Beach Day

Today we had a great day on the beach in Canoa.  The sun finally came out!  We played in the waves with one of our friends from the farm.  The only bummer was Harper got stung by a jellyfish on her toe.  Harper reported that the sting didn't really hurt all that much so after some ice cream she was all better.
Sorry for the short note, but we spent all day on the beach instead of in front of the laptop and now we need to catch our truck back to the farm.  Ciao!

October 16th

It’s been a slow week at the farm.  I started it off sick Sunday through Tuesday and then Danny wrapped it up sick Friday through Sunday! Our symptoms included headaches, no appetite, and just general malaise and now we have to just cross our fingers that the kids aren’t next. 

Also this week the teachers of the younger grades were absent from school so Harper and Cal didn’t get in much “academics.”  They still went to school with Danny most days (because he was subbing in the older grade class.)  Cal did his usual all week- he played in the tree house with the Lego’s and then enjoyed soccer at recess.  Harper got to help Danny a lot with the English lessons.  She modeled the ABCs for the kids and helped with their pronunciation. At the end of the week Cal and Harper got to show all the kids our "Sesame Street Letters and Numbers" DVD and they were really excited to share this. Although it was much slower paced than most weeks the kids still wanted to go to school each day and see their friends.

Harper and Edgar watch the parade

All the girls decked out for their dance in the parade

About 20 kids piled into this truck to come to Canoa

On Wednesday all of the farm volunteers went to Canoa in the morning for a parade.  All the area schools participated by marching, singing and dancing.  The Rio Muchacho School marched and danced dressed in long wide skirts and trousers.  Sadly for Harper she wasn’t part of the processions, but we got to watch all the school groups and cheer.  It was one of the few parades in Harper and Cal’s lives that they were not in!  Because the parades in Carbondale usually have more participants than spectators we all felt a little left out sitting on the sidelines. 

One of the other schools in the parade

Cal cheers muy fuerte

This weekend we decided to stay at the farm for Saturday.  It was a nice lazy day and Cal and Harper spent almost all of it playing with their friends who live here.  Harper and Crystal (a 7 year old girl who lives just across the river and who’s grandmother works in the kitchen at Rio Muchacho) spent their day coloring rainbow after rainbow.  Cal played with Davíd driving around a little truck in the dirt.  Language barriers don’t seem to matter when you are making truck sounds and passing crayons!

With Danny in bed (and the disagreeable señora away for the weekend) I got to do a little cooking in the kitchen.  Two other volunteers and I took the kids up to the garden to grab ingredients and then we got cooking- we sautéed kale and onions and I attempted to concoct a recipe from home.  The soup and beans portion of the meal had already been made by the señora (the sweet one) and so although it wasn’t much, it was fun to cook for myself a bit. 

Tonight we will stay up late to make chocolate because there are a few new tourists here at the farm.  Cal is taking a nap now to get ready.  Tomorrow it is off to Canoa for the day to eat our gringo food and use the internet.  Ciao!

A new kitten is at the farm and Harper has been having so much fun with it.  Sadly it appears to have fleas so the fun has slowed a bit.

Chocolate

Chocolate!

Oscar roasting the cacao seeds

Harper, Cal and Andrea remove the toasted skins

Grinding the seeds into cocoa powder

Grinding the cocoa one last time, with sugar added

Mixing the cocoa powder/sugar with milk

Eating it up!

Since we’ve arrived at the farm we’ve been lucky to make chocolate a couple times.  We start with the fruit of the cacao tree.  It is yellowish in color and about the size of the mango.  We cut the fruit in half to find large white seeds covered with white gooey stuff.  Next we need to remove the slime around the seeds so we sucked on each one.  It tasted somewhat sweet, but nothing like chocolate.  Danny was worried about Cal choking on the seed so he kept reminding him not to swallow it.  As he was hungry and really wanted a snack, he kept asking, “Can I have something I can chew and swallow?”  After rinsing the seeds in water, we put them in the drying rack.  The seeds take about 8 days to dry.  Fortunately there were some seeds in the solar dryer that we ready to use so we collected them and put them in a pan.  We roasted the seeds until the outsides were all black.  After letting them cool a bit, we peeled the blackened skin off the seed and put the seeds in a bowl.  Voila!  Chocolate!  It was quite bitter, as it had not been sweetened.  It smelled great but the kids were still not impressed. To sweeten it up we mixed the seeds with a block of sugar and ground it all up in a hand grinder.  We all took a taste of the powder and now the kids were happy.  Cal and Harper both kept sneaking pinches of the chocolate, but we still weren’t done.  We put the ground chocolate back on the stove, added some milk, and stirred.  It thickened on the stovetop and came to be rich, thick, fudgy syrup.  Finally, we poured the melted chocolate over some fresh pineapple chunks and dug in.  Yum.   

En la Cocina

This week I worked for my morning routine as the kitchen wench.  This is not the official job title, but it should be.  Assisting the disagreeable señora, each morning I cut fruit for breakfast and set the table.  I also was lucky enough to score the job again to help prepare the lunch for a few days.   I don’t think I still have a fair read on her but let’s just say she is not the sugary sweet grandmother type.  She bangs around the kitchen bumping into whomever or whatever is in her way. She has very specific ideas about how to cut fruits and vegetables (she’s been here for 8 years) and unfortunately for most of the volunteers who speak some but not fluent Spanish, she only repeats the same words over and over but in a louder and harsher voice in order to explain her preferred preparation method.  A few volunteers have ended their time in the kitchen in tears but I have vowed not to do so.  I know how to cook.  I can chop, dice, etc.  These skills help (especially compared to the 20-somethings here right out of college with not much more than Mac-and-cheese in their cooking repertoires.)  Unfortunately, she still is usually not pleased with my fumbling in Spanish while I attempt to get a clear directive from her.  Instead of letting it get to me I’ve decided to kill her with kindness and not show that the banging and yelling affect me at all.  Inside my mind I am usually reeling and bad-mouthing her in any Spanish phrases I can think of (which sadly I don’t have many and should have paid more attention to the side conversations in my high school Spanish classes,) but outside I'm all sí and por favor and gracias.  Thankfully next week I will be back to an outdoor morning chore and done in the kitchen!

Another Week

We flew out of Denver one month ago today.  In some ways we feel like we just left, but in other ways we feel like we've been traveling for much longer.  In the grand scheme of things we've barely nicked the surface of our eight month long trip but so far it is all feeling manageable and, of course, fun!

We had another nice week at the farm.  School continues to go well for the kids, and Danny and I are feeling good about our daily work.

Danny had three afternoons this week working with Genesis (one of the older students) and her family on the garden for her graduation requirement.  The family has welcomed him, sharing all kinds of treats with him and teaching him what they know about the land.
Although there are some Ecuadorians who work on the farm:
-Oscar, Danilo, and Edgar- three 20 something guy who do all kinds of jobs on the farm and in the office
-Benja- a man in his sixties who oversees them
-Sergio- a handyman who does everything from building new beds to making bamboo fences
-Juanita and Norita- the señoras who cook and clean
-Dario- the boss
getting to know Genesis and her family has felt different.  This connection has been a meaningful way for Danny to learn more about life in rural Ecuador and make a real relationship with a family here.

I have kind of a different experience on the farm because I spend my day mainly with the volunteers.  Right now there is a couple from England, three American interns here for 6 or so months, a German woman here for a year, a woman from Norway, an American guy who came for classes and now is staying on to volunteer, and a woman from New Zealand.  Danny and I are definitely the oldest ones.  Because of the increasing interest a "gap year" most of these folks are kids right out of college not wanting to get a "real job."  I can definitely relate and in a lot of ways I kind of feel like I am reliving some of my AmeriCorps experiences.  But 10plus years and two kids later I've got a very different perspective.

One breaking news story from the kids- this week we did lots and lots of riding in the back of pickup trucks!  Because we've got little ones, everyone always offers us the front cab of the trucks in which we take into Canoa.  I've always just taken the front with the kids, but this week we threw caution to the wind and the kids are very happy with their new location for traveling.  When in Rome, right?

Our plan is to stay at the farm for another 2 weeks.  We're itching to see more of the country and it would be really nice to rent an apartment for ourselves in Quito and do some of our own cooking.  We also would like to set up a short homestay through a language school and continue to practice our Spanish that way.  We've got a bunch of plans brewing for now.  We'll know more next weekend.

Canoa

Yes, just like Camilo said we would, we’ve become very fond of the town of Canoa.  In some ways it is what keeps us motivated all week on the farm.  The kids love to play at the beach and eat ice cream; we love to get a cold beer and sleep in a bed with a real mattress. 

One of our favorite things to do in Canoa is to visit the panedaria to buy muffins, bread, donuts and cookies.  After 2 weeks on the farm we have a new appreciation for baked goods because the farm doesn’t have flour and hence, no bread!  (besides a kind you make with yucca flour, which doesn’t compare.)  The bakeries in Canoa make the basics- no Artesian Bread in Five Minutes a Day, but it does hit the spot.  We’ve made the rule that the kids can eat as much bread as they want on the weekends.  We’ll see if that fattens them up a bit. 

In Canoa we’ve been staying each weekend at a hostel a bit off the main street that is quiet and has amazing food.  Diego and Lorena, a really helpful and friendly couple from Spain, run the place and we have enjoyed talking with them and getting ideas about other areas to see in Ecuador.  Danny and I joke that one day we’ll come down here and help run the place, but we haven’t seen the rainy season so no commitments yet.  For now I’m just trying to consume as much Spanish tortilla as possible.

And last but not least, the beach here is great.  Here is what Cal and Harper have to add:

Cal- Lake Michigan has little tiny, tiny waves and Canoa has some tiny waves and some big waves and some really, really big waves that go, “whoa, whoa (Cal motions that they knock him down and tumble him around in the surf.)  I just go falling and keep moving in the ocean and I go to the end all the way. I go all the way to the dry, dry sand.  I go pretty far. 

Harper- We haven’t seen any fish swimming in the ocean but we have seen snails, sea centipedes, sand dollars, and dead jellyfish washed up on the beach.  We make a lot of sand castles and decorate them with shells that we find- big ones and little ones, striped ones, and shiny ones.  I like the good scooping ones. 

But according to them both the best thing about Canoa is the ice cream.

Eco Papel

Each week we take Wednesday afternoon off from farm work and have a "cultural afternoon" with the rest of the volunteers.  This week we went to Bahia and visited a recycling and paper-making company.  The folks at Rio Muchacho started EcoPapel, which collects paper from the surrounding schools and business and makes into new paper.  Here are some photos of Harper making a piece of paper and some bookmarks we decorated with the flowers collected at the farm.  They sell notecards, boxes, and paper within the community and some is sold internationally as well.

Harper pulls the screen through the paper "mulch" 

Next she dumped the paper on the screen onto a drying sheet and then it gets hung out in the sun to dry.

Here are 2 bookmarks we decorated that were made from the ecopaper.

Harper decorating a bookmark with Marta.  Many of the workers here were hired from a shrimp company that is overshrimping and destroying the mangroves as a result.

And the ride back to the farm WITHOUT CARSEATS!