Happy 4th of July!

And yes, that is a Declaration of Independence. That´s it: Stop the competition. We win. At life. Everyone else can go home and cry about it.

4th of July in Ecuador/Rio Bamba included: Gringos, Americans, Canadians, English, Volleyball, Hamburgers, Hot dogs, Potato Salad, Fireworks (so close we were peppered with falling debris), Hot Chocolate, Friends, and Love. Just as it should be.

Complete with Declaration of Independence.

Bra: Better Than a Purse

Sarah’s Ecuador Lesson #1: Yes You Can fit all of your cash, your credit card, your phone, and your ipod in your bra. It´s safer. And not at all awkward. Except when digging for cash.

Today at the feria I hefted the largest and heaviest zucchini I’ve ever seen in my hand and the first thought that popped into my head was: “I could kill a man with this zucchini.”

Maybe that’s a reflection on my mental state as of late.

I’ve been…not terrible, but surely slipping down the U-Curve, in the typical time of culture shock and adjustment and loneliness and homesickness. I know that it will pass, and I believe that I’m doing better than many would in my situation, in part because Spain toughened me up a lot, but it’s been stressful as of late. I got sick, again; it’s 5.5 months until I go home for Christmas and I miss my mom constantly; my community drives me crazy sometimes; local children harass me constantly to the point of literally screaming; and even those kids that I thought I was bonding with ended up stealing from me. I’d say that now I don’t trust them as far as I could throw them, but I could probably throw them pretty far, so I’m just going to flat out say it: I don’t trust them. I don’t trust anybody in my community. I feel so conspicuous, and when I try and organize something to help them, to do my job, nobody shows up. Plus, school is out for the summer so there goes over 50% of my work, and that also means more kids to pester me all day long. It’s just frustrating, and overwhelming, and I think, what can I really do to help these people? Can they really change? Do they really want to?

These are questions I know that almost every Peace Corps volunteer asks themselves at least once during their two years. I know that it is normal, and that it will pass; that I am experiencing culture shock and adjusting to a new way of life. But knowing this doesn’t make it any less hard.

Besides that, life has been a mixed bag. I had a fantastic time in Rio Bamba for my birthday, where we had pizza and beer on the floor one night and went out to bars and restaurants the next, and when the clock hit midnight and it was officially my birthday everyone sang to me and the waiter put a hat on my head and gave me free chocolate cake. Then that night, back in Patate with this wonderful family whose house I am writing this in right now, I had a home-baked cake with a candle and they sang to me in both Spanish and English. They are my saving grace here; I don’t know what I’d do without them.

Yesterday I went to Rio Bamba again for a Gender and Development (GAD) seminar. It was fun, and moderately informative, and best of all: free food at honestly the best restaurant I’ve eaten at in Ecuador. The whole trip was worth it just for the food. I got to hang out with a great group of people, and speak English, and overall it was a relaxing, amusing day.

Except…I found out that Ana, one of my friends, the girl I hung out with over my birthday and honestly one of the most charismatic people I’ve ever known, got sent home. Plus, three other people dropped out and headed back to the US. If you don’t count Russ (he didn’t go through training with us and really just does his own thing), then Omnibus 101 is down to 35 people. We’ve lost nine, several of them people that I truly considered friends.

Good news: Joyce is coming to visit next weekend, and I have an opportunity to do something for the fourth of July, which I don’t know if I’ll take, but it’s nice to know that the possibility is there. Later in July I’m going to Puyo, which will be my first taste of the Oriente. I’m eating cuy tomorrow with a group of high school students and Moderately Creepy Teacher, which should be fun despite the fact that Moderately Creepy Teacher is Moderately Creepy (he showed me shirtless vacation photos and kept pointing out his wife and reinforcing the fact that she is dead.)

Ecuador continues to amuse and amaze me. I’ve had a stranger tell me I should marry a local British man who I’ve never met and is probably vastly older than me because we both speak English and “No one should have to be alone.” I’ve seen a skinned cow hanging from a tree, complete with skin next to it, like something out of “Silence of the Lambs.” I’ve had an old woman invite herself to my house for lunch and then demand I kill her the chicken conveniently pecking around by my feet (I got out of it by pretending not to understand and walking quickly away). I was given guitar lessons by a group of nuns in their convent. I bought a cheap guitar, which promptly broke. I bought a ridiculously large, hand carved wooden turtle that will apparently bring me luck (but where will I fit it?). I bought a foam mat and started teaching myself yoga in my house. I got birthday presents in the mail in Ambato (NEWSWEEK makes me deliriously happy) and discovered by the post office the best empanadas of my life. I have HOT WATER in my shower. I went to a local fiesta and shuffle-danced with my landlord (and later got sick off the food). I bravely battled with large spiders and won. I’ve met new people and made new friends.

Overall, life is not perfect, but is it ever? In fact, it’s something better than perfect: it’s exciting, and new, and challenges me, and makes me think and change and grow. I appreciate being here, in Ecuador, in the Peace Corps, every day, even the bad ones. Underneath it all, I am a hopeless optimist. I think you have to be.

PS: This entry was for you, Ruben. Now stop pestering your wife. ;-) I love you guys.

Paranoia is a healthy belief that just might save your ass someday…

I wasn’t going to write again for at least a week or two but I wanted to talk about an incident that happened to me a few nights ago. Two incidents, actually.

To start off, Ecuadorians don’t understand or appreciate a good healthy dose of paranoia, especially in small towns or in the country. No matter how many times you explain to them why don’t want to walk alone at night (I’m a gringa, I’m a stranger, I have a clearly visible bag, I’m blonde, for God’s sake) or why you want more security/locks in your house (I’m a gringa, a stranger, wealthier than all of the people in this community combined, living alone with few neighbors in the middle of a field), they will shake their heads at you. Silly gringa, why are you worried. Nothing happens here. It is muy tranquilla.

If one more person says that I don’t have to worry because an area is muy tranquilla, y no pasa nada, I am going to strangle them.

Also, you have to understand, I am the most paranoid person I know. Not crazy, just with a fierce desire for nothing to ever happen to me that I could have prevented. I like feeling in control, and not placing myself in dangerous situations keeps me feeling safe. In Spain I missed out on fun nights because I refused to get in a car with a bunch of strange guys, or go home with strangers; in Pittsburgh I walked at night with mace and didn’t get into a car with a stranger even to go through a drive through at night when ordering on foot wasn’t allowed. In Ecuador I don’t walk alone at night, I carry my leatherman in my pocket so that I feel more secure, and I instinctively size up anyone I’m speaking to. I’m decently trained in martial arts and have taken an intense self defense class. I sleep with a knife under my bed. I take my security safely.

In Ecuador, this has even heightened. It is a machista culture, where men are men and women are good little subservient housewives, especially in the campo. American women are seen as easy, especially as they speak more openly with men. Men don’t look at you; they leer. Comments are made. You are the butt of jokes you are glad you don’t understand. I love Ecuador, but I could never date anyone from here. No offense. The culture is just too steeped in gender differences for me to take.

The people in my community are pretty tranquillo, hard working, and appear to be even keeled. Except on the weekends, when they drink. Last weekend, in the middle of the afternoon, I saw several men so drunk they were either passed our or weaving dangerously as they walked. I’ve seen people smashed, but nothing like I see here. Also, everyone goes to bed at 8:00 pm, except for the weekend drunks, who stay up a bit later. Even so, 11:00 is usually the latest, because even on weekends there are still animals to care for in the mornings and work to be done.

On Sunday night, a little after midnight, I was sound asleep in my bed when the pounding started on my front door. I jerked away, my hand instinctively going to the knife under my mattress, and just stayed very still. I figured that whoever it was would give up after a minute or two and leave me in peace.

Not so. Over half an hour passed of insistent pounding, and then I saw someone circling the house and shining a flashlight through the drawn curtains in my bedroom window. They circled the house, then began to hit the door again.

Here I should probably insert that my inside door to my bedroom still doesn’t have a knob or a lock on it, so if anyone gets through the front door, I have no protection.

Finally I got up, understanding that the person wasn’t going to go away. I was tired and it was pitch black in the house, but I didn’t want to draw any more attention by turning on a light. So I put my sneakers on in the dark, just in case, grabbed my knife, just in case, locked my drawer with all of my valuables in it, and shoved my phone into my bra with some money. Just in case. I then went to the window and yelled through it.

“Go away, I was sleeping, leave me alone,” I said, in kinda shitty Spanish. It was a drunk man on my doorstep, one I had never seen before.

“Let me in, I just want to sleep!” he yelled. “This is my house, I always sleep here. Don Victor (my landlord) knows this. I usually have a key. Let me in!”

“No!” I snapped. “Please, just go away and don’t bother me. I’m not opening this door.”

He kept arguing with me for a few more minutes, insisting that he often slept in my house and that I was being a bitch for not letting him in. He kept asking me, why not? At one point he asked if I were afraid, but I didn’t answer. I just finally shouted that I was leaving the window and the conversation was over.

Even though there was no noise after that, I was still so freaked out that I was shaking. I thought, what if he was telling the truth and that my landlord would just let this random man have a key to my house? I had visions of drunk man rounding up his friends and returning to my door. I didn’t sleep well all night, my leatherman clutched in my hand in case of any disturbance.

When I spoke to my landlord about this, he had no idea who the man was. He said that no one ever sleeps in this house except for a daughter and sometimes a young son. He said it could have been just a drunk or an attempted robbery. Or worse.

So here’s the moral of the story, what the Peace Corps will already tell you during training: Never open the door for anyone at night. Anyone. No matter what they say, no matter what their reasons. Do. Not. Open. Your. Door.

What could I have done differently? Called someone. Now I know that I can call my landlord no matter what time of night it is and he will come and chase off anyone bothering me. I can also contact my counterpart, who, if the situation is scary, can come here with or without the police. I should also have opened my conversation with the man by saying that either the landlord/police were on their way. That would have chased him off good. As it is, I just had a scary experience that left a bad taste in my mouth the entire next day.

The second incident came the next day. I was in Patate and had stayed too long at the internet café, and it was dark out. Because I was bringing some supplies to the local high school the next day, I had my huge hiking backpack on, marking me clearly as some kind of tourist. To get to the house where I stay, I have to walk to where the road ends and turns into this massive set of stairs that goes up quite a way, and isn’t well lit. I noticed a car slow as I entered the stair street, and then go away.

I am indeed paranoid, especially with a hugely noticeable giant bag on my back at night, and had my knife out and hidden in my sleeve. When I got to the top and started walking to the house, I noticed a car coming up. Luckily the house is right at the top of the stairs, and I opened the gates and stepped inside. As I was doing this, I noticed the car slow to a stop and idle by the side of the road, but as I got inside it sped off. All I could think was that someone had seen me walking up the stairs and driven around to intercept me, but I reached the house before anything could be done. Paranoid? Yes. Possible? Definitely. I made myself and attractive target that night.

Moral? Be inside at night, no matter how tranquilla your town is, and if not, have someone walk with you. You never know what might happen.

These are my stories, and while they are not terribly thrilling, they made an impression on me, and I hope I can make an impression on whoever is reading this. You don’t have to be as paranoid as me, but for God’s sake, take care. Be alert. The last thing you want is for your Peace Corps adventure to end with bad memories, a robbery, or worse.

Really the moral is, don’t be stupid. And carry a knife.

Home, home on the range

I have a house! And it’s a-freaking-dorable. Honestly, I love it. It’s a little casa de bono, meaning that it was built recently by the government (for the longest time I thought that it was called a casa de abono, meaning fertilizer… like a storage house where they would store the cow poo or something.) It’s not leaky, moldy, smelly, or cold, and has cement floors, a luxury.

It’s painted blue inside and has a little indoor bathroom with a shower, and the kitchen has a nice sink, the little fridge I bought, a plastic table donated by the Red Cross with a bright tablecloth, and gas burners where I can cook and use my campo oven. The campo oven, which is really just a big pot you put over the burners with empty tuna cans inside to rest your baking dish on, works fantastically, just like a real oven. I’ve already made little brownie-cookie things, carrot cake, and roast chicken. I hung my Otavalo hammock from the ceiling in place of a couch, and it’s nice to lie in during the evenings.

I have a comfy bed and a nice dresser in my room, an area to wash my clothes outside, and a stray dog that eats my scraps and wiggles happily whenever he sees me. Though he is not my dog, I’ve still taken the liberty and named him Tilney, continuing with my habit of using last names of Jane Austen characters for animals.

So, what else is new? I’m turning twenty three in eight days (as I write this Saturday night), on June 7th, and I’m going to Rio Bamba for the weekend to celebrate. Around other Americans! Though my time so far at my site has been great, I look forward to speaking some English and feeling, well, like a twenty three year old again. I miss that. After that, on the 10th, I’m going with my sort of adopted family in Patate to the big soccer match in Quito, Ecuador vs. Argentina. I’m thrilled. That was something I always regretted from Spain: that I didn’t get to see a big game in a country wild about soccer.

My work has been going well, though we’re still in the planning stages for many things. There are so many possibilities right now it will be exciting to see, in the end, which ones we actually end up doing. I’m starting the big organic garden with the local high school and also helping to plan an environment “open house” for June 5th at an elementary school in Patate. School lets out in about two weeks, though, so both of my projects will soon be put on hold.

I’ve started my CAT tools…barely. One interview so far, and hopefully more the week after next. The good news is that my community is so small that the interviews shouldn’t take long, not like people who live in towns or cities, who could have 100 families to talk to. I’ll have maybe around 20.

The Red Cross is thinking of starting projects to create large community organic gardens to help get some good food into the people around Patate, my community included. They are also thinking of treating the water to make it safer to drink, and implementing nutrition and alcoholism programs. There is a married couple (a gringa and an Ecuadorian) who live near here and might help me give charlas and possibly implement some form of garbage collection, so the people stop burning all their trash. And there is a pair of nuns who come to my village every Sunday to speak with the children, and I’m hoping that they will be interested in giving talks with me. And I haven’t even spoken yet to the local elementary school near my community, which will also be letting out for the summer soon. There are so many options right now, it’s a little hard to keep track of them all.

I joined a soccer team!...sort of. I don’t know how I ended up in it, but suddenly I was on the court and told to meet some women in my community the next day to travel to another town to play some “indoor”, aka soccer on a cement basketball court with a smaller ball. I sucked, naturally, and everyone laughed at the tall, awkward gringa playing futbol, but it was definitely an integration process. Hopefully I’ll play better this week.

I’ve been writing more lately. It feels good to get back to that part of myself after so long a break, to sink comfortably back into those worlds of my creation. I promised myself that I would finish up my online story first, for the people who have been sitting through it these three long years, but then I’ll finally be able to turn back to my baby, my book, and finish rewriting/revising it. I have a photocopy of the fantastic picture Nicky drew for me on the wall in my room, and I look at it whenever I’m feeling stressed. It feels so wonderfully ironic to be writing that story when I’m in the Peace Corps, like a clash of ideals. My beautiful characters, for all of their insanity, keep me sane.

I should probably stop now, this entry has been long enough. But I wanted to end by saying a huge thank you to Laurie, who left me a beautiful message at the end of my last post. I guess my reverse psychology worked, lol. Honestly, though, if you’re reading this, you made my day. I even read what you wrote out loud to my mom over Skype. I love to think that people are reading this and smiling, and that in some small way, my story is touching someone else out there.

I’ll write again after my birthday! V excited.

Love, Sarah

The best literature for a bored PCV...

I have discovered the secret to being entertained when alone at your site, without internet access, TV, or friends. Sure you can read a book, but we PCV’s usually only have limited supplies of books, so if you read all the time, you would run out, and pretty quickly too (especially if you’re like Ecuador and have no volunteer library at headquarters because someone threw them all out, claiming they were taking up too much space.) All you need is a laptop (most of you have those, right?), and a flash drive.

What is the secret to hours of free reading pleasure? Fanfiction.

Yes, fanfiction. Probably all of you who are not giant nerds like myself don’t know what that is. Fanfiction is when someone takes a preexisting story, like a book or a movie or a television show, and expands on it, turning it into a sort of online book and posting it to a website. Yes, it’s nerdy, I know. I write it (and am pretty popular, too, in my chosen fandom), so of course I know. But think about it for when you are bored. Have a favorite book or tv show where you reallllyyyy wanted two characters to hook up but never did? I’m sure you’ll find many stories online about that, no matter how obscure the pairing. Favorite character died and you wish that hadn’t happened? Alternate realities where they live, happily or not so happily ever after, exist in droves. Really hate a character and want them to die? There’s that too. Or maybe your favorite series ended or your favorite book didn’t wrap things up the way you wanted, and you wished it could have gone on a little longer. Fanfiction!

Now I have to be responsible and warn you all: Most of what is out there is utter crap. Serious, steaming piles of poo. Just awful. And there’s porn, too. Lots of it. Oddly enough, there’s a thriving amount of gay porn in the Harry Potter sections. Good news is, you can often sort by rating, from K, which is good for all ages, all the way up to M, mature. On sites like fanfiction.net, the largest (and it is HUGE) listing of all the fanfiction you could ever want, you can even sort by character, pairing, length, and published date. It’s fun. And if you look, and sometimes it takes a little looking, you can find real gems. I have read fanfictions that far surpass most published books I have ever read, that made me laugh out loud and cry, sob actually, or gasp at my computer screen. Some talented authors can take the most trivial, stupid stories (like, children’s anime, or bad 80s movies) and somehow turn them into the most breathtaking works of near-genius. There are also smaller communities where stories are screened for quality before they are allowed to post, so no crap there.

So what do you do? Take a flash drive with you when you go to the internet café, go to fanfiction.net, and start looking up stories. When you find one that’s decently long and the first chapter looks pretty good (proper punctuation, people in character, not too much purple prose or Mary-Suing, though you probably don’t know what that is…) copy and paste the chapters onto Word. It takes only a few minutes. It took me years to figure out that if I highlighted the top of the story, then went to the bottom, held shift, and clicked on the end of the story, the whole thing would highlight for me. Pretty simple, but I’m kinda absentminded sometimes, and spent years highlighting and scrolling through ridiculously long chapters to copy it. This way is a lot faster.

With about fifteen minutes of copy-pasting onto a word document, you’ve got hours upon hours of reading pleasure, and there are more genres and more stories out there than you could ever read. It never runs out, and damn, is it fun. After a while you might want to stave off boredom by trying your hand at writing one. I tell you, there is nothing more fulfilling than posting a chapter and having loyal readers rejoice that you have returned after a six month absence (ahem, I’m not that frequent of a poster), or compliment you on your story, or even offer constructive criticism. It’s fun, and it’s a great stress reliever. I’m finishing up a chapter towards the end of a book-length story now, and am looking forward to posting once again.

So get to it!

My kingdom for a HOUSE

I miss you, as I miss the little moments,
sipping tea on the couch with the TV on.
I see you, like the photos in my fingers,
as I´m standing here alone and the whole world feels wrong.

Yes, I still write songs. It´s a nice stress reliever.

I’m writing outside of the house I am staying at, my feet in the sun and a light breeze blowing by. Three cats in varying shades of white and grey, one pregnant (and hopefully I will get one of the kittens when it comes), sleep on top of each other in a heap at my feet. Flowers are in bloom all around me, the air smells sweet, and it is a bright blue sky day in the Sierra.

I’m writing this here, instead of at my village twenty minutes away, because after two solid weeks my house is still not finished. It was supposed to be finished when I got here, but it still has only some of its lights, no door, and is filled with various junk. Truth be told, it’s starting to piss me off just a bit. Luckily the family that I am staying with (the same I stayed with during my site visit) are amazing, feeding me good food and talking with me and just in general being awesome.

We are all fed up with my housing situation, and so on Saturday there will be a Red Cross minga at my house, to clean, install lights, and do whatever needs to be done. We might even put the damn door in. Then Saturday night I am supposed to meet with the town to explain who I am and why I am here; this was supposed to happen twice already, but both times no one showed. Let’s see if Saturday is any different.

With the notable exception of the no-house business, everything has been going surprisingly smoothly, and I have been very content and happy settling into my new life in Tungurahua. The weather is perfect, sunny and mild most days, much better than often-frigid Cayambe. Since I can’t work on my PACA and CAT tools due to the fact that my community is too far away/too expensive to commute to daily, I’ve been getting my other ducks in row. I’ve already been approached by several farmers with questions about going organic, and have seen some of their farms. I’ve met the (fantastic) Red Cross volunteers, a group of mostly young men and some women with whom I will be working for the next two years. We are already discussing plans for the future, including a possible youth camp for two weeks at the end of June, when school lets out.

I’ve also had meetings with a local agricultural high school and a local elementary school. At the moment the plan is to give a full day to the ag high school once every two weeks to work with the students and create a large example organic garden that will showcase all of the various techniques for the community to see (including different types of compost, both liquid and solid, different types of irrigation, companion planting, crop diversity, organic pesticides, tire-gardens, and more). At the escuela I’m all set to give my mornings one day a week to work with younger students on who knows what: hopefully nutrition and maybe a family garden of their own. I think that’s pretty good for my first two weeks, especially without a house and in the midst of buying everything I need for the house, including a fridge, a bed (donated by the Red Cross!), a dresser, and many cooking supplies.

Swearing in was fun, with the ceremony at the Ambassador’s mansion in the early morning, the chilly mist around us and planes roaring ahead every five minutes. That night was the big party, and earlier in the week we had gone to the old part of Quito for a pitifully short cultural trip. However, we did see the newly re-elected president of Ecuador, Correa, the day after the big elections, which was damn exciting. He drove slowly by, hanging out of the front window and waving. I hear that he even shouted to some of us (“Where are you from?” to which people enthusiastically yelled, “Estados Unidos!”), but I didn’t hear that part.

The sad news is that now five of our group are gone, some of their own free will, some wrenched away. At our hostel in Quito, I happened to room with two girls who left, one because she felt the work didn’t suit her, and one because of frustrating beaurocratic reasons. By the end of our stay in the hostel, I went from having two roommates to having none.

So here I am, a real volunteer, just starting off my two years with a little trepidation and a lot of optimism. I just feel so lucky, every day, to be in Ecuador. The people are amazing, the culture different and alternately trying and wonderful, the work intimidating but I think I can figure it all out; if not I have a back-up system of over 100 volunteers all throughout the country. I already feel like I’m getting somewhere—even if my community takes a long time to trust me, I still have my Red Cross work and my charlas at various schools to give. I realized the other day that at least once a day, at least a little and often much more, I have been happy here, and that’s really saying something. I am so blessed, it’s almost scary sometimes.

And Oh! I have an address now. It’s in Ambato, so I’ll probably only be able to check it once or twice a month, but please, anyone out there, even people I don’t know, if you want to send my letters, I will love you forever. Nothing beats the excitement of opening a mailbox to find letters/packages from friends and family far away.

The address is:
Sarah Evans
Casilla 18-01-175
Ambato, Tungurahua
Ecuador
South America

If you send a package, make sure that it is under four pounds, preferably in a padded envelop, and completely wrapped in clear tape to discourage thieves. Also never, ever declare a value. Thanks.

Another Oh! moment: My Gill, my best friend since we were six and practically my sister, is getting married sometime within the next two years, so that means I’m a’comin’ home twice! Lil’ extra money I’ll have to scrape up, but it will be worth it to see her walk down the aisle.

So that’s life in Tungurahua, Ecuador. I’d ask how everything is going in the US, but no one ever seems to answer my entreaties for comments and love, so I’ll just skip it this time. Or maybe I’m using reverse psychology…

Chaito!

The world is a mess and I just need to RULE it

I’m going to try and make this a quick post, as so much has been happening. The big events were MY SITE VISIT and THE TECH TRIP, two viages that could not have been more different.

My site is one of the more difficult ones. Ag got all of those; NRC has the tourism, working in caves and on the beach whalewatching kind of sites. Mine is a community way up on the side of a mountain of about 100 people, but about 60 of those people are children under the age of 12 or ancient people with no teeth. It’s small. There are no stores, no bakeries, no nothing. Just a collection of dirty, dirty houses and even dirtier children that go to the bathroom in the grass with the animals.

I can’t really get into it here but let’s just say that some stressful situations occurred during my trip, the upshot being that I may or may not have saved a kid’s leg, or his life. The may not is because later I found out that the hospital the mother was saying she couldn’t afford to take her extremely ill child to is actually free, and she knows it. She was just trying to get money off of me. Imagine how I feel right now about this being my site.

Truth be told, I don’t know how I feel. For a while after my site visit I was very depressed, and convinced I got one of the shittiest sites. But now I’m not so sure. I have a darling little house to live in (and not with a host family, thank god, just with my landlord’s daughter), and an amazing view in what I am convinced is one of the most beautiful places in the sierra. My counterpart, a doctor for the Red Cross, is fantastic. Patate, the city that I live near, is adorable. I’m close to Ambato, Rio Bamba, and not even too far from Puyo in the Oriente. And being that I’m the first volunteer and that the town is so terribly poor and uneducated, there is a lot I can do to help, as long as the people accept me and try to change. I already have a list an entire page long of possible projects. As Russ, the older man in our group who has been volunteering continuously for over twenty years, said: “You’re the one they will remember, the one they will forever compare all the future volunteers to.” So…we’ll see.

The tech trip, for those of you not in the know, is an eight day (it used to be longer) trip around Ecuador to learn technical information that you can use at your site. We spent the first three days in Puerto Quito, in the coastal jungle, swimming in a pool and a river, sleeping in bunk beds and hammocks, hacking with machetes in the jungle, playing soccer, having yoga lessons, dancing at night, and just generally having a blast. In between all of this we had classes during the day, where it was stifling hot and a million insects bit us.

After that we split into three groups, depending on where our sites were: Sierra, Coast, or Oriente. The Sierras went to Rio Bamba and SOME PEOPLE (The NRCers) got to hold baby llamas and sled down a snowy mountain. The aggies went to a farm and got to sit on top of a zebra cow. Seriously. Zebra Cow. Tell your friends.

Then we went to a small mountain town called Salinas, and if you ever feel like getting a piece of Ecuadorian culture without all the tourists and with amazing chocolate and cheeses, go there. They have a million micro-enterprises and we bought so much food and wool products it’s a little ridiculous. We also hiked to some amazing views and to a waterfall, where some brave people (not me) went swimming in the hypothermia-inducing waters.

Today was our last day of class and we spent half of it playing sports with special sport outfits the groups made (our’s was the coolest, naturally). Tomorrow is our last full day in Ayora/Cayambe, and then on Sunday we go to Quito for a few days before the massive swearing in ceremony on Wednesday. I’m so excited. Afterwards we’re going to a big club where we’ll have special handstamps and an entire floor for ourselves and other volunteers. I’m almost a real PCV!

Sunday we’re on lockdown, formally called standfast, and can’t leave the hotel because of the big presidential elections, just in case of any upset or protests. The elections are huge here, propaganda everywhere, and I should really take a picture of it before it all disappears.

Thursday is the day: Moving to my site, the tiny village where I will live for the next two years. And that’s where the adventure really begins.