Random Thoughts

Most of my Posts so far have had some kind of theme, but this one will be a little different and have a bunch of different stuff. First, I have to admit that my good luck with GI issues ended last week. I woke up a couple of days ago with bad stomach cramps and for about 5 days after that I wasn´t 100%. I didn´t have it as bad as a lot of the group, but even a little diarrhea is a bad thing. I drank a lot of Gatorade which helped, and then it just passed.

The other day, I was walking around the nearest city to my town, Cayambe, and as I turned a corner I saw in one of the shop windows an old friend from St. Louis that I thought I wouldn´t see for a while...a bottle of Budweiser! I went in and bought it for a dollar. The only problem was that the Born On Date is 1/25/2006. That is a little too old for my blood, but it is nice to have the bottle in my room to remind me of home (I think I should get a refund from AB when I get home for taking their skunky product off of the self). I also bought a soccer jersey for $5. It is the German National team´s white jersey. In Spanish, Germany is called Alemania, so when I saw a German style shirt with "Ale Mania" on the front, I had to have it. The last thing that I got was "Little Miss Sunshine" on DVD. The store owner said it was in English, but not so much. I need to learn a little more Spanish before I´ll be able to get the subtleties of the dialog. Next, I´ll have to find "The Departed" so I can keep saying that I´ve seen all the Oscar winners for Best Picture.

On the subject of confusion in Spanish, my language training has been going good. We had a progress test the other day and I did well. I´m still far behind a lot of people in the group, but since I´m one of the few people who has not lived in Latin America or Spain, I´m not upset.

We went on a three day Technical Trip last week that I´ll talk more about later, but on the bus ride to our "Hotel", I sat next to one of our language facilitators and he wanted me to practice. We spent an hour talking about Baseball in the US. I have to say that it is pretty tough to explain the Designated Hitter in Spanish.

The trip we took was to a town about 100 miles East of Quito called Pedro Vicente Moldanado. Quito´s elevations is about 9,000 feet, and even though we traveled only 100 miles, we dropped to about 3,000 feet in elevation. The difference was night and day. We could breathe easily again, almost instantly started sweating, were attacked by bugs, switched from potatoes and rice to Yuca and Bananas, went from pines to palms, and basically entered the jungle. The trip was full of Technical Training and very fun. It was hard and hot work, but at the end of every day we got to swim in a river next to the compound that we were staying in and drink a couple of beers, the local brand "Pilsener". Those three days have been typical of the type of training we´ve gotten. Very hands-on, very intense, and very fast paced. They don´t have a lot of time with us, so we mostly go over some of the basics of a lot of topics. When we get to our final sites we can use the PC HQ as a resource to learn the details to fill in the blanks from the general training we have received.

They have started giving us info on our possible two year sites. There are about 10 out of 22 that I like, so I should be happy with the final decision. The ones I like deal with small business, value-added manufacturing, community banking, and irrigation. We had site orientations this week and get the final word on the 13th of March. Keep your fingers crossed for a good one.

Jay

P.S. - Went to the Equator yesterday. I figure so far on my trip I´ve crossed it about 60 times.