Still here

I am sorry that I have been delinquent in keeping up with what I have been doing and what happens now that I am done with training (!!!!) Let me say that one more time, cause that has a nice ring to it: I am sorry that I have been delinquent in keeping up with what I have been doing and what happens now that I am done with training. Yes, we swear in a week from tomorrow. Leading up to that, we have goodbye parties, some boring administrative stuff, and language assessments. It is very exciting and a little overwhelming and we are all sort of giddy and cranky at the same time.

Now here I should say that from moment to moment I alternate from adoring my beloved co-aspirantes here to throwing my eyes up to the sky with ill-disguised impatience with a thousand shortcomings. If I go too long without seeing someone from my group, I get kind of nostalgic and wonder who I can find to go have a beer with me. Then one of them will play New Kids on the Block or the Spice Girls, you know, to take the girls in the group back, and I will be rudely reminded of the fact that when I was moving into my first apartment, most of the people in my group had not yet entered puberty.

Last week though, I was in love with my training group and frankly in love with the Peace Corps Ecuador. On Thursday, we went to a town to the north of us called Mascarilla where the community, which is Afro-Ecuadorian, has started a project of mask making in order to foster cultural identity and create a small business opportunity for the artists. We helped the youth group do a mingha and pick up trash in the town. In the afternoon, we went to Ibarra, also to the north and hung out with the youth in the Cemoplaf affiliate there. (CEMOPLAF is like Planned Parenthood) We visited a big hacienda and saw cuy (guinean pigs raised to be eaten) and a field of tomatoes de arbol, tree tomatos, which are totally different from regular tomatoes. The teenagers did traditional dance that was typical of the area and made us dance with them. On Friday I went with a little subgroup to give talks in a shelter for teenage mothers, some of whom had been trafficked in the sex trade. That was both intimidating and chaotic, but good practice I figure. Saturday I spent with my family and then Sunday we took off again for Mindo, towards the coast, which is a good site for bird watching and has subtropical cloudforest. We stayed in a wooden house open to the forest, that was situated right next to a river. We did do some work while we were there, but lots of time was spent hiking and jumping off big rocks into swimming holes.

So, there is more coming soon, but that is what I have been busy with. So, there is not too much to complain about as you can see.