Los Jordan Polings Vamos al Ecuador

We had a plan. It was simple. Fly SFO to UIO, stay a few nights in Quito to get a little business done, then make the bus trek over the Andes Mountains to La Josefina, where we would meet my Ecuadorian family and our little cinderblock house and spend at least the next month nesting. Such nesting would entail interior painting and curtain-making, hammock hanging, probable bunkbed building, sugarcane sucking, banana bread making, and green orange picking. Said plan was specifically designed to be smooth and atraumatic -- a  means to mitigate any upset the kids may experience in having purged, packed up, and disembarked from all the comforts of home and community. We had every intention of grounding ourselves to a halt in La Josefina. It was going to be amazing. And then on June 13, the Ecuadorian people took to the streets.  image from the guardian.com image from ecuadoriantimes.net image from elcomercio.com You haven't heard? I know, these nation-wide strikes have hardly made ...

"It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be loved without satiety." -John Steinbeck  We are just 2.5 weeks away from our leave-taking, and despite the gaping carboard boxes that clutter each room of our house, the stacks of "important" papers with unclear destinations, and the seemingly endless todo list, I have to say this is a sweet time. This leave-taking time.  At work, I am feeling valued and cherished for the work I have done and the work I won't be around to do (even if some of my colleagues are reasonably resentful). At church, I get extra hugs and blessings for safe travels. In my little neighborhood, so many sweet exchanges of well wishes and curious questions. Are the kids excited? Do you know where you will be living? Are you all ready?* My kids are cherishing each pluot from our tree, each strawberry from the strawberry stand, and e...

hot showers, tap water, ice water, lap swims cheddar, muenster, brie, Havarti, parmesan, goat Erica bread regular mail service, driving, Halloween in the West End,  Cheerios  cold milk, friends, my mom, my washing machine  and dryer my neighbors, a nice mattress, screen doors, printer the library prewashed spinach, sushi, church, garbage service What might you miss if you were going away for a year?

Don't feel bad if you don't really know where Ecuador is in the world.  Or if you do not really know very much about Ecuador. It doesn't make the US news that often--which is probably a good thing.  When I received my invitation to Peace Corps Ecuador in 1999, I remember a sense of excitement, a dream of burgeoning adventure, and then a feeling of shame: other than the fact that I presumed it was on the equator, I had no clue where in the world Ecuador was, nor any idea of all the wonders it had to offer. In preparation for our family's year abroad, I thought it might be interesting to try to write a post on the nation of Ecuador. A little geography, a little history, a little anthropology, and some personal commentary. It's obviously far from inclusive. Ecuador is a small South American country sitting squarely on the equator, nestled between Colombia (to the north) and Peru (to the south). At 176,204 square miles, it is slightly smaller than Nevada. When I write t...

Paul and I met at a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer event in Berkeley, California in the fall of 2004. We were the only RPCVs under fifty there that night, save for a mutual friend who had coordinated the event and a classmate I had dragged along for company. During the course of that evening's conversation and a date or two shortly thereafter, it became crystal clear to me that Paul would be my life partner. And very early in our relationship, in a dark salsa club, trading stories about our families of origin and our Peace Corps experiences, we began to envision the adventure our family is about to embark on. . . now almost 18 years later.  We would finish our schooling. We would marry. We would have children. We would live somewhere we love and be of service to our community. We would travel the world with our children. And, when the time was right, we would take them somewhere for an immersion experience-- for the opportunity we both so treasured -- to live in another place, to ...