Viva La Libertad

I have a couple minutes while I'm at the PC HQ in Quito on my way to La Libertad for the 8 day visit, so I thought I'd post the info I have on my site and job duties...

LA LIBERTAD

"Association Nueva Vida"

Sierra - Cotopaxi

Site Characteristics:

La Libertad ias a small agricultural community of about 400 inhabitants (1200 in the wider area) located in the sierran province of Cotopaxi. It is a hilly area with a relatively cold climate and a rainy season from November to April. It is one of the most productive areas in the country for onions potatoes, and small animals, The people are predominately mestizos and all speak Spanish as their primary language. Local incomes are low at around $120/month, but they have been improving along with local nutrition, The volunteer will be colaborating with an established micro-credit organization, the local irrigation group, and other community based organizations.

Primary Activities:

- Supporting the activities of the community bank and womens' group, Nueva Vida

- Collaborating with the school and high school in agriculture and animal projects

- Supporting and developing small business projects to provide additional income

- Working with the local irrigation group to improve their system and diversify production

- The implementation of an organic family garden project

Secondary Activities:

- Teaching agriculture classes at the colegio

- Reforestation

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I hope this gives you an idea of what I'm supposed to do. In reality it may be this plus other stuff or none of this at all. I pretty much is up to what is going on and what I feel I can assist with. I'm mostly excited about the small-business and irrigation stuff because I think that is where I can help the most.

Anyway, bye for now and go TARHEELS!!!!!!!!!

Wearin´ o´ the green...

Ecuador style. First off, happy St. Pat´s to all y´all. I´ve looked everywhere for a Guinness and a corned beef and cabbage special, but I think I´m out of luck (side note to Conor Magee: This is not the country for you). I am wearing my newest piece of clothing today. A green Brazil tee-shirt that I just got for $6. It says "Adidas" on the front, but the tag is different. Oh well, another six bucks to the pirated clothing industry. On the subject of sports, I setup a NCAA pool for my training group. The response wasn´t as much as I would have wanted, but as long as UNC wins it all and I take the pot, I´ll be happy.

A family in my town just opened up a Pool Hall with satellite TV. The group from my town thought it would be a good idea to invite the rest of the training group to town last Sunday to watch Conference Championship games and the selection show on ESPN. About 27 showed up, but all ESPN was showing was Spanish soccer games. Luckily the hall has beer, so everyone still had a good time.

The other day I got a package from Steph (my sister) with the Post Dispatch in it. It had a complete Cards schedule. Now, even though I can´t watch the games, I´ll know when they are playing. (P.S.- If anyone wants to send a Cardinals wall calender or DVD highlights of some games, I´d love you for ever).

I had some good food last Saturday. My host mom decided to treat me to some hamburgers. They were good and just needed some french fries, iced tea, and apple pie to make me feel like every Sat night back home. I decided to return the favor and make them dinner this Friday night. We had spaghetti with tomato sauce, bread, and wine. Everyone liked it. Apparently some other PCT´s that have lived with my family have tried to cook and it never turned out well. It was good to eat familiar food, but I have to admit that it made me a little homesick.

Something else that reminded me of home, but didn´t make me homesick was cutting my hair last week. I did it with my beard trimmer and some safety scissors that we have in our medical kit. I think it turned out OK, but my family thought that it was pretty funny that I cut my own hair.

Spanish is going well. We had another progress test this week and I got a 4 out of 10. This is a lot better than the 2 out of 10 that I got on the first test. We need to get a 5 out of 10 by the end of training, so it shouldn´t be a problem.

Now for the BIG news! I got my two year assignment location the other day. I´ll be stationed in a town called La Libertad. It has an extremely high altitude, 11,000 feet, so I´ll have to deal with that, but the work sounds great. I´m leaving tomorrow to visit the town for 8 days and to meet the people I´ll be working with. The trip will only be about 3 hours because the town is just a little south of Quito. The temp will be a little chilly at night, but it is going to be very convenient to get to Quito for supplies and to meet people when they visit. I can´t wait to see where I´ll be for two years and I hope I don´t make a complete ass out of myself right of the bat. I´ve already met the guy who is currently serving there and he seems like a good egg, so it will be easy with him there to introduce me at first. He leaves at the end of April, so when I show up for good, I´ll be on my own.

Other than that not a lot to report. I´m feeling well and hope that everything is good with you.

Jay

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.

Sewer Rat may not taste like Pumpkin Pie, but...

Guinea Pig does taste a lot like Chicken. So I finally got to do it. My host family cooked me up a Guinea Pig this week. In Spanish it is called Cuy, and it isn´t that bad. When I found out the day before that we were going to have i, I immediately flashed back to third grade at St. Dominic Savio. I may have some of this wrong, but I remember our teacher, Mrs. Brawn (?), having a pet Guinea Pig named Poquito. The thought that I was going to to eat a classroom pet was very disconcerting for the 24-hours before dinner, but the whole thing was actually anti-climactic. I was served the ass-end of the Cuy. It looked the color and texture of baked turkey, but with little paws on the end. After pulling open the stomach skin, I pulled out some of the thigh meat and ate it with a little cucumber. It tasted and looked like dark meat chicken. There wasn´t a lot of meat in it too. It seemed like a lot of work for a little bang. Kind of like eating Crawfish, but without having to suck out the brains.

Since I´m on the subject of food, I´ll go over the rest of the Ecuadorian Sierra food that I´ve had...

Breakfast
Every breakfast that I´ve had comes with the same basic components.
1) Bread - Usually some sort of roll
2) Eggs - Hard boiled with salt on the side or scrambled with tomato and onion
3) Juice - One of about 15 different kinds that are all great (I like piña and tomate de árbol the best)
4) Hot Chocolate or Coffee - Even though Ecuador grows great coffee, they only have instant down here.
5) Every once in a while we´ll have yogurt

Lunch/Dinner
I put these together, because they have been pretty much the same. First you get soup. From cream of asparagus to chicken noodle, you can always count on getting soup. It is usually pretty good too. The interesting thing that we do is to sometimes put popcorn in our soup. It doesn´t add much, but it is different to see a handful of popcorn floating in you tomato soup. One soup incident occurred the other day. My host mother put a bowl of soup in front of me and said, "Sopa de ___ de borrega". I didn´t get the middle word, but when I spooned up from the bottom of the bowl half a brain, I figured she said "Ram brain soup". I had a couple of bites, but one lobe was enough to realize that I´m not a fan. As I was eating my brain soup, I tried to explain that In St. Louis that have brain sandwiches. I said that we needed brains in our sandwiches because we didn´t have any in our heads. I don´t think the humor translated though.

After soup we will have a big plate with rice and boiled potatoes. These are the staples of Ecuadorian Highland diet. Sometimes they put broccoli, cauliflower, fried egg, or noodles on the side or have french fries of potato pancakes. I´d say 19 out of twenty meals are some variation of the potato/rice combination with chicken too.

After dinner I´ll have a glass of tea or some tap water that I added a water purification tablet to. I think that I have actually gained weight since I got here because of all the carbs and the altitude has kept me from jogging at all.

That is the news for now. I hope you enjoyed the culinary tour.

When in Ecuador...

I’m writing this laying in bed (on a piece of paper again, as I still haven’t had a chance to get to a computer) the night of Feb, 13. Things have gone pretty well since we got here last Saturday. My host family is very nice and has been very patient with my lack of Spanish. The first night we got in town there was a fiesta and my family and I sat up front to watch the entertainment. There was music, dancing, and then a beauty pagent for girls in the local high school. They did a dance routine in their normal clothes to I think a Britney Spears song and then a dance in Traditional Ecuadorian clothes. The last part was in formal wear and had them all answer a question ("What do you think the role of women is in today´s Ecuador" etc.). It was a lot like Miss America. As I mentioned, when we first got there I sat up front with my family. Quickly they asked me to sit at the very front table. I realized thet they wanted me TO JUDGE THE CONTEST! The queen from two years ago was supposed to judge with two other women, but she was late. They asked me to take her place. It was a real honor and very unexpected. I did the best I could with the Q&A part, but I really couldn´t understand what most of the answers were. The former Queen showed up right after the contest started and sat next to me, so I pretty much just cheated off her scoring sheet. The night ended with us all dancing ´till about 1:00AM. What a way to enter a community.

Since then I have been practicing my Spanish a lot and trying to hang with my host family. My Spanish is pretty horrible and it is frustrating for all of us when we try to talk. I end up just saying "Gracias" and " Muy Bien" a lot. The five of us in my town (by the way, my town is pretty decient sized and has two churches, a couple schools, and stores for whatever we need) have been split up into two groups that meet every morning for about five hours for Spanish class. I´m paired with a girl from upstate New York. Her Spanish is a lot better than mine, so I´m just trying to keep up. Luckly she is pretty cool (like the rest of the PCT´s in my town) so it isn´t a problem.

Tomorrow we are going to the local school for Valentines Day activities with the kids. We got a bunch of stuff to make cards and I´m going to try to teach them how to play Dodgeball. It should be fun.

Jay

P.S. - I haven´t had the opportunity to eat guinea Pig yet, but I have had about 10 different types of Juice that I´ve never heard of that have all been awesome (Tomate de Arbol is my favorite).

P.P.S - No Montezuma´s Revenge either !!!!!!

¿So this is Ecuador?

We had to get up at 4:30 AM today (This is starting to become a bad habit) so we could catch our 11:30 AM flight from DC to Miami. Think that seems a little like overkill? Yeah, so did we. Anyway, it was hard to get up because I hadn´t slept more than 30 minutes that night (too much nervous energy). The flights were OK and we landed in Quito around 7:30PM on the 7th. There was a bunch of PC staff to meet us and then get us though customs and immigration. Then they rushed us out into the parking lot and we were blown away because there was a big group of current Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV´s) at the door waiting for us. It was grat to have such a warm welcome.

We spent the first night in a Hostel in Quito and then got up early on Thursday for a bus ride to Cayambe (1 1/2 hour North and on the other side of the Equator). The ride was awesome as we were heading through a river valley in the Andes. We took the Pan-American Highway and the drop-off on the side of the road had to be about 500 feet to the river.

In Cayambe we did our country specific training and started language training. The compound (I can´t think of a better word for it) that we stayed in was a nice walled in group of buildings where we can all eat take classes and sleep. One of the last things that they did was to give us our groups for Community based training (CBT). I´m with four other PCT´s in a small town halfway between Cayambe and Quito. I´ll be staying there for the next 10 weeks with a host family. The idea is that by integrating as much as possible we will be able to learn Spanish faster. Sometime during CBT we will find out our 2-year assignment location and work details. We leave tomorrow morning to head to our new homes, so tonight we are taking it easy. As I write this (on paper because I have no computer access) I´m looking out the window at the sun setting over the Andes. I´m excited to get this adventure finally really started, but I wish you all were here to see this.

Jay

¨I can´t believe we´re really doin´ it!¨

So, besides having to wake up at 4:30 AM and having to make a couple of final decisions on which T-shirts I was bringing and which ones I won´t see for a couple of years, the morning of departure started well. I had some problems the night before packing. We were supposed to to bring three big bags of stuff, but I decided only to bring two. This was because I had talked to some Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV´s) and they said to bring as little as possible. I had to leave some things out, but hopefully that won´t bite me in the ass later. The biggest decision was whether to bring an extra pair of shoes or my baseball glove. I went with the glove because I figure I can always buy a new pair of Nikes, but me and baby brown have been through a lot.

After Saying goodbye to Dad and Kyle, Mom took me to the airport where I flew to DC (Side Note: Jackie Joyner Kersey was on my flight with her husband). Spent Monday in DC meeting the rest of my group. There are 45 of us from all over the US and with a lot of different experiences. It should be a good goup. There are a bunch of people from Texas, Ohio, California, and Wisconsin, but only 1 from Missouri. Damn, no Cardinals fans!

Tuesday we went over expectations, safety, country details and other training exrcises. Everyone was half there and half in Ecuador, so it wasn´t as productive as it could have been, but we still learned a lot. One of the last things we did was to go around and have everybody say a short phrase that summed up how we felt. Mine was the ¨Dumb and Dumber¨ quote that serves as the title of this post. Most of the goup is younger than me (22-25), but I think they still got the reference. after that we grabbed dinner, re-packed, and tried to get some sleep for the long day of travel ahead.

Hasta en Ecuador,

Jay

P.S.- Our group is officially called "Omnibus 97¨ as it is the 97th PC group to go to Ecuador. Now, I wish that I had brought one of my Old 97´s T-shirts. Oh well, I´ll see it in two years.

Time To Go

It is getting close to departure day (Feb, 5th) and I guess this is as good a time as any to start this whole blog thing. My goal with this is to let y'all follow what I'm doing in Ecuador and give everyone a chance to let me know how things are back home. I'm keeping my e-mail address open, so we can use that for sending info that doesn't need to be out there on the Web. I decided to keep this as an open blog, so anyone can look at it. This makes it a little less secure, but then you guys won't have to log in every time you want to check it out. Please feel free to post any stuff you want to on this (as long as it isn't from Cubs fans in Chicago talking trash).

Enough with the blogosphere details.....

I 'm almost done getting things ready to go. I just have to get a few more things (Duct Tape for one. I hear that it is invaluable.) and then pack it all up. I fly out at 7:30 AM on Monday, so I hope to get everything packed up before the game on Sunday. I then spend two days in Washington, DC and fly to Quito via Miami. We have to go on a three day retreat after we land up in the Mountains right away. I'm excited to meet everyone in my group (there are 46 of us) and get this adventure started.

I don't know how often I'll be able to post on this site, but I will try to as much as possible. It all depends on how often I can get on the net. I should be able to pretty frequently duing the fist three months of training, so expect my next post from Ecuador sooner than later. Anyway, I hope this first attemp at a post was readable even though it was mostly informational. Have fun with this guys because any messages from you will be like gold to me.

Thanks again for all the support and well-wishes that you all have given me, and I'll talk to you later from below the Equator!!!

Jay