Update from Ecuador

Hey everyone! We are back in the capitol, Quito, waiting for a grad student and our student director, Mike Vehar to arrive. He is traveling to a few of the ETHOS sites this summer to do some filming as part of his thesis. In Ecuador, we are going to be filming some of the local school children near our village to get a better understanding of their daily lives both in school and around the home. I think there will be a segment with Br. Giovanni and his work with the Otonga Nature Reserve as well as some info on our work here this summer. So hopefully there will be a video online soon all about the projects that are going on this summer. Vehar will be here for about a week then move on to the next country. We will be here in Quito for the next couple days, then head back to our small village Las Damas when he arrives.
As for an update from me... things are going very well. Our family is very nice and giving, even though they are very poor. I can´t imagine how hard it is for them to adjust to living with three gringos, but they have made us feel at home and part of there family in the past few weeks. The work is going much slower though. First, there is the inevitable ¨tropical time¨ where there is no rush or need to get anything done. This coupled with a slew of other obstacles has prevented us from getting as much accomplished as we had hoped. We have spent a lot of time learning the language and culture as well as becoming more familiar with the distillation setup in the area. We also built a tank and pipe system from the other side of the valley, so that the family could get a steady water supply, as their past water would come and go with no regularity. Then we ran some distillations, but somehow the GLASS device used for measuring alcohol content broke and the family does not have the money to buy another one. We might end up buying one for them this weekend so we can measure our progress. Hopefully in the next few weeks we will make further progress with the distillation. The family sells all the alcohol they make in Alluriquin. The initial idea of using this alcohol for fuel in cooking stoves does not seem reasonable after all in Ecuador as the government subsidizes propane, so pretty much everyone uses that in conjunction with wood cooking. Instead we are working with one family to try and up their alcohol production so they have a more steady income. (They also make a sugary, taffy like candy called panella made from fermented sugar can juice, sell bannans and tagua nuts as well to make money.)
The family is pretty big. There is Piedad and Luis, who have four daughters. Their ages are 18, 23, 30´s, and another one that is older. The oldest two daughters are married and one has children. There are a couple others that come and go, but its already too confusing for me to think how to type out (it took us a while to figure out how everyone was related). Needless to say there are a lot of people coming in and out/eating and helping around the house. It has been interesting living in the area we are in. The roosters, chickens, dogs, mule, and any other animal in the general area start making their crys and yells at anytime between 4:30 to 5:30 am (we go to bed around 8:30-9 each night). The sun comes up and down the same time year round; sunrise and sunset are around 6:30 am/pm.
We have also made the hour and a half walk through a footpath to another village called Malton a couple of times. There we have stayed with the Yanez family who also produces alcohol. There process is very efficient and the family is fairly well off. We have made a few visits there to learn more about the fermentation/distillation process and also get a change of pace in the food department. We are still eating chicken and rice, then rice with chicken, then chicken and rice soup.... so we appreciate any slight changes in menu.
The area we live in is fairly remote, so we do not have a newspaper, tv, or telephone at our disposal. There are some faint radio stations though if you dont mind thick static. For internet and phones we have about an hour walk, North, down the mountain to Alluirquin (I believe you can google earth that city if you want to check out the area). Free time is spent playing volleyball, by far the most popular sport that we have seen and tossing the frisbee with some of the family members. We did get to watch the Ecuador vs. Argentina World Cup qualifying match today while we are in Quito. Argentina scored in the last minute to tie the game 1-1!!
The views are amazing here. It seems like we are always on a vista overlooking valleys and rich, green forest. We have seen so many colorful insects and flowers, it has taken up the majority of our pictures so far. They are all beautiful though. Ecuador is a very pretty country. The people are very hard working and hospitable as well. We definitely stick out as gringos but it is just curiosity. Not many foreigners ever are in our area so they always ask where we are from and where we are staying in the area.
As for future plans. We should continue to live in Las Damas for most of the time, but we havent done mutch traveling yet, so we plan to start that possibly next week. There is so many places I want to visit in the country still. Next week we are planning on visiting the town of Banos, south of Quito, where we can lay in some natural hot springs, check out some local, weekly indigenous markets, take a bike ride into the amazon, and tour through some of the Amazon rainforest. Also, just before Kyle heads back on July 31st, we hope to visit some cities on the coast of Ecuador. Even take a tour of a small island close to the Galapagos islands. To go to the actual Galapagos islands is very expensive and this is supposed to have the same type of wildlife (it is actually called "poor man`s Galapagos").

Thats about it from me. Things are going well and everyone is in good health and good spirits. I have learned so much already about the language, the people and the culture. I hope we can continue to make progress on our project in the coming weeks. I hope things are well in Ohio. I have not heard any updates from team Enigma yet, but I am sure things are going great. Miss you all and I will try to post again in the coming weeks.

Until then...