Soccer Star and Birthday Boy

July 19, 2008
Saturday
8:33am
Sayausi
Our Apartment


Warning: For those of you looking for more Ecuadorian culture, color, dancing, and fireworks please refer to our last post. This post documents the more mundane happenings in the last two weeks.


Over the past several weeks random events have taken place in Sayausí including a Fourth of July party, a soccer game, and Mike’s birthday. Below I will briefly explain each event and of course there are pictures as well. For those of you in a hurry please feel free to skip directly to the pictures. For those of you with time to spend, I’m glad you’re spending it reading our post.


Fourth of July
We hosted our first official gathering at our apartment on the Fourth of July. Two of our friends were making their way from Zapatillo (the southern most part of Ecuador on the border of Ecuador and Peru) to Quito and decided to stop in Cuenca for a few days to break up the 22 hour bus ride. They stayed with us despite the fact we have very little to offer in the way of sleeping accommodations. However, we compensate our lack of beds, pillows, blankets, and warm/cozy sleeping spaces with good coffee, hot water (most of the time), and unlimited hot tea. Not sure if it’s a good trade but they seemed happy enough.

Since we already had two people over it seemed logical to invite our nearby fellow PCVs to come over to celebrate the Fourth of July and make excessive amounts of food. So, for the Fourth of July the six of us made the following in honor of Lady Liberty: guacamole, tortillas, spinach dip, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, veggie plates, fruit salad, peppers and onions, and last but not least hot dogs (with a few chicken dogs as well for the sort-of meat eaters).

Sadly, there were no fireworks (although in reality I had had my fill of fireworks from the weekend before in the fiestas of San Pedro), no flags, no streamers, no parades (although again I think I had had my fill of parades during the San Pedro fiestas), and no cupcakes with flavorless red, white, and blue frosting. Despite the lack of so many Fourth of July goodies we still had a good time and look forward to the next Ecua-Fourth of July celebration especially considering that in between the Fourth of July and now I have learned how to make some pretty killer pigs in a blanket using the pretzel dough recipe from our Peace Corps cookbook and locally grown hot dogs!

Soccer Game
The Sunday after the Fourth of July the daughter of the daughter-in-law of our old host mom invited me to play on their women’s soccer team. So after ten years in soccer retirement, I laced up my tennis shoes, put on some tight red pants (all the uniforms here for the women consist of some sort of lycra pant or shorts and a tight shirt…go figure), found an old black t-shirt and ya, I was ready to play in the big leagues…actually the word big may be misleading here for two reasons. One, the women (and men, children, teens, preteens, and everybody in between)here are anything but big. Therefore, I am grandote and had to try really hard not to knock anybody over while playing. Two, the league is made up entirely of people from Sayausí. But for Sayausí this is a big as it gets, so I guess it depends on your perspective.

At three o’clock on Sunday afternoon I filled out my registration card and took the field with eight Ecuadorian women, teens, and preteens for my South American debut. We won 1-0 in the end and according to Mike I impressed everyone on the sidelines with my ability to pass.

Passing is something that is not really practiced much in the women’s league. The protocol for when the ball comes to you is to kick it as fast as you can and as hard as you can in the direction that you were facing when the ball came to you. So, despite my ten year absence from the soccer field the ability to pass was impressive enough to invite me back to play again (tomorrow I have my second game).

The Big Three Ohhhh!
As most of you know Mike celebrated his thirtieth birthday this past Monday. Thanks to you all for the wonderful gifts that you sent. You’ll see how much they helped in creating a birthday atmosphere in the pictures attached.

I think I can safely say that Mike is transitioning very well from young, carefree and in his twenties to older, wiser, and grayer in his thirties.

The Apartment, again
We’ve also included more up to date pictures of our apartment, including some hand-painted chairs (by Mike), hand painted bookshelves (one by Mike and the other by me…I did the one that you think looks nicer), the kitchen, and me with an apron (this was a necessary purchase as I only have one fleece and wear it all the time, even when cooking so it is so flour filled at the moment that I might actually have to wash it…brrr. Thanks in advance for the new fleece, Mom!).


Hope you enjoyed an insider’s look into some of the things that Mary and Mike do in a random couple of weeks in July. There of course were some work related activities as well but we didn’t have any pictures to go along with them… maybe next time?

I’m not sure what the next post will contain but there’s a rumor about a BBQ in nearby Santa Ana with another Peace Corps volunteer (Kelly) and maybe some pictures of me milking cows if I can manage to get up at five when it’s cold, wet, and dark to help my old host niece milk their cows. Better just say there will be pictures and stories of a BBQ and the cows might end up being a nice surprise…but don’t count on it.



As always, double-click to enlarge the photos and read the captions.