Halo! I am at my site and it is very beautiful as promised! Unfortunatly my counterpart is in guayaquil till Friday which makes it a bit difficult to do any of the things that Im supposed to do while Im here for the week. The trip from Caymbe to Puerto Rico (where I am staying in an amazig beach hotel) took just over 24 hours....yuck. Ill tell you more when i can find a functioning keyboard...this one has sticky vowels. Hasta luego!

My assignment!

I´m going to the coast! I´m super excited about my site...I sounds as though it was tailored for me! It´s a small coastal town in the Manabi region. I´ll be primarily working on watershed managment, but also on the protection of a turtle nesting beach, ecotourism, and reforestation (mangroves?) I´ll also be one of the few volunteers who is working with a bigger NGO on the grassroots level, which a huge potential advantage as I´ll probably have funding for my projects and a little more structure. My counterpart whom I will be working with extensivly over the next two years is also supposed to be great. FURTHERMORE the view from my house ( where I will be living for at least three months) is absolutly spectacular. I´m very, very lucky. I´m leaving tommorow for an entire week at my site before returning for one more week of technical training, and then further training in a coastal area with other volunteers.
Yesterday they told everyone their site by creating a big map of Ecuador on the floor and calling us one by one so that we could see the people we were closest too. Not everyone is excited as I am with their site...there were a few tears. Luckily, I´m fairly close to one of my friends Kiki from my community...but everyone else is a fair distance away. I´m also a little afraid of the language barrier because everyone on the coast drops vowels and s´s and speaks way too fast. If I survive, I´ll be fantastic at Spainish by the time I return. It sounds as though I will have internet access, water, and telephone service at my site. I´ll let you know more once I´ve finished exploring this week!
Choi!

HOLA!

Hello! Sorry for the delay in starting my blog, but I think I might be able to start posting some material now....

I´ve now been in Ecuador for nearly a month. I´m living with a family in a small agriculture community just north of Cayambe. I bathe out of a bucket because the showers are freezing cold and occasionaly eat strange food like guinea pig and gautita (cow stomach)...but mostly I eat rice and potatoes. All 55 volunteers are divided into different communities based on our language competency...I´m about in the middle. The six people in my group are all cool, which is a huge advantage as I spend much of my time with them trying to learn Spanish. The Peace Corps has been great for putting me in the most awkward situations I´ve ever been in before, such as trying to explain what the Peace corps is to a class room full of kids with my terrrible spanish...after this I dont think Ill be able to be embarassed anymore. On friday I find out which region of the country I will be living in...Galapagos is restricted to third year volunteers but I´m keeping my fingers crossed for the coast (or the orient!). Yesterday we had a Peace Corps volunteer barbeque complete with a soccer tournament between the 12 different communities which we are divided between. My team was basically robbed of second place...but third isn´t so bad;)
I´ll give more complete update of these early weeks once I´ve become more settled. I love you all!