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Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Entonces...

So no it´s been one week since staging in DC and all of the trainees are living in Cayambe at the moment. Everyday has been crazy busy...waking up at 7 and being totally booked until 5 o´clock with security briefings, language diagnostic classes, technical briefings, and basic history and culture of Ecuador. Thankfully all of the trainees are good people and we´re all having fun amid all the chaos. All of the staff are great too.
Today we found out where we will be going to live with our host families for the 2 months of training. I´m going to live in a small town called Olmeda which I know absolutely nothing about. We also got placed in our language groups based on level today. I´m living in the same town with 5 other trainees and we are in language level Avanzado Bajo. This means that based on a few interviews and diagnostic classes, my Spanish proficiency is above the required level to graduate from training! Don´t ask me how but it is a great relief. Now I can just concentrate on improving even more with my host family before I get sent to site which I still don´t know where it is. I don´t want to speculate either.
As we´ve been kept so busy in session all day, we really haven´t gotten to see much of the country but that will change on Viernes when I move in with mi familia. One really awesome thing is the fact that when I wake up in the morning and walk outside, I´m staring at a 20,000 foot volcano called Volcan Cayambe. It´s absolutely incredible. Really I couldn´t ask for a better group of prospective PCVs to be placed with either. Tommorow my agriculture group is visiting an organic farm somewhere and we´re going to start familiarizing ourselves with the local techniques and necessary vocabulary. Should be a blast. I´ll let you know how it goes. Now i think I´m going to walk around and try to find some ice cream or some cuy al carbón (the term for roasted guinea pig)...Rico! That´s it for now. I know it´s not very exciting yet but it will be. Take care all. Ciao.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The journey begins...almost.

So here we are, the night before I leave for a 9:40 a.m. flight out of North Carolina. The end of an era...the beginning of an era. I've spent nearly a whole year tied up in the whole Peace Corps bureaucracy and the time has finally come to take the leap. My official program is Sustainable Agriculture and I will be trained in the Integrated Farms/Animal Production area. My basic job as I understand it is to introduce organic farming techniques along with other sustainable and less expensive practices to small farmers. Along with this I will be trained to promote the production of small animals as a source of protein to people who lack this in their diet. Incorporating organic methods with small scale animal production is where the "integrated" part comes from. Let's not get ahead of ourselves though! There are so many unknowns as to what I am about to take part in, so I guess the appropriate thing to do would be to start with what I actually do know for sure. Here goes...
I leave tomorrow morning for Washington DC where I will spend the day and night with the 40 or more other trainees (mind you I'm not officially a volunteer until training is over April 22) en route to Ecuador at what PC calls "Staging." This is where we register and get an overall introduction to PC and the other trainees. We turn in all the necessary paper work and sit through information sessions. We spend the night in DC and leave early Thursday morning and fly to Miami and then change planes for the capital of Ecuador, Quito. In Quito we stay in a hostel for two nights and during this time we meet the country staff, receive necessary vaccinations, get oriented to the surrounding area and all the basics.
On Saturday morning we will be taken to the town of Cayambe which is about 60 miles north of Quito. Cayambe is situated at the foot of a volcano subsequently named Volcan Cayambe. This is where we will spend the next two months of training. We will stay in a "center" of sorts with our language facilitators for the first week before we move in with our host families, whom we do not know yet. PC will put us into groups of 4-5 depending on our program and we will live in small pueblos in the Cayambe area with different host families. This is where I'll learn everything I know to be a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) from specific farming skills, to Ecuadorian culture, and of course Spanish. The Spanish is decent at this point...pero necesito practicar! Assuming we make it through training, we are sworn in as PCVs on April 22 at the ambassador's residence and then sent to our sites where we serve out our 2 years! It's going to be an interesting and eventful road and I'm just ready to stop talking about it and get it started.
Well I think you now know almost as much as I do about this whole situation. We shall see how it all really pans out. Thanks for reading the first post and stay tuned for more. Regards to all...