Slow Returns

So it’s Saturday, and I feel like I owe you all something for my unexplained absence the past few days. The lack of Thursday and Friday’s contemplations would suggest another internet outage, but that’s not the case. Nor was I intimidated by Dunc’s homage to a certain carbonated orange nectar, although it was quite powerful. The actual reason was a horrible tussle with what we’ve assumed to be food poisoning. Without getting into any details (you’re welcome), let’s just say it was a small victory this morning taking my pillow out of the bathroom and throwing away my toothbrush (you taught me well, Mama).

Anyway, having missed out on the past two days in a haze of delirium, I’m slowly catching up with everyone on what’s been happening. From soccer games in the community to stressful visa complications; countless calls regarding the start of the small business classes this coming Monday (yeah Dunc!) to making three new Canadian friends, it’s been a full two days.

Friday afternoons always finds me in the kitchen cooking dinner for the group, sou-chef Mark tailing close behind and dreading the inevitable question “will you cut the chicken breasts from the rib cages?”. Usually cooking for 8 calls for about 2-3 hours in the kitchen, boiling huge pots of water, cutting and dicing a lot of veggies, detaching chicken breasts, mincing garlic cloves, juicing limes, etc. Seeing as how yesterday I was just returning from the land of the dead, Mark was still in Quito, AND we were having three extra guests (hello Canada!) for dinner, I headed to the kitchen at 2. I was moving slowly, ok?! After washing my hands about 40 times and dousing myself in anti-bacterial soap, I felt ready. From what I’ve been told, 5 hours later dinner was good (I was still on the strict ‘toast and gatorade’ diet), and the house was full of loud voices, hilarious stories, purple wine-stained lips, and an abundance of laughter. The perfect Friday week’s-end.

Below you’ll find my recipe for Cinnamon-Sugar Banana Bread, which was effectively devoured last night. Enjoy!

Cinnamon Banana Bread

Ingredients
* 1/2 cup butter
* 1 cup sugar
* 2 eggs
* 4 large bananas
* 2 cups flour
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
* 1 tablespoon butter, melted
* cinnamon-sugar mixture

Directions
*Cream butter and sugar.
*Beat in eggs, one at a time.
*Mix in mashed banana.
*Sift dry ingredients together; stir into banana mixture, add nuts.
*Pour into greased 9x5x3 loaf pan.
*Bake at 350 for 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into loaf comes out clean.
*While cake is warm, pour melted butter over top and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar mixture.

Holly

Wanna Fanta, Don´t cha Wanna...

(Today´s blog post comes from Dunc Fulton, a new MPIE PD whose mission this year is to put a bed in the kitchen...yes, THAT Dunc. He is a die-hard Tex Mex snob, has talked to just about every single person in all three towns about the small business classes he´s been organizing, and loves to listen to Holly tallk about Michael Phelps)

Following up on Holly’s promise several days ago, I will in fact devote my first guest blog entry to what is clearly one the greatest simple pleasures of living abroad: the glory that is Fanta. As I quickly learned 2 years ago during my first stint living abroad (when I spent a semester in Spain), the States just can not match the quality of Fanta that exists outside its boundaries. While strangely enough I am not a huge fan of soda in general, nothing beats an ice-cold Fanta out of a glass bottle. Fortunately, as I was able to discover one of our first weeks living in the Manna house, such a delicacy exists only a block away from our casa. One little street over, in fact, sits what is TV-commercial quality Fanta for only 20 cents a bottle! If there is to be a caveat, it lies in the fact that one must drink the Fanta inside the little tienda due to the high value of glass bottles in this country.

If, by chance, at this point in the entry you’re suddenly thinking, “Dunc must not understand that you can buy Fanta in the U.S,” I do actually realize this truth. However, there is an acute difference between your typical 7-11 plastic 20-oz. bottled Fanta stateside and the treasured glass-encompassed bottles that abound in Spanish-speaking countries. In case you were curious, a comprehensive Fanta hierarchy exists. As all wine connoisseurs out there surely agree, not every “year” for a particular brand is as good as the others. It is much the same with Fanta. Without further ado, here is the Fanta ranking in its entirety (ice-cold temperature is presumed):

1. Glass bottle (200 mL)
2. Glass bottle (500 mL)
3. Fountain soda with ice filled 1/3 way (although this can be a risky choice based on the syrup concentration
4. 2 (or 3) liter plastic bottle
5. 500 mL plastic bottle
6. Any size aluminum can
7. Warm = the worst. Not even worth it (any size / type of container).

Dunc

Fractions and Strawberry Cake

Today’s correspondence comes after an enormously satisfying dinner cooked by Jocelyn and Eliah; two types of enchiladas, tomato-rich guacamole, and strawberry cake. Yes please.

I started to write before dinner, but was in a somewhat foul mood and everything I tried to say came out sounding a tiny bit cranky. And by a tiny bit cranky, I mean very cranky. I blame the fact that Serena and I had just done a Billy Something-or-other Boot Camp workout; in preparation for our women’s exercise classes we’re trying to create different workouts, translate the directions into Spanish, and get into shape ourselves, which is proving more difficult than perhaps it should. An hour of squats, pushups and punch-kick-lunges was enough to make me want to jump out my open window. But now I’m well fed and the burning in my thighs has somewhat dissipated, thus I am in a better position to begin the daily blog.

As I write this, Seth and Dunc are singing (seriously jamming) to Ray LaMontagne in the kitchen while doing the dishes, Jocelyn is playing with our little baby birds, Serena is attempting to learn how to dictate workout moves in Spanish, Eliah is at a Cabina talking to his parents, Luke and Mark are in Quito sending off Carla (our fantastic Ecuadorian friend who just got a job in Denver, my home town!), and I am soaking it all in. Speaking of baby birds, we all talked this morning about the feasibility of keeping them, and Serena and I were defeated in an “anonymous ballot vote” 6 to 2 in favor of returning them. It is probably for the best, considering everyone has taken to calling the duckling "Bird Flu", but it will be hard to say goodbye to the little guys come Sunday. Even if they do crap more often than they chirp (which is quite often).

Anyway, today at Apoyo Escolar, I was working with Jonathan, one of our students, on fractions. Oh fractions. Not only have I had to essentially relearn how to do fractions (least common denominator, flipping the fraction with division, simplification... welcome back to Campus Middle School, Holly), Ecuadorian math in general is NOT the same as math in the States. The process is just different, and when you have someone who likes to guess what the lowest common multiple could be instead of actually working through the problem (ahem, Jonathan), this process becomes all the more important. Don't misunderstand me, Jonathan is a really smart kid. He knows how to do fractions. Not only can he do them, he can do them well. Even gets the right answers. (Like I said, smart). But he gets so frustrated that half the time he erases his work before he’s finished the problem even if he’s on the completely right track. If it doesn’t feel right to him, he whips out the eraser.

The first problem he attempted (complex factional addition) he did exactly right, ending up with the right answer. And then he erased it. All of it. To try again, in the same way. With the same result. And erased it again. I guess 14/15 just didn’t look right to him. 4 erasures later, I found myself sitting on my own hands so as to not steal his eraser and swallow it. But patience and reassurance won out in the end, and we eventually reached the conclusion that 14/15 was, in fact, correct.

Here’s hoping tomorrow we do long division.

Holly

Bird Flu

This past weekend was a full one. We hosted Jens, a state-side visitor from the organization HealtheChildren who came down to Ecuador to meet with Julia at Aliñambi about expanding the clinic there. Mark and Abbie (a recently departed, sorely missed 2007-08 MPIE founding member) have been working since April initiating, coordinating and nurturing a budding partnership between HealtheChildren and Aliñambi, and it was awesome to see months of emails, phone calls, and planning come together this weekend. After tomorrow mornings’ team meeting I will have a better idea of where the collaboration stands now, but we are, as Mark put it, “cautiously optimistic” about how things progress from here.

This weekend was also the close of the Sangolqui Corn Festival, and Saturday found Dunc, Jos, Serena and I watching an enormous parade of horses, searching for the much anticipated bulls, dancing on the sidewalks with questionably drunken Ecuadorians, and jostling our way through the throngs of people in an attempt to get to the “largest cake in Ecuador”. With Jos taking the initiative on that one, we got there pretty darn fast :)

We also added to our Manna family, but these little guys are a current point of house tension, so until tomorrow’s meeting I will refrain from posting anything more than just their pictures...


Holly

When in Doubt, Use Photography

Today I spent the majority of my time drafting, re-drafting, deleting, starting over, getting side-tracked, avoiding, thinking about, writing, editing, and obsessing over the monthly email update we at Manna send to all of our donors, friends, family, professors, neighbors...ie. you if you’ve found your way to this site. Thus it is midnight here in Ecuador and all I have to show for today’s Daily Life blog is a long run on sentence and what follows close after (read: THIS).

When you check your email and see something from Manna Project International, just know that I’ve poured more thoughts atop that sucker than I do syrup over Mark’s homemade griddle cakes. And that means a LOT.

So today instead of a story via words, you’ll get a story via photographs. Enjoy :)

(Marjorie, one of our Apoyo Escolar students, soaking up free time between homework)

(the much anticipated stop for cold Fantas in the glass bottle...by far the best, according to Dunc's grading scale. He'll probably post about it when it's his turn to guest blog)

(top of a church in downtown Sangolqui, site of last weekend's "Corn" Festival and our favorite outdoor food market)

Hasta,
Holly