San Pedro

So the past two days have been unbelievable.

The Fiesta de San Pedro starts with a night of dancing, drinking and eating with various groups from the Tabacundo area starting around 7 and going until 4 in the morning.

Anyway, Stuart, the volunteer coordinator worked out a bunch of us hooking up with a group, the Tocadores del Sol.

After a week and a half of motorcycling back and forth between my host familys house and guitar practice, our traditional singing/dancing group was ready for the big night. Although Ill have to say that no one really bothers to tune their guitars with any degree of precision so it ends up being these phenomenal strong voices over a bit of dischord - not unlike serving a beautiful filet mignon over crumbled saltines - mmm. With trago and chicha in hand, we stumbled along the street singing the same song for 9 hours. Making tons of new drunk friends that will love us forever or at least until they sober up.

Many more details im leaving out but dont have time im afraid. Much love!

Toro

i got up this morning to help my family with the days work cutting alfalfa to feed the guinea pigs they farm here (a local delicacy i hope to have before long). the grandmother has a face thats so wrinkled, it boggles the mind to think about where all that skin came from. the two of us went out to the field and had a lovely chat about other volunteers and the upcoming fiesta (which by the way is all anyone can talk about). the family im staying with is really quite a remarkable bunch. the woman i was working with is the mother of 7 children, most of whom have aspirations for social change. goodness knows their father was a strong enough influence. for something like 30 years he worked with five of the local communities for improvements in health, water conservation and job security.

so this guy has retired to this huge plot of land neighboring a rose plantation where hes set up a very complex irrigation system, redirected with patches of sod stuck in these deep channels that cut through the ground. anyway, while we were cutting alfalfa, which by the way is not unlike cutting a field of grass with a pair of scissors, the old lady walked off for a bit to grab something and mentioned rather matter-of-factly "toro" before leaving the field. this of course means bull in spanish so i thought she was just being a sweet old lady talking to the animals that hang around the place. it wasnt but a few minutes later that two more ladies came running over the hill with the grandmother of my family walking patiently behind her. they ran right up to one of the irrigation channels and started grabbing at something. it didnt take long to figure out there was in fact a cow stuck in the channel - upside down! no lie - here was this huge beast totally incapacitated and resigned to its dismal and watery fate. it took the four of us tugging desperately at its hooves to get the damn thing out. and then once it was free it was remarkably relaxed. ive never seen an animal so nonchalant about very nearly drowning to death.

Fiesta fiesta

so it develops that it happens to be the beginning of the fiesta season here. its a vestige of indigenous tradition celebrating the summer solstice. after conquest the spanish adopted the festival and changed the focus to san pedro. stuart just told me a couple of days ago that id get to be in the beginning of the fiesta and this stuff starts before dinner and goes until 5 or 6 in the morning. lots of traditional dancing and live music and old folks walking around handing out trago and chicha (the funky corn-derived chewed and spit up fermented drink... were all thinking about how good that sounds arent we?). theyre making me a traditional shirt with my name on the back, ill be renting some funky goat skin pants, and picking up another fedora (hopefully). we also picked up a charrango, a miniature guitar with strange tuning that i cant figure out yet that i hope to learn by tuesday after next. ill fit right in except for being a foot taller than everybody.

so friday i moved in with my family and had every intention of staying there that night but the brother of the father of my host family insisted on checking out one of the early fiestas in the nearby town of cayambe (city of the sun). its at the foot of the third highest peak in ecuador capped with snow. well be making a trek as far up as we can go without freezing our toes the coming weekend. anyway, we went to cayambe and started drinking around 4 and danced all night long (which is really just until 9 or 10 here). we ended up riding in the back of a busted truck back to the fundacion. once we got back, we had a great discussion with the driver about why volunteers want to come to work. needless to say, i didnt make it back to my host familys house that night.

Of trees and trago

So ive been at the fundacion since last monday. ive got to admit, the way this country works is amazing. i caught a bus to tabacundo, a small village near where the fundacion is and told the driver that i needed to get off at kilometer 23. i then walked 400 meters to the compound and couldnt find anyone. after asking around with folks working in the fields i found stuart, the volunteer coordinator guy making a grand lunch of chili and rice. would definitely be sketchy if it were anywhere else, but its normal here! so great.everyone here is awesome. there is a total of something like 10 volunteers spread throughout this county and the one neighboring it. stuart is quite a character and is all about making the month the best it can be. ive been thinking lots about how this stuff could be applied elsewhere. theyre always needing more volunteers so if any of you are interested, the link is on the right toolbar.at the hacienda, i split my mealtimes between eating with stuart and with one of the families that lives in the compound. the father of the family that i eat with here is named fredemon and he insisted on giving us all trago (the local cane alcohol) on a particularly cold night. he lights it on fire to make it a bit milder and fixed three different varieties for our drinking pleasure. he makes it himself, and i started to explain about the beer making but then i remembered that i dont know any of the right words.
speaking of spanish, its funny how hit or miss understanding can be. a few times ive said i have shit instead of i have fear (dont worry it was only in a joking context, theres nothing to be afraid of here). sometimes i get so comfortable talking with folks that i forget i should be speaking in spanish and dont realize ive slipped up until i get lots of squiggly faces.
one of the main missions of this place is to encourage reforestation with local trees. they need about 1/10 of the water of the exotic eucalyptus trees that are all over the place here so theyre much better for water conservation in that regard. so we took a trip past this place called papallacta to talk with some folks that were very traditional ecuadorians. they sold us some of their llawal branches and we climbed up in the trees and sawed for about 2 hrs before taking the long winding road home. at one point we stopped and the guy driving pointed out that the rainforest was just over the mountains. what a great country!

the bear will be coming around the mountain...

last night i ended up catching betsy and we went out for beers and hookah. i also got to meet her novio and some of the other kids from her program. all great folks. insisted on goodness of schwarma, a rotating pillar of meat that they carve into huge sandwiches. think its from argentina. definitely on the list for dinner tonight...

today we got up early and rode the bus for 3 hours, hopped off and hiked 3 km up to mascarilla - the african ecuadorian village where betsy (known as pepsi to them) had her internship for the past three months. it was awesome, theyve got a great community development project going with mask-making that benefits a womens group. she taught english and the whole village was ecstatic to see her again.

we had lunch (an awesome lunch, probably the highlight of the year) with betsys host mom who is the coolest cranky old lady. she broke her foot a while ago and betsy carried her on her back to the bus station!

now were off for more beer and schwarma. first thing in the morning i leave for a week of training in organic farming before i stay with a family and do the real thing for 3 weeks. already my spanish is much improved and rather useful, i cant wait to see what can happen in 4 more weeks. thinking more and more about delaying return trip home for an excursion to machu pichu. booking is a bit difficult, but theres some ways to get there that arent as cool and even if that doesnt work out, other cool ruins in the area.

while we were out getting schwarma there were a couple of travelers at the table across from us. its such a strange phenonmenon. they want to leave home, but at the same time want to seem like they are home where ever they are and shoot discriminating looks at anyone that could be a potential threat to the secrecy of their identities as travellers. theres still a lot of thinking to be done, but were certainly a group of misfits. ive been talking with a good friend about how it ruins your life in the sense that it poops on any plans for work in ones home land and makes one supremely lonely wherever one may go. even that loneliness though can become a comfort in time. certainly dovetails with question thats been bugging me of whether its better to live comfortably with folks like ones self or to go where one might be an agent of change. why americans feel like they should/can change things is a different discussion altogether. perhaps later. anyway, its bedtime for me.

love to all.

what an interesting smell youve discovered...

so after yesterdays adventures, today was slightly more relaxed, though i was able to relive everything from yesterday through a variety of smells. you see, the hare krishna insisted on giving me a bunch of patchouli incense and id throw it away but the smell is simply starting to grow on me. it even added some kick to the banana bread i had in my bag which was already beginning to pick up the minty scent of my soap. mmm...

about yesterday, i also forgot to mention that when i went to see star wars, this creepy movie theater urchin that ran the place ran all around the theater squirting this bootleg water-spray bottle of bluish scented gel for our olfactoy pleasure... he may have nicked me a bit which would explain my feeling like having ridden in a taxi for hours.

im in a hostel now in quito and should be meeting betsy any minute now

what a day in peru

so i had an amazing day today in lima. i got up first thing and had a really rich discussion about food and its transgenic stepchildren with a peruvian canadian transplant, a french peruvian transplant and a quebecois couple on holiday. it was a bit confusing at first as to what language would be the common demoninator but we decided on spanish. i just listened. todavia no soy demasiado vite a hablar espanol. from there i rode the bestest, most bootleg bus in the world. it was fantastic and there's so many of them. there's a guy that's paid to ride outside and yell at folks to come in, and the driver doesn't say anything. kinda like the guy that relies on the shrunken head in the 3rd Harry Potter story.from there i wandered a bunch trying to get oriented and not having any confidence in holding a map even a miniature one. but i was able to eventually find the museum of the inquisition. it was munchkin day so all the tour guides were taken, but i fit in nicely with one of the elementary groups. the kids were very curious about their new gigantic friend but we got along nicely and they helped a bit with translation.I had lunch first at a sketchy sandwich shop because i was worried about getting too cranky on my search for this vegetarian place. and then i had second lunch eventually once i found the joint. awesome food, concerned owner, kinda place i'd like to work/own if i lived here. it seemed pretty impossible to find a full meal anywhwere for more than $2 - even great local, organic food. if you could see the tears right now...from there i wandered a bunch more and rather than taking the hike to another museum since I was already a bit tired, I decided to follow the wisdom of my grandfather, the reverend charles r. williams. before the days of widespread airconditioning he'd go see a movie just for an airconditioned nap... so i saw about 1/4 of episode III of star wars for the 3rd time and in between grabbed some glorious shut-eye. again, very cheap. around $1.50 for a ticket.immediately following, it was time for dinner so i thought i'd head back to the vegetarian place when this really nice lady started talking to me. some creepy guy was with her so i was a bit sketched out but we went to a neutral meeting place for dinner and they open all drinks in front of you so no worries there. it turns out the guy was just sketchy because he's a hare krishna and the lady was nice because he had to leave early and insisted on her talking to me. he didn't leave of course without giving me patchouli incense and a lesson on happy living. we had a great time and made a munchkin beggar friend. his name is gorge. i've got pictures + video. and now i'm here. back at the hostel. i promise not to write lengthy stuff about every day, but I had a great time tonight and thought I'd get it all down.love you all,