This weekend was a flurry of activity! Friday night started off the weekend, as the nearby town of Amacy Picao commenced their 9 day patronales. This is the town’s personal “carnival” in which there are events and dancing every night. Many of us young Guayabans went and danced, danced, danced. Lots of fun. Home at 2am, only to awake at 6am Saturday to go into the city. I specifically needed to buy a new phone, since my main cell phone somehow broke (and doesn’t get reception anyway).However, when I went to the cell phone store and asked how cheap the least expensive phone was, they told me $40US dollars. Heck no!

One thing I always struggle with is transportation into the city every Saturday. We take a local truck (and all pile in the back with bags of cement and chickens) but its always very vague as to when it will pick us up in the morning and when it will leave the city in the afternoon. Sometimes it leaves at 7:30 in the morning, sometimes at 8:15. However, you never know, so you need to be standing at the stop (which is a 20 minute walk to get to) early, just in case. Then, when you finally get to the city and ask the driver, “what time are we leaving” he responds… “hmm..10:30? 11?”. Well the truth is, he doesn’t really leave until 12. But you can never be quite sure, and you certainly don’t want to be left behind (because if you aren’t there when he leaves, you will be left). So, sometimes I waste an hour in the city just waiting for a bus… that leaves at no specific time..from no specific spot in the city (you kinda just wait on the street looking for the truck). Whatever, hopefully I will learn over time.

As we are riding back from the city Saturday afternoon, we stop at a nearby town on the way and pick up 20 Guayabo family members from Santiago (including 7 host family members)! Who knew they were coming (7 extra people to my house)? Not I. Turns out, its voting weekend for the local legislature and everyone returns home to vote. The town of Guayabo was flooded with 20 and 30somethings who had left Guayabo for the city. Everyone was happy.

Then, later Saturday afternoon I was invited by my evangelical priest/project partner to a service at “the castle” at 3:30. I thought this sounded cool, and unknowningly agreed to a service that lasted until 10:30 pm in a town 40 minutes away. There was no castle. The town was actually named castle. This was very unfortunate, as I missed the big Saturday night dance that EVERYONE went to, including all the out-of-towners. The service consisted of a lot of ranting and people fainting with the spirit of Jesus. A bit disheartening, but there will be other dances.

I awoke Sunday morning with a sudden urge to bake. I rustled up some supplies at the colmado in the town over, and decided upon a pumpkin squash-carrot-green leaf bread. Basically flour, sugar, butter and veggies. It also turns out that my host mother has a functioning oven (very rare here). I doubled the recipe and made a big pan. It came out DELICIOUS and was very successful. I then lunched at a neighbor’s house and ended up buying the used phone of my 17-year old friend, Aneudi (crazy names here) for $20. So, moral of the story is that I have a new phone, and a new number. I also have in my possession 4 cell phones (1 Peace Corps phone with no reception, 1 American cell phone, 1 broken cell phone, 1 new/used cell phone).

New number (that has reception in my town!):

809-852-8813