Ah, where to begin. This past month has been a whirlwind. First there was Easter with the family in Ayora, then the 2-week tech trip around the Central Sierra, and finally swearing in at the Ambassador’s house in Quito. Oh and then I almost forgot the most important part, arriving and settling into my new home, Guayllapishi.
I guess I’ll start at the beginning, my final week in Ayora. It was Semana Santa which is basically a week long Easter celebration. Seems pretty standard, right? Well, this is Ecuador, so of course it wasn’t your normal Easter celebration. Instead, we ate this soup like dish called Fanesca for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the entire week! In case the soup wasn’t enough to fill you up, there was also another dish that came with every meal- a huge plate of mashed potatoes, avocados, a piece of cheese, and a slice of a tomato. On the first day, I liked the soup so much that for the first time since I had been there, I ate my whole bowl. Dolores shouted out “It’s an Easter miracle!” (in Spanish, of course) and the whole family laughed hysterically. Unfortunately (or fortunately for my figure), that was the first and last time that happened. Finally after 2 or 3 days of the same meal 3 times a day, I had to tell Dolores that my stomach was hurting and she started to make me and the rest of the family some normal meals while she continued to eat fanesca. On actual Easter Sunday, Dolores took me to mass complete with a procession around the whole town where the alter boys took turns holding a huge cross and statutes of Jesus and Mary. The procession ended in the cemetery where there was some more praying and then everybody went home for some more fanesca. After that, I basically just spend my time hanging out with Estefania and packing up my stuff and then I left a few days later. Overall, I had a pretty good time with my training host family. I was their 7th or 8th volunteer, so they didn’t really include me in as much as I would have liked, but it was a good experience and they were really patient with my Spanish and they had hot water in the shower which is all I could have really asked for in a good host family.
So, next came the 2-week tech trip. We were all split into groups based on our regions within our programs- NRC or Ag: Costa, Oriente, Sierra Sur, and Sierra Central/Norte. Since my site is basically smack dab in the middle of Ecuador, I was in the Ag Sierra Central/Norte group. There were 9 trainees (4 boys- Patrick, Jake, Bob, Aaron 5 girls- Me, Leah, Cara, Carrie, Lindsay), 1 leader (3rd year volunteer- Mo) and 2 language facilitators (Andrea y Javier). We started off with a few days in Riobamba with day trips to Chambo, San Bernardo, an integrated farm at the local university, and Cajabamba. It was cool to get to know Riobamba a little bit since it’s my closest big city and I’ll probably be spending a good amount of time there. After Riobamba, we went to this really cool town called Salinas de Bolivar. As if the name itself isn’t enough for you to be begging me to take you when you come to visit me, it’s a really cute little Ecuadorian tourist town with huge chocolate, cheese, yarn, soy, mushroom, and soccer ball factories. It’s super high in the mountains (around 3500 meters) but only a 2 or 3-hour camioneta ride down one of the mountains brings you to the subtropics! Apparently it’s really cool, we couldn’t go down because the road was out of commission or something but Patrick (the volunteer who is going to be living there) tells me it’s awesome! We saw a bunch of different kinds of greenhouses and even helped build one one day, which was pretty cool since we only had 1 hammer, 1 machete, and 1 saw to work with between about 14 of us. After Salinas, we headed to Guaranda where we learned about making and working with compost and gave a charla (sort of an informal workshop) to a bunch of elementary school kids about garbage. We met up with the Sierra Sur Ag group on the last day of the trip and learned about hot boxes (small greenhouses) and tire gardens. Overall, the tech trip was really fun. We bonded a lot, came up with plenty of inside jokes (mostly coined by yours truly thank you very much), and learned a lot about agriculture. I can’t say that I felt 100% ready to leave for my site and be an effective volunteer with only what we learned on the tech trip, but I know whatever else I need to know will come in time. Poco a poco as they say, little by little.
After the tech trip, we all made our way to Quito for some final logistical meetings and tests before swearing in. We were split up by program and stayed in separate hostels (NRC stayed where Ag stayed last time and vice versa- luckily this time no one got robbed). We had our final LPIs and I tested into Intermedio Medio which is exactly where I needed to be in order to become a volunteer. We also had a bunch of other post tests- health, safety and security, agriculture. Every night we would all go out to this area of Quito called the Mariscol. It’s where all the restaurants and clubs are. It was pretty fun to let loose after being cooped up for so long. Finally, on April 22, Earth Day, we all became official Peace Corps Volunteers at the Ambassador’s house in Quito. The ceremony was pretty fast, there were speeches from the Country Director, the Training Director, the Ambassador, and one volunteer representative from each program. We all raised our right hands and repeated back the oath and then were called up individually and presented with a certificate for completing training. After that we were treated to a nice breakfast (bagel and shmear, fruit, coffee, and juice) and then headed back to the Peace Corps office for a little celebratory bbq. That night we all went out in the Mariscol again and then the next day we all left for our respective sites.
Which leads me to Guayllapishi. I stayed a couple of nights in Riobamba at my counterpart’s apartment and then we all made our way to Guayllapishi. I got to town on a Sunday, which is when there is a market in the center of Cebadas (the next town over). Manuela, my host mom, has a booth where she cooks and sells lunch so I just hung out with her and helped where I could. For the next few days, I mostly just hung out with the family and tagged along wherever they went. One day, Lucho (host dad) drove Manuela and I to Riobamba so that I could buy some essentials for my house- some pots and pans, dresser, curtains, pillow, trash cans, dish rack, etc. We met up with Jaime and Sara (counterpart and his wife who just happens to be one of Manuela and Lucho’s daughters). After a long day of shopping and walking around the city, we packed up the camioneta and headed back to Guayllapishi. The next day I spent the morning rearranging and cleaning up the house and then in the afternoon I helped Sara and Manuela in the garden. I’ve mostly just been hanging out with the family, I haven’t met too many of the neighbors yet, but I’m not too worried about that because I have 2 whole years here and there aren’t too many people in this town so I’ll eventually know everyone whether I want to or not. I have so many ideas of little things to do with the family (they have 2 small abandoned buildings on their property and we’re thinking I might try to raise some cuyes (guinea pigs) in one of them and then try to convert the other into a pseudo invernadero (greenhouse)) so I can’t even imagine what will happen once I start my CAT (community assessment tools) interviews and hear what the other families think this town needs!
Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. Sorry I haven’t had too much time to blog. There isn’t very good Internet here so I’m looking into a few options and depending on how expensive they are (I’m on Peace Corps salary now) I might be able to figure something out. My texts weren’t working for awhile, but I think I fixed it so I should be able to receive texts now. I’m still not allowed to call out internationally from my phone, but you guys can call me if you want and if I can’t talk right then I’ll just tell you when a better time to call will be. I can easily check my email on my kindle but it sometimes freezes or restarts when I try to respond. Hmm let’s see what else? Oh, I finally got my new mailing address. It’s a PO box in Riobamba so I’ll probably check it at least once a month if not more so feel free to send me anything. Remember to keep the packages small (under 4 kilos I think) and not to claim a value or else they’ll try to charge me to get it out of customs. I don’t have any special requests just yet, but give it a few months and I’m sure I’ll have quite a list going.
Rachel Ostwald
Casilla 06-01-692
Riobamba- Chimborazo
Ecuador
May 1, 2010
Hope all is well in the US. Oh, that reminds me- it’s kind of hard for me to keep up on the news and stuff so if you guys either have old issues of Time, Newsweek, New Yorker, NYT, National Geographic, etc you can add them to the future packages OR if you have some spare time while surfing the Internet if you want to email me some interesting articles (when I check my email, I usually just copy and paste them into a word dock and save it to my flash and read them later so I can do that if you add some news articles into the body of your emails). Also, if you send me hard copies, I can use the pictures in them to decorate my walls- they’ll pretty barren right now.
Special shout out to my new baby cousin, Nathan! Sorry I couldn’t be there to help welcome you to the family, but we’ll have plenty of hang out time when I get back. Everybody better get their holding fix now because come April 2012, you’re all mine!
I guess I’ll start at the beginning, my final week in Ayora. It was Semana Santa which is basically a week long Easter celebration. Seems pretty standard, right? Well, this is Ecuador, so of course it wasn’t your normal Easter celebration. Instead, we ate this soup like dish called Fanesca for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the entire week! In case the soup wasn’t enough to fill you up, there was also another dish that came with every meal- a huge plate of mashed potatoes, avocados, a piece of cheese, and a slice of a tomato. On the first day, I liked the soup so much that for the first time since I had been there, I ate my whole bowl. Dolores shouted out “It’s an Easter miracle!” (in Spanish, of course) and the whole family laughed hysterically. Unfortunately (or fortunately for my figure), that was the first and last time that happened. Finally after 2 or 3 days of the same meal 3 times a day, I had to tell Dolores that my stomach was hurting and she started to make me and the rest of the family some normal meals while she continued to eat fanesca. On actual Easter Sunday, Dolores took me to mass complete with a procession around the whole town where the alter boys took turns holding a huge cross and statutes of Jesus and Mary. The procession ended in the cemetery where there was some more praying and then everybody went home for some more fanesca. After that, I basically just spend my time hanging out with Estefania and packing up my stuff and then I left a few days later. Overall, I had a pretty good time with my training host family. I was their 7th or 8th volunteer, so they didn’t really include me in as much as I would have liked, but it was a good experience and they were really patient with my Spanish and they had hot water in the shower which is all I could have really asked for in a good host family.
So, next came the 2-week tech trip. We were all split into groups based on our regions within our programs- NRC or Ag: Costa, Oriente, Sierra Sur, and Sierra Central/Norte. Since my site is basically smack dab in the middle of Ecuador, I was in the Ag Sierra Central/Norte group. There were 9 trainees (4 boys- Patrick, Jake, Bob, Aaron 5 girls- Me, Leah, Cara, Carrie, Lindsay), 1 leader (3rd year volunteer- Mo) and 2 language facilitators (Andrea y Javier). We started off with a few days in Riobamba with day trips to Chambo, San Bernardo, an integrated farm at the local university, and Cajabamba. It was cool to get to know Riobamba a little bit since it’s my closest big city and I’ll probably be spending a good amount of time there. After Riobamba, we went to this really cool town called Salinas de Bolivar. As if the name itself isn’t enough for you to be begging me to take you when you come to visit me, it’s a really cute little Ecuadorian tourist town with huge chocolate, cheese, yarn, soy, mushroom, and soccer ball factories. It’s super high in the mountains (around 3500 meters) but only a 2 or 3-hour camioneta ride down one of the mountains brings you to the subtropics! Apparently it’s really cool, we couldn’t go down because the road was out of commission or something but Patrick (the volunteer who is going to be living there) tells me it’s awesome! We saw a bunch of different kinds of greenhouses and even helped build one one day, which was pretty cool since we only had 1 hammer, 1 machete, and 1 saw to work with between about 14 of us. After Salinas, we headed to Guaranda where we learned about making and working with compost and gave a charla (sort of an informal workshop) to a bunch of elementary school kids about garbage. We met up with the Sierra Sur Ag group on the last day of the trip and learned about hot boxes (small greenhouses) and tire gardens. Overall, the tech trip was really fun. We bonded a lot, came up with plenty of inside jokes (mostly coined by yours truly thank you very much), and learned a lot about agriculture. I can’t say that I felt 100% ready to leave for my site and be an effective volunteer with only what we learned on the tech trip, but I know whatever else I need to know will come in time. Poco a poco as they say, little by little.
After the tech trip, we all made our way to Quito for some final logistical meetings and tests before swearing in. We were split up by program and stayed in separate hostels (NRC stayed where Ag stayed last time and vice versa- luckily this time no one got robbed). We had our final LPIs and I tested into Intermedio Medio which is exactly where I needed to be in order to become a volunteer. We also had a bunch of other post tests- health, safety and security, agriculture. Every night we would all go out to this area of Quito called the Mariscol. It’s where all the restaurants and clubs are. It was pretty fun to let loose after being cooped up for so long. Finally, on April 22, Earth Day, we all became official Peace Corps Volunteers at the Ambassador’s house in Quito. The ceremony was pretty fast, there were speeches from the Country Director, the Training Director, the Ambassador, and one volunteer representative from each program. We all raised our right hands and repeated back the oath and then were called up individually and presented with a certificate for completing training. After that we were treated to a nice breakfast (bagel and shmear, fruit, coffee, and juice) and then headed back to the Peace Corps office for a little celebratory bbq. That night we all went out in the Mariscol again and then the next day we all left for our respective sites.
Which leads me to Guayllapishi. I stayed a couple of nights in Riobamba at my counterpart’s apartment and then we all made our way to Guayllapishi. I got to town on a Sunday, which is when there is a market in the center of Cebadas (the next town over). Manuela, my host mom, has a booth where she cooks and sells lunch so I just hung out with her and helped where I could. For the next few days, I mostly just hung out with the family and tagged along wherever they went. One day, Lucho (host dad) drove Manuela and I to Riobamba so that I could buy some essentials for my house- some pots and pans, dresser, curtains, pillow, trash cans, dish rack, etc. We met up with Jaime and Sara (counterpart and his wife who just happens to be one of Manuela and Lucho’s daughters). After a long day of shopping and walking around the city, we packed up the camioneta and headed back to Guayllapishi. The next day I spent the morning rearranging and cleaning up the house and then in the afternoon I helped Sara and Manuela in the garden. I’ve mostly just been hanging out with the family, I haven’t met too many of the neighbors yet, but I’m not too worried about that because I have 2 whole years here and there aren’t too many people in this town so I’ll eventually know everyone whether I want to or not. I have so many ideas of little things to do with the family (they have 2 small abandoned buildings on their property and we’re thinking I might try to raise some cuyes (guinea pigs) in one of them and then try to convert the other into a pseudo invernadero (greenhouse)) so I can’t even imagine what will happen once I start my CAT (community assessment tools) interviews and hear what the other families think this town needs!
Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. Sorry I haven’t had too much time to blog. There isn’t very good Internet here so I’m looking into a few options and depending on how expensive they are (I’m on Peace Corps salary now) I might be able to figure something out. My texts weren’t working for awhile, but I think I fixed it so I should be able to receive texts now. I’m still not allowed to call out internationally from my phone, but you guys can call me if you want and if I can’t talk right then I’ll just tell you when a better time to call will be. I can easily check my email on my kindle but it sometimes freezes or restarts when I try to respond. Hmm let’s see what else? Oh, I finally got my new mailing address. It’s a PO box in Riobamba so I’ll probably check it at least once a month if not more so feel free to send me anything. Remember to keep the packages small (under 4 kilos I think) and not to claim a value or else they’ll try to charge me to get it out of customs. I don’t have any special requests just yet, but give it a few months and I’m sure I’ll have quite a list going.
Rachel Ostwald
Casilla 06-01-692
Riobamba- Chimborazo
Ecuador
May 1, 2010
Hope all is well in the US. Oh, that reminds me- it’s kind of hard for me to keep up on the news and stuff so if you guys either have old issues of Time, Newsweek, New Yorker, NYT, National Geographic, etc you can add them to the future packages OR if you have some spare time while surfing the Internet if you want to email me some interesting articles (when I check my email, I usually just copy and paste them into a word dock and save it to my flash and read them later so I can do that if you add some news articles into the body of your emails). Also, if you send me hard copies, I can use the pictures in them to decorate my walls- they’ll pretty barren right now.
Special shout out to my new baby cousin, Nathan! Sorry I couldn’t be there to help welcome you to the family, but we’ll have plenty of hang out time when I get back. Everybody better get their holding fix now because come April 2012, you’re all mine!
Comments
Post a Comment