Guaranda, Ecuador

So, training has been crazy. Every second is filled with schedules and requirements. Free time is not a common phrase here.

My site visit went awesome! I will be living in a bigger city (the capital of the province Bolivar - Guaranda), and working in communities all over the province. For the first three months, I´m living with a host family. I have a mom and sister who live in teh house with me. The father works in another city for 45 days a week and is home for 2-3 days a week, and the oldest son of the famliy just graduated from colegio (high school) and is going to University (possibly in Quito). My mother loves having another hija in her house - sadly, she recently has lost her job and her son has left for school, so she loves cooking and cleaning for me. During my four day visit, I ate enough food to feed a small army. I´m going to have to work on slimming down my meals once I get there! My host mother and sister went walking around town with me every day I was there, they will be great support to have while adjusting to Ecuadorian language, culture and lifestyle. Both sets of host grandparents and 4-5 aunts and uncles (I haven´t figured out who lives there, and who was just visiting) also live on the same street - so I´ll have lots of Ecuadorian family around.

The Foundation I work for has an office in Guaranda. They work in cities all over the province, I´m going to start working in their Youth Program. They work with childre, mainly through after school programs, in organic agriculture. They philosophy is that if they teach the childre, they children will teach their parents. Additionally, the Foundation does work in community loans and small enterprise development. Under the office in Guaranda, they have a pizza restaurant and a store that sells cheese and chocolate; these stores support women-run businesses in Salinas. Once my Spanish gets better, I hope to do some work in these areas.

For the first three months on site, the Peace Corps asks us not to leave our sites, so we have time to adapt to the culture and to get to know the people at your site. However, I am also not supposed to ahve visitors and I´ll ahve to ask permission to leave for my birthday and Halloween. We are also supposed to complete community assessmens and present them in four months. My Foundation has been around for 30 years, and has doen some work with long-term goals and program/community assessments. However, it will be quite a challenge to get to know 6+ communities and build confianza with them. I will be the gringa who just shows up for awhile... I was talking to a current volunteer who also worked in surrounding communities during his service - he said you never quite adapt to the culture of all the pueblos, ¨Just make your charlas at each community as fun, outgoing and crazy as you can so they remember you and want to come next time. Then, find a few people at each pueblo you can relate to, and try to work through them.¨ A charla is a term here for workshops. Many Peace Corps Volunteers utilize charlas to reach out to and to educate their communities. They can be anythign from a 30 minute conversation about sexual education to a camp fire, s´mores and talking to kids about fears.

Another sweet find while at my site, was the Federacion de Deportes de Bolivar which is a 20 minute walk from my house. They are a government run program which offers all children in the province sports free of charge. When we were there, we saw karate, kung-fu, soccer and a rock climbing wall! The Federacion also has a soccer field, basketball courst, a track and an awesome staff. I hope I can find sometime to work here.

I´m heading to Guayas today for a technical trip. About half the Youth and Family Volunteers (about 12) are going. We will get to meet current Volunteers, practice charlas with kids and see the beach!! I´ll be back Friday, and then I only have a week before going to Quito for a few days and swearing in on August 19th!!

I know I´ve been promising photos - but I still can figure out how to upload them from these public computers to Blogger...