Where I will be spending the next 2 years of my life.

Hello, I’m sorry that it has taken me that long to post again! I have been super busy with training and have had little to no access to internet. I am back to feeling almost 100% and am all caught up with training which was a struggle because I missed a week and a half of it. So much to update on I don’t know what to say. Let’s see we have gone salsa dancing several times which has been fun and I actually put on a bit of a presentation in order to teach the group the basic step.

Presentations are a big part of what training has consisted of. As part of Youth and Families we have on average 3-4 presentations a week to ages 6-17 at different schools. They have been difficult at times but I have learned a lot and have had to improve on the fly. Something else that has been difficult is finding a church. I have contacted several people and looked at several places online but it’s just really hard to find a good church that’s near me. I actually ended up going to a church with a friend and it was nuts. It was basically a rock concert. They asked people to go up front and they had a mosh-pit going on. There was also dancers up front, solos, and last but not least toilet paper being thrown about. The sermon was pretty good but it was all a little much for me.

Anyway, on to the biggest thing that has happened since I’ve gotten here. I have been placed in Ibarra, Ecuador.  Ibarra is a medium sized city that is only 2 hours away from Quito. Ibarra has all the modern amenities I would need and is supposed to be a beautiful place. It’s called the Land of Lakes and the White City (thanks to all the white colonial buildings). At first I was not excited in the least bit about my placement. I wanted to be placed on the coast and my site is fairly far from all of the PCVS. However, the more I find out about Ibarra the more I fall in love with it. I will be living right across from the plaza which will be fun and apparently have a view of three different volcanoes from my terrace. Furthermore, I have the whole 3rd floor to my self and have my own bathroom and kitchen which is truly a luxury. Lastly, I will have internet, cable, and there is even a library in my apartment. The volunteers in the area decided to do something really cool and started collecting books and movies so there are now over 100 books and movies that are kept at my place and that all the volunteers in my area are welcome to.

As for what my work will look like I will be taking over the projects for two different Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVS) which is already overwhelming but they’re also both girls which means that I will be working predominantly with women. This was naturally something I was concerned about so I decided to call and talk to both of the current PCVs. I had the opportunity to talk to the girl who currently works and is living there and got great advice. I will be working with Columbian refugees with one of my projects and with a women’s home where abused girls and women live. Both girls said that they were looking to be replaced by a male PCV because the girls and women had reacted well to men in the past and were excited to have me. In short, I have had a great past couple weeks and am really excited about living in Ibarra for the next couple years!

I would love to hear you are all doing as well so please comment, skype, facebook or email me!

The first 2 weeks of the next 2 years of my life

Many of you know this about me but I’m not a particularly talkative person, and that’s especially true when it comes to talking about myself. However, as I think back about all that has happened in the past couple weeks, it seems like a good idea to begin processing all of it so I hope you enjoy my attempt to do just that.

Where to begin. All 30 of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers and I flew into Quito and then took a bus to the training center in a city called Tumbaco about an hour away. We were bombarded with names, faces, and new information. We all tried to meet each other, learn the basics about Ecuador, and figure out just what in the world we were going to be doing in the next 2 years. Then after only a few days we were sent off to live with our host family. Thankfully I speak Spanish fluently so it wasn’t as much of a shock but many in my group know very little Spanish so you can imagine how difficult conversation can be with a brand new family and language.

My host family has been great! I have a couple older sisters and a brother and a little girl who is only 5 (I guess she’s my niece?). The 5 year old is adorable and knows way more than I knew at her age, for better or worse. She loves making up random games and loves talking away which makes for great dinner conversations. My host dad is a taxi driver and my host mom is caring and loves to know how I’m doing.

We travel every morning to the training center from our host family homes and have classes from 8-5. I lasted all of 3 days of doing this before I got really sick. The Peace Corps doctor had to rush me to the hospital where I spent 5 days. It took them a couple days to figure out what was going on. They first thought I had kidney stones, then a bacterial infection, etc. I had told them that I had an appendectomy a couple months ago so they were confused as to why there was pain in the area where the appendix was. They ended up deciding to go in for exploratory surgery and found a leftover piece of my appendix… Thankfully the operation went well and I feel much better now. If it had been a couple more days they said my organs would have probably gotten infected and it could’ve been much worse. 

After a couple hours of surgery I woke up in a strange room attached to an oxygen tank, IV, and who knows what else. I also find that I have some kind of drainage attached to me which they call a “grenade” (real encouraging). A couple days after leaving the hospital I need to go back to have my stitches removed as well as the grenade. He takes out my stitches which are pretty painful but he then tells me to hold my breath. I am getting real nervous at this point and then he starts yanking at the grenade and I apparently had over 3 feet of plastic tubing inside of me. I had no idea it was that long which made it that much scarier. It was extremely painful and felt really weird as I could feel it rub over several of my organs. 

Since then I have just been resting and procrastinating in starting this blog. It’s crazy for me to think that I have only been here for 2 weeks. It feels like I know my fellow volunteers for a much longer time and I have already experienced so much in my time in Ecuador. Next week I will be going back to training and I hope that next weekend I will be able to visit a couple friends who are living in Quito. 

Well, that’s it for now. I promise I will have some pictures next week, my camera is charging as I am writing this. Then again I haven’t been out and about much recently. I could have taken some really gross pictures while at the hospital but it’s probably for the best that I didn’t do that. Feel free to ask me any questions and I would love to hear how all of you are doing, I am already starting to miss everyone!