The end...for now

I leave for Quito (and then to the airport) exactly ONE week from today. The last couple weeks I had been feeling really ready to go home, almost wishing I could fast forward time…and now I am finding I want exactly the opposite. The library is finally coming together and I am adding the finishing touches: currently typing up a list of rules to laminate and put on the wall, labeling the different book sections in the library and as the table and book shelves are finally in the room I have been enjoying just hanging out and watching the kids come in, sit down, and just read…something they have never had the opportunity to do in school. I almost couldn’t believe it when a group of the seventh grade boys stayed past the school bell to finish the page they were on.

Just for fun, I am going to make a list of things I will miss and things I will not miss.

THINGS I WILL MISS (and already miss thinking in a week they will no longer be the “norm”)
1. A minimum of 100 hugs per day from some of the cutest kids you could imagine
2. Listening to Segundo’s stories about the Llaganates, hidden treasure, and whatever else is on his mind
3. Being a campo girl: milking cows, planting fruits, plowing land, riding horses
4. Eating encebollado (this fabulous tomato based soup with onion and fish that Isabel makes Friday-Monday to sell in el centro de El Triunfo).
5. Watching the kids play with my puppy, Sisa and listening to all the nicknames they have for her, “Sisas,” “Sisita,” “Sisan,” “Simon”….
6. Watching Barbie movies with my “hermanita” Melanie on rainy Ecuadorian winter days
7. Learning how to knit from my neighbor (or rather stopping by her house every 5 minutes because I messed up a stitch on the scarf I am hoping to someday finish)
8. Taking the bus to and from El Triunfo and seeing waterfalls, gorgeous mountains, a snowy volcano, etc. every time I look out the window
9. Riding in the back of trucks with at least ten other people with hands grabbing onto me trying to steady themselves
10. Picking fruit from trees and kids pressing little apples, pears, claudias and numerous other fruits into my hands every day during class
11. Going to the river when it gets hot to skip taking a cold shower
12. Paying only 35 cents for a coke, 25 cents for a tamale, 15 cents for ice cream, $10 for a pair of jeans (and the list goes on…)


THINGS I WON’T MISS:
1. Not being able to drink water without boiling it first
2. COLD showers (when there is even water that is)
3. Rice and some form of chicken (if it’s a good day) every day
4. Not being able to flush toilet paper down the toilet
5. Catcalls and the nickname “gringa”
6. Other teachers thinking I am a money tree of gringa-ness
7. Not having any privacy
8. Not having internet or a phone (although I will admit, this could just as well go in the list of “things I will miss”)
9. Waking up to roosters crowing at 5:30 every morning
10. Washing my clothes by hand (Well, this could be a little white lie…I have been paying a neighbor to wash my clothes for the lat couple months)

When I re-read what I have written down, both for things I will miss and won’t miss, I think to myself that all of these things have been a part of my experience here in Ecuador and that my experience has certainly been a positive, unforgettable one. Even the things I won’t miss I cherish in some way and probably wouldn’t change them even if I could.

I think it’s fair to say that this could be my last blog from Ecuador…thus, the end of my blog until my next adventure (which is still T.B.D). As I am leaving mid-May I have rounded out exactly one year abroad (having left late May for the Dominican Republic last year). Wow. One year abroad. The Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Ecuador. Sometimes I wonder what it will be like to be stationed in the U.S for a while, speaking English, taking hard classes again, etc… Then I remind myself that the adventure doesn’t stop here, nor does the Spanish or the cultural clashes…life is what you make of it and I certainly want to keep the same zest for life, adventure and new experiences that I have encountered abroad.