Lots
of questions and no answers, that’s what these past few weeks have
been all about.
So
much to tell so little time and space! First of I guess I am way
behind in my updates, like a month or so behind. Sorry just cant keep
track of everything ….
So
here we go
MARCH:
In
March I left for two weeks to visit my family in Bolivia. It was fun,
relaxing and chaotic, very very chaotic. I mean there were moments
when I thought and I was sure I would kill someone but those were few
and far in between. Which is great! Anyway, the chaos was caused by
several happenings. First, the houses were getting built/fixed so
there were many workers in and out all freaking day, and I mean
starting their work at 7am and ending sometime in the late afternoon.
Secondly, my Mama Nelly (grandma) had moved back to Bolivia to open
up her Tienda and to spend her days in “peace”. Which meant
building, fixing her home, getting her paperwork/stuff done, and
getting her stuff moved into her new place. Thirdly, there were way
too many people living in one place, which caused a lot of contempt
between individuals. Well even after those terrible moments of mild
agitation, I still enjoyed my family and their company. I had a great
time with my brother. We spent most nights huddled in his room with
the projector beautifully illuminating his wall with our TV-shows. We
also spent time talking about stuff, random and stupid stuff, but
still made my heart warm. Which makes me miss him a lot. I wanted to
spend more time with my parental units but I knew they were busy with
the houses. In the end we still managed to spend time with each other
and have family bonding time as well. Hopefully when they go back in
June they can relax and just have a grand ol' time. Seriously they
need the damn relaxing time.
Yup
lessons taken from this small vacation:
-
I enjoyed the small moments I had with my family. You know when you
are making dinner for them and it comes out terrible and they sit
there and eat it anyway. Or when you finally figure-out that your parents are still trying to figure shit out just like you are.
- I
loved bonding with my brother and my Mama Nelly.
-
I find it interesting that I no longer have any patience what so ever for
anything or anyone.
-
My temper seems to come out more often now, which I need to keep in
check. That is something I must work on, like really work on.
- I need to spend more time with my grandpa, sadly he isn't getting better. and that scares me.
My grandma and my daddy
Michael, my cousin, and my granddaddy
APRIL:
April,
oh April, you are a month of suckage. Yup you have been by far the
worst month. So pretty much this month started out with a bang, and
mind you not a happy BANG. I never thought of my city as a dangerous
scary place to live in. Yeah it has its really awful parts and places
you shouldn't willingly go to just like in any big city, but it still
had some charm to it. Well, one unforgettable evening, Katie and I
happen to be walking home alone after dropping off a fellow volunteer
at their hotel. About a block before we turned for our apartment
building, we were assaulted by two guys from behind. The main guy had
a big shinny knife and made a grab at for my necklace, while he was
holding that shiny big knife of his very close to my face. Mind you
my necklace is a piece of shit steam-punk locket but it was my piece
of shit locket and I really liked it. While his buddy was the look
out guy. Anyway, the main guy asked us to hand over our cellphones,
which we did. Then he started to leave, when he was about 10 steps
away from us he turns around and asks us for money, which we told him
we had none. Then both guys took off. The whole situation sucked,
mainly because I have never been assaulted on the street while
walking home and never felt so hopeless/defenseless. Yeah makes you a
wee bit paranoid about every one. Anyway, we reported our incident to
PC and also reported it to the local police.
That
week we ended up going to PC HQ in Quito (12-13 hours from our site
on bus) to talk about our incident and to go to the swear-in
ceremony for the new PCVs. PC was very responsive and very nice to
us, so we had a good chat with our director. I appreciated the way
they treated us and the way they handled the situation, I did not
feel like they blamed us for what happened. And they were very
comforting. Thanks Peace Crops Ecuador.
Anyway,
this type of situation can set off all sorts of paranoid feelings. We
are still jumpy, we still get uncomfortable when walking alone on our
crowded streets, and we rarely go out at night (this is normal we are
really homebodies and like to spend our time at home reading, on the
internet, or cleaning/washing clothes).
So
dealing with that situation made us miss a week of teacher training
but it wasn’t too bad. The teachers had meetings and other stuff
going on so it wasn’t like we lost too much time.
That
weekend we had rain, monsoon season type rain. Yup guess what
happened? Our apartments flooded again. Yeah we had about and inch or
two of water throughout our apartments. So we had our landlord and
family help us get all the water out. Yup so after angry Katie and
andrea talked to the landlord about getting our roof fixed, his
mother (which turned out to be the landlady of the whole building)
decided it would be a good idea to get it fixed.
Last
week, a day after we started classes officially, unannounced we had workers in our apartments fixing our roofs at 8am.
So
the first week of classes we had to stay home to look after the
roofers cause everyone and their mother said not to trust the guys
in our house alone. So it took them two days to “fix” our roofs.
By the time they were done, it rained again and well what do you know
it leaked again. So sure enough they took the whole week to finish our roofs. And guess who comes by at about the same week, well what
do you know the door guy shows up takes 5 minutes and voilà
I have a bathroom door! Yes I can finally pee/poo without feeling
self conscious about it. It took the door guy about a freaking month to show up for
5 minute work (we timed it), all I could do was shake my head in disbelief.
So
now we are all caught up to this week. The weekend before was my friend Nicky's
24th birthday and we celebrated it on the beach. We had
such a great time it was by far an amazing weekend of shenanigans.
Now
to the shitty part of the week. On Sunday, I found out a close
“friend” of mine tried to harm himself and ended up in the ICU.
This is the second attempt at harming himself. I thought I wouldn’t
feel the way that I am feeling right now but I am. I thought my
emotions would be a tad restrained less of those feeling I thought
were long gone. My emotions, those tricky bastards, have betrayed me once again, which I am okay with. I guess this means I can still care for
someone deeply. Anyway, just hurts and I feel hopeless and angry. I
cant help my “friend” and I feel like there are so many questions
which I am sure will never be answered. I feel bad for his family and
his close friends. I feel anger towards him for trying to leave me
and his family alone without him on this planet. I never thought this
could happened and yes I do blame myself for not seeing it, maybe if I
had been more attentive at his comments I could have
stopped him. Yeah I know irrational thought but I still cant help it. The "What
if...?" will always cross my mind constantly. That’s the truth. All I can do now is think
positive and hope to the gods and goddesses that he gets all the help he
needs. I still care for him and that isn’t going to change any time
soon, I know that now. But I will not stand for another episode like this, this was way too much for me. I can care for him from far away. I
can send positive energy his and his family's way, that is all I can
do.
Well that is all, now I must/need to concentrate on getting my schedule fixed and planning my workshops for my English teachers. I also have to start writing proposals for the two libraries (reference and school libraries) we want to start up soon. Yup lots to do still.
I leave you with this amazing, nostalgic, sad song that really just gets my heart tangled in a swirl of emotions.
The gaslight anthem song - Old Haunts
