Limbo Day at the Library

(Guest Blogger of the week: Jocelyn Lancaster!)

"Programming at the library during July is a bit different than the rest of the year. We have dismantled Children’s Art and English classes to give Holly and Dana time to focus on other projects that have been put on the back burner throughout the year, and implemented new activities for each day of the week. Tuesdays are sports day, and the first Tuesday of July, Dana and I were in charge of planning the day’s activity.

During our weekly meeting, I had been struck with a genius (if I do say so myself) idea of organizing a “Limbo Day” sometime in July. Nothing gets kids of all ages (even 23 year old kids) excited like the prospect of cha-cha dancing to fun beach music in a line while putting your balance, and your spinal cord, to the ultimate test- over and over again. While Limbo isn’t what you would traditionally consider a “sport”, Dana and I were rushed to come up with something for sports day since the meeting where the weekly responsibilities are assigned took place at 9pm the night before (here, our work literally never ends- in case any of you parents were concerned about our daily routine)!

That Tuesday at 3, Dana and I took over the teen center with our speakers, iPod, stickers (for incentive), and broom, and waited for our students to arrive. They piled in with their jack-o-lantern smiles and listened as we explained the rules of the game. Now, Limbo is a fantastic game, but even the most amazing, fun, and inspired game in the world can get boring after a while. Anticipating this inevitable reality, Dana and I, being the clever and responsible people that we are, had planned a second activity to follow Limbo- another fantastic game called Musical Chairs. Unfortunately, the inevitable reality of boredom does not only apply to games such as the former, but to the latter as well. Do not be mistaken into thinking that Dana and I retreated into a state of frustration or chaos when our carefully planned activities took up only half the time they were supposed to. If living in Ecuador has taught us one thing, it is to never accept defeat, especially in the presence of 6-11 year olds. Thinking quickly on our feet, we led them in a surprisingly successful “human knot” activity (where you stand together and grab random people’s hands before attempting to untangle yourselves) followed by an exhilarating leap-frog competition spanning the length of the teen center.

Looking at our watches at 4:05 with a sigh of relief, we accompanied the kids back out to the library where they quickly dispersed to take part in their activity of choice- puzzles, reading, blokus, mancala, drawing, etc.- happy and fulfilled. After being consumed with leading the summer English program in San Juan for the past two months, I sure have missed the excitement and unpredictability of the library. Limbo day with Dana and the munchkins was a perfect way to be welcomed back.

-Jocelyn"

Guess who's here...

(hint: they're tan from a Miami orientation, are currently in Spanish class in Quito, and are gifted pyramid stackers, apparently)

Cooking Delights

This past Friday, the girls held our first (of hopefully many, hint hint next year's PDs) women's cooking class. Advertised as a class focused on natural ingredients, healthy recipes and new cooking techniques, we found willing participants through Serena's women's exercise group.

When Priya and Mari (summer volunteers) were down here, they worked hard with Serena to pull together a cohesive menu of appetizing, inexpensive, and nutritious foods whose ingredients we could actually access down here. All the women agreed that they more than accomplished their goal. Below you'll find the menu of foods we made, along with one of the recipes. If you're interested in any of the other recipes, please feel free to email me! holland.c.ward at gmail dot com.

The Menu
Homemade Soy Milk (from the beans!)
Iced Chi Tea

Tomato-Corn-Avocado Salad
Grilled Vegetables and Pasta Salad
Drunken Beans

Rosemary Honey Roasted Chicken

Banana Nut bread
Zuchinni Muffins

(Preparing the corn-tomato-avocado salad in the dining room for lack of space in the kitchen!)

(Our taste testers, just making sure we got the flavors right.)

(The whole cooking crew with satisfied bellies and zuchinni muffins in hand)

(Of course, I can't currently find the cookbook we used, but here's a delicious variation of one of the salads we made, a house favorite whenever we can find mangos!)

Avocado, Tomato, Mango Salad

INGREDIENTS
* 1 mango - peeled, seeded and diced
* 1 avocado - peeled, pitted, and diced
* 4 medium tomatoes, diced
* 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
* 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
* 3 cloves garlic, minced
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
* 1/4 cup chopped red onion
* 3 tablespoons olive oil

DIRECTIONS
1. In a medium bowl, combine the mango, avocado, tomatoes, jalapeno, cilantro, and garlic. Stir in the salt, lime juice, red onion, and olive oil. To blend the flavors, refrigerate for about 30 minutes before serving.

Easy and delicious and summery. Which works basically year round down in these parts.
-Holly

Green with Envy

Summer left Monday morning. New PDs arrive Friday afternoon. Please forgive me if posting is a little slow this week, we're all trying to catch up on everything we've been too busy to get around to in the past 2 months. Which if you're a procrastinator like myself includes writing transition reports, putting together the house binder, writing the monthly update (oops...), editing Manna's foundational principles, drafting quarterly reports, planning my segment of the new PDs cultural week in Quito, and working with everyone else in coordinating all the new programs at the library during July (tango lessons! theater! electricity class! guitar!).

That said, all I can really concentrate on is our neighbor's garden. I mean, just LOOK at it! It's beautiful! It's filled with life! And color!






Ours is filled with dust and dead things. Please, PLEASE let one of the new PDs have a decent green thumb. Or else I'm going to have to call my parents and beg them to come back to fix our sad little garden.

(sad dead flowers)

(sad barren dirt)

I blame the state of our garden for why I can't get motivated to work. That's a valid excuse, right Dad?

-Holly

Swallowing fears and llapingachos

(And now, a weekend recap by Dunc, who while typing remembered the day old llapingachos in his backpack...good thing he decided to write a blog today, or who knows how long those cheese potatoes would have spent molding in the dark!)

"Giving a speech in front of 7,000 people?! IN SPANISH!?!

Yes, those were my immediate thoughts when Seth announced that we had all been invited to speak at the Inti-Raymi (Quichua for “Festival of the Sun”) in one of the biggest towns in the valley. Magnifying my fears was the fact that Bibi, Holly, and I would be the only ones in town over the festival weekend due to the Amazonian rainforest excursions and glacier-capped mountain climbing adventures of all our other fellow PDs.

Luckily, we were able to round up of a few of our community friends to go with us, including 4-year old Iori, his mother Paola, and 16-year old Christian. While Holly and I occupied the bouncing Iori on the trip up to the festival, Bibi spent a good half-hour convincing Paola and Christian to talk on stage about their experiences as committed library patrons and teen center members, respectively. As we neared the festival, located in a large field nestled amongst the nearby mountains, however, Paola and Christian’s minds began to change. Along with the dancers in traditional indigenous attire, musicians, and food vendors (mmMMM Ecuadorian llapingachos!) came people. And more people. And even more.

(One side of the pentagon of people)

All in all a couple thousand people were in attendance, enough that when we were quickly ushered towards the stage as the dancers ended their performance, Christian and Paola suddenly declared they not only didn’t want speaking roles, but didn’t even want to go on stage! We luckily managed a compromise, and they joined us on stage while agreeing that Bibi would do all the talking. Fortunately, Bibi did a great job calming her own nerves and gave an excellent outline of our programs and services at the library to the suddenly rapt audience.

After exiting the stage and before I could make a beeline for the llapingachos, we were all swarmed by people interested about our programs. In just a few minutes, we gave out more than 200 fliers and offered even more details about MPI. Before heading home for the day, I was finally able to make my way to my long-awaited (like 30 minutes!) snack. The food in my belly just amplified the satisfaction I felt about the afternoon. We strengthened our bond with several of our best community friends, advertised our programs to a large number of people in a new neighborhood, and Holly and I successfully avoided testing our Spanish in front of several thousand Ecuadorians. I guess in situations like these it really pays off to be a Program Director rather than a Country Director…

-Dunc"