Monday, February 24th, 2003
     At 8:15 am, I went around the corner to the quasi-garage of Micah´s house for Spanish class. We did little in the way of actual Spanish and lots in the way of going bananas with the neighborhood kids; playing soccer, billards, showing off pets and doing gymnastics for the camera. Finally we blew classes off altogether and went down to the river to swim.

     Later on, 2 of the top Peace Corps brass here in Ecuador, along with a third person, showed up at my house. They spoke so indirectly that I'm not sure what we were even talking about. I think they were giving me the third degree for pulling out of Buenos Aires. When they asked how I was liking San Miguel, I lavished praise upon its people and the community. They ignored this and repeatedly said they were there to "help me adjust" to my new home. I would say "Are you kidding? I've died and gone to Heaven here." They just stared back at me stonefaced. They were "there to help me". No clue what they were really there for and now I completely distrust them.

  Tuesday, February 25th, 2003
      Someone killed a pig outside my window at 4:00 AM. They kill animals early so they can get the parts to market at a good hour. But yeah, it´s a little much to wake up to. Pigs scream whenever they're manhandled. It's not so much the murder as it is the pig being disagreeable to having been pulled on to its side. About an hour later they whacked a second pig.

      Spanish "class" was again 30% Spanish and 70% neighbor kids. The gringa Grace and I, presumed to be at the same level of Spanish, got out of "class" at 2:30pm together. With nothing better to do, we attempted to walk down the highway to the next town, but not knowing how far away it was, turned back after about a mile when it started to rain.

      I showed my host (a woman who insists she is "mi mama´") my digital camera. She was impressed, and placed an immediate phone call to her friend to tell her all about it.

  Wednesday, February 26th, 2003
     The Animal Production people showed up today to interview me to find out what my qualifications were and thus where I should be placed in 3 months. They seemed to be pleasantly surprised by my qualifications, probably because it included some construction. I told them I would like the climate of the mountains but the open attitudes of the coastal areas. Essentially, I told them nothing.

     I was hanging out on my porch after dark, when Jaime ("Hai-may"), an 8 year-old neighbor kid, walked past. I asked him about the kids I could hear singing into a microphone up the street. We decided to check it out but never got there because we stopped at Micah´s house where we found many people hanging out. Jaime went on without me. It turns out that the kids on the microphone were just an evangelical church service -but, since Jaime loves "an event," he absolutely had to get there. Earlier I saw him run at top speed to join the passing funeral procession of a stranger.

      I gave Micah a hair cut and let the kids he lives with play with my camera. Then I got sick and went home.

  Thursday, February 27th, 2003
      The 4 gringos in my town (Micah, Jason, Grace and myself) took a 7:30AM bus to a "college" near Santo Domingo in a place called Calazacon. The "college" was in grave disrepair. There we got rabies vaccinations and met with the others in our respective programs -mine being Animal Production, as you´ll recall. We were given huge training manuals, told what projects were due when, and were given a quick tour of a nearby farm, complete with fish ponds, broiler chickens, pigs, cows and worm beds. Afterwards, even though I had gone delerious from an out of control frisbee session in the hot sun earlier, I went with Micah to another gringo´s house near the "college" to hang out. Micah and I missed the last bus headed to San Miguel so we had to get there in a filthy truck.

     For some reason, my Spanish was on point in the evening and I talked about everything under the sun with the old woman I live with. Then I went to my room and took a freezing shower, as freezing water is all that comes out of the tap. The last remnants of a giant cockroach I had been refusing to clean up were washed into the drain and inexplicably, I felt very accomplished.

  Friday, February 28th, 2003
      Instead of having Spanish class in the usual locale, we 4 gringos plus Ecuadorian Spanish teacher went into Santo Domingo under the stipulation that we would only speak Spanish. As it is muddy around here all the time from the constant rain, and since the only way to be cool here is to walk down the highway in big rubber boots with machette in tow, I bought myself a pair of knee high rubber boots in Santo Domingo. Maybe I said this already, but for "Carnival," and the days leading up to it, people everywhere are throwing water balloons or spraying squirt guns at passers by. By the time Carnival sets in for real, people go crazy and start throwing eggs and food and paint and everything at passers by. Today in Santo Domingo, guys on balconies dumped buckets of water on girls passing on the sidewalks below. I bought a squirt gun in order to arm myself, but later, in San Miguel, gave it to 8 year old Jaime when the neighborhood girls came to dominate the local water gun wars.

      Today is the first day it failed to rain and the heat is terrible. It is the start of the weekend and San Miguel has been transformed. Men that had been away working poured back into town. A soccer game broke out in the park and a volleyball game in the unpaved road off the highway. I hooked up with a local farmer, the guy Jason is staying with, and agreed to milk cows at 6 am on Sunday. I needed this hook up to hopefully get some of my animal projects off the ground.

     I discovered that my mysteriously self-refilling water bottle was being refilled, not with the giant culligan water bottle in the dining room, but with tap water and thus is possibly what got me sick the other day. As, darkness fell, all the men in town congregated around the store being operated out of the front of my house. My door is 20 unobstructed feet away from the chattering hordes.

  Saturday, March 1st, 2003
      Today's pig murder outside my window went down at 3:30 AM. I sat up in bed for a very long time while it screamed. Finally it shut up, but then I heard it being chopped to pieces with a hatchet. When I emerged from the house at 7:45 am, there was a stand set-up accross the street from my house that looked like the psychiatrist stand from the Peanuts cartoon. Chunks of pig were dangling from it by hooks. An excited crowd had encircled the stand and the man there was still chopping at the pig with a hatchet in order to supply the crowds demands. A couple of times, just like when chopping down a tree, the hatchet sent an explosion of pig chips sailing over the people in the crowd, who merely turned their faces away from the incoming debris as it landed in their hair and down their backs.

     The 3 divisions of volunteers went into the colegio at Calazacon for "technical training". My division, Animal Production, learned about applied hydroponics and something that was supposed to be "environmental education", but was actually just a lecture on how to give an effective presentation.

     Around 3 PM, I and a gringo from the next town over took a bus out to our homes. The bus was pure insanity. It was full of people screaming and drinking cane liquor and inciting mayhem for Carnival. The bus was constantly assaulted by water balloons and water cannons through its open window. Upon arriving home, the woman I live with, who calls herself my "mom" (as is the custom in these parts), strolled up the street and told me that 2 other male Gringos in town were going crazy with the rest of the town down by the river and that I should take the Gringa sitting with me on her porch and go check it out. Nothing was really happening at the river when we arrived, but the locals there asked me why I was neither dancing, swimming or playing soccer. I dont believe there has been a sentence uttered in this town for days that hasn't contained the word "bailar" (to dance) in it. But, for whatever reason, the much anticipated dance never happened that night and everyone was left confused in the streets. So we created our own havoc all night outside the pool hall. A radio broadcast was interrupted to tell us the mayor of Santo Domingo had just been killed by 2 gunmen who burst into his house as he was enjoying a beer. The people told us the murder of public officials is a common occurrance here.

  Sunday, March 2nd, 2003
      I dragged my butt out of bed before 6AM to go milk cows. Jason, my guide and ticket to the farm, told me the night before to wake him up at 6:00 AM and we would walk there together. When I got to his house, the guard dogs wouldn't let me get near, so I set out in search for the farm alone. That was unsuccessful, so I stopped by Micah's house to ask his family for directions. It so happened that Michah's "dad" and 13 year-old son were just heading there themselves.

     The 3 of us arrived to the farm soon thereafter and the cows saluted our arrival by dropping vast amounts of waste on the ground and walking in it. I learned from the farmer there that the time for the cow milking had been changed to 7:30 AM and Jason had forgotten to tell me, so I was on my own for the next hour. But no matter. I watched whole procedure for milking cows. It's more that simply yanking utters, you may be surprised to learn. The farm hands were greatly amused by my total cluelessness about such things. The 13 year-old kept me in stitches with his milking antics.

     I had plans to go into Santo Domingo, so I left to eat breakfast and catch a bus. I was intercepted by Micah, who was also going to Santo Domingo to go to church with his host family. He wanted me to come too so he would have an excuse to break away after church was over.

     We all piled into the bed of a pickup truck and arrived at the church a mere 1 hour and 43 minutes before the service. That little surprise put a kink in our post-church plans, but we broke away afterwards and spent time in an internet place trying and failing to upload pictures from my digital camera. While we were there, a huge angry funeral procession chanting something about 'wanting justice' passed by in the street carrying the Mayor's coffin and by extension, the Mayor himself.

     Micah and I did a few other things in town but shops were beginning to close and people were once again getting out of control for Carnival. Our bus home was almost empty. I went home to eat. 2 carloads of visitors (my host's kids and their spouses and their friends) showed up to raise hell at my house. We went crazy on the porch and screamed and threw water at each other. Then we got sidetracked by a debate on "which is the bigger terrorist organization: the C.I.A. or Al-Qaeda". Then we threw water and screamed some more. I then went down to the river with Gringos Grace and Micah to see if anythng was happening. It wasn't, and by the time it did, I was tired and disinterested. The dancing by the river irritated me. The lady who refers to herself as my mom- my EcuaMom- wanted to show me off on the dance floor. I made an excuse about leaving to find others and made my exit. I returned home and found my house locked. I walked around a bit trying to think of what to do or where I could sleep. I then got into a fight with 2 crazed dogs on a side street that tried to attack me, and since witnesses saw the dogs and I thrashing at each other, I decided that tired or not, I needed to get back to the dance. Since most of the town was at the dance, if anything weird happened that night, such as something being stolen, witnesses would link it to this memorable sighting and I could be blamed. And they don't call for police in these parts, if you know what I mean. So I returned to the dance and got EcuaMom to let me into the house. She was irritated at my unpredictability and asked if i was a "borracho". I fell right to sleep, but later woke up to an insane party in my house. I didn't care to check out who or what.

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