Mailing Instructions and much, much more!

May 22, 2008
Thursday
11:15am
Computer Lab
Cuenca

We have lots to write this time but we are going to start with mailing instructions because we love getting packages and there are a few tricks to make sure they get here as quickly and inexpensively as possible. So, here we go.

Mailing Instructions

(1) The package must be under four pounds.

(2) Send contents in a padded manila envelope. Small boxes are OK but may end up costing us money and taking longer.

(3) Send as normal delivery by regular USPS (not UPS or FEDEX).

(4) Declare a $0 value. This sounds counterintuitive but do it, otherwise we have to pay money to get the package. We don´t have money.

(5)Declare contents as `stuff´, `papers´, `magazines´, or any other vague declaration you want to make.

(6)Also include a list inside the package that says everything you sent, that way we know if customs stole anything...which they have been known to do every now and then.

(7)Please feel free to include small bills and we will let you know exactly what we spent it on (ex: taxi ride, laundry when it´s raining all of the time and nothing will dry, extra snacks, more internet time to post blogs and email loved ones, books, movies, bottled water, fancy toilet paper, curtains, cat, house plants, the nice frying pan not the aluminium one, ingredients to make cookies and cakes, more fancy toilet paper, granola, other foods with fiber, etc..)

(8) Our address is:

Name of Volunteer (Mike Carbone or Mary Driscoll)
Cuerpo de Paz
Casilla 01-01-2001
Cuenca-Azuay
Ecuador

So, those are the mailing instructions as best as we can give them. Please follow them. They may sound silly but it´s a kinda crazy postal system. We have received several hassle free packages within two weeks of when they were sent at no cost to us. We have also received a package that had declared value of $2 that took us three days, four lines, a trip to the bank (to pay customs fees of $5), and several chats with a customs official with her armed assistant to receive. We did get the package and everything was in it (which we enjoyed greatly and still appreciated a lot) but it took a long time and cost us money. So, please follow the guidelines and everything will work out fine.

We really do love getting packages, so thank you so much to those of you who have sent something, whether it be gum, magazine articles, books, or a simple note...we love it!!

Living Situation

As most of you probably know we have had a few housing issues since we have arrived in Sayausi. Last week we implemented a new eating plan which has helped tremendously. We told our family that we were instructed by our bosses (this is not entirely true) to eat outside of the house during month two. We explained that by doing this we get to know the comedores in the area and get to know more people by being out of the house. We did not explain that we really just do not think it is quite good for our health to be eating in their kitchen everyday (ex: the glasses we drink out of at times have mold in them or have at times been used to collect urine samples from sick people in the house). While the family is still extremely nice we have successfully removed ourselves from eating there. And as a benefit, we have actually met a lot more people and received a discount on our laundry because the laundry owner is also the owner of the comedor where we have started eating breakfast each morning!! In light of the success we have had with this impromptu strategy we are thinking of relaying the idea to our bosses because, though unintentional, it does have legitimate merits.

Furthermore, it looks like we might be able to move into an apartment during the first or second week of June, assuming the apartment meets the stringent standards that Peace Corps requires for our housing. We will tell more apartment details if it is actually approved. For now it should suffice to know that we have spent a considerable amount of time in a hairdresser´s salon to work out some of the details (the hairdresser is the niece of the owner of the apartment that we are looking into). Don´t worry, no radical new haristyles have resulted from out time spent there, yet.

Work Stuff

As far as my work goes, things continue to pick up. I´ve had several meetings over the past week to plan for the festivals of San Pedro of Sayausi. In particular, The incorporation of ecological activities during the festival. For example, a trash pick-up in the surrounding barrios, a plantaccion in the nearby Sanctuary (a place very near the national park where the Virgen Mary was sighted some years ago. You can imagine this has attracted a lot of people to the area and thus damaged the environment), and a Museo de Agua which will display information about the water cycle, how water is used in daily activities, how we contaminate the water, how we can make it better, and how God created water for us as a gift as well as it´s symbolic role in the Bible. Yes, I am working with a priest lest anyone forgot.

I also met up with a volunteer who was giving health lessons to the catechism classes in Sayausi. She lives in Cuenca and is finishing her service in about two months. The grand plan is that I will take over these classes when the new class begins in September. This is very exciting as I kind of love teaching about the birds, the bees and STDs to adolescents...and the priest okayed teaching about condoms (don´t tell the Pope).

This weekend, we´re headed out to the small villages around Cajas that I will be working with over the next two years. We had a meeting with all the community leaders last week about the cost and feasibility of putting in bathrooms and it looks like it´s a go. So, this weekend we´ll get to check the places out and get to know the people a little bit better. We´ve heard that the area is supposed to be beautiful, freezing, and that Padre Oscar takes his poodle on the trip carrying him strapped to his back like a baby as we travel on horseback (we will try to get a picture but it depends on our unreliable camera). We´ll be back safely on Monday and we´ll fill you in on all the details in our next post.

On the house keeper side of things, the competition for free wire to hang drying clothes has picked up a notch this past week due to continued rains and absence of sun. I´ve started to leave my clothes up even though they are dry until I am ready to hang up new clothes...this is only mildly working as the family is OK with the layers of drying clothes which means our clothes get stuff piled on top of them...I´m currently brainstorming a list of new and more foolproof methods. Also, the wash bucket we use has moved with the cows a full 200 yards from the house through mud, grass, and poo. I´m not sure if this is a retaliation to my wire-hogging scheme but they have successfully deterred me from doing laundry this week. However, I do think the cow is on my side as I saw her eating their clothes off the line the other day (this may also be the reason for the yellow milk last week).

Now for Mike´s work updates. Mike is still going into the office, though apartment dealings have kept him in town more than once this past week. Apparently, there is is a gigantic mudslide in between Sayausi and the office where he works and for some reason the workers are digging it out from the bottom which only makes the top more precarious. The road was completely closed Friday and then again on Tuesday but no one was hurt during either slide. I try not to think about it but Mike keeps telling me all sorts of worrying details, I will not pass them on. The bright side is that by Tuesday when we get back the road should be cleared of the twenty vertical feet of mud and Mike does not have to go to work between now and then.

At the office Mike got a computer this week! But he can´t have internet at his desk because there is no available connection to the network at his desk. But he wouldn´t have been able to use email so it´s not really that big of a loss. In more useful news he did get an extra rain pancho from the office which we will be bringing with us this weekend (yes, it is still raining everyday in large quantities and getting very cold).

Random

Baby chickens hatched this week and, for some reason we have yet to extract form our family, the mother is tied by the foot under our staircase (see picture from last week) and the chicks just mingle around her.

There are a ton of Ecua-poddles in Sayausi and the people call them raza (race) frreynch (french). They are the dirtiest dogs you have ever seen because they have white fur but it rains all the time and the roads are dirt and they are outside all of the time. That being said it is quite the status symbol to have one. The Padre has the most famous raza frreynch named Benito who dons a sweater when it is chilly and attends all of the meetings held in the convent (he usually jumps up on the nearest chair to the Padre and remains there for the entire meeting). The Padre also has a kitty named Violeta-Gertrudis, not just Violeta, Violeta-Gertrudis. She wears a bell with a purple ribbon around her neck and spends her time batting Benito in the face as well as having her tail pulled by Benito. It seems like one of those love/hate relationships.

Last but not least, I had la gripe (a cold/flu) this week which means more home remedies. Not quite so many as the last but enjoyable all the same. Appartently, if you rub cocoa butter all over your neck and chest then cover it with a brown paper (very much like the kind lunch bags are made of) this will help the gripe. Also, it is good to eat a little cocoa butter with a little aguita de remedios (a homemade pink, sugar tea).

Today

Today we are in Cuenca to post this blog, go to the bank, check our mail, eat fresh vegetables, and enjoy the celebration of Corpus Christi, a.k.a. the best celebration in the entire world. As far as we can tell the next 12 days are celebrated by eating tons and tons of cookies, cakes, and candies, and watching tons of crazy fireworks at night!! How cool is that! We´ve already tried a coconut cookie, a peanut treat, a donut-like cookie, and some other cookie. The streets are literally lined with cookie and candy vendors and at night the streets fill with three-story high castillos (castle-like structures filled wtih fireworks) and vaca locas (crazy people with cow-like structures on their heads also filled with fireworks).

Hope all is well! We love you, and miss you all!!