Hello all,
Well it's officially 2012. Incredible. So much has happened in the past few weeks and months and year I can't even fathom it. I think New Year's is my favorite holiday because it forces us to evaluate the entire past year and look towards the future. I love that! So much has happened in the past year. I fell in love with Shadow (well, that was a little more than a year ago...but close enough!), I graduated from college (again!), I was accepted into the Peace Corps...and I moved to Ecuador. What a roller coaster ride my life has been.
Despite the fact that I'm thousands of miles from the people I love the most in this entire world, I had a great Christmas and New Year's celebration with fellow PCV's and Ecuadorians. Jordan (my PCV neighbor) and I had a Christmas cookie decorating party on the roof at our apartments and made DOZENS and DOZENS of cut-out sugar cookies for our friends to decorate. We made tons of homemade icing of different colors and, of course, sprinkles!!! A bunch of my CEPAM co-workers came, some Ecua-friends, and our host family, and fellow PCV's. Everyone loved it so much and I took tons of pics. I also made Buckeyes (Hello, Ohio!!!!!!!) and they were a HUGE hit!!! I still am snacking on a plate of them...hehehe...
For Christmas I went to Riobamba to visit Orrin and some PCV's in the sierra (it's about 5 hrs from Guayaquil, my homeee). It was an awesome trip! Orrin is the best host ever and he had bunches of fun, relaxing things for us to do. We saw the Christmas lights in the park, ate cevichochos (my favorite Sierran snack!), went to a live animal market (I have tons of pics!!!), cooked DELICIOUS food, drank too much beer (started at 10am on Christmas morning...Merry Christmas, everyone!!!), and climbed freaking Chimborazo. Jesus, it was crazy!!! Chimbo (as we now call it since we're buds - lol) is an inactive volcano here in the Andes Mountains known as being the furthest point from the center of the Earth and the highest point in all of Ecuador at an altitude of about 21,000 feet. We went up to the second refuge and it was absolutely one of the most incredible things I've ever done in my entire life. I actually cried when we got up there because it was so overwhelmingly breathtaking and I just wished Shadow could've been there by my side. When he comes to Ecuador we're DEFINITELY gonna climb it!!! No doubt. It was totally incredible and I'll post pics on my photo page eventually - I'm slacking on that, as usual!!! Ugh...
Anyway, then for New Years I took a wonderful trip with Anna (my best friend here!!!!) to her site in another province of Ecuador then from there we went to a farm in El Carmen which is a teeny village amongst miles and miles of plantain trees (a type of banana). Her host mother's parents live there, so we stayed with them and the whole family for 3 days. We took a tour of the farm (I have tons of pics, of course...), saw a cock fight (it wasn't really legit, just a demonstration because the family fights cocks...), set off fireworks, danced salsa all night long on New Years Eve, drank way too much, ate delicious food, took lots of bucket showers with rain water in an outdoor shed, burned a life-sized man to celebrate New Years, laughed at drunken men, found refuge under the mosquito net at night, yelled at each other to communicate under the rain pouring on a tin roof all night long...etc, etc, etc. It was nuts. Such a good time. There aren't even words to describe it but I'm trying my best...I could write a book...
Anyway, I'm back to work today at CEPAM!!! It's the first official day back to the grind and I hope it goes well. Vamos a ver. I wanted to let all of you know that I have officially started a 365 project!!!!! It's the photo project where I'll take and upload a photo everyday of the year and post it to this website with a description and whatnot. I think it will be really awesome and will help me to remember cool things that I've done and to share them with everyone. The website is:
www.365project.org/sheburnsbright/365
That should take you right there and you can check out my pics as I go through the year!!! I'm so excited about this!!! :) :) :)
Well take care and keep in touch!!!
Don't forget....
my e-mail address is everlys1561@gmail.com...
my photo site is www.photobucket.com/sheburnsbright
and my new 365 photo project is www.365project.org/sheburnsbright/365
Those are tons of ways to keep track of me and see what crazy adventures I'm having...
Much, much love from Sur America,
Sarita
