Reading: Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy

Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepción, Cuenca

Since I have been spending a fair amount of time in mass while at the same time reading Joyce and Tolstoy, both who write a great deal about religion, I figured I’d leave you all with this nice Tolstoy passage from Resurrection. It seems so fitting for Catholicism here.

And none of those present … seemed conscious of the fact that this Jesus, whose name the priest repeated such a great number of times, whom he praised with all these curious expressions, had forbidden the very things that were being done there: that he had not only prohibited this meaningless much speaking and the blasphemous incantation over the bread and wine, but had also, in the clearest words, forbidden men to call other men their masters or to pray in temples; had taught that every one should pray in solitude; had forbidden to erect temples, saying that he had come to destroy them and that one should worships, not in a temple, but in spirit and in truth; and, above all, that not only had he forbidden to judge, to imprison, to torment, to execute men, as was done here, but had even prohibited any kind of violence, saying that he had come to give freedom to the captives.

That is all.

Two Months In

Reading: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Main street, only street, Chimbo de Venecia

Seeing as I have been in site for a full two months now, I figured I should probably give some time to explain what I have actually been doing for the last two months in Chimbo de Venecia. Pictures included.

My official project from Peace Corps was to work as a liaison between the NGO ACDI/VOCA and the local ag-organization of cacao farmers in the community. However, in typical Peace Corps fashion, ACDI/VOCA has effectively lost all of their funding for the region of Ecuador that I am in and the ag-organization that they had been hoping for me to work with in essentially non-existent. Fortunately, my counterpart/host dad is the closest thing Ecuador could produce to the Energizer Bunny, which has left me with a handful of small projects to occupy my time with these last two months. Yet, I still have to start my CAT tools… :)

Tripe: An Ecuadorian Rendezvous

Reading: Harry Potter & the Half-Blooded Prince

Hornado, Ecuadorian roasted pig

I’m sure most of my faithful readers are dying to hear about my love life down here, since you always here these wonderful stories of Peace Corps romances and what now. However, I am here to say that it has been quite disappointing, aside from my lovely false novio, Nat, but we’ll get to him later.

It seems that guys down here are quite interested in the prospect of having an available gringa around yet they seem widely obliviously to any form of usefully courting techniques in spite of the massive amount of US media dumping that they’re exposed to. Thus, most seem to think that the most appropriate way to attract a girl’s attention is to hiss at her until she acknowledges you, at which they seize the opportunity to say as many degrading things they can think of as rapidly as possible. It must actually work for Ecuadorian ladies, but they can’t seem to figure out the need to revise their tactics for American women.