Carnaval!

Hi Family and Friends!

Saturday to Tuesday we had a four day weekend over which we celebrated carnaval, the holiday that immediately precedes Lent. We don't celebrate with parades of beautiful women in feathers like in Brazil; instead, in Ecuador we have a giant water fight! People throw water balloons, buckets of water, spray foam (kind of like silly string but a foam), flour and colored powder.  They do this from cars, off of buildings, from windows, and outside of businesses. ANYONE and ANYWHERE is fair game for the whole four days. On Sunday we filled up a couple hundred water balloons (Joe, a Peace Corps Volunteer, and Bonnie, my housemate, filling balloons in the kitchen):

 

Then we drove in Xavi's pickup truck to a town called Misahuallií with about 10 people in the back (I was inside the truck) and they had a water fight all the way to our destination. In Misahuallí on the river beach there was a show with music and beauty pageants (no festivities here are complete without beauty pageants of some kind) and of coarse an on-going water fight. Here we are in upon arrival in Misahuallí (already wet and covered in spray foam):

Here are some children next door to our office playing carnaval with the spray foam:

There are a lot of things going on in the next few days. Today the VP of Runa, Dan MacCombie, arrives and his parents arrive on Sunday for a visit. We also have a group visiting for a week from a Canadian tea company. Our monthly meeting with the Guayusa Producer Executive Body is on Saturday, it is always interesting to see how the representatives work together and generate ideas for the community of guayusa farmers.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Love you!
Aliana

A quick post on baby tapirs

My Aunt Ellen forwarded this link to me with dozens of pictures of baby tapirs. Number 18 is my favorite! 

What's cuter than a baby amazonian animal??

Quito for the weekend

Hi Friends and Family!

The Fiestas del Napo were last week in Tena. On Wednesday night I went to the main plaza and watched the fireworks with my friend, Carmen, and her husband and three children.  There was live music, food stalls and toy vendors, and there were so many people. Unfortunately my camera died while I was out and I didn’t get one picture!

Last week I worked in the office in Archidona through Thursday and then went to Quito to file paperwork to register my visa on Friday. Thanks to my coworkers, Nick and Cass, I was able to do some of the paperwork online so when I got to Quito, I didn’t have to run around too much.

On Friday night, Xavier and I hung out in the Old Town of Quito. We visited three churches: La Iglesia de San Agustín, La Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesus, and La Iglesia de San Francisco that were all built over many years from the late 1500s to mid 1600’s.  I wasn’t supposed to take pictures within the churches but I here is what I got.

 Quito was founded in its present location in 1541 and the Old Town is one of the largest and best preserved colonial centers in the Americas. Here are some monuments and pretty buildings in Quito: 

On Saturday I accompanied Xavier to Santo Domingo de los Colorados for a work meeting. It is a commercial city between Quito and the coast and there are some gorgeous waterfalls along the road.

There is also sculpture of the face of the devil carved into the side of a cliff.

We stopped to buy some mangos at a fruit market outside of Santo Domingo.

On our drive back to Tena on Sunday we could see part of the snowy top of Antisana (a 18,714 ft volcano).

We stopped to check out this lagoon near Papallacta.

We also watched two great Ecuadorian movies this weekend, which I highly recommend: Cuando Me Toque A Mi and A Tus Espaldas. 

 Next week is Carnaval and Runa gets Monday and Tuesday off for the celebration. The tradition here is that everyone attacks each other with water balloons and water guns for four days! I’ll have to make sure to carry dry clothes with me! Good thing it’s hot here in the jungle :)

Happy Valentine’s Day, friends and family!

Love,

A

Wildlife and a birthday BBQ

Hi everyone!

Last week flew by! It’s funny how in a place where the pace is slower, time seems to move faster. Work has been interesting, I am really getting into the swing of my job and I love it. I went out to Community 10 de Agosto with the two interns and our Peace Corps Volunteer, Lindsay, on Wednesday to survey indigenous farmers for our community needs assessment. We went along with the harvest field technicians and while they bought the freshly picked guayusa leaves from the farmers, we conducted interviews.  The community is located about 2 hours away from Tena, so it was a long trip out there on the back of the pick up truck and an even longer ride back on the bus. Although I won’t always have time to attend the community visits to conduct surveys (Lindsay and our interns will be doing a lot of this work) I really enjoy talking to community members and learning about their lives.

Look what I saw coming home from work last week, it’s a tapir! There is a zoo/wildlife reserve on the island in the river across from our house... looks like it was out for a stroll! 

 

This weekend we celebrated Cass’ birthday with a barbecue on our roof terrace.  See how nice it looks with the hammocks?? 

 

There were more than 30 people there and we ate delicious guacamole, grilled vegetables, steak, sausages, and an amazing chocolate cake! Above Helen, Lindsay (our Peace Corps Volunteers) and Robin (a friend from Quito) are preparing food and below Ester, a friend from Tena, is watching the grill.

Here is a picture of me, Lindsay, Cass and Helen at the BBQ. 

The tradition here is that the birthday girl’s face is pushed in the cake so here is Cass with cake on her face!

My housemates built a pingpong table for the house. Here is a picture of my housemates, Nick (no he doesn't always have that mustache...) and Juanjo working on it.

 

I know I owe you pictures of the rest of my housemates, I will try to take one soon!

I’ll be off to Quito later this week to register my visa… Hopefully it doesn’t take too long! 

Have a great week!

A