Finally, I´ve been Published!!!!!

Yeah right.

So when you are in the Peace Corps you have the option of joining one of a couple of different groups, VAC, GAD, or TIPS to name a few. Most are acronyms that I have no idea what they stand for (by the way the Peace Corps doesn´t believe is using common english, everything MUST be in the form of an acronym). There was a group that did stand out to me though, and not because it wasn´t an acronym, but because it was the only group that looked like fun and that was ¨El Clima,¨our quarterly newsletter.

The bad news is that after I got on the committee and went to Quito for my first issue we learned 2 things. One, our CD(another acronym that stands for Country Director, aka The Big Boss) got reamed by his boss because our newsletter needed to be more ¨professional.¨ Which is a definite bummer considering the previous issues contained very professional topics ranging from the worst diarhea stories to roasting the incoming and outgoing volunteers. ¨El Clima: was definitely a fun read that the volunteers looked forward to.

The other bit of bad news was that due to budget cut backs, ¨El Clima¨was probably either going to be cut back to being issued twice a year or cut altogether.

So I figured I would put two of my articles on my blog so they would get national recognition. Who knows maybe someone from The Washington Post or The New York Times is keeping track of me, I will be discovered and become the next Hemingway. (Or maybe just my Mom will add another comment about how talented I am. Thanks Momma, keep´em coming!)

Anyway, here you go! (Oh and Almuerzo means lunch)

Volunteer Interest

The Almuerzo Calculator
Andy Hood, 99

I am a newer volunteer and am still getting used to living off of my monthly allowance. This still poses somewhat of a challenge but I am working on it. But what I have discovered, as I am sure most of you have, is the beauty of the cheap almuerzo. What better deal is there that you can get soup, a decent meal of chicken (insert other random meat here) and a drink, all for about $1.50. Can’t beat it!

Now, as time is progressing and I grow more accustomed to life here in Ecuador I am consistently finding myself comparing the price of just about anything against the price of an almuerzo. It literally has turned into the second form of currency I use, just behind the almighty US dollar. How many times have you been in the store and said to yourself, “….that is like 5 almuerzo’s” or “Why would I buy this bag of cheese doodles for $3.20 when I can get an entire almuerzo for $1.50.” Keeping this in mind, I contacted the mathematics departments at both Princeton and Harvard and they helped me come up with the following equation to help you, my fellow volunteers, utilize the almuerzo currency tambien. (Also if your almuerzo price is mas o menos than $1.50 go ahead and insert your own amount in there).

# of Almuerzos = x/1.5

X= the dollar amount you are comparing to see the number of almuerzo’s this adds up to.

In order to make this more relevant, below are some examples of what things cost in almuerzo’s:

ITEM Price in Almuerzo’s (almz)

An apple 0.2 almz
Meat on a stick 0.33333333333333333 almz
Pilsener Grande 0.66666666666666666 almz
The new Indiana Jones Movie, Ecuadorian Price 1 almz
Big Mac meal at McDonalds 3 almz
Bus ride from Loja to Quito 11.3 almz
Category B Peace Corps Living Allowance 153 almz
Sony 37” flat screen television 354 almz
#1 selling vehicle in the US, the Ford F-150 16,000 almz
Average annual income in the US 32,134 almz
Highest Paid Professional Athletes:
NFL: Dwight Freeney 20,500,000 almz
NBA: Shaquille O’Neal 23,333,333 almz
MLB: Derek Jeter 19,333,333 almz
GDP of Ecuador 29,456,000 almz
Total Expenditure up to this point for the War in IRAQ 2,000,000,000 almz
US Deficit 108,000,000,000 almz

I was having a hard time with the photos in these articles but the caption on this pic is supposed to read: ¨Alright Honey, so do you want the Chicken, the Chicken or the Chicken?



My Promise to the Readers of El Clima
Andy Hood, 99

The moon was full and the rain was just starting to fall as I was washing my last dish from the beautiful four-course dinner I had just prepared for myself that night (peanut butter and jelly sandwich). I had been in my site for all of about two weeks and had had a long hard day of fulfilling my role as the deaf, mute gringo, whose main talent is lifting heavy objects, feeling very similar to Lenny from Of Mice and Men. It was then that the thought occurred to me that I would engage in one of my favorite Peace Corps pastimes, Sudoku. I recently had done the impossible and completed the Sudoku book that I had brought from home, even finishing the appropriately named “diabolical” or “fiendish” puzzles. So I opened an older issue of El Clima that had been gifted to me by our ravishing good looking and intelligent new Editor-in-Chief, Jeanette Warner.

I began my Sudoku ritual, just as I always do, by first grabbing a bottle of my finest wine out of my wine cellar (Clos from my kitchen shelf), lit a fire in the fireplace (burned a candle in an old tuna can), and curled up on my chaise lounge with matching ottoman (plastic lawn chair with a cardboard box) to see what kind of Sudoku challenge El Clima could present me with.

That night, just as I had done a thousand times before, I went about the usual strategy that I, unlike others, find to be effective. You know, finding the easy numbers first then employing the long, drawn out process of utilizing a calculator, an abacus, long division and the Pythagorean Theorem to methodically discover each additional number. So here I was, concentrating heavily on my new Sudoku puzzle, ignoring the moths flying around my head and the dogs that seem to be barking at the roosters who in turn seem to be cock-a-doodle dooing right back at them in some sort of vicious cycle that they agreed upon to make sure the gringo only sleeps about 3 hours a night. Anyway, I had been working on this puzzle for about 20 minutes and was deep in a trance of concentration when I realized the unthinkable and unforgivable. Somehow of the millions of Sudoku puzzles that are in the world, our staff at El Clima included what we like to call in the industry, a “tainted” puzzle. That’s right, in puzzle number 2, column #3 of the Winter 2008 issue of El Clima there are two 9’s, yep that’s right, two. After taking a couple of minutes to get through the initial shock of my discovery, I immediately contacted my local authorities and sent both a handwritten, notarized letter and an e-mail to the International Committee for the Security, Administration, and Collaboration of Sudoku Puzzles, more commonly known as ICSACSP, to alert them of the situation. I still have yet to hear from them but continue to check my casilla twice a day for their response.

Many of you readers may be wondering why I titled this article “My Promise to the Readers of El Clima” and then telling this story of one of my first and probably most unforgettable nights in my site. Well, being a new member of the El Clima staff, I felt it was my duty to inform you that such a mix up like this will never happen again while I am onboard as a part of El Clima. Now I may not have the most well-written, most thought-provoking articles in this publication (for example this) but I guarantee that I will personally (or with the help of other smarter people than yours truly) go through each and every Sudoku puzzle in our new and upcoming issues in order to prevent such a catastrophe as the one that happened in the Winter of 2008. I feel it is our duty as Peace Corps Volunteers to spread peace by digging ditches and putting condoms on cucumbers instead of sitting at home toiling over Sudoku puzzles that are in fact “broken.” That my friends is my promise to you, the readers of El Clima.

Unfortunately I couldn´t get the pic to come over for this one but just imagine a sudoku puzzle filled with nothing but 9´s. Then the caption read that it took me an hour of working it before I figured out it was ¨tainted.¨