Ecuadorian Futbol Team!!!

For those who don't know, futbol is serious business down here in South America. Instead of little kids having the choice of little league, football, tennis, or futbol like in the US, pretty much the only choice here is futbol. Kids are born and bred to play soccer, and they don't lose that passion as adults! There is no Sunday tennis with your girlfriends or adult slow pitch softball leagues, there is futbol leagues for little kids, adult men, and yes adult women; and I think I fear the women futbol players more than the men down here! Haley, Jackie, Sarah, Bibi, and I had the opportunity to join one of these Ecuadorian Women's Futbol teams; the team representing our part of town, Rumiñahui. We committed to playing with the assurance from Bibi that there would be no practices (because we really don't have too much spare time outside of work), that it was not too competitive and we were promised sweet jerseys including our names on that back! How could we pass that opportunity up! Well come to find out our team and the league are anything but laid back and 'friendly'. Our 'coach' (more of just the organizer of the team) is super hard core and LOVES to yell at Jackie for unknown reasons, and we have practices once a week. Though I did amazingly get my lucky/favorite number, 4, my jersey is 4 sizes too big and with one sprint down the field I may be completely shed of my top....yikes! Oh and no names on the back! But, such is the Ecuadorian/South American lifestyle...vague/unpredictable.

We had our first game today against a neighboring barrio. I did not play because I had been in bed the past 2 days sick and thus, this morning just walking to the field made me light-headed, soooo, I was a side line cheerer. Though we unfortunately lost 2 to 3, the game was great! The other team was pretty cheap and mouthy and just really uncool. But Jackie scored an awesome goal and I am quite sad I did not catch it on video. It was a proud moment for all of us gringas since the coach loves to pick on her; perhaps now she will be more easy on poor Jackie?

Anyway, it was definitely hard sitting on the sidelines not playing but I am feeling better and will definitely be out there next weekend! Can't wait!

This is panning out to be a rough but great experience for us. It really gets us more infiltrated into the community and first hand experiencing what everyday Ecuadorian life is like, bruises and all! The season goes until December and so we will see what happens! I will keep you updated on our record! Going for the gold baby!

Quick team huddle before kick off! Sarah #7, Bibi #8, 

and Jackie #2 (to the left of Bibi)

Me being sad I missed out on playing

in our first game :(

Bibi dominating the field!

Hope the weekend treated everyone well!

besitos!
Krysta

Somos Ecuatorianos?!

Hey all,
So now that we are about 5 weeks into our programs that started on September 14th, I have lots of updates about the ones that I am personally running/involved in!


Adult English- We have 9 people registered now for the class! Woohoo! And on a regular basis, we have about 6 people show up each day. Which for starting out with no one showing up is pretty good!  We ended up teaching an intermediate class because all our students were far more advanced than we had planned for and so we did a quick change of lesson plans to cater the course to intermediate students. Each day we teach some grammar, vocab, and my personal favorite (my favorite lesson I did everyday when I was teaching in Austin) the Song-of-the-Day!  We give the students the lyrics to an English song with about a word per line missing and so they listen to the song and have to fill in the blanks with the words they hear. It's pretty awesome when we go over all the words and then listen one final time and we all sing along :) So this 6 week course is about to end but we are more than likely just going to advertise some more and continue the course as is since we finally have regular attendance and eager students. But man is English grammar getting hard to teach! Thank goodness one of my English partners is Chet and he was an English major!


Kids English- I am now helping out with Kid's English on Wednesdays because the class got too big, and so they had to split it into 2 groups and thus needed extra help to wrangle all the kids! It's a much more relaxed class in which we teach them colors, animals, and numbers and don't have to worry about teaching them the pluperfect or any awesome grammar like that!  I really enjoy helping out with this class and it gives me a great chance to work on my class room management skills, a skill we all should have in this crazy world!


Natural Science class- I had a vision of starting a science class here teaching kids about elementary science topics and doing those awesome experiments we all did as children (baking soda volcano anyone?!). Jackie is really involved in environmental projects down here and wanted to teach kids about environmental issues and raising their awareness about conservation. So we decided to join forces and start a Natural Science class for kids where we do science experiments while at the same time incorporating environmental topics; i.e. projects that show how oil and water don’t mix and incorporate negative impacts of oil spills on the environment. It has been very successful thus far and we are really excited about the progress and future of this class. These kids have already passed our expectations on their science and environmental knowledge so we can't wait to build on it!

Aliñambi Nutrition Program- A few weeks ago we took measurements (weight, height, and arm and trunk circumference) on all about 130 students that attend the Aliñambi school. We did this because we are in the works of developing a Nutrition Program at this school where, while all are not malnourished, most have nutritional issues whether they be undernourishment, obesity (very few but it is present), or lack of iron issues. We have yet to develop the specific program, as I am still doing research to find what time of Nutrition Programs have already been implemented in Ecuador and their success and failures. So all in all we are looking for a type of program to base ours on, as our partner foundation HealtheChildren, with whom we are working on this Nutrition Program with, will support a program that has shown previous success. So I am crazily working on Nutrition Program research as well as working with Dra. Julia at Aliñambi to get other information about these kids are far as economical status, and other info that will help us correlate what makes these kids malnourished (what the strongest factor is) and how we can change that variable. Also, while taking these measurements we took the opportunity to ask these kids first hand what they ate for breakfast, lunch, and what their favorite food is (I think we only got 1 pizza and 0 mac-n-cheese response...poor kids, I feel I need to enlighten them on the amazingness that is mac-n-cheese!). But we are going to use these responses to also help us find identifying factors of malnutrition. So it is all really exciting and once we get all this data charted and entered into SPSS, we will hopefully have a well enough trend and identified variables where we can create a great Nutrition Program. Upon the hopeful success of this soon-to-be Nutrition Program, we want to implement it in other schools in the Valle de los Chillos region to improve nutrition over a greater area. 

Ecuador Ministry of Health- This past week Shawn and I met with Dr. Escobar, a contact with the Sangolqui Hospital and Ministry of Health, to talk to him about the 5 medicine-interested girls in Manna to start shadowing some doctors. The Sangolqui Hospital is the only public hospital (all public hospitals in Ecuador are free) in the Valle. There are 10 or 11 other subcentral sites (small local clinics that serve small rural communities) that are run through this Sangolqui Hospital as well. This past Thursday we met all the heads of these Subcentral sites at their monthly meeting. It was pretty awesome to see how these areas come together and hear their numbers for the hospital. So in the end, all 5 of us have been assigned Drs. to shadow starting off with once a week and then if we feel we have more time, we can add another day. This is an absolute AMAZING opportunity for us as pre-health students as well as for Manna, and also we are offering up our time to the hospitals here that are in absolute DIRE need of extra hands. Shadowing will allow us, as Manna volunteers, to see how health care here in Ecuador is run so we get a better idea of how to open a successful Preventative Health Center. Also, this experience will show us and allow us to do/see what we couldn't even imagine seeing our entire lives in the US or doing until our later years of professional school. I am starting off working with Dr. Escobar himself who is an Internal Medicine doc who also works with diabetes and TB. I am soooooo stoked, words cannot express. Maybe even happier than a little kid on Christmas morning! I'm such a nerd. Even though I have loads of work already, I am hoping to try these next 2 weeks and see how they go and then hopefully add another day of shadowing per week. Since I am already working with Dr. Escobar in the actual hospital, I am hoping to add another day in a rural subcentral site where the cases are more rare and my opportunities to perform "procedures" would be greater. I will definitely keep you updated on this and I'll try and keep out the gory details (especially for you Mackie! ) (but don't worry mom you'll hear them all even though I know you don't want to but you're my mom and well that's how it goes :) )

Presidential Inauguration- Manna Ecuador has been here for the past 2 years, and with this current group makes 3. They opened the Library last March and thus since then Manna has been a constant figure in the community with the Library acting as a community center for kids and teens. Just being constant in the community doesn't necessarily mean we are 'part' of the community. Though culturally, Ecuadorians are very welcoming, it takes more than just us being here and offering classes to be accepted into the community. We are reminded constantly that the communities are thankful that we are here but we do all we can to be accepted and considered one of them. We go into the community whenever we can, we have attended a fundraiser for the church in Rumiloma, which they tore down last year but didn't have the funds to rebuild (ya sounds weird but thats how they do things down here ha). Rumiloma is the particular community where our Library is located but is it very small and the other communities that are just streets away are San Francisco, Tena, Fajardo, Chaupitena, and Santa Isabel. Rumiloma elected a new President a couple weeks ago and we went to introduce ourselves to him. He had obviously already heard of our presence in the community and so we just wanted to extend our presence to have him as a major contact in the community and his insight. Upon our meeting with him, he formally invited us to his inauguration into office. We were blown away by this invite and were so honored to be formally invited to such a big event. This invite showed us we are one step closer to being accepted and considered part of the community here. The inauguration was great. It was a small meeting where representatives from the other barrios (neighborhoods) and heads of major bus companies and camioneta companies were present. The prez honored us and thanked us for coming and for doing all that we have done for Rumiloma. It was a great honor to be recognized by so many people at this meeting and thanked. We know we are making a difference slowly here in these communities, though sometimes we feel that isn't always the case. It was great to see how much our organization and presence meant to a lot of people and how they are thankful for each day that we are here. One man spoke and said he had been living in his barrio for the greater part of 10 years but has greatly considered moving to Rumiloma because of the opportunities that exist there, with Manna's Library being one of them. That alone was an amazing praise to our organization and fuel for us to strive to achieve more here. 
*Check the MPI Ecuador Blog (link to the right on my page) for some pics from the Prez Inaug! or just click here :)  http://openhandsdirtyfeet.blogspot.com

Other- Last Saturday we did a minga (aka. more or less a community project--sometimes I wish Spanish and English would just translate perfectly..anyway) where we cleaned the streets of Rumiloma with kids and families from the library. We collected over 400lbs of trash along with 2 tires!  It was awesome to see. We took the opportunity to teach kids about litter and trash and the environment. Litter here is sadly horrible and most think that the streets are a trash can. 
We also had a Health Focus Group where we got the chance to talk to a few women in the community about health and preventative health and what type of center or way of obtaining information would be the most successful and used by the community members here. It went great and we received a lot of good information about what Ecuadorians think about Preventative Health. Steps to the center are looking better!


Finally, Ecuador's national soccer team played Uruguay last night and 5 of us had the opportunity of going!  We got to the stadium at 11:45am, more than 5 hours before game time, which was 5pm, and the stadium was already FULL!!  It was insane!  We unfortunately lost, which means our road to the World Cup just got harder, but all in all it was an amazing experience and not many people can say they have been to an Ecuador World Cup Qualifying game!  So it was great and I'm so happy to have gotten to experience the awesomeness that is South American soccer during such a big game!  But on happier news, the first love of my life, Chile, played last night against Colombia and won and thus qualified for the World Cup!  Yay!  I was super excited they won for 2 reasons, 1. They qualified, obvious happiness!  and 2. Ecuador plays Chile this Wednesday as their final opportunity to qualify and so I was really distraught over who I was going to cheer for but now that Chile has qualified, I am comfortabe cheering for Ecuador without feel too* guilty! 

That is all my news for now. Sorry there was so much of it. So much goes on around here each day and I have a severe case of over-wordy-writing. But thank you again for your support on this project and I am so thankful that I am here being able to make this difference for the people down here. Muchos muchos gracias!

Chet and I sporting our newest piece of Ecuador fan 

gear....awesome hats that I want to wear like everyday! 

Ecuador vs. Uruguay!

View of the fans and police from our seats (3rd row baby!)

"Vamos, Ecuatorianos.

Esta noche, tenemos que ganar"

"Let's go, Ecuadorians.

Tonight, we have to win!"

Viva Ecuador!

Krysta