Training has begun!

Well after a nice couple of days in Quito, we moved onto out training sites just outside of Cayambe. The city of Cayambe is about 40,000 people just North of Quito, and the equador. Our bus trip up to Cayambe was interesting to say the least! Our trip started out at our little hostel in Quito, where we all piled into the bus and headed over to the PC offices to pick up our BIG bags and head to Cayambe to meet our host families, which was both nerve racking and exciting! How ever when we showed up and got our bags to load on the bus, things got a little interesting. ALL 40+ health trainees bags could not fit on the bus, so we packed as many as we could in the bottom of the bus and then through the window pass the bags to the back of the bus! How ever the trainees who were sitting in the back were out of luck, and had to sit on the bags! People were crammed into every corner of the bus, but we made it work! We then took a 1 1/2 hour bus ride north, we got to see some very interesting things, including the equator sign which was really cool.

We got to Cayambe and piled into the back of a truck bags and all (literally!) and off we were! It is absolutely beautiful here!!! I will post lots of pictures! We got to the first house to drop off the first person at their house, which was supposed to be me, we got all of my stuff out of the truck, and I had started to meet all of my host family, and then everyone was ready to head to the next house when they realized that I was at the wrong house and they had switched me and another person. So we got everything re-packed in the truck, said good by and then headed to drop everyone else off… We got to my house and no one was home :( They had some car trouble so they were unable to meet me… so I went to another trainees house to stay with them for awhile while my family made it home!

We took a little walk around the area which was nice, it rained off and on, and walked back to town with my other training site friends. It was really nice to see everything, I did take a lot of pictures! My family made it home and I got to meet them, they are really really great people! I was really tired and it was really late to I will have to ask their names again in the morning. I have a mom, a dad, brother, sister, and an uncle, AND a puppy :)

Well until next time… Hasta luego!

-J

Made it to Ecuador!!

Hola! Well here I am in Ecuador! It took a lot to get here, but we are just now chilling in the hostel, and we are now headed to our host families near Cayambe tomorrow, which I am really excited about! The past couple of days have been long and tiring. So far training has consisted in a crash course of everything and all things Ecuador! So far I am really excited to get things going with my work, but there is still a lot of stuff to do before I am at that stage.

The first day that we were at the PC office we did our language test, I was really nervous about it. I personally thought that I did quite bad at it, and that I was going to test beyond low! LOL… But when we got our training assignments today I actually tested higher than I thought that I was going to do. I tested at beginner high, so I am pretty happy about that. That means that I only have to go up two notches to be able to swear in :)

Well I have a lot of stuff to do before tomorrow (packing, yet again...writing letters, programming my phone) So I will post again from Cayambe.

PS: We have not really done much other than go from hostel-to-bus-to-office and back…. so I have not really taken any pictures! But I will be taking a ton of them tomorrow!

-J

Stagging

Hola de Ecuador! Los voluntarios de Cuerpo de Paz y yo vamos a Ecuador hoy! Ok thats about all I got right now on my Spanish lol… well it turns out there are 68 of us voluntarios heading to Ecuador, most of us are in the Community Health extension, with a few in the Youth and Families group. It was fun to spend some time in DC, and to see Miss Cyndi :)

But other than that not much has happened to exciting, but I think that it will get real crazy when we finally get to Ecuador, and I am pretty anxious to get this party started!

I will write again when I get there…

-J

  Food @ Ben’s

DC Metro

Packing Hell….

Well I have managed to make it to the last week… only a couple more days to go!! Im so happy I could cry, I want to get to Ecuador so bad, at this point I am considering hitchhiking there now…

But before I do, I have been doing a lot of prepping in the last two weeks, getting all of the paper work in order, quitting my job, relaxing, stressing, and most of all packing. I think I set a personal record for packing, being ready two weeks a head of schedule! And come to find out I was way under weight for my bags! :)

But then came the real fun of trying not to use any of the stuff I had already packed. Which I think I did quite well, though I have been living in the same ratty jeans and sweat pants for a couple of days. But now everything is all in bags and sitting next to my room waiting for the big trip down south. I only have a day left before I had out of Seattle, and the weather is going to be great for my last couple of days :)

I will leave you with a couple of photo’s of my last week or so on the West Coast… Now its on to DC!

-J