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...