hello friends: navidad es mi favorito

Oh the holidays. There are few things I enjoy more than waking up on the ol' Steele ranch with nothing on the agenda except preparation of the feast of Feliz Navidad (this year's choice for our Christmas meal), an ass-kicking workout from Mama, and picking up a sister at the airport.

This morning, after all the jumping, squatting, sitting up, planking, and nearly vomiting because I hadn't had breakfast ("you know if I don't eat every few hours I get nauseous"), I sat down with a cup of coffee and this year's pile of Christmas cards, inspired by Schizo's utterly hilarious post, The Most Dysfunctional Time of the Year. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and get on it, right now. I laughed my ass off, twice. Good work, my friend. The captions kill me.

Unfortunately, none of the family photos we got this year are good enough for awkwardfamilyphotos.com (though I do believe the Stout boys could get a pretty successful preciousfamilyphotos.com going if they wanted). But I did giggle several times while reading my favorite Christmas letter (love ya, Womacks), so I thought I'd write my own.

For this to be effective, let's all pretend you are opening a piece of snail mail. Like most normal humans, you look first at "family photo". I'm thinking something along the lines of...

Add three chickens, and maybe some super-cheesy message like "Hope this holiday season brings you that warm and floofy feeling" (Floof is Kitty's nickname) or "Merry clucking Christmas" and voila! Just enough awkwardness to put people on the fence between having a good chuckle and feeling kinda sorry for me (which is, of course, my intent. There's no way I'm serious... or am I?)

Then, with a slight hesitation for fear that you may discover that I'm a bit nutty, you proceed to the letter (which just so happens to follow the exact format of the Womacks' except I added color and photos since I don't actually have to print this. And I'm quite a bit wordier):

Holiday Novella 2010

Chapter 1

This was a crazy year for the youngest of the Steele families. After having four great years in Arizona, Kitty and I are happy to say we've moved on. This was the year of the complete shut-down of the state government, the ultra-hike in tuition (due to the failing state economy), and the new uber-oppressive immigration law (one man in Ecuador, in broken English, told me that this law made Arizona the new Nigeria. Congrats, Grand Canyon State. You must be proud to be "protecting America's border"). We have settled in quite nicely in South Carolina, and are happy to announce the addition of three new members of the family. Blue, Green, and Pink are three beautiful Barred Plymouth Rocks that previously served as breakfast (until they stopped laying eggs), and may someday (all the squeamish, skip ahead to Chapter 2) serve as dinner.

Chapter 2

Kitty

Its been a bit of a rough year for Kitty. Back in Arizona, she thought she ruled the roost, but the local mockingbird thought otherwise. Every time she walked outside, the stupid thing would dive bomb her. Even our last day in Arizona, I was finishing up in the house and had loaded her in the car. The stupid bird was dive bombing the car. But she did great in the car.

While I was in Ecuador, she stayed with Hayley. In a strange twist of sympathetic fate, they both had a broken hip at the time. Finally she made it to South Carolina, where she loves it (despite getting mauled twice by some fanged creature). There is so much for her to do here; palmetto bugs are her new BFFs.

Chapter 3

Murn

March- Spring break brought my second Ecuadorian "vacation". Somehow, in a week off school, my Engineers Without Borders group managed to fit in a ten day follow-up of the water distribution construction project we underwent in the summer of 2009. All in all, the March trip was pretty successful. The transmission line (about a kilometer of 110mm PVC buried a few feet deep in Amazonian rainforest clay, from the community's dam to their holding reservoir, which we had spent countless hours constructing) was performing swimmingly, and the holding reservoir and distribution system that runs through the community were still operational as well. We did water quality testing that proved the drinking water facility to be a success (no coliforms)! The trip was wrapped up with some community education about proper disinfection and maintenance, and we arrived back in Arizona late Sunday night with class the next morning (needless to say we were all exhausted). Carrying on the tradition from the previous summer, my ankles decided they wanted to swell to the size of a baby elephants, so I opted to skip my Monday 7:30.

April- After working with him in a lab at ASU since October, my post-doc supervisor got a faculty position at Clemson and offered me a position in his research group. I applied and planned to make my decision post-South-Carolinian visit in May.

May- Graduation! The whole fam, plus Molly, minus Hayhay (who was at the time scoring herself a sweet new job in Nacogdoches) were in attendance. Shortly after, Mama and I headed to SC, where I almost instantly (adopted the accent and) decided that's where I would be in August.

June- I spent June working in the same lab at ASU, training my replacement: an awesomely entertaining Mexican girl who was not only fun, but also brought me her mother's delicious homemade Mexi-concoctions, and eventually a kitty cat for Craig.

July- Perhaps the craziest month of my life involving lots of riding in the car, Colorado hiking, a horseback ride from search-and-rescue, a new home on the other side of the country (see previous posts), and a final Ecuadorian excursion. The first two weeks of my time in Ecuador were intended to be the "wrap-up trip" for our years-long project. Our intentions were to make a few adjustments to treatment system setup to make maintenance easier, go through the process of changing the sand in the filter with them to ensure they could care for the system, help the elected water committee decide on a budget, and say our final goodbyes. But not a single thing went our way. The new parts for the system and the sand for the filter were never delivered, the community had not elected a water committee as promised, and perhaps worst of all, the system that we EWBers and the community together had spent the past two summers breaking our backs to build had been all but destroyed by the community's new "urbanization" project.

This, my friends, was their idea of the path of least resistance for building a new road: bulldoze the shit out of about three meters of earth and lay some gravel. Nevermind the new, perfectly functional, hard earned transmission line that used to be buried in the top few feet of the hill. See that 90 degree PVC bend on the right side of the road? That was their solution to the exposed pipe. For all you people not well versed in the ways of the civil engineer, let me tell you that installing two 90 degree bends and three meters of loss followed by two more 90 degree bends and three meters of gain in a gravity fed system is anything but a solution. A combination of the poor glue job and the enormous force on the first bend meant complete blowout if the valve in the reservoir was closed. So the valve was left open at all times (the automatic shut-off valve we had installed previously had magically "broken off"), overflowing the sheet of heavy plastic that lined the reservoir to prevent leaking. In lay men's terms, thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of labor down the drain (or the broken bend and the cracked reservoir, to be more exact). We were distraught, to say the least. In the final few days we were able to get most of the loose ends tied up: a water committee was elected and we made suggestions as to how fix their problems. The committee was encouraging; they had great ideas how to regulate water use and maintain the system. But the bottom line is, NEVER and I mean never get involved in a project that you can't see through, beginning to end. Somehow I feel like if the group that is finishing the project had been the ones that started the project, things would be much different. Despite the hardships we faced (and the group at ASU continues to face today), it was hard to say 'Adios' to the Yankuam family, who had been our generous hosts all those years. Our last full day in the village, Cesar, the father of the family took us to a waterfall about an hour's hike into the jungle that he had been telling us about for years. I will always appreciate them.

(A terribly blurry picture, but) John, Afton, Cesar, Anita,
their four children, and myself on our last night

August- It just so happened that an old friend from high school (Ryan) was going to be in Ecuador in July for a study abroad program. So we decided to both stick around after our respective programs and do some traveling together. Since the other EWBers left about a week before Ryan was done, I had that week to kill by myself. The first few days I spent in Quito, just relaxing. I had my laundry done, walked through the city's string of parks to its mountaintop park to hang out and study my Spanish, and enjoyed a few of my new favorite baked good: empanadas con queso. You are probably thinking, "Meh, boring." But you are completely wrong. Public parks just so happen to be my favorite way to see a city, and Quito sure knows how to do it. In one park I watched a game of soccer and a magician with quite a crowd, in the next I enjoyed a live band with some grilled meat on a stick (I LOVE STREET FOOD), and the park on the hill? Well, that was pure bliss. Acres and acres of courts, fields, paths, gardens, ponds, a magnificent view of the city, and one of the most enjoyable art museums I've ever been to. If I had had a tent, I could have spent the rest of the trip there.

Best. Park. Ever.

The empanadas became somewhat of an obsession. Imagine the softest bread you've ever put in your mouth, filled with (something along the lines of) cojita cheese, and topped with a sprinkling of sugar. Afton and I had followed our noses to a bakery in Puyo a week or so before and tried these gems. My life was changed forever.

After chilling in the capital for a few days, I had made arrangements to go to Samana Pamba. I spent almost a week on a working dairy farm with Luis and Maria, the farm manager and his wife, and Niko, my tour guide. It was wonderful. Picking vegetables, preparing the land for planting, milking the cows, picking corn and beans, feeding Maria's animals. In the afternoons, Niko and I would go to the nearby town of Cayambe and see the sights. He was constantly talking about taking me on "gastronomic tours" (we were a tour guide/ tourist match made in heaven). We went on a road trip to the nearby markets in Otavalo (the oldest markets in the Andes). At the end of my stay, after telling me just how much he appreciated my attitude ("You never say no to anything!"), he took me to the one place he has never taken a tourist, La Floresta. Street food (and awkward stares at the white girl) abound! I could literally talk about that week for, well, weeks. But I'll leave that for another time.

The pastures.

Maria and her granddaughter feedin' the piggies.

On the only mountain that the equator passes
through that is covered with snow year round.

Once Ryan was done, we met up in Quito to head to the beach (or so we thought). We woke up early for the eight hour bus ride (on which I had a ragin' fever) only to get there and discover the town was disgusting, the people unfriendly, and the ferry to our hostel would not be leaving until the next day. Pretty desperate, we got on what looked like a zoo train, and rode for a few more hours (inland, nonetheless) to a hotel. We stayed the night, then decided we'd much rather just go back to Quito than brave the terror again. So it was back on the eight hour bus ride. Back in Quito we relaxed: walked around the city, I showed him my favorite park, we went to the botanical gardens, and the last few nights we moved to a hostel outside of the area chock full of tourists, to Casa Bambu (heaven on earth). In the evenings we would buy some veggies and such at the little stand down the street, make dinner, and relax on the rooftop hammocks that overlooked the city. It was hard to leave, but I know I'll be back.