Malaria, Tsantsas and Caca de Vaca

   Well here we are wrapping up week number three. This past week has been rather long, both in a boring "I've been stuck in class learning about policies" and "we try to do as much as we can on the weekends" way. Last Sunday the host family and I piled into the family car, a KIA SUV, and drove about 2 hours out into the country to the Quito Zoo. The zoo was quite interesting seeing as how nearly all the flora and fauna there are native to Ecuador. My host dad took off for work on Monday, he is and electrician in the oil fields by the Colombian boarder, were he stayed until Friday night. Early in the week we started our community garden out back behind the training center. Each group of 4 gets a plot about 10 by 30 feet to work with and the best plot at the end of training gets a prize. We also learned about building worm beds, organic composting "the right way" and how to make a very effective liquid organic fertilizer, consisting of pig manure, wood ash, tree leaves, old milk and some other lovely ingredients all mixed into a mesh bag left to steep in a tank of water.

   On Wednesday the advantage of being in the "advanced" language class became evident. Following our trip to the Peace Corps office in Quito, all the volunteers headed back to Tumbaco to work on community maps and various other class projects. My group on the other hand ended up getting ice cream and laying in the central park experiencing a "cultural" siesta with our professor who decided we knew enough about the neighborhood.

   Throughout the rest of the week we spent a fair deal of time talking about various tropical diseases, more safety and security policies, community banks (which actually thrive here), as well as  a trip to a local tree nursery where we learned everything from planting seed beds and transplanting, to harvesting seeds and large scale composting. Saturday's class time was spent in language classes followed by a tour of a small farm next to the training center. The farm next door raises cuy (guinea pigs), rabbits and real pigs. It was interesting getting to learn about raising all three animals and could be vary useful out in the boonies where basic concepts like not inbreeding have yet to take root.

   Playing with the pigs next door gave way to the rest of my weekend at around 3 o' clock that afternoon. Following a short siesta my host family and I, as well as a fellow volunteer, drove up to Quito to tour the major churches in the city. By far the largest and most impressive in my opinion was the Basilica which tours over nearly every building in Quito and is complete with turtles and birds in place of the more traditional gargoyles. For dinner we stopped off at a kebab restaurant in Cumbaya, an upscale suburb of Quito much like Tumbaco. The food was amazing and to my extreme joy the kebab restaurant is located right next to a high end sushi restaurant and an Irish pub, I may have to move in.

   On Sunday we got out of the house around 8 and drove south up over the Papallacta Pass at 14,000 feet on our way to the Papallacta hot springs. The drive up was by far my favorite part of the trip, winding through the high Andes Mountains. As you reach the top of Papallacta Pass the land opens up in front of you, looking down the valley of Papallacta and out at Volcan Antisana, touring at 18,875 feet. On the way back from the hot springs we stopped at a fish farm in the hills owned by a family friend who gave us a quick tour of the fish ponds and his cuy barn, complete with a thatched roof. We also toured the fish farm across the street which used the slope of the hill to run the farm. He had split a small stream in two and dug small tanks into the ground, separating each tank with a net that would hold the fish back. Each tank had different sized fish with the smallest at the top and the largest at the bottom of the hill. As the largest fish were sold off he could open the upper tanks to let the fish flow down to the lower tanks,  a rather nice set up in my opinion that required very little work.

   Lastly, today being Presidents Day and all, we took a class field trip the La Mitad del Mundo, or the Center of the World. La Mitad del Mundo is a very large monument to the equatorial line which was calculated by hand by some French guy back in the 70's. To his dismay however, he was off by a few hundred meters but they still built a very large monument with his name on it. Slightly to the north is another, much smaller, museum which actually lies at 0'00"000 latitude. On the equatorial line you can preform a few experiments like balance an egg on end on a nail (which I successfully did), have a vertical sun clock, and watch the water in a sink drain straight downward. The last one was a bit more of a surprise to me since the lady doing the demonstration moved the sink 10 feet to either side of the equatorial line to demonstrate that it does in fact drain opposite directions. Also at that museum were various examples of indigenous cultures which included seeing a real Tsantsa of the Shuar tribe (Quichua for "shrunken head"). The Shuar people are known as mighty warriors who cut off the head of great opponents and shrink them believing that the head contains the soul of their fallen enemy.

   Espero que les vaya bien, Chao!

Two weeks down, only 112 weeks to go

   Having been a whole week since my last post, I am having trouble remembering where I left off. I believe it would have been last weekend leaving off at the beginning of the week and the first days of "real classes". This week started off with a few more days of Peace Corps policies and the occasional staff skit of what not to do and how to react to certain situations. One of these said skits included a female volunteer and a prop backpack of which she knew non of the contents as she walked into her new house to be greeted by her two younger siblings and host parents. While the parents piled on the food and welcomes, her pesky siblings proceeded to pull bras, thongs, birth control pills, an impressive heap of condoms and other unmentionables out of her backpack (to which she was unaware of possessing).  Other days had us sitting in a nice cool room listening to the Medical Officer cover a gratuitous number of causes for diarrhea (as well as a few happy terms such as Montezuma's revenge and adjectives such as "explosive"). Now sitting here quietly in my room I am taken back to fond memories of a famous tune written by our very own Kevin Lungren covering such topics.

   This week also saw our first round of vaccines (rabies, typhoid and yellow fever?) as well as technical and language interviews. Apart from feeling like somewhat of a human pincushion I have to say I am rather proud of having tested into Spanish at the Advanced-medium level, far above the Intermediate-medium level needed to become a Peace Corps Volunteer. The last two days we had a chance to talk to some currently active volunteers from around Ecuador and ask the "nitty gritty" questions (like "how's your Spanish now" and "do volunteers tend to date while they are here?" to which came my favorite response of the day. "The best way to learn Spanish is to sleep with a dictionary").

   Apart from the various school activities and a random survey we had to partake in at the center of town, I have been spending most of my time with my host family. My host dad Hermeo, who works as an electrician in the oil fields on the Colombian boarder, came home on Monday. He is a very likable person and is always checking in on me to see if there is anything I need. He has shown me around town in the family SUV and we spent most of today driving up into Quito to a park in the center of town where you can see nearly the entire valley and city of Quito. He also took me to a small shop that sells humitas, a sweet bread baked inside a corn husk, that opens for one hour per day and normally sells out before the hour is up.

   In the coming week we are planning various class trips and cultural excursions, (couldn't really tell you the difference between the two)  as well as various group projects like building a community garden and raising chickens for our swearing in feast. Also, to those who are interested in visiting me here in Ecuador, please feel for that free to do so after July 1st. Peace Corps encourages us to have friends and family here and you are welcome to stay for as long as you want (I know of one volunteer who had a friend staying 6 months in site).

  With that I look forward to reading your comments and I hope February is treating you all well, I know I am enjoying the 70 degree weather. Que les vaya bien! Chao!

Staging, Home Stays and First Impressions

Hello All,

    I have to admit, this is my first blog so you will have to hang in there as I figure it all out from Ecuador. I have been sending out a lot of emails in the last few days and decided this is the best way for me to keep everyone up to date and informed without having to spend my whole day answering emails so here we go.

   After a nice weekend with the family and a some good Chinese food with my lovely girlfriend Hillarie on Monday night, I flew out of Seatac Tuesday, February 1st 2011 just after sunrise. The weather was beautiful and the flight to Washington D.C. for staging was painless. My only note here was the abundance of snow in the states which lasted from Eastern Washington all the way out to Regan International in D.C. The Peace Corps staging event was fairly quick and covered some ice breakers for getting the group together. I actually had the chance to walk the Mall from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capital building (a nice U.S. send off for my Peace Corps experience).

   Following 2 hours of sleep and a 3 am wake up, we checked out of the hotel and headed for the airport. Everyone was exhausted to say the least and I must say you can learn a lot about people in that state. After a layover in Miami we arrived in Quito Ecuador just after sunset on Thursday. We were met at the gate and escorted in groups of 5 to the bus as to not get our stuff stolen. The last few days have been more a less a blur of settling into the climate and a welcome to the training center. Everyone is great and they all seem very excited to have us here. The valley here in Tumbaco (the suburb we are staying in just outside of Quito) is surrounded by hills and volcanos and the plants are very similar to those in Costa Rica. It has been about 70 degrees the last three days and partly cloudy.

   Today we finally met our host families after 3 hours of class in the morning. For the next 11 weeks of training I will be living with a family in downtown Tumbaco in a three story house overlooking Quito and the Pinchincha Volcano. My host parents have 3 children, a 10 yr old girl, a 14 yr old boy and a 17 yr old girl. After a warm welcome and some time to settle into my room, which happens to be the youngest daughters room normally and is painted a nice pink with Barbies and Snow White scattered about, I had some time to relax on the patio. As I sat in the sun in front of our 4 sliding glass doors that open up to a full view of Pinchincha, listening to quiet spanish conversation and a heavy reggaetone beat off in the distance, it started to hit me that this is home for the time being.

    I am looking forward to spending a lot of time here in Tumbaco both with my host family and the great group of volunteers that we have down here. I can already see why this is said to be one of the best places on earth, let alone have the highest bio-diversity in the world (Ecuador holds 10% of the worlds plants and animal species in a space the size of Colorado). To all you who have the ability it is worth a visit!