https://picasaweb.google.com/juniper.sol/20110706Punay
This the whole mountain I climbed. You see that little house at the bottom right of the pic? That's where we started. Yessir, I climbed that whole mountain.
But still, positively amazing:
This week has been nice, being able to have a sort of a schedule, as I came into the tourism office everyday to translate emails. The daily access to internet has also been wonderful. I also went to my friend Fernanda's sister's school events. There was an open house and graduation. The open house was entertaining. Each class did different presentations. There were these 5th graders that did some crazy looking math picture stuff. I was impressed. The presentation about the Americas was equally entertaining. "In North America (where they had a bottle of coke and burgers laid out to represent it) there is New York, center of commerce and business, Chicago, center of transport (sad, that's all they had to say), California, home of Hollywood, Atlanta, home of Coca-Cola, and Houston (didn't hear what they said)" Don't you love what the kiddies think of the USA? Graduation was also interesting. There are only a few gowns and caps that they put on each row of kids, then take them off when they sit down and pass them off to the next row. Everyone runs around everywhere and speaks over everyone. I wonder if the teachers get frustrated since no one is ever listening to them. The link to the whole album if you wanna see what Ecuadorian kiddies look like:
https://picasaweb.google.com/juniper.sol/2011070104SucaSchoolEvents
I've made a few more contacts, which will hopefully turn out positively the next week. I've run into a bit of office problems, as the employee here in Riobamba has apparently been saying not so nice things about me to the directors. The director then emailed me criticizing my work, which I found very frustrating, seeing as that they really did drop me off here, leaving me to figure things out, haven't tried once to contact me, see how I'm doing or anything, haven't tried to ask me about progress, then the first correspondence I get is how I'm not doing a good job. Thankfully, the director called me the next morning (I hadn't responded back to the email yet) saying that perhaps there have been some miscommunications and that she wanted to hear from me updates on the work. That put me at ease that she recognized that she should get information from the source. We cleared the miscommunications and she is pleased with what progress I've made, recognizing that the pace of things are out of my hands. Nonetheless, I am very frustrated with the Riobamba employee, seeing as that I interact with her about five minutes in the morning, she doesn't ask me any questions, doesn't include me in any meetings, and had the nerve to develop an opinion about my work when she doesn't even talk to me personally. OK, that's the end of that rant. If you're asking yourself what her problem is and what did I do, well the truth is, I don't really include her either. I saw from the beginning that she was a big gossip, and so I kept my distance. But I didn't see it necessary to include her in my thoughts, nor did I find it beneficial. I had nothing against her for not including me, and accepted that as just how things were. But even in keeping my distance she somehow managed to poop all over my stuff. Anyway, things have been cleared up w/ the director and I continue on my way. Things have not been cleared w/ the employee, and how to move forward with her I don't know. B/c really, our work does not overlap, the more I talk to her, the more she talks on my behalf to the people, when I ask her to let me speak on my behalf, she doesn't really listen and so taints people's opinion of me and what my intentions are, and when I ask her for specific help, she doesn't help me (i.e. "How do I get to __?" "Take a cab."). Soooooo... I chose to not work with her at all, which was perhaps a bad choice on my part, but I don't really see in what ways we can work together. Ugh, what is my problem? I recognize the hypocrisy on my part when I seek to live compassionately with others, but I give up on some. But aggh before I just found this woman draining, and now I'm just angry at her for talking behind my back.
Anyway, I DID finally get to make it out to the community on Tuesday and have a bit of time to chat with the people. There is a bit of a power struggle w/ one of the leaders in the community and EkoRural, and I can kind of only go at the pace she allows me to. Which is right now going out to the community once a week. I did however meet a med student here, who works in another community, and I'll be meeting the director of that one on Monday. So as I said, things go at an incredibly slow pace here, but I'm still going at it. At first, I thought people's receptiveness to my coming into their lives was met with resistance, but once I struck up conversations with them, it went wonderfully! If only I can get out there more frequently...
Well's those are my thoughts for now. They're kind of all over the place, as I am also all over the place. Need some grounding...
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