Sippin on some syzurp

Hey friends and family. Ross here. Have you ever felt like you were a tourist for about 8 months straight? That is what I am starting to feel like. I know I am not really a tourist and that I live here, but whenever I visit other places, people always tell me welcome to Ecuador and then try to speak to me in broken English. At first, I would get a little upset and try to explain to the person that I am living here and that I have a job in this country. Now, I kind of play along. I have found out it is more fun to replying to there statements in English. They either think it is really funny or just look really confused. I mean they are yelling at me in another language and I am returning thoughts to them in my native language. All of a sudden, they are bilingual. I don’t know if this is mean or nice, but it helps me pass the time.

Also, I have been returning all the “hey you” and “gringo comments” by just simply saying “hey you” back. It is pretty awesome and most of the people in my community find it comical. Sometimes it seems to like a game to Ecuadorians. They are all trying to see if they can say something to me and have me understand. The best thing I have seen/heard was about two weeks ago when I was on a bus back to my site from Quito a random dude ran on the bus I was riding looked at me and shouted good morning pollo. He then smiled and darted away from the bus. He simply said good morning chicken to me, but he had forgotten to translate the pollo part into English.

So what has been happening lately in the Ecuador world you might be asking? Well, about a month ago I went to what I would like to call I minor freak out when my counterpart was put into the hospital in Guayaquil. All of a sudden I could not understand Spanish and people were just telling me the worst things about his conditions. Don’t worry though, it was just a minor freak out. Today, he rode his bike to work. He is doing much better even though he claims he is only mas o menos.
After the freak out, I went to reconnect. It is like a conference/reunion thingy. All I know is it was the GREATEST week of my life. You get my drift right. What else? I have been back in the Municipio for some time now and they will give me the dinero for my project, but they want me to change my project. Instead of making a tree nursery, they want me to buy 18,000 trees from another tree nursery and then teach people in the community how to plant them. I am gonna try and talk them back into the nursery idea, but hey, at least there is money to do something. I think the next project that I will work on will be a garbage separation project. I want to teach the people in this city how to separate organic and inorganic garbage and then have the Municipio pick up each type on separate trips. This way, we can make compost in a large scale next to the landfill. This will greatly effect the amount of garbage in the landfill because right now about 80% of it is organic. We would also then have good dirt to give away. I have basically been in a brainstorming coma for the past two weeks. I got plans and it is just a matter of translating these English thoughts into Spanish activities. I think I can.

So I am planning on coming home for Christmas still, I am gonna try and buy a plane ticket this week. Lets hope it is reasonable. I will let yall know exact dates asap. I hope everyone is doing good and again, I miss most of you…ok all of you.