Un-zambonied Ice and Impropperly Oiled Lanes

Where to begin?


First off, Training is still going good. It's hard to believe, but we are already halfway through. As I write this, the Trainees are all at their future sites. Things have gone great so far, but the real problems will beginning after they get back from their sites. That will be when they start to complain if they don't like where we put them.

It was sad last week because we said goodbye to seven members of my training group who all flew back to the USA. A couple of us who weren't leaving came in to Quito to give them a nice send off. We let one of my friends decide how to celebrate, and she picked...bowling and ice skating! It was fun, but the bowling alley lanes were drier than your grandady's scalp and the ice was gouged up. I know I shouldn't expect too much, but I was disappointed that I couldn't show off my patented spin-ball and triple axel.

After that we went out for a bit of dancing.

I went to the airport at 6:00 am the next day with some friends to say goodbye. I don't know if it was the headache or the heartache, but it was hard. I think a lot of it was realizing that my time is soon to come to an end as well.

One good thing about a friend of mine leaving was that he gave me a couple bottles of Guinness that he had just received, but wasn't going to drink. I shared them with the other Co-Trainers. It wasn't like a good draught pint, but good enough.

After seeing them off, I went down to La Libertad for the day. I wanted to give the new PCV who is living there, Russ, some contact information for the schools that I worked with and also to attend the La Libertad grade school "Sports Day". As it turns out, Russ wasn't there that day, but the "Sports Day" was fun. When I showed up, all the kids from the grade school and high school were in the center of town watching the grade school teachers playing the local police in volleyball. As I walked up to the court, a ton of little kids came running out to greet me. They all were yelling my name and asking if I was coming back to teach them more English. It was nice to know they remembered me, but I think that I'd have to teach them "some" English before I could teach them "more" English. I said hi to all the parents and teachers and got a sore hand from high-fiving all the kids.

After saying hi to my neighbors, one of the teachers asked me to be the referee for the next game. I tried to get out of it, but was unsuccessful (as always). The game was a basketball game between the female teachers at the high school and grade school. As soon as they started to play, I knew I was in trouble. They were fouling and double dribbling all over the place. I decided that since I would either have to blow the whistle every 15 seconds, or not at all, I'd go with option two. Most of the male teachers watching started to yell that I should call more fouls, but I stood by my guns and only called two fouls in the first half. I don't know how many I would have called in the second half because they fired me at halftime and let someone else do it...fine by me.

The best part about going to La Libertad was seeing my neighbor's kids. They were all doing good, and Karla, the middle girl, won the "Sports Day" beauty contest. The youngest daughter was confused to see me again. I think she couldn't quite remember me, but when I picked her up and asked her my name she said "Jay" right away, and then it all seemed to come back. Overall it was nice to be back for a day, but one day was enough.

Last week we had a session on small animal management. We did some work with chickens and cuyes. I think the Trainees enjoyed the hands on experience, but they were a little grossed out when yours truly castrated two guinea pigs. I don't have a lot of experience doing this, but it's not that hard. I'll be more than happy to give lessons when I come home.

Here is a picture of some of the guinea pigs with their babies (these were un-castrated of course) and a picture of Mount Cayambe that I took from near the farm.





The biggest thing we have done recently with training was assigning the sites to the Trainees. As I said, they all seemed happy with their sites, so Mary and I are pretty happy. We sat down for a couple of hours two weeks ago and put together a list of where we thought the Trainees would work out best. We gave the list to our boss expecting that he'd make some changes, but he kept them all the same. It's kind of strange to think that in two hours we decided the next two years for 20 PCVs, but I guess that's how things go in a government gig.

NOTES:
-I finished my taxes for 2008 recently. Surprisingly I owed Uncle Sam nothing again. That is one nice thing...the taxes on nothing are very low.

-I also wanted top say thanks to everyone who sent me a card, a phone call, or an e-mail on my birthday. THANKS !!!!!

-I haven't made a big deal about it on the blog, but I wanted to finally write about something that has been very exciting for my family. We found out in December that my sister was pregnant...with twins!! Everything has gone well so far and she is due to deliver in June. Here are some pics of babies and mother.

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Hear That Training a Comin’

The Trainees finally arrived on February 25th. It has been a fun and intense two weeks since then. The other Co-Trainers and I have been preparing, implementing, and evaluating most of the technical aspects of the training. I have to admit that working in the office before they got here was pretty boring and I wasn’t too motivated, but now things are a lot better.

From the moment they got here, I have been living in a cloud of déjà vu. Almost everything that the new trainees are doing, we did two years ago. The night they arrived, we sat at the Airport waiting for them. I remember when we walked off the plane. There were so many thoughts and worries going through my head all mixed in with excitement and curiosity. I remember the Co-Trainers for our group meeting us and telling the baggage handlers in Spanish where to move our bags. I was impressed to see Gringos speaking so well, and being so organized. Now, I was one of those Gringos. It was a good feeling, but a little weird.

We spent the first couple days in Quito listening to presentations by the Country Director, PC staff, and some representatives from the US Embassy. We didn’t have a lot of stuff to do, but it was good to see the Trainees and answer their questions. We also spent those days finishing up the plan for the first week of training. There are 45 Trainees from all over the US, a couple of them are older, and there are two married couples. It is a lot like our Omnibus. The difference is that these guys “seem” a bit more low-key than we were. I used quotes around seem because it is impossible to say how they act when the training staff isn’t around, but I don’t think they drink quite as much beer as we did.

After getting them prepped in Quito, we moved all the Trainees bags to their home-stay families around Cayambe. It was a lot of work, but we were able to move our stuff as well (that was a lot better than moving all our crap in buses again). It was nice to move out of the house in Quito, but as a parting gift, the owners of the house I lived in only charged me $180 for repairing the Kohler faucet I broke. It was only a small piece of plastic, but repairing anything from the US costs an arm and a leg down here.

The new house we are living in is huge (except for my room). The three girls have big rooms that are all the same and mine is on the small size (small enough that I can touch all four walls at the same time). I worked out well (for the girls), but I can’t complain (outside of parenthesis).

The good news that we all received was that the Peace Corps will be giving us a 9% raise effective in March. The inflation has been pretty bad down here, so that extra $28 a month will really help.

In Cayambe we have had a couple technical sessions where we have had to present to the Trainees. Some of it is stuff I know well, but some of it is on topics that I haven’t had to work with since our training. Its nice to review those topics and now that I understand Spanish, I’m learning a lot of things that I didn’t pick up on the first time around.

I had to give a short session on grafting and pruning the other day. I hadn’t done anything with trees in La Libertad, so I had to do some research. I think I did a good job, and one of the other Co-Trainers asked me afterwards, “Wow, I didn’t know you knew so much about trees!” That was the good, the bad was when one of the Trainees asked, “Jay, how many grafts have you done during your service?” I answered that including the six demonstration grafts I did during the session, I had done six. He looked at me and said, “That’s what I thought”.

Another interesting thing is the La Libertad already has its replacement PCV. One of the Trainees has been a Peace Corps Volunteer several times, starting in 1984. He has been in Ecuador as a PCV and even worked in the office. Since he knew almost everything already, they decided to let him skip training and go right to his site. They decided that la Libertad was the best fit for him due to his small gardening experience and desire to work with a woman’s group in the Sierra. I hope it works out for Russell and I plan on heading down there soon to give him my contact lists and advise him on projects I tried, what I had hoped that he would continue, and the basic logistics of La Libertad. Its crazy to think of him sleeping in my bed, but its his bed now.