changed at all.

I feel like my Spanish is improving here at a much faster rate than anywhere else during my program. Even though I had trouble understanding the coastal accent at first, it now sounds like such a wonderful, lively Spanish to me, and the Quito accent seems drab and boring now in comparison. At times, I still have difficulty understanding people due to a combination of the accent, the coastal slang, and still not being proficient enough in my comprehension, but I’m getting a lot better. My speaking is improving much faster than it has during the rest of the program too. I only speak English to Deirdre, who is from England, and Alese, my fellow SIT student, but I don’t spend much time with Alese and the times I speak with Deirdre are so outweighed by the rest of my life here when I’m only speaking Spanish that I feel myself improving every day. I’m still nowhere close to being fluent and I’m far from the proficiency I hoped to achieve during my time in Ecuador, but I’m still really glad I’m getting this month to rely so heavily on the language and thus speak and learn it everyday. I’m even starting to think in Spanish and when memories from throughout my entire my life pop in my head, I remember the conversations as being in Spanish even though they weren’t!

My health is back to normal now. I made sure to take really good care of myself last week—taking a few more antibiotics, eating natural yogurt with live acidophilus, always purifying my water, getting enough rest, etc.—and now I’m healthy again! I’m still worn out more than I’m used to, but that might be due of the heat. I’m going to be in Ecuador for 11 more weeks, so I anticipate getting sick again, but for now it feels good to be parasite, virus, and infection-free!

Now for a briefing about my weekend. The weekend was quite dramatic, in good ways and bad. Earlier last week, I had met a guy named Felix in town. He helped me shop for a sarong then when he saw me on the beach later, he asked me to watch his cell phone while he surfed. When he returned to get his cell phone, we chatted a little and walked most of the way home together since he lives only a few blocks away from me. When I got home that day, I asked Angel if he knew Felix and Angel said that the guy I had been with was actually named Ricardo. I was confused to say the least, so when I saw him again on Friday, I confronted him and asked if his real name was Ricardo or Felix. He was a little taken aback by my confrontation, but explained that his first name is Ricardo which a lot of people in town know him by, but he prefers to go by his middle name which is Felix. I thought this was a fine enough explanation, so accepted it. The sun had just set and he had just finished surfing for the day so he asked me to go have a coffee with him. I was tired so declined, but he insisted so I went along since it was only for a quick coffee. We went to the Colombian restaurant and he ended up getting an entire dinner, so I had a crepe, and we talked about a bunch of different things like travel, my experiences in Ecuador thus far, and his life in Germany (he lives there most of the year). It was pleasant enough, and near the end of the meal, he accidentally spilled his beer all over me, which turned into a big joke and we laughed about it the entire walk home. He asked me to go dancing with him that night, but I didn’t feel like going out so I said no. After acting hurt that I didn’t want to go out dancing with him, he asked if I wanted to learn how to surf the following day. I’ve always wanted to learn to surf, so I eagerly agreed and we made plans to meet up the next afternoon on the beach.

At 4:00pm the next day, Saturday, I met up with him and we walked a ways down the beach, still with a few people around, but where it was less populated and there were much higher waves. He first taught me the basic motions of pushing myself upright on the board on the sand, then after about 20 min. of practicing on dry land, we went into the water and I proceeded to wipe out multiple times, but each time getting a little closer to standing on the board. It was hilarious and really fun and we laughed and had a great time. After about an hour of this, my arms were tired from paddling the board and trying to push myself up to standing, so we rested on the beach for awhile and talked and laughed. He invited me to cook dinner with him at his house, but as I didn’t want to give him the wrong signals, and because I had only met him a couple days before, I declined. He said he understood if I didn’t want to, but asked me think about it more, but I knew my answer would be the same later. As the sun was getting low in the sky, we returned to the water to give it another go. I tried for about a half an hour more, but by that time my muscles were just too tired to continue, so as the sun set with every shade of orange and pink shooting into the sky above us, he surfed and I swam and it was glorious.

As we walked back towards town on the beach, I mentioned to him that he reminded me of a certain someone and that I was in somewhat of a relationship with that person. Immediately he became withdrawn and started walking a couple feet away from me. Even though he claimed nothing was wrong and he wasn’t upset, it was obvious what I said had upset him. I told him I was sorry, but that was just the way it was. I didn’t want a relationship with him anyway, he was leaving in a few days to go back to Germany, and I really just wanted friendship. I told him all of this, and he said how he always had such bad luck being attracted to girls who were unavailable, but seemed to eventually agree that we could just be friends.

Alese had returned from a neighboring town earlier that day, so we stopped into her hostel on our walk back from the beach to see her. As soon as the hostel owners saw Felix, they accusingly asked him why he was there and were really rude to him. He got upset and left abruptly and when I rushed out to see what in the world had just happened, he told me how rude they had always been to him and how just because he liked to have a lot of friends, including women, they assumed he was a womanizer. He was really upset and even had tears in his eyes. It is extremely rare to see an Ecuadorian man, who’s been taught his whole life he’s too macho too cry, shed even a single tear, so for Felix to be crying, especially in front of someone he wanted to impress was really unexpected. I tried to comfort him, but it was basically of no use, and we split ways in our neighborhood with plans to meet up later but with him still pretty upset.

At 9:00pm, Felix, Alese, and I met up and went out on the town. We ended up gathering together a couple other Gringos (one of whom coincidentally graduated from Oberlin just a couple years ago) and a lot of other Ecuadorians, including a few of Felix’s friends, into a fun random group. We all found a little juice bar with a dance floor in the back and ended up salsa dancing until 3:00am. It was a blast! I’m definitely not the best salsa dancer in the world, but I’m getting better and better, and some of these Ecuadorian guys really know how to lead and ALL of them know how to dance. It’s incredible! I wish the guys in the States could dance like the them! We danced and danced the night away. Felix was by far the best dancer out of all the guys and he and I danced much of the night together. Because of what the hostel owners had said though, and because of a couple other rumors I had heard, Alese and I were extremely careful to watch our drinks and watch out for each other. This is just a generally smart thing to do here since basically all the guys are eager to jump into bed with us and a random few would do anything, including drug us, to make that happen, but it was especially important on this night since we had heard some sketchy things about Felix and his friends.

I like to think I can trust my instincts, and Felix seemed like a really sweet and great person, so I wasn’t going to dismiss him until I had some concrete evidence that I shouldn’t be hanging around him, but even though the whole night was a blast, I still didn’t trust him enough to have him walk me home alone at 3:00am especially after he had had a few beers, so I made plans to walk home with Angel’s best friend Fernando who lives across the street from me. As soon as Felix heard I wasn’t going to walk home with him, he got pretty upset and refused to talk to me for awhile. I explained to him that since Fernando lives so close, it was obviously more convenient for him to walk home with me, but Felix was offended. He told me that it was part of their culture that you walked home with whoever you went out with and since we had gone out together, he wanted to walk me home and was offended I was going to walk home with another guy. I kept refusing and he kept adding more reasons why I should walk home with him, such as claiming that because I had danced with him for so long, it signaled that I wanted to go home with him. The more he insisted, the more I didn’t want to walk home with him, so eventually I just told him I didn’t want to give him the wrong signals by walking home with him. He asked why not and I told him because they would be false because I didn’t want a relationship with him. He got more upset and in a tone meant to offend me said, “Pienso que tú eres más loca que yo,” (I think you are crazier than me). I told him it was fine with me if he wanted to think that, then left with my brother, Fernando, and Alese.

The next day I saw him on the Malecón, and he waved and shouted out “¡Hola!” I responded to his hola, but kept walking. He called out “Hey!” after me but I kept walking because I didn’t feel like dealing with him or potentially getting myself into a bad situation if the rumors I had heard about him were true. Later, he came into the internet café I was in, talked to the man at the front desk for a few minutes, while glancing at me every once in awhile, then sat down at a computer a couple seats away from me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that he kept glancing at me, but I ignored him. I could tell he was waiting for me to leave so he could leave with me, but since I was figuring out what classes I wanted to register for next semester at Oberlin, it ended up taking four frustrating hours, and he couldn’t hold out that long (especially since he was paying for his time on the computer). He ended up leaving after a couple hours, and I didn’t see him again that day.

That evening, I briefly met with Deirdre to talk about my project and asked her if she knew Felix/Ricardo and if she knew whether some of the rumors were true. She told me that yes she knew who he was and that he was suspected in a gang rape that happened on the beach last year, and that he was also part of a group of guys that went to the hostels in town, flirted their way into the hearts of Gringas, invited them over to their houses, got them so drugged up they couldn’t think straight, then gang raped them. When I heard this, I was absolutely horrified! While Felix had told me his friends did things he didn’t agree with, and Deirdre did only say that he was suspected in the rape case and that a few other people thought he had been set up, I was still horrified that I had walked down the beach with him and had a surfing lesson just the two of us with only a couple other people somewhat nearby and then gone out dancing with him and almost let him walk me home. Imagine if all these things about him really are true and I had let him walk me home at 3:00am or I had gone over to his house after surfing to cook dinner! While I know there are indeed many false rumors that circulate this little town, and gossip is everyone’s favorite pastime, and everything people said about him could very well be false, this wasn’t a chance I was going to take. I successfully avoided him for the last couple days, and this morning he left to return to Germany. Now I can rest assured, but it was still one of those experiences that was so close to something dangerous that I could taste it. Luckily I learned my lesson about trusting strangers, especially here in South America, and still came out safely on the other end. Also, after further contemplation, I’ve decided that although I would like to be able to fully trust my instincts about men and people in general, I’ve only lived just under 21 years of my life which is certainly not enough time to gather enough experience to have finely tuned instincts about strangers, especially in a foreign country I’m not familiar with. Therefore, I’m going to stick to the people I know for a fact I can trust, like some of my brother’s closest friends. Obviously I’m still going to be wary, because even if they’re friends of my brother, they could have their bad streaks, but I think it’s a lot safer than trusting a stranger to give me a private surfing lesson.

I’m disappointed in how this turned out, though. Every time someone loses my trust, or I get a wake-up call that not everyone can be trusted, it saddens me because I wish so badly that the world weren’t like that. I know this wish is idealistic, but it still hurts me every time I find out how far from reality it truly is. Felix was kind, generous, funny, intelligent, thoughtful, goofy, and most of the time I felt really good being around him. I felt I could trust him, but I couldn’t and that saddens me.

Now he’s gone, though. I’ve learned my lesson, and it’s time for me to live the rest of my month here in Puerto Lopez. Hopefully I can find a trust-worthy surfing instructor because it was so much fun and really I want to get better. And I’m not going to stop salsa dancing just because Felix isn’t here anymore. There are plenty of great Puerto Lopez men to salsa dance the night away with! Thus, with continuing my work in the schools, writing my 20-30 page research paper in Spanish, salsa dancing, surfing, beach swimming/reading time, and continuing to get to know my host family and the town of Puerto Lopez, I think my last two and a half weeks here are going to be sufficiently full.


If you’ve gotten to the end of this entry, I applaud you and declare you one of my truest friends or family members. I didn’t set out for it to be so long, but as my mom would say, that’s the way the cookie crumbled.

I want to thank those of you who wrote me wonderful emails. It really makes my day to hear from any of you. If I haven’t written you back yet, know that I’m getting to you, and that I truly do appreciate the thought you put into writing me.

Okay, I guess that’s all, folks.

Thanks for reading and love to all across the world!

Chao de Ecuador,
Zoe

Puerto Lopez

¡Holas a todos!

I realize that I haven´t updated for more than a month and a million things have happened since then, but really, that is the reason I haven´t updated. Because I´ve been too busy LIVING it all to write about it all. Not only have I been lousy at updating my blog, but I´ve also disappointingly neglected my journal which I brought to Ecuador to record all my adventures and reflect on them. I´ve been doing fairly well with a photo diary though, so if you haven´t yet, you should check out my facebook albums that range from the cloud forest to Quito to the Amazon to weekend excursions. I haven´t had a chance to put up pictures from the Galapagos yet and probably won´t be able to until I return to Quito again in 4 weeks, but the rest of the albums are still pretty exciting. And even though I haven´t updated since February and it is now April 8th, I´m going to write about my time thus far in Puerto Lopez since it´s fresh in my mind and if I took the time to write about everything that´s missing from my blog, I would be here until the end of eternity. Thus, I give you Puerto Lopez.

For those of you who don´t know, I´m in Puerto Lopez for the entire month of April to do my independent research project on environmental education. Puerto Lopez is a fishing town on the central coast of Ecuador. It is still pretty rustic, but is working on developing so as to attract tourists to the prime whale-watching that happens off the coast here from June thru September. It sits in the middle of Machalilla national park which contains dry forest, wet forest, beach, island, and marine ecosytems. Because of this complex combination of ecosytems, it is vital to protect the natural environment here which means that environmental education in the elementary schools is extremely important so that the up and coming generation will understand, respect, and protect the land and sea around them. I arrived late on the evening of Saturday, April 5th after a 13.5 hour bus ride from Quito and will be leaving either April 30th or May 1st to return to Quito for the closing week of my program. Hopefully during my time here, I will get a good taste of the culture and be able to accomplish an insightful research project all the while giving back to the Puerto Lopez community as much as possible.

Thus begin my tales of Puerto Lopez...

Puerto Lopez is interesting. It has an underlying beauty that isn´t apparent at first, but the people are wonderful -- really friendly, open, and laughing all the time, unlike most of the people of Quito. The beach is beautiful and the water is the perfect temperature for swimming. The town has some charm too, but for the most part is quite dusty and litter-strewn. There are a few cute shops and restaurants, though, and the beachfront street is lined with bamboo huts selling cocktails and fresh juices (which I can´t drink for fear of more parasites... but they´re still cute). My homestay family consists of my mother, Elsa, and my 18-year old brother, Angel. Elsa is very nice and overflows with hospitality. She´s a plump women and spends her days keeping-up with housework and gardening in the extensive gardens surrounding the house in a strapless dress that doesn´t zip-up all the way in the back. Angel is nice, but can be kind of overwhelming when he gets with his friends and they´re gossiping, speaking slang, and he´s trying to act cool. His friends are pretty ridiculous and most smoke pot (although all the adults are convinced pot doesn´t exist in the town...). We went out to the beach with one of his friends on Sunday afternoon to swim, boogie-board, and lounge on the sand, then Alese (the other SIT student here) joined us to go out for the night. Sunday nights aren´t really optimal for clubbing, so we ending up hanging out on the beachfront at one of the bamboo drink huts and danced salsa with the waves crashing behind us. It was really enjoyable and one of the moments when it´s hard to believe that I´m technically in "school" right now.

My homestay house is fairly nice, but still quite rustic. The toilet rarely flushes (which is kind of annoying since I´m still having digestive issues from my parasite...), the floors are cement or creaky wood, and everything is coated with a thin layer of dust. I´m getting used to it, but the food is also the heavy Ecuadorian carb-loaded type which is made worse by the country/rustic lifestyle so that I´m not always sure it´s safe. The food in Ecuador is definitely something I´m not going to miss, since it´s usually so heavy and often greasy. There are a few specialties I´ve grown to love though, for instance many of the exotic fruits like maracuya and pitahaya, a flaky heart-shaped baked good dipped in chocolate called "oreja", meaning "ear" in Spanish, and a very traditional creamy soup called locro.

But I´ve gotten off topic, back to Puerto Lopez...
I´m covered in mosquito bites -- I counted 41 on my legs yesterday afternoon and have gotten many more since then. Mosquito repellent is useless since it´s so flippin´ hot here that I just sweat it all off within minutes, so I´m just trying not to scratch the bites and religiously taking my malaria medicine every night. The heat can be really overwhelming which is made worse by the extreme dryness, especially mid-day when it reaches about 100 degrees F. in the sun and mid-90s in the shade. Everyone takes a siesta during that time, but even my fairly airy upstairs room is sweltering, so it´s hard to be productive or even be optimistic about life during this heavy heat. I´ve been living in skirts and my jean shorts, and just bought a sarong today, so that should help. If I could, I´d spend my whole day cooling off in the ocean, but since that is not possible, I just try to make it a ritual to go down right before sunset, go for a swim, then dry off on the beach while eating a popsicle and watching the brilliant pinks and oranges of the sky as the sun sinks into the sea.

Alese and I are becoming closer friends, and share the sunset ritual together, but she´s doing half her research in a neighboring town so is leaving today for the next few days and will generally be splitting her time half-half between the two towns. The hostal she´s staying at is quite nice and fairly cheap, and I´m thinking of spending the last two weeks there when I really need to focus on writing my paper since there´s almost always a radio or television (or both) on at my house. That way I´d also be able to control my own food, which is something Alese is really enjoying. There´s a small outdoor kitchen at the hostal, and she buys herself fresh eggs, bread, fruits, vegetables, and rice and cooks for herself every day. I think that kind of independence would be nice, since I haven´t had it since I came to Ecuador since I´ve almost always had the program or a homestay family controlling my schedule and food intake.

As for my project, I went to the first day of school at a nearby private school yesterday with my advisor, Deirdre. The parents all come on the first day for the opening talks from the teachers, so Deirdre and I went into two of the classrooms, and she introduced me to the teachers, parents, and students. Then I briefly spoke to the classroom full of people about my project and my hopes of working with the kids. It was a little nerve-wracking since I´ve never spoken to rooms so full of native Spanish speakers before, but I actually spoke very eloquently (I think) and even was able to understand and answer a few questions from the parents. The kids are so cute too! As we were leaving, the kids and parents were milling around the courtyard and one girl walked by me and exclaimed to one of her family members excitedly "That´s the girl who spoke to my class!" (in Spanish, of course). I´m very excited to work with them further and get to know the personalities behind their cute little faces. Also in terms of my project, I´ve been doing quite a bit of reading that Deirdre gave me about previous projects on education in Puerto Lopez and on environmental education in general. I also have to keep three different kinds of project journals for my program, so that´s been taking up quite a bit of time. Oh, I almost forgot! I was television today too! Deirdre does a weekly environmentally-focused television show on the local channel, so today she took the opportunity to introduce Alese and I on TV to the local community and both of us said a few words about our project and how excited we are to be in Puerto Lopez for the next four weeks and to get to know the people and culture. This TV show was even more nerve-wracking than the classroom talks, because way more people watch TV than were in the school, but I feel like I spoke my Spanish well and got across what I wanted to say in a confident manner, so that made me proud. Now, when I walk through the streets and on the beach, I have to greet almost everyone because so many more people know who am I and what I´m doing here. As I walked down to the town from my house in the upper hills, almost every single little kid greeted me with a cheery "¡Hola!" which hasn´t happened before. Most of the kids in my neighborhood go to the school at which I spoke yesterday, so I´m pretty sure most of them saw me in their classrooms and now know who I am and greet me because of it. It´s wonderful and makes me smile. I´m going to go to another school opening next week, then hopefully really start working more closely with the kids: talking to them about the environment, their feelings about nature, how they think their lives affect the environment, and what they think of the environmental education lessons Deirdre has been teaching in the last couple years. I´ll probably also ask them to draw some of their thoughts on these themes since I´ve been told by numerous people here and believe myself, that many kids can express how they feel much better through pictures than through words. I´ll also be going on a few educational nature walks led by Deirdre with the kids in the next couple weeks to see her program in action and really discuss with the kids in a natural setting the aforementioned things and observe how they react to the lesson. I´m really looking forward to this whole project since it so closely relates to my passions for environmental education and kids, and also to my future career goals.

Okay, I should probably head back up the dusty road to my house now, since I´ve been out and about town all day. I´ll probably do some reading, eat a late lunch, then head back down to the beach in time to catch the glorious sunset. ; )

I hope everyone is well in whatever country they´re reading this from and I would love to hear from any and all of you through email, mail, or phone! I have been more homesick than I anticipated, especially lately, so any little snippet of love from the people I care about puts a smile on my face. The internet here is hard to access and pretty slow though, so if I don´t respond right away to your "snippets of love", it´s not for lack of appreciation, it´s just because I´m living in a rustic town that doesn´t have good internet. Also, for any of you that I was able to call from Quito, that practice sadly won´t be able to continue since it´s really expensive to call the U.S. from here. Sorry!

I guess that´s it for now. Hopefully you were able to understand my ramblings and hopefully I´ll get to write another update soon!

Love to all!