Upon my site assignment by the staff of Peace Corps Ecuador I had no idea what to expect with my counterpart agency: The Colinas Verdes Foundation. As most of you have probably heard, one of the largest frustrations of Peace Corps volunteers is the lack of work or of people willing to work but fortunately that was not the case with my organization. Colinas Verdes was started in the mid 1990´s by a husband and wife from the United States who wanted to create a Non-Government Organization (NGO) to help preserve Podocarpus National Park and its surrounding area. In its first couple of years the foundation participated in projects that revolved around water and watershed conservation as well as land and forest preservation. Nowadays the Colinas Verdes Foundation is run by a team of Ecuadorians from the area (the American couple had to return to the US to get jobs to pay for their kids´ college education). The focus of the organization has also changed a bit too going from a conservation based group to more of a development agency. How it works is the people of Colinas Verdes solicit funding from development organizations from all over the world. To solicit the money they need to write an in-depth proposal with a budget that is specific down to the penny. Then once they are awarded the money they have to be constantly reporting their progress usually on quarterly basis until the project is finished. Since I arrived in San Pedro de Vilcabamba, two years ago, we have worked on all kinds of projects, big and small. The projects we worked on ranged from everything to irrigation systems, school gardens and small animal breeding. The largest project we have been involved in since my arrival has been the coffee project. Back in 2008 the Colinas Verdes Foundation received funding from an organization called Manos Unidas (United Hands) which is based in Spain and the project was designed to help the local coffee growers from all over southern Ecuador in a number of different ways. Below are the major components of the project. 1. Organize the Coffee Growers: Just over a year ago the coffee growers of the Vilcabamba Valley were all working individually, selling their coffee to local distributors who were taking advantage of these poor farmers by paying them extremely low prices. Our first priority with Colinas Verdes was to help with the creation of La Asociación Agroartesanal de Productores Ecológicos de Café Especial del Cantón Loja (APECAEL). This organization has given the coffee growers the structure and power needed to get a better price in the coffee market and enables them to do things such as get organically certified in the future. 2. Coffee Nursery: Within the city limits of San Pedro de Vilcabamba the Colinas Verdes Foundation has a small parcel of land and with the funding from Manos Unidas we have been able to raise and give away over 50,000 coffee plants these past two years. This part of the project is enabling the local coffee growers to plant more coffee and replace older, non-producing plants. Thus helping them to increase the quantity of coffee grown to supply to huge demand for Ecuadorian coffee (They produced 17k sacks of coffee last year and the demand was for 30k). 3. Coffee Support Centers: One of the main problems in the history of Ecuadorian coffee is the post-harvest processing of the coffee. In the past (and still today many growers use this process) it was the custom to pick the berries, dry them on a cement pad out in front of their house and then sell it to the local coffee buyer. Unfortunately with this process the coffee is absorbing the acids from the berry and being contaminated by all the dust, chickens, dogs…etc that are walking all over the drying coffee. In an effort to improve the quality of coffee these small farmers are producing , we have been building ¨support centers¨ which consist of a de-pulping machines, washing and fermentation tanks and large drying racks thus giving the farmers the ability to produce ¨café lavado¨ or washed coffee. The process involved in washing coffee is basically de-pulping it from the berry, then fermenting it to remove the sticky coating, washing it and then drying the coffee in a clean environment. Over my two year stint here we have successfully made 16 of these support centers for the coffee growers to process their harvest and thus improved the quality of the coffee they produce, getting them a better price with buyers. 4. ¨Field Days ¨ : The last aspect of the coffee project for the Colinas Verdes Foundation were the field days we would have with the farmers. These field days were meetings we set up with the small groups of growers where we traveled out to their farms and taught them about composting, organic herbicides and pesticides, combating plagues and how to prune their coffee. I really enjoyed these days because it enabled us to see these people´s farms as well as really get to know these folks personally. Well that about sums up most of the work we have been doing over the past two years. I have to say that I have been extremely lucky to work with an NGO as organized and driven as the Colinas Verdes Foundation. Most volunteers have found themselves yearning for work or something to do and I am happy to say that that was not the case with me. The team at Colinas Verdes is a great group of people and I have been truly blessed to have them as my co-workers and friends over the past two years.

Aka: Capuchino, Capoopo, Capullo, Queso de Ojos, Clifford, The Gentle Giant.

Well I think it is about time for me to write a country song. First in August my girlfriend left and now my dog has gone back the USA and left me here in Ecuador all alone. If only I had a pickup truck… that would probably breakdown too.

Raising Capucho has been one of the highlights of my Peace Corps time as he was my best friend here and I probably had more conversations with him than I did with my counterpart. I got Capucho when he was just 6 weeks old and was still very small (He and I have the same birthday by the way). From there he just kept growing and growing until now where he is about 120lbs. From afar many people are scared of him because he has the markings of a Rottweiller but once people get up close to him the realize that he just wants to greet them and give them a kiss.

Capucho had a great life in San Pedro de Vilcabamba. He got to go swim in the river, got to chase cows around the pastures, and got to go on a decent walk along the river pretty much everyday. His life will be pretty different in the USA but seeing as all the Ecuadorians loved to joke about eating him I think he will be much better off in the USA. The process to send him home was somewhat of a long one mostly revolving around trying to find a kennel big enough to send him away in. But thanks to my loving parents we were able to find a used one on craigslist for $75, then with some luck the airline I was flying back to Ecuador on during Christmas let the GIANT kennel pass through without questioning its size. From there it was just a waiting game until this past week when Capucho and I flew from Loja to Quito where he was to get his last approvals before his big day of travel. Unfortunately when Capucho and I embarked on our journey no more than 2 minutes down the road from my house the driver yelled “ He fell out, he fell out!” I quickly ran around the side of the truck only to find his leash and collar just dangling there on the side of the truck. Then poor Capucho came limping up the road out of the darkness. He had fallen out of the truck and been dragged for a little bit, ripping the skin off of the pads of his paws and really shaking him up. So that was a little stressful but we made it to Quito where he was still walking with a limp. But all his eating, peeing and pooping functions were working ok so I assumed he was ok internally. So we continued with the process of getting him approved and then we went to the airport at 4am on Wednesday morning for his sendoff to the US. From there he flew out to Houston at 7am and then to Baltimore where he got in at midnight. My Dad said he is still stiff and low on energy but they are taking him to the vet this evening and hopefully everything will turn out ok.

I cannot believe we were able to go almost a year and a half without incident only to have this happen right before he was leaving (He had ridden in the back of a pickup truck 1000 times before without any problems). Oh well I guess that is just how life is. The good thing is that now he is safe in the good old land of the free and of Veterinarians whose training is more than a two week online course. So hopefully the vets in the US can get him all fixed up and he can return to being the 120lb playful puppy he was before the accident. I am already going through some withdraw of him right now and my house back in Vilcabamba is going to be super quiet without him for my last couple of weeks. But it is comforting to know that he is safe and sound in the US and is waiting at my parents house to greet me once I get home.

Ever since I arrived here in San Pedro de Vilcabamba I have been working with this great development organization called the Colinas Verdes Foundation (http://www.colinasverdes.org/). The foundation was founded about 20 years ago by a couple from the US to preserve and develop southern Ecuador.

Just before I arrived in my site, Colinas Verdes was awarded a large grant to work with the local coffee growers to both increase the amount of coffee grown in the area and to teach the coffee growers techniques to improve the quality of their coffee. One of the aspects of this project was to create a coffee nursery where we would raise coffee and many other types of plants in small plastic bags and then give them to the local farmers in order to be planted at their farms. So pretty much every day of my first summer here in Ecuador was spent working with the Colinas Verdes team at the nursery making the shade structure, seedbeds and bagging dirt to raise approximately 25,000 coffee plants. After we had given out these plants we immediately started the planting of another batch of coffee seedlings as well as planted some citrus and other types of trees to help provide shade for the coffee at the coffee grower´s farms.

As you can tell this nursery was a great tool for Colinas Verdes in order to complete their development projects but unfortunately there were some problems with it. For one it wasn´t very secure and we had some issues with thieves coming in and stealing plants as well as chickens or dogs damaging the seedbeds at night. Another problem was the shade structure we initially built was really only a temporary solution. After about 2 years the structure started to rot out and the Foundation wanted to replace it with a more permanent solution. Unfortunately the Colinas Verdes Foundation is a non-profit and because of that they didn´t really have much extra money to make improvements to the nursery after paying for office expenses and people´s salaries.

That’s where I was able to help with what is called a PL480 grant. The PL480 fund was set up 25 yrs ago by the US Dept of Agric as a fund to help with development of third world countries. Fortunately this grant money is made available to Ecuadorian Peace Corps Volunteers to fund small projects with a budget of no more than $7,000.

So, with the help of my counterpart of Colinas Verdes, we wrote a proposal to make the needed improvements to our coffee nursery. Our proposal contained three parts: 1. Put up a fence around the entire nursery to protect it from thieves and animals. 2. The installation of small greenhouse where the Colinas Verdes team could cultivate native species plants to be given out to the local farmers. And lastly, we used the rest of the PL480 grant to buy black plastic netting used in nurseries as a roof or cover to provide shade for the plants but that also allows rain to get to the plants. Also included in the budget were new tools, plant bags and organic material for future projects.

After some ups and downs with the buying of the materials, organizing people to help and many other hiccups that are typical here in Ecuador, I am happy to announce that this past Friday we completed all the aspects of our Coffee Nursery Project. Now the Colinas Verdes Foundation has a secure site where they can grow thousands of plants, teach farmers about organic compost and herbicides and basically use the nursery as a tool to help with the completion of all their future projects.

As I wind down my Peace Corps experience I figure now that I only have a month and a half left that it is time to do a recap of the work I have done and my experiences here.

One of the groups I focused on in my town, San Pedro de Vilcabamba, was the women´s Association 23 of June. This group of women was started over 20 years ago as a way for the ladies of my town to make a living by selling toasted and ground coffee. Then about 15 years ago a Peace Corps volunteer was able to convince them to start making cards and books out of recycled paper. These days they still make a small amount of coffee but their main focus is on the recycled paper products.

Many of you reading this have probably seen their products. They are beautifully decorated cards, books, boxes, bookmarks, and picture frames that have all been made and decorated by hand.

When I got to San Pedro I first noticed that these ladies have a great product and that there is a market for their goods in both Ecuador and the US. So my first course of action was to create a small ¨marketing plan¨ for them to help them get their name out to the local tourists coming into Vilcabamba and the in the city of Loja which is about an hour away. The first thing I did with them was gave them a little workshop on what marketing is and how it is essential to a business like theirs. After the workshop, the other volunteer in my site, Lindsay and I created some pamphlets, business cards, mini-posters and ultimately a website as marketing collateral. Then we went around with a couple members of the women´s association to all of the different hostels here in Vilcabamba and left the posters and pamphlets in an effort to get tourists to make 20 minute hike up the hill to San Pedro to check out the women´s group.

Another problem I saw with the women was that they were very content with just sitting in their office and making the recycled paper products and did not want to leave. But if they could make the effort at least once every couple of months they could have some great success selling to local artesenia shops in both Vilcabamba and Loja. So I spoke with the women and we elected two of the more outgoing ladies to become the association´s Sales team. Armed with a catalog of all their products and business cards I had made for them we hit the streets first in Loja and then in Vilcabamba. Who would´ve guessed but it was a great success and just about every store we went into placed orders of $50 and more of their products. I then created a contact list of all the stores for the women in hopes that they would continue to stay in contact with these stores for future business.

Unfortunately I cannot lie and say that working with the women´s group has been super easy. They definitely are a very fun and upbeat group of ladies who are always up for improving their business with my help but once I stepped away and left it their hands to continue with these marketing and sales activities everything immediately stopped. This was definitely a huge frustration for me as it seemed like all the work I had done for them had been for nothing. I had to ask myself ¨Do these ladies really want the business?¨ or are they content with just sitting around, laughing and gossiping with the other members and making less than minimum wage. The conclusion I came to is this: these women do want to work and will work hard but only if it lands on their doorstep. They need some type of fulltime salesperson who will just call them once a week with orders. Which lead me to another barrier seeing as the ladies are very reluctant to let anyone else into their little ¨club.¨

So going forward I have decided that, after seeing the success these products have in the US, I will be that outlet for them. My plan is to create a website and to work with local card/artesenia shops in order to continue selling their products in the US. The biggest problem with this is getting the products to the US for a somewhat reasonable price, something that I am happy to say I think I have figured out!

Looking back on my work with the women has definitely been an amazing experience. Some of the highlights of my past two years with them have been first and foremost just sitting around with them and drinking coffee and chatting it up. I am also happy to say that my efforts did have some success for them. They went from selling their products in only two stores in Loja to now selling them in 6 and in Vilcabamba went from one store to four stores (And already have two selling their stuff in the US). Also when I arrived they were only making about $15-20 per week selling their items in a local market. Now, with the help from some large orders in the US and one for Christmas gift bags by the US Embassy in Ecuador, I would say their average weekly income as an organization has gone up to about $100-150. Most recently, I was able to use some extra money made from a large Christmas order to take the entire group on a weekend long ¨field trip¨ to do an intercultural exchange with the Ecuadorian Indigenous Tribe named the Tsachilas. A trip that was very important for them in understanding the other cultures of Ecuador as well as a rare opportunity for them to leave their little town of San Pedro de Vilcabamba.

Working with these ladies has been truly an amazing experience filled with its ups and downs but one thing I will tell you is that they have always been very appreciative of any help I gave them. They are truly a special bunch of ladies and I am looking forward to the possibility of continuing to work with them in the future.

Tired of bundling up and shoveling snow? If so, I suggest a quick trip to Ecuador for a little relief from it all. The weather is perfect, the prices are beyond belief, and the scenery is magnificent, especially in the southern region.

Carl and I joined Andy for a week this past November and had a great time. We visited his site in San Pedro which is a sleepy little community located near the main tourist town of Vilcabamba.

After a couple of days of exploring this area and visiting Andy's projects (Women's Cooperative and Coffee Growers Association), we headed towards Loja and then to Cuenca. Our trip concluded in Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador.

Of the places we visited, I personally enjoyed Andrew's location the best. We flew from Guayaquil to Loja - the approach to the airport is worth the trip. Looking out the window, the Andes Mountains are on your left and you suddenly bank to the right for a quick landing on the airstrip. Magnificent! As Andrew has mentioned in his previous blogs, this area is known as the Valley of Longevity . We tried to drink up as much water as we could to test the premise. I should add that the land is being bought up by Americans and Europeans which is rather sad, but many know a good thing when they see it. The rolling hillsides are lush, good for hiking or just viewing - one afternoon we were at a lovely hostel having lunch on the porch that overlooked the valley. I think I could have spent the entire week at this one location.

While there Carl and I were introduced to many new experiences...we ate guinea pig at the home of his host family, visited a sugar cane processing center, awoke every morning to the noises of barnyard animals (donkeys braying, roosters crowing, and dogs barking), walked through some Incan ruins, shopped at an outdoor market where everything and anything was being sold...hardware, toilet paper, candy, and of course vegetables. We tried different foods and drink and discovered that we really enjoyed Ecuadorian soups and juices . They don't seem to be big on sweets or salty food, BUT they do have popcorn...however, they put it in the soup!

A couple of things struck us as funny. One day we came out of Andy's little house and we saw a burro walking down the side of the road. We looked for a farmer but there was none. Apparently, these animals know how to get back and forth from the sugar cane fields without anyone tending to them. Along this same line, we were riding on the highway when we came upon a sight we haven't seen around here. In front us was a very small pickup truck loaded down with one huge cow tethered to the sides of the truck with a couple of ropes. We were grateful that the cow (and everything else) stayed in the truck!

Andy is planning on being in Ecuador for a couple more months. If you want a good tour guide, we suggest you contact him soon. His plan is to return to the states by late March or early April. It will be wonderful to have him back home, but having been to Ecuador we can better understand why he will want to return.

When I joined the Peace Corps I mentally prepared myself for a very solitary experience, one where I was going to be working alone in a foreign land with the only resources provided to me were by the Peace Corps and my surrounding community. But in my time here I am happy to say that that has not been the case as I have received support from all kinds of people who are still living in the US but want to help me in my cause any way they can.

That is where Jay and Melanie of New Mexico come in. About 8 months ago the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that I work for, the Colinas Verdes Foundation, was going through a small lull in-between projects. In that time I was looking for stuff to do so I went to our website, http://www.colinasverdes.org/, and decided that it needed a drastic overhaul. After choosing to take on this project I was going through a list of friends in my head who might be able to help me with the web design and amazingly enough I received a message that same day on my blog from a couple by the name of Jay & Melanie who have some expertise in this kind of thing and were very interested in helping to redo the Colinas Verdes website. Well the first thing I did was jump for joy at the fact that someone other than my Mom & Dad was actually reading my blog and then I celebrated the fact that these people were so eager to help.

First off I guess I should give you a little bit of back round information about the Colinas Verdes Foundation. They were formed in the mid-1990’s as an organization to help with the conservation of southern Ecuador’s natural resources (with a focus on Podocarpus National Park) as well as to help with the development of the local farmers and their practices to provide a better standard of living for them and their families. That being said, Colinas Verdes solicits money from all over the world to fund projects in areas such as irrigation, coffee, a starch made from the Achira plant and marmalade production to name a few. With some NGO’s I have had heard horror stories about how they just take the money and do minimal work on the proposed project and just keep the rest of the money but I am happy to say that that is not the case with the Colinas Verdes Foundation; they are truly a remarkable group that is very organized and dedicated to helping the people of southern Ecuador.

Now, given the fact that the first action possible donors will take in approving the foundation for a project funding is to go to their website, I thought it essential to update http://www.colinasverdes.org/ to a tool they could use to portray their professionalism and successful past projects. Therefore, over the past 8 months I have worked essentially as a liaison between the Colinas Verdes team and Jay & Melanie to create a website (in both English and Spanish) containing the mission, vision, past projects, galleries of images and enabling outsiders to contact us from all over the world.

As well as building a website to benefit Colinas Verdes, we have also created “buttons” on the home page of http://www.colinasverdes.org/ that will direct people to some of the other smaller organizations of the San Pedro de Vilcabamba community. The beauty of these “buttons” is that these small organizations now have a web presence that will enable them to direct people to should they pose the interest. (We have actually had one person contact us who is interested in importing honey to the US!)

From a personal standpoint I am deeply indebted to Jay and Melanie for all their help. Previous to this project I felt as though even though I was a member of the Colinas Verdes team I was not really providing too much value to the organization. I was more or less just another set of hands that could work a shovel or fill a plastic bag with dirt. But since the website project I have felt that the team has grasped what I can do to help benefit the foundation and the resources I have available to me.

As well as receiving help from Jay & Melanie, I would also like to thank my Mom the English teacher for all her help going through the English portion of the website. In sending her the pages to proofread I was amazed at how bad my English had gotten and I know myself as well as the Colinas Verdes team are very grateful for her help.

So if you are bored at your computer and looking for things to check out online (and I know you are if you are reading my blog) please check out http://www.colinasverdes.org/ and you will get an idea of everything this great organization stands for. I am especially proud of the Contact Us page, check it out!

“to promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of the peoples served.”

Above is the second goal of the Peace Corps and I believe that the following story is relevant.

A couple of weeks ago I was working with my organization, the Colinas Verdes Foundation, in a little town named Chalaca, about an hour south of San Pedro de Vilcabamba. In this small “pueblo” we were putting in one of our “Support Centers” which is part of our initiative to furnish groups of coffee growers with the facilities to wash and dry their coffee as well as to grow new coffee plants. While we were there I noticed how all of the kids were keeping their distance from me. Usually the kids are very curious about the gringo and always come up to me to talk but this instance wasn’t the case. After trying to talk with them a couple of times and the kids running away from me I asked the people we were working with why the kids were so scared of me. That is when they explained to me that someone, most likely their parents, told the kids that if they aren’t good little boys and girls the gringos will come and either cut out their eyes or chop off their arms/legs to sell in the United States or Europe. After we all laughed about the absurdity of this idea I made it my mission to befriend these kids. So for the rest of the day I sat with the kids and we just chatted it up about school, what kinds of games they like to play and any other topic that may be pertinent to a 7 yr old. By the end of the day I had three little boys following me around asking me all kinds of questions and trying to help me with whatever task I was doing at the time. So I think they got over their fear that I was going to rob them of certain body parts.

This past week I went back to the town of Chalaca to show the people there how to compost and make organic fertilizers/pesticides. My new friends finally came around after about an hour and were hilarious in their attempts to help me. Making compost constitutes mixing all kinds of organic material that needs to be finely chopped up with machetes and then put into levels in the designated area. My little new little helpers were basically fighting over who gets to carry the bag of cow manure over to the compost area, something that was cracking all of the grown ups up. One of the little boys even made his shirt into a makeshift basket and filled it with about 30 oranges to give to me.

Well after a couple of hours both the compost piles and organic pesticides were complete and it was time for me to go home. But before I left, I decided to give these sweet, poor little boys a couple of gifts. The first was some coloring books with magic markers that my Mom had sent me from the US. As I pulled them out of my bag their faces immediately lit up and I literally felt like Santa Claus on Christmas morning and I realized how rare it was for these great, sweet, well-mannered little boys to receive a gift, especially something new. My next gift was an old Nerf football that my girlfriend, Katie, had brought from the US and had given to me just before she left. At first these little boys had no idea what it was and thought I was giving them some new type of sponge to wash dishes with, but after a little explanation of “Futbol Americano” and showing them how to throw it they were soon chucking it around the yard and chasing each other in circles.

As I mentioned above the second goal of the Peace Corps is “to promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of the peoples served.” The idea of this is to give the people in the countries we are serving a feel of who Americans are, why we are here and ultimately for us to give them an idea of the culture in which we live. This isn’t done through a class or workshops, it is accomplished by the volunteers living in the communities and interacting with the people on a daily basis. This situation with the children of Chalaca was definitely an extreme example of this but it really made an impression on me how truly uninformed these people really are, especially in the poorer communities, about the world outside of Southern Ecuador.

After this experience in Chalaca I sent the Peace Corps office in Washington DC an email suggesting that they change their second goal to read; “to promote a better understanding that the American people will not cut the arms or legs off of the peoples served…” Just kidding.

One thing I have found that we as Peace Corps Volunteers can offer in our respective communities is our access to information. This information can come in many forms, whether it is teaching people how to use computers and the internet, showing farmers a new technique that is used in a different part of the country or by introducing a small business to a distributor based out of Quito to sell their products. For you see many of the people in my site (and other sites I would assume) basically just live in their own little world surrounded by the same people and setting for their entire life, rarely venturing out of their tiny little bubble or if they do it is only for a small, short vacation. Therefore I have found that I can use this access to information and contacts through the Peace Corps, whether it is another volunteer or an Ecuadorian contact, to help my community with their progressive development.

One such case of this utilization of contacts is a recent compost project I have been undertaking the past six months or so. It all started out when my NGO, The Colinas Verdes Foundation, was preparing to give a small workshop on composting and organic fertilizers. In preparation for a composting/organic fertilizer workshop my co-workers mentioned to me that it was hard to convince the local farmers to utilize compost because of the long drawn out process that can last as long as a year before it is ready. Remembering a training session we had in my first couple of weeks, I contacted a volunteer from up north who had presented to us a special kind of composting bacteria he had access to in his site and after speaking with him he was very excited to help me and immediately sent me about a half pound of these special bacterias that come in powder form.

Together, Colinas Verdes and I, did a test as to whether or not these bacterias actually worked and sure enough they broke down all of the organic matter and in just a little over a month the compost was ready to be applied. So that following week I presented these “magic bacterias” in our composting and organic fertilizer workshop to about 20 of the local farmers from San Pedro de Vilcabamba. In my presentation I showed how easy it was to make and that even though it required a little bit more labor in the first couple of weeks, the compost would be ready in about a month. I also expressed to them that within each pile of this now “living” compost they made, that if they saved a third or fourth of their pile and started another compost pile, that the bacterias would transfer over and start breaking down the new organic material. The farmers seemed to be very impressed with this new type of compost and at the conclusion of my presentation I offered to set up a time with each and every farmer in attendance to come to their farms and make this compost with them and I am happy to say that five of the farmers accepted my invitation and we have since made some huge mounds of this “sweet, sweet compost.” (I was even able to talk my girlfriend Katie into helping with one of the compost piles).

This Friday the Colinas Verdes Foundation will be having another composting workshop in a neighboring town where I will be presenting my “magic composting bacterias” again and hopefully I can persuade a couple of these farmers to begin composting using this new technology.

When my girlfriend, Katie, first came to her site in the city of Loja in southern Ecuador she was assigned to work in a small town just outside the city named Zhucos (pronounced shucos). After working there a couple of weeks she decided that Zhucos would be a good place to do some surveys that the Peace Corps requires us to do in our first couple of months in site. These tools are basically just a long list of questions to help us identify areas within our communities where we may be able to help. As Katie went from house to house asking the same questions she found that the people of Zhucos were all expressing the same thing, the need for a source of healthy drinking water.

Fast forward a year, Katie’s family in the US are all part of the Great Bridge Presbyterian Church of Chesapeake, VA who was starting to participate in the “Living Waters” program. “Living Waters” is a non-profit group that supplies the necessary filtration systems to churches who wish to do potable water projects in third world countries and the circumstances couldn’t have been better for the church, Katie and Zhucos. So Katie went to work, first testing their water which turned out to be filled with bacterias and then she began to set up everything for the project which included ordering about 300 plastic bottles, organizing the town to have participants come help and learn, and figuring out where we were going to put the filtration system. It was a long drawn out process but things all came together at the last minute (as they always do here in Ecuador) just as the installation team from Great Bridge arrived.

The installation team was composed of the two Sam’s, Sam Howard (Katie’s Dad) and Sam Chalk whose responsibility it was to set up the system and make sure it ran properly. The other Great Bridge team members were Karen Gibson and Traci Chamberlain Bagley who worked alongside Katie in educating the women and children about the importance of clean drinking water and in how to clean the re-usable bottles. My friend and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, Jason Kreisselman and I were able to help the two Sam’s as helpers and as translators to the locals who also assisted in the installation process.

The system consisted of the water running through three initial filters to catch any sediment in the water then passing through the “ozonator” where ozone was mixed with the water for the ultimate step in the cleansing process. The water then went to this huge storage tank where it was stored until required by the community. We were very lucky to have some great hard working Ecuadorians helping us which enabled the system to be completed, including the construction of an enclosure around the system for security, in only two days.

After the system was installed and all of classes were over we celebrated the completion of the project with a small fiesta complete with bubbles, candy and our new, clean water. The community came down from their houses all over the hillsides just to try their new water and to express their appreciation. The “Living Waters” team of Great Bridge Presbyterian Church should be very proud of the great job they did preparing for and delivering clean drinking water to this small community and from a Peace Corps Volunteer’s standpoint it was very fulfilling to be a part of something so great and I will definitely look upon this project as one of the highlights of my time here in Ecuador.

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a friend of mine who lives with an indigenous tribe named the Tsachilas (Pronounced Sachilas) who reside outside of the city of Santo Domingo, Ecuador. My friend, Clay, had come to visit me a couple of months ago and I took him to my women’s group to see the artesenia they made. One their products, baskets hand-made from banana leaves, seemed like they might be a good thing for the Tsachilas to make as well seeing as they have an abundance of bananas where they live.

So Clay and I arranged for what is called a “Tech Trip” through the Peace Corps. A tech trip is basically where the Peace Corps pays for one volunteer and a member of their community to travel to another volunteer’s site to learn a specific skill. In our case, Clay was going to bring the mother from his host family to San Pedro de Vilcabamba in order to learn how to make these baskets and sell them with the jewelry they sell in fairs. Tagging along with Clay and his host mother was his host father who is also a Shaman medicine man. Unfortunately the Peace Corps would only pay for two people’s trips so we decided that Alejandro, Clay’s host father, would do some “cleansings” with the some of the local Peace Corps volunteers in order to pay for his trip. Also the goal of this trip wasn’t just for Clay’s host parents to come and learn how to make the baskets and to do the cleansings, but to experience the people and places of a part of Ecuador which they have never seen before due to the fact that they can rarely afford a trip like this.

So a week ago Clay and his host parents came into San Pedro de Vilcabamba at about 8am following a long 14 hr bus ride. After a brief rest and a change into their native dress, we all went over to my women’s group to get his host Mom started with her class. While she was in training, Clay, myself and his host Dad walked around my town to introduce him to the people in my community. I was fascinated how intrigued they all were to meet him and how they all were very interested in his culture and in being cleansed. We also were able to meet with the people of my organization, Colinas Verdes, to give Alejandro a tour of our nursery and the work we do there. He was very interested in all the coffee we had planted and so as a gift we decided to give him some coffee plants to take back to his farm and plant.

After Rosa, Clay’s host Mom, was finished with her class we all headed back to my house to prepare for the cleansings. That night we had about 15 people show up who all participated in an individual spiritual cleansing which he used different rock statues and some grain alcohol to basically tell us about our past, present and our future. Then he used an egg to cleanse our spirits and rid us of all the evil surrounding us. (The entire process is very hard to explain, you will just have to visit and experience it for yourself!)

After the cleansing it was time for our herbal sauna. This involved boiling a number of different herbal plants in a large pot as well as digging a deep hole for a sauna. What they do is fill the hole with the water and herbal plants, then drop a super hot rock in the hole to create steam. Then they put a stick over the hole for you to place your feet as you sit in a chair with a blanket wrapped around your body and the hole, thus creating a “mini” sauna for your body.

The entire cleansing and sauna experience was very soothing and relaxing (even though it felt like my feet were burning off in the sauna at one point). I literally almost fell asleep while he was doing my cleansing and the sauna felt amazing!

The next day we decided to head to the nearby tourism town of Vilcabamba and hike to the top of Mount Mandango to give them a view of the Valley of Longevity. Both Alejandro and Rosa really enjoyed the view from up there even though they hard time understanding why we would do a hike like that for pleasure. After treating them to a spaghetti lunch, the Tsachilas unfortunately had to head back to their town, but not before buying some souvenirs in the local artesenia shops.

The Tsachilas visit was a great experience for everyone involved and even though it was brief they really enjoyed being somewhat celebrities in my site and seeing a new part of the country. The cultural exchange for both the Tsachilas and the people of my site was really something special and both Clay and I were very happy we organized the tech trip. Their visit also got me super excited to go and visit Clay to experience their culture first hand in his site (and maybe get another cleansing/sauna).

About six months ago another volunteer and I were approached by the Peace Corps office to spearhead a workshop to educate both coffee and cacao growers on the process and benefits organic certifications. The Peace Corps approached Brigitte and I because we were both working in communities that were very active in the cultivation of coffee. The other crop this workshop was to focus on was Cacao, which is the bean they use to make chocolate and comes primarily from the hot and humid coastal communities where we have many volunteers located as well.

So Brigitte and I started the long, hectic and often times annoying process of dealing with Ecuadorian hotels/convention halls, restaurants and organic certifiers to arrange the food, lodging and presenters of our workshop. First we had to contact all of these possible places to have them send us a cost breakdown, which can be very frustrating given the level of business we were both accustomed to in the US and how extremely different they do things here. Then we wrote what is called a PL480 grant to apply for funds established by the US Dept of Agriculture specifically for Peace Corps projects. (I am also in the process of writing another grant like this for a greenhouse and nursery project in my site). About 4 months later we finally got the money and were ready to set up the workshop.

Fortunately we found a great place located in Quevedo, Ecuador which is known as a distribution hub for Ecuador’s huge banana production. We had our workshop at the Instituto Nacional Autonomo De Investigaciones Agropecuarias, aka INIAP, which is an area of about 3000 acres set up by the Ecuadorian government as a farming research and training facility. It was a great location for us because we could eat, sleep and conduct the seminars without having to leave their campus.

The training started on May 4th and lasted for three days and was conducted by a group named Conservation and Desarollo who are auditors for the Rainforest Alliance certifications. They gave a great presentation on all the different types of certifications, the process of becoming certified and we even went on a little field trip to a farm to show the growers the auditory process that is conducted in a certification. After their presentation we were also lucky enough to have a Cacao distributor come in from Guayaquil to do a brief presentation on the commercialization and exportation of cacao.

Given the amount of participation of both the Peace Corps volunteers and their counterparts I think the workshop was a great success. We had about 30 people attending with 7 of them being volunteers, thus it was a great learning experience for the Ecuadorian coffee and cacao producers and hopefully they are spreading that knowledge back in their communities.

Personally this workshop couldn’t have come at a better time for the coffee growers in Loja and in my community. I was able to bring representatives of 8 different coffee groups from my area, including Carlos Lapo from San Pedro de Vilcabamba (my site). Within these 8 groups, a number of them are starting the process of becoming certified. San Pedro’s coffee organization, named APECAEL, has only been together for about six months so they still have some more internal issues to address before they can pursue their certification, but with their formation they are fulfilling the first goal of becoming certified, coordinating the coffee growers. The goal of this workshop was to give groups like APECAEL an idea of what to expect on down the road when they do decide to pursue some type of organic certification and I am confident we achieved that. (Just to give you an idea, groups can earn about $75 more per sack of coffee if they were certified which is a substantial chunk of change here in Ecuador).

For now Carlos and I are planning on giving a small presentation to the local coffee growers on what we learned in order to pass it on to them. The entire certification process lasts about 3-5 years so unfortunately it won’t happen in my time but I hope that I have at least helped to lay the foundation for them to be certified in the future.

If you talk with five different people in my site you will probably get five different answers as to when the seasons change here. Oh and there are pretty much only two seasons here, summer from May until September and winter from October until April. The winter is in no way classified by a drop in temperature that is for sure; where I live it stays pretty constant at 65-80 degrees all year round. The only difference in the seasons here is the excess of rain that comes right around February and lasts until April. When I arrived to Ecuador the entire country was having many troubles with landslides and floods in various places all over the country. Fortunately my site and Loja weren’t too affected last year. But unfortunately it was all waiting for this year.

The rains started to get stronger about mid-February this year, it wasn’t as though it was raining here all the time but when it did rain, it rained really hard. So for about two months we received some really hard rains about 3-4 times a week. In the beginning things were ok and we didn’t see too many problems. Then one by one I started to notice how in the neighboring mountain there were about 9 landslides, then 13, then 18. After one hard nights rain I heard the roadway was blocked to get back to the city and that travelers had to walk through the mud to meet the bus on the other side. These types of adaptations seemed somewhat minimal to me. Then after a very hard night of rain it seemed like the entire town was going to slide into the river. There were houses who were swept off their foundations, the main road was again closed due to the HUGE landslide that took about 3 days to clear, the road to another smaller town was completely blocked, and lastly one of my good friends’ pig farms was just about wiped out by a landslide. I went to visit him to see if I could lend a hand and his pig pens were full up to the top board with mud. Thank goodness not a single one of his 40 pigs was lost. But he did have two crops wiped out and rented a third bit of land to a poor farmer who lost about 3 months of work in the landslide…very sad. The main highway that runs right alongside my site also had a HUGE cave in, thus causing the road to be unusable and diverting all the daily traffic to Vilcabamba through my quiet, sleepy little town of San Pedro.

Not to mention all the damage done to the peoples houses and farms but our new potable water system, which had tubes running down from high in the mountains down the river banks, was very damaged in the rains. The workers were going up everyday to fix the system where every time they fixed one part, they discovered another area broken. With these damages to the water system we were basically without water for about six weeks, yes that’s right SIX WEEKS! In order to get by the local firefighters would come by and fill all of our plastic water tanks up that would last for about 3 days. I have to say it was mighty annoying but after about the second week of not having water I became accustomed to life without it.

In a conversation with my counterpart a couple of weeks back we were talking about the issues we were facing and it was then that I made a very interesting realization about Ecuadorians and their culture. I asked him, “If you have this problem pretty much every two years or so, then why don’t you do anything to proactively fix it.” Basically his response was “We just don’t.” With that response I came to the conclusion that the Ecuadorians function pretty much only in the here and now. What are they going to earn today(money wise), where are they going to get today’s meals, ….if it rains all night and my house is filled with mud I will just shovel it out and continue on until it happens again and will shovel it out then too. In my brief experience here I have found it hard to find someone that thinks ahead into the future (not to say they don’t exist). Their tradition is solely to address problems or challenges when they are faced with them and not to have any type of forethought about what might happen to them or their families in the future.

Henceforth in hopes of possibly lessening the impact of future landslides I am looking into possibly doing a small project of finding certain types of native plants here that we can plant in critical areas where their roots will strengthen and hold the land from falling. I am hoping to do it with one of the local schools to introduce them to certain strategies to combat these landslides which have pretty much ransacked my small town this year.

Before I came to live in South America, I made a small list of a couple of the sites I wanted to see and at the top of that list was hiking the Inka Trail and seeing Machu Picchu. So in late December my girlfriend, Katie, 2 other Peace Corps friends , my friend from back home Brad, his girlfriend and I all made arrangements to head to Cusco, Peru and hike the Inka Trail to Machu Picchu.

We arrived in Cusco on Monday, April 6th after spending the night sleeping on the couches in the Lima Airport’s Starbucks. Cusco reminded us very much of the city of Loja, tucked into a valley surrounded by low-lying mountains. After resting a little while we headed out to explore the Plaza de Armas of Cusco and visit the local markets with all of their Peruvian handcrafted goods. At these little shops I got to practice one of my favorite pastimes about living in South America, that is price negotiation. It is almost like clockwork how you can ask the vendors a price for something and at first they give you some absurdly high number, aka the Gringo price, but then once you negotiate with them you find you can get much more bang for your buck if you just hold out for a little bit. One of my favorite things to do, which I think is hilarious and I am sure the vendors think is annoying, is to ask the price of an item, then offer them a substantially lower price that the vendor immediately rejects. Then I offer them a price that is even lower with a big beaming smile…usually this gets a little giggle out of the vendors and then we continue to negotiate until we reach a good price for both.

Anyway, moving on, we really enjoyed Cusco, it is a beautiful little city of about 300,000 people filled with churches, town squares and many narrow streets that have a very European feeling to them. The people were extremely friendly no matter where we went and the food was excellent. Even though we were only there for about a day and a half we were still able to sample some of the staple dishes of Peru such as cebiche and alpaca.

The following day, Tuesday, April 7th, we were greeted by our bus at about 6am to start the 2 hour bus ride to Ollatamba. After winding through beautiful valleys of forests and rivers we arrived at this small town and were immediately inundated by scores of women trying to sell their coca leaves, walking sticks, water bottle holders and pretty much anything else they thought the hikers might need or want. I was lured in and bought a winter hat with some gloves, plus the essential coca leaves with their magical “activator,” all of it cost me about 8 bucks total. After that we headed to the trail head where we sat and watched all of our porters divvy up the things they were going to carry. By the way we had 10 porters for 8 people total, makes you feel a little excessive when you think about it. On us, we carried all of our clothing, personal items and sleeping bags while they carried all of the tents, food, safety equipment and pretty much anything else there was. At the trailhead we all got checked in with the Peruvian governments monitoring staff and then headed out for our initial leg of our 4 day journey.

The first day wasn’t too bad, we only hiked for about 4 hours and stopped about 5 times to see the ruins along the way and have lunch. Just to give you an idea how good the food was, I think that day we had some fried trout with a vegetable medley on the side for lunch!(Oh and one day we even had cake for breakfast, every little kids dream!) We continued to walk for about another two hours where all along the way there were indigenous Peruvian families selling Gatorades and waters from the front steps of their homes along the trail. Also there was a resting point for the porters where a woman was serving “chicha” which is an alcoholic drink made from corn. The drink is supposed to be filled with all kinds of vitamins and minerals to give the porters energy so we stopped to have a little taste and it, like the chicha I had in the jungle in Ecuador, tasted just like gasoline. That night we arrived in our camping site at about 5 to find all of our tents all set up and our dinner being prepared by our excellent team of cooks.

The following morning we were all preparing ourselves for what everyone told us would be the hardest day. So after a breakfeast of crepes and coca tea we all slung our backpacks over our shoulders, threw some coca leaves in our mouths and started the long walk “..up,up,up and up….” as our guide, Saul, would say. The trail wasn’t too bad at first but as we progressed we hit the biggest staircase I have ever seen. These stairs were remarkably made of rock hundreds of years ago and basically take you all the way up to the 13,500 foot summit. The incline was definitely hard at times but we all commented on how the coca really helped with our adaptation to the altitude and opened our lungs for the hike. It was so interesting that I did a little experiment after a snack break we had. Upon resuming the hike I decided not to chew on the coca while we climbed and I could not believe the difference. When I had a coca wad in my mouth I was slightly winded the whole time but not gassed and could keep walking at a steady rate. Without the coca I found myself completely out of breath after walking for about 5 minutes feeling really drained of energy. Apparently after talking about it the coca works by re-directing blood flow to your heart and lungs thus enabling you to climb at high altitudes easier. So after my little “experiment” we continued to climb where we hit some rain from time to time which caused us all to frantically cover our bags and put on our rain coats but we finally reached the top at about 11 o’clock in the morning. After the summit we immediately started a huge decline down the other side of the mountain on a very steep rock staircase. We all felt that the hike down was harder on our bodies than the hike up just because it was so much stress on our knees coming down. We finally arrived at our camping site at around 3 for a late lunch and a chance to rest up for the rest of the night.

The next day we continued our trip down for a little while and then it leveled out. This third day we had the chance to stop at number of different Incan sites that consisted of small towns with signal towers to send signals through the valley or a corn storage facility for the Incans on the trail. This day was probably my favorite because even though the high parts of the trail were usually covered in fog, once we got into the thick forest the trail was covered under a canopy of huge trees where the wildlife was amazingly active all around us. We arrived at our camp on the third day at about 6pm to find a large building serving food and alcohol with music playing, not quite what we expected to find on the Incan trail! That night we turned in early to prepare for the 4am wakeup to head to the “sun gate” in order to catch the sunrise at Machu Picchu.

On Friday morning we all hustled to get our stuff packed and get on the trail to get a good spot at the sun gate. After about 45 minute walk we arrived at the Sun Gate to find it completely covered in fog, if you haven’t noticed there was a common theme on our trip….fog. Anyway we waited around for about an hour hoping to catch a glimpse of the sun shining on Machu Picchu but no such luck. So we grabbed all of our stuff and headed down the trail to Machu Picchu. Once we arrived surprise, surprise more fog…. We could only really make out about half of the ruins from our point of view. But after about an hour or two the sun burned off all of the clouds and we were able to really enjoy the beautiful spectacle that is Machu Picchu and the valley surrounding it.

From there we spent about a half day walking around with our guide, Saul, where he told all about the history of the ruins and of the Incan people. Some highlights of it were the sun dial, sacred rock, the alter where they made sacrifices to the Gods, a mummy rolling rock, the Condor Rock, the list goes on and on so you really should go and check it out for yourself! After our tour we all said our goodbyes to our guide Saul and the married couple that was part of our group. We took sometime for the rest of the day exploring the ruins and then headed off to the town of Aguas Calientes for a little R & R at their hot springs.

So I have to say that this trip was truly amazing and am so glad I did it. If any of you are thinking at all of heading to Machu Picchu I definitely suggest doing the 4 day hike on the Inca Trail if you are able. The trail itself wasn’t too terribly hard (there were a number of 50 and 60 yr olds on it) but just the experience and the beauty of the trail are more than worth your journey.

Can you believe it has actually been more than a year since I left, I sure can’t . When I decided to look into working abroad I was looking for an experience that would get me out of the everyday routine that I was stuck in. I was seeking an adventure where I could experience new cultures, make new friends, see new places and try to do some good while I was at it. Now I can honestly say that my first year in Ecuador has more than exceeded my expectations (oh and I still have a year left).

From the time I left my parents in Washington, DC for our “staging event” there has been a steady level of adrenaline running through my veins. The sheer excitement of jumping on a plane with 45 strangers and heading for Quito was something I will never forget. Then on top of it all I was introduced to a culture that even though it seemed to be very similar to ours was incredibly different in very many ways. As my first days went by I came to the realization of how bad my Spanish actually was (see previous blog entries to understand my frustrations) and how utterly exhausting learning a language in a foreign land can be. Then after about two months of training, my Spanish improved and I bonded with the 45 people who were in the same situation as me. Then, the day came which we were all dreading, on April 19th we were all split up and sent off to our different worlds of Peace Corps service. Some went to cities others went to the most God awful places in Ecuador, I was extremely fortunate to go to beautiful San Pedro de Vilcabamba.

I can remember riding on the bus for my first time to San Pedro like it was yesterday. Seeing my host brother Angel running up the highway towards me not knowing if he was coming to help me with my bags or to rob them from me. Ever since then this past year has been filled with a lifetime of experiences, some have been tough or aggravating but most have been great times . All in all I can honestly say that I definitely am living the adventure that I was yearning for.

So, in order to entertain you I figured I would give you two of my first year’s top ten lists:

Top Ten Things that drive me nuts about Ecuador and Ecuadorian Culture (not in any specific order):

1. Butting in line is acceptable and pretty much routine

2. Women hauking loogies

3. Dog’s barking and roosters crowing all night long

4. Sitting in meetings where all they do is plan and then having another meeting 3 days later to plan some more and then following up on that meeting to plan for the next meeting.

5. Bus and Taxi drivers that drive like they are on a death wish

6. THE LITTERING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

7. No one ever has change for a $20… so you wait…and wait…. And PRESTO they magically have just found change even though they haven’t moved or looked anywhere different while you just stared at them…

8. 15 hour bus rides to Quito where half of it feels like your are in a pinball machine

9. Gringos that think they are super cool cause they bought a “finca” (farm) in Vilcabamba

10. Showing up to work drunk on a random Tuesday is acceptable

Top Ten (or twelve, now thirteen) Things I love about Ecuador and its culture:

1. The Soups and the Drinks

2. Sitting on the porch stoop with whomever and just chatting it up

3. Ecuadorian resourcefulness and work ethic

4. The fact that at the most random times when you need something random (eg. broom, toothbrush, flash drive, stethoscope, inflatable pool) there will be a salesman walking by selling that item. And yes we did have one walk by and try to sell us a stethoscope.

5. THE WEATHER!!!! (At least where I live)

6. How Ecuador is really 3 countries wrapped into one with its Jungle, Mountains and Beach.

7. Realizing that these people are content with living day to day and enjoying what they have, there isn’t such a desire for success as in the US

8. The fact that if I ever need a Sashe for any kind of beauty contest, I have the ability to shop around at 50 different stores that sell them in the city of Loja.

9. Riding in the back of a pickup truck

10. $1 Big Beers!!!

11. The far off sound of a Donkey HEE HAAWING… still cracks me up when I hear it.

12. Hearing “Hola Andres!” shouted by one of the many little kids I have befriended in my community.

13. Taking my dog for a walk in the early morning or late afternoon and recognizing how blessed I am for living in such a truly beautiful place with such great people.

Next Blog Entry…. Machu Picchu!!!

As many of you may or may not already know, I am not only working with the NGO Colinas Verdes on their coffee projects, but I am also working with a local women’s group and their recycled paper products. Mis mujeres, aka my ladies, organized about 20 yrs ago in order to create more income for themselves and their families. Originally they just toasted and ground coffee but then a Peace Corps volunteer came to San Pedro about 10 yrs ago and got them into making recycled paper products. They originally started making just the cards but then expanded their product line into boxes, large books and photo albums and bags.

The process for making the paper is amazingly simple. They just collect discarded paper from area businesses and schools, wet it down and then throw it into a large industrial sized blender. While it is blending they mix in the fibers from the banana plant stalks or from other plants to add some color/texture into the paper. Then once done blending they dip “framed screens” into the pulp, these screens give the paper form while draining most of the water out. Then they take the top part of the frame off and place a large thick vinyl like sheet on top of the pulp and flip it. The pulp stays on the vinyl sheet in form and then they place it on a drying rack where it takes anywhere between 1-3 days to dry, depending on the amount of moisture in the air. Once dry they take the paper and, using pre-designed patterns, make them into the bags, books and boxes. Then they hand paste, yes I said hand paste, the petals of flowers into beautiful designs on whatever it is there making. I have sat and watched them go through this grueling process and cannot believe they have the patience for it. But I will tell you that these women take great pride in each one they make because after they have completed each product they will call everyone to attention and show their artwork off to the rest of the group.

Since they started to make these recycled paper products ten years ago they have been able to perfect the process of making their products but, as with many small businesses of this nature in Ecuador, these folks have no real sales or marketing sense. In regards to marketing they really do nothing other than set up a booth in the local markets on Sunday afternoons and when I say “sales sense” I mean that they literally just sit and wait for people to come to them and do not go out and try to find locations to sell their products in either Loja or the tourist town of Vilcabamba, both gold mines! So in return, these women were really only selling about $15-20 of their products per week, thus paying the workers about $.50 per hour.

So given my backround and my experience I felt like the sales and marketing side of their business was the best place I could help. The first thing I did was to help them cut down their product line ( for example they had about 4 versions of a small book that were all pretty much the same) and to create versions of products that might sell better. Then I created a catalog in both Spanish and English to serve two functions. One it enables me to email the product line out to potential buyers and two, we can now visit all the local artesenia shops in Loja and Vilcabamba and show them pictures of each product and the prices easily. Just in doing this alone we have been able to sell about $1200 of their products in the last 6 months. Many thanks to Melissa Howard for selling about $800 of that!!!

In an effort to get these older women more in touch with technology, the other Peace Corps volunteer in my site, Lindsay Dudley and I, have started computer training classes with the women. I just recently signed them up for an email address and am trying to train them to check it on a regular basis in order to start receiving international orders.

Looking into the future, we are developing more marketing materials to help them attract more tourists to come to their office and see how the products are made and to hopefully buy directly from them. Also we started selling our products in the US Embassy in Quito and have found two more stores to sell their products (they were currently only selling to one) and are hoping to find more. My goal for them is to train one of these women in simple sales strategies so they can continue to find more locations to sell and to maintain their existing relationships in order to create sustainability once my Peace Corps time is up. Lindsay and I are also going to be making a flower garden in their facility so the women only have to go out their front door to find the decorative flowers. Lastly, as I am sure you all are thinking, we need to start selling our products on that little thing called the World Wide Web, maybe you’ve heard of it? My goal here is to develop a website (or to utilize a web service) where we people all over the world can view their products and purchase them with a credit card. But, seeing as these women just learned how to turn a computer on though I think we are still a little way off with this…. Baby steps….Baby steps….

I hate to mention it again but if you are looking for a blog talking about my interactions the indigenous folk trying to explain Santa Claus or the birth of Jesus you might want to do a Google search on “Peace Corps Africa” or something along those lines. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not belittling my experience down here, it is just very different than what I originally thought it would be like and what others might think the stereotypical Peace Corps Christmas would be like.

First off, coming from places where we the climate is cold during the holidays made it very hard to grasp that it was actually Christmas time. To be standing in 90 degree heat looking at a family of lit up reindeer mechanically grazing in an Ecuadorian’s front yard while being offered a plate of pig skin just didn’t have the same feel as sipping egg nog by the fireplace while Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” is playing in the backround.

But many of the traditions we have in the US are similar to down here. For instance, each of the organizations I work with had a little office Christmas party complete with the usual cheap gifts, copius amounts of food and drunken co-worker.

On Christmas Eve night, my girlfriend Katie and I went with my host family to the church to celebrate the birthday of the local Padre with a big feast. Naturally they upheld the Ecuadorian custom of serving dinner at midnight and afterwards we fought off dozing off while the Padre and some friends played guitar and sang. That night I was made aware of a funny birthday tradition they have down here. In Ecuador it is customary for the birthday boy/girl to try to take a bite of the cake (just mouth, no hands) before his or her friends can push their face into the cake. At first I thought the idea was absurd and was worried the very tasty looking cake was going to be damaged. But it turned out to be pretty funny and the Padre did in fact get his face stuffed into the cake (and I was able to get a piece of cake too, thank goodness!!!). Christmas morning Katie and I gave my host families their presents of a battery charger complete with two sets of batteries and a bag of candy, then we headed into Loja to spend the day with Katie’s old host family partaking in another turkey feast (this was turkey feast #4 for me in four days). The lunch was excellent and it felt just like home with a great meal and then retiring to playing games and joke telling(none of which we got) afterwards.

That evening a couple of the Loja volunteers all came over to Katie’s apartment for some hot cider and Christmas cookies. After a couple glasses of wine we decided to break out the hearing and vision test machine, you know the usual kind of thing twenty-somethings do on a Saturday night. Inside the kit was a red/green color blindness test that we were passing around. Our friend Jason looked at it first and said why do they just have a bunch of big dots on this page. We all thought he was joking when he said this cause there were actually numbers in these dots, numbers that Jason couldn’t see. So after getting our laughs out that Jason was discovering his inability to see reds and greens he tried his luck at the hearing test and sure enough he couldn’t hear the highest frequency out of his left year. So unfortunately Jason didn’t have the best Christmas for he learned that he was both color blind and slightly deaf in one ear.

That following morning I headed back to my site with my friend Shelley who was in town for Christmas. It was with her that I splurged and bought myself my first massage and I must say that it was well worth it. After spending two days in my site, Shelley and I caught a bus for the exact other side of Ecuador from me and headed north to our friend’s house in Attacames in the Province of Esmereldas.

Attacames I would describe as the Ocean City, Maryland of Ecuador with t-shirt and trinket shops on pretty much every corner. It is one of the larger beach towns in Ecuador and attracts a lot of vacationers from Quito. We spent two days with my friend Chris in his house on stilts which is located only about 2 blocks from the beach(tough life).

After a couple of days we headed to Mompiche for New Years. Now Mompiche is my kind of beach, super quiet where the waves aren’t so big they knock you over. 15 of us all met up in this small tourist/farming town and enjoyed the rest and relaxation of our $15 cabanas right on the beach. I won’t go into details about all of the fun had in Mompiche but lets just say we all enjoyed a much needed rest from our respective sites.

On the first I hopped on a night bus to Guayaquil to meet up with Katie and her parents and head to yet ANOTHER beach. Salinas is located on the southern coast of Ecuador and is often referred to as a “. We stayed at a beautiful resort and enjoyed the all inclusive buffet, gambling at their casino and wakeboarding out in the Salinas bay. I had a great time with Katie and her parents and it was good to go back to living the “good life” even if it was only for a couple of days. So like I mentioned earlier my Christmas wasn’t too bad with visits to three of Ecuador’s nicest beaches. Even though I was kind of bummed to be away from all of my family this Christmas, being with my new great Peace Corps friends and Katie’s family made it a great holiday season, one that I will cherish forever.

Alright so my number one fan and I think the only person reading this, my mom, asked me to talk about our Thanksgiving aka Dia de Gracias. Now, I’m sure all of you have this picture of two or three of us sitting on a dirt floor, eating pita shells wrapped in beans or rather beans wrapped in pita shells (the first would just be messy and pointless), dreaming of our lives back in the good ole US of A that were filled with Turkey and stuffing, football and watching Dad fall asleep on the couch. Well as a matter of fact we were able to cover all of these bases which even included yours truly filling the shoes of my father by falling asleep on the couch later in the night. The party turned out to be a great success with approx. 30 volunteers travelling from all over the country to meet in Loja.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to watch any football on Thanksgiving day so mid-afternoon, before the feast, we all headed to Loja’s futbol stadium and organized a little pick up game of Omnibus 99 vs. some 97ers, Bolivians (aka former Peace Corps Bolivia volunteers who were expedited due to the civil war there, now we refer to them just as Bolivians) and Omnibus 100ers.

After football we all retired to the homes of the Loja volunteers to raid their kitchens and make all of our assigned dishes for the Turkey day potluck at our friend Jason’s “Space Station” apartment. The turkey, well turkey cutlets were cooked by our own resident chef (yes I said that correctly) and we stuffed our faces with the usual mashed potatoes, veggies and stuffing while we took in the beautiful view of the Loja skyline.

After dinner, and a brief nap on my part, we enjoyed all the benefits Jason’s house was equipped with. These included a huge rooftop deck and a mini night club in which we were able to dance off our Turkey comas.

The following day we all recovered a little bit from the previous nights party by heading to the river in my site, San Pedro de Vilcabamba. Then pretty much most of the volunteers headed to the famed Hosteleria Izshkaluma for a night of relaxation and for massages they had booked the following day. That’s right, massages in the Peace Corps, I never thought I would be saying that.

That night all of the volunteers came back to my site and we had a huge Chili feast in my tiny little apartment and then we headed to a dance that was going on due to the fiestas happening in my site (there are pretty much always fiestas in either my site or one of the towns nearby).

The next morning everyone started to gear up for their long trips home, some had to spend almost 30 hrs in a bus and travel to the exact opposite end of the country.

I have to say that the long weekend was a great success and that having all my new Peace Corps friends here for my first Thanksgiving in Ecuador made for a memorable event and all being together really helped us cope with the fact we were thousands of miles away from our families and loved ones for the holiday.

As some of you may or may not know my sister Molly and her husband, Bill, came to visit me a couple of weeks back and we had a great time. Here is a little summary of our adventures!

After a long flight to Quito and then a short flight to Loja (which is worth its weight in gold by the way) Molly and Bill finally made it! Unfortunately due to flight schedules and vacation policies we only had a short period of time so we decided to cram as much into their stay as possible. On Sunday morning they got into Loja and we took the 2 hr car ride back to my site, a ride that enabled me to point out the route of my 25 mile walk which they were very impressed with. Once we got back to my house, we walked around my site and I was able to show them all of the projects I had been working on the past couple of months and I had also arranged to have a meal sharing session with my host family where we made a typical “American” dish, aka pizza and they made the typical Ecuadorian dish, aka mountain of rice with chicken. I think Molly and Bill had a great time with my host family though, everyone was laughing and cracking jokes (mostly at my expense) and I think it was fun for all. But the fun didn’t stop there, because after our lunch I was going to be debuting my soccer talents for the people of San Pedro and Molly and Bill were going to be there to witness it! Well let’s just say that it wasn’t all that great a showing seeing as they didn’t even get a chance to watch me play. As the story goes, I had to leave lunch early and run up to the game with my host brother because it was starting and Molly, Bill and Katie (my girlfriend) all finished lunch with my host family. The sad thing was that I was able to start the game and play my heart out for about 15 minutes, but unfortunately, due to my lack of talent, I was switched out immediately after a new team member showed up. Molly and Bill then came a little bit later and thus never even got to see me play…tear…

After spending the night consoling me on my soccer inadequacies, the next day Molly, Bill and I decided to scale one of Vilcabamba’s best tourist attractions, Mount Mandango, aka the sketchiest hike ever! This Mandango trail starts out with a quick summit to the top, where there are great views of both Vilcabamba and of the mountain ranges in southern Ecuador. Then as you start to walk along the ridgeline the trail progressively gets thinner and thinner until there is one section that is so thin we were all more comfortable going down on our butts versus our feet. But, after braving these couple of parts you get to walk along the ridgelines of the mountains for a while and are surrounded by nothing but beautiful views. Our descent was filled with spider webs and fighting off crazed dogs with rock but we finally made it home ok. Once home, Molly and Bill got enjoy true campo living by each taking a cold shower and then, after meeting up with Katie again, we headed for dinner at the famed Izshkaluma Hostel nestled in the hillsides overlooking Vilcabamba.That next morning Molly, Bill and I headed back to Loja’s airport to catch the 45 min plane trip to Quito (again worth its weight in gold vs. the 14 hr bus ride). Unfortunately we did have to brave the Ecuadorian bus system for our next leg of the journey and caught a 5 hr bus for Tena, Ecuador. I figured bouncing around in an old beat up bus that stopped every 5 minutes to pick up someone new would give them a good feel for the Ecuadorian way of life and would enable them to get a glimpse of the beautiful Ecuadorian countryside.

We arrived in Tena late in the afternoon on Tuesday and paid the $8 cab fare for the 10 minute ride to our hostel (in comparison to the $5 bus fare for a 5 hr ride). We were staying at the Cotococha resort where we definitely were living the good life! They had a fire pit, 4 course meals and these beautiful huts that came complete with hot water (yesss!!!) and oil lamps for when the sun went down. The resort was really unexpectedly nice and to top it all off they basically had our whole stay planned out for us.

Our first day, after breakfast, we did a beautiful 3 hr hike to a waterfall. Along the way our guide would stop to tell us all about the different plant and animal life as well as the history of the people in the jungle. This hike was a little strenuous and that, along with the humid jungle climate, made us welcome the idea of tubing down the Rio Napo, back to our hostel!

After lunch, we then headed out to jungle on the other side of our hostel and went for another nature hike, away from the river. About 5 minutes into our walk, our guide decided that if we were going to explore the Ecuadorian jungle that we needed to look the part. Therefore he made each of us our own authentic headdresses and even painted Molly’s face like the queen of the village! Now dressed as village people/super tourists (with our cameras and our LL Bean Cargo pants) we headed into the Jungle. Again our guide showed us the huge array of plant and insect life, explaining how they all live together in harmony. At the end of the loop we had the chance to do a Tarzan style vine swing! The whole ordeal didn’t seem to scary so I grabbed the vine, swung off the ledge and immediately found myself to be 30 feet off of the jungle floor! An experience definitely not intended for those folks who are a little scared of heights.The next morning we all boarded a canoe and headed south down the Rio Napo to an animal sanctuary right on the river. Here we were able to see all the different kinds of monkeys, birds, turtles and other organisms that were either saved due to the threat of poachers or because of the population was impeding on their habitat. Packed full of visitors, this organization was run solely by volunteers who were very knowledgeable on all of the different animals being protected by the sanctuary.

After the animal refuge we had a little bit of free time to swim in the Rio Napo and try our hands at a rope swing on the other side of the river. After braving the swim back across the river, our hostel prepared a picnic lunch for us where we feasted on pasta salad as the bugs feasted on us!

After almost being utterly consumed by the bugs on the side of the river, we hopped back in our canoe and started the 3 hr trip back up the river. On the way back we stopped by a small indigenous village to experience a little bit of their culture. Our first presentation was learning how they made their pottery. Crafted from clay they found in the river, the women molded this pottery by hand, fired it in a makeshift kiln and then smoothed it using rocks. It was very interesting to see they techniques they used and the small pieces of pottery were beautiful. After our “pottery class” we headed over to another little hut where a woman was mashing and boiling yucca to make the famous drink “chicha.” The ingredients for this drink are primarily just fermented yucca with some water and sugar. In the past they used to make it with human spit but they finally realized that using the spit is what was making everyone in their communities sick. Anyway Bill and I sampled the chicha and it wasn’t too bad, if you like drinking paint thinner. For our third and final presentation we got to learn about and how to use blow dart tubes and I have to say that I think Molly was the only one of us who was able to hit the target. The rest of the afternoon we spent enjoying the beautiful scenery on our canoe ride back up the Rio Napo to our hostel.

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and Molly, Bill and I had to leave Friday morning and brave the 5 hr bus back to Quito. Once there, we walked around the downtown bar and restaurant area known as the Mariscal, where Molly and Bill enjoyed one last meal of typical Ecuadorian cuisine. The next morning we woke up early and headed to the airport where I was able to see Molly and Bill off. Our entire trip was a blast and it was great to do it with two people who are very adventurous and pretty much can have a good time doing anything, I hope they come back!

Alright so I am sure you are all wondering what I have actually been doing for the past six months and no it hasn’t been just making furniture, playing with my machete or spending two months writing and editing my next blog entry. I have actually been working!

Pretty much the day I arrived, I started working on a large coffee project with my main organization, La Fundacion Colinas Verdes (Green Hills). This group is composed of five people who are dedicated to the development of the community of San Pedro de Vilcabamba and all the surrounding areas. They are a Non-Government Organization that receives all of their funding from outside organizations and right now all of their money is coming from Belgium and Spain. Along with the coffee project that started pretty much in mid-April, right when I arrived, they are also working on projects with a local flour product named Achira, soy bean cultivation, small animal production, irrigation, and teaching the local children about natural resource conservation.

So as you can tell there is no real shortage of work for me in my site. (I am also failing to mention that I am working with a women’s group to help them market their recycled paper cards and books, blog entry to come).

Getting back to our coffee project, it consisted of two major elements:

First, we held 4 different workshops for all of the local coffee growers which pretty much started the day after I arrived in my site. The workshops covered everything from the planting, pruning, harvesting, washing and drying of the seeds, and ultimately testing the quality of their coffee. Having these sessions upon my arrival helped to advance my Spanish and to give me the basic knowledge of the local coffee cultivation.

The second part of the coffee project was to make center based facilities in San Pedro and other neighboring farming communities, giving the coffee growers access to a greenhouse for the initial phases of growing the plants and a marquesina which is a small warehouse type building that is used solely for the drying of the coffee beans. The primary objective for these facilities is to both increase the amount of coffee produced and, through the use of new techniques and the drying facility, to improve the quality of the coffee produced.

To give you an idea of the progress we have made in the past 6 months, we completed each of the 4 workshops over a span of 3 months. We have made a total of 8 marquesinas for San Pedro de Vilcabamba and her surrounding communities and we are currently about 65% of the way done with the first of three greenhouses we are making.

This first greenhouse or vivero, is located in San Pedro, and is by far going to be our largest with a total of 25,000 coffee plants. This is where I have spent a majority of my time the past three months and below is an idea of all the work we have done there.

First we had to make the beds and planted the seeds that took about 4 months to mature in order for transplantation.

Next we had to clear the land to make the beds and shade structures for the bagged, transplanted plants. The shade structures are composed of thick bamboo posts holding up a roof of smaller bamboo stalks. These give the coffee plants the 60% sun, 40% shade ratio that they need for the best growing conditions. The beds we then dug out of the soil or made walls of wood in order to support the small, soil and plant filled plastic bags.

Then comes the fun part, collecting the parts for the soil and actually bagging it. In each bag is a mix of regular dirt, organic fertilizer (either pig manure or decaying sugar cane stalks) and sand. Each part we had to track down within the community, shovel it onto a truck and then shovel it back off at the greenhouse site. (Tractors/Front-End loaders just don’t exist so it is all done by hand). Then after we have huge piles of the three components we had to mix them into the soil for the plants, this mix consisted of four parts dirt, three parts organic fertilizer and two parts sand. And after it was thoroughly mixed together we got to bag these huge mounds of dirt into small little plastic bags that were about the size of coke can. The soil filled bags are then crammed into the beds and the small coffee seedlings are transplanted where they will grow for the next three months.

I know it seems like this is a fairly easy process but let me just re-iterate that we are doing 25,000 little soil filled bags, yes 25,000. To give you an idea of the timeframe we are talking, it takes about 3 days to collect each of the components for the soil, a day to mix it all and then each person can fill about 100 to 150 bags per day. For each mound of mixed soil I would say we get about 2,000 bags and this project started with just three of us doing it all. The first time we went through the entire process of gathering, mixing and then bagging the soil I was in good spirits. But after about the third time of doing it and seeing what little progress we were making I was starting to have my concerns that this was what I was going to be doing my entire Peace Corps term. I was at the point where one day, when we were tediously filling bags of dirt, I looked up at one of my counterparts and said to him(in Spanish), “You know, my service here as a volunteer probably could be better utilized doing something other than just filling bags of dirt for two years.” He understood and then mentioned to me that he didn’t want to bag all 25,000 plants either. He then mentioned that Colinas Verdes was in fact contacting all of the communities we had been working with and over the past 3 months we were setting up community work days where 7 or 8 of the coffee growers would come and fill bags of dirt for the entire day. This has proven to be a pretty effective strategy and right now we have approximately 15,000 bags filled with the mix and the seedlings and have more work days scheduled for the upcoming month to complete our goal of 25,000.

So that gives you a good idea of the work I have been doing over the past couple of months. Most of my days I was working with a shovel in my hand just chatting it up with either my co-workers or the local members of my community. But, nowadays I have been speaking with Colinas Verdes about starting some projects of my own and they are in agreement. The first goal I had was to find some new markets for the local coffee growers to sell their products. Right now they are only selling their coffee to one exporter about 2 hrs away and this exporter is offering a decent price but not the best. My recommendation to Colinas was to help the people find new avenues to sell their product, thus giving them the opportunity to get the best price possible for their coffee.

One idea we have is to start a small business where they would toast, grind and bag their own coffee and sell it to the local tourists for approx. $5-8 per lb (right now they make about $1.20 per pound). The plan is to implement this on down the road as we need to raise the funds for the equipment.

To find a more immediate fix to their distribution issues, I am helping by contacting other distributors/coffee toasters and grinders in Ecuador for the option of selling it to them rather than selling all of our product to just one place. And I am happy to say that through the contacts of the Peace Corps, I have been able to track down a new alternative for my community where our growers can make up to $50 more per sack of coffee. In our next harvest, we hope to increase my community’s coffee net income from approx. $49,000 to $70,000. This may not seem like a huge amount of money to you folks in the States but it will have a large impact on the well-being of the people of my community.

This entire experience has shown me how easy it is to have an effect on my community, whether through manual labor or through utilizing some of my business skills. In just my short time here I have already had a lifetime of experiences and am excited to see what else I can get done here in my next year and a half.

Other projects I am planning on helping Colinas Verdes with (I am sure others will arise on down the road):

Developing and implementing a marketing plan for their Achira flour product

Getting the coffee farms organically certified

Helping to solicit money and initiate their irrigation project

Yes, yes I know I am a terrible blogger, sorry to keep you all in suspense as I know you have been checking my blog every hour on the hour to see if it has been updated.

A week back I was talking with the secretary of my organization and she mentioned that she was going to participate in this year’s “Reina del Cisne” walk. I posed some interest and she, along with the help of my counterpart convinced me to participate.

The story of the Reina del Cisne or Queen of the Swan originates with a woman who showed up one year unexpectedly to Southern Loja, which was in the midst of a serious drought, causing many of the locals to eat dog and burro to survive (giving Lojanos a bad reputation that still exists today). Apparently this unknown woman came into town and was deemed as a prophet when immediately the rains started to come and the health of the community began to improve. As the story goes the woman then mysteriously disappeared leaving no trace that she had been there or where she had gone. Fittingly the people had a small doll made in her remembrance and now they pray to that every year.

The significance of the walk is that about a hundred years ago, Ecuadorians would walk from Loja to a small religious town named Cisne (Swan) which was about 80 km away (approx 50 miles), making a pit stop about halfway in a town called Catamayo. The tradition states (or at least what I could understand in what was explained to me) that family members of sick individuals, expecting mothers (which I find it crazy a pregnant woman would do this walk), and many others with their given reasons would hike across the Ecuadorian countryside to pray to the Reina del Cisne statue for good health. Only nowadays they bring the doll from its home in Cisne through Catamayo to Loja and the followers walk with it. Each year, approximately 500,000 people come from all over the country to participate in this journey and many of the local residents join in to make the trip from Catamayo to Loja but there are still a few die hard's that do the entire 50 miles in two days.

My Experience on the “Reina del Cisne” walk:

Needless to say I decided to get in touch with my Catholic roots (I am not Catholic at all) and walk the 25 miles from Catamayo to Loja with some members of my community. Why this took only minor convincing and not much forethought on my part I have no idea, but it wasn’t until about an hour into our two hour bus ride that I realized what I had actually signed up for. I was getting ready to go a night without sleeping, walk uphill for about 7 hrs and downhill for 3, all the while accompanied by 500,000 of my best Ecuadorian friends who I could barely communicate with.

We arrived in Catamayo at 10:30 at night I was a little surprised at what I saw. First off the streets were full of people and rather than this being some kind of religious event it looked more like the county fair. There were kids walking around with their hands full of cheap stuffed animals, ice cream and cotton candy. The Ferris wheel and fireworks lit up the sky while novios (boyfriends) won cheap key chains for their novias at the pellet shooting games. Our group walked around for a while, went to the church where the statue was on display and then headed towards the highway to find a place to rest for a couple of hours. It was here that, for the first time in my life, I slept on the island of a highway with about 10,000 other people, I felt like I was camping out for a Grateful Dead concert. Anyway the fact that I was about to walk for 25 miles running on about 20 minutes of sleep was slowly starting to sink in as my eyes slowly came to rest using a rock as a pillow. Then I woke up and it was 2:45 and my group was getting ready for our 3 o’clock departure. We packed up our water and sunscreen, snapped one photo for a “before” picture and embarked on our journey up the mountain.

As we slowly scaled this mountain seemingly inch by inch, I will say that it was very cool to walk for about three hours in the early morning with only the moon’s rays to guide us. Then to see the sun coming up over the mountains made the first part of the journey pretty spectacular. As we progressed we started to see more and more people on the side of the road taking breaks for a cat nap. It was pretty amusing to see how the people would curl up in the gutter, snuggling with their loved ones as if they were at home in their nice warm bed.

We continued walking through the morning stopping at one of the many street vendors along the way for a typical Ecuadorian breakfast, chicken and rice. And after about 5 more hours of walking uphill we finally came to the crest of the mountain where it had seemed the county fair from Catamayo had moved. There were dozens of small restaurant operations set up to serve the thousands of people as well as street vendors selling everything from cotton candy to visors and coats for your dog (cause what better place to buy clothes for your dog???).

At about 2’oclock in the afternoon we slowly made our way into Loja only to find another fair going on with music, games and churches preparing for the arrival of the Reina that was about 3 hours behind us. As you might imagine we were not too excited about partaking in the festivities and just wanted to catch the first bus back to our small little town for some well earned rest. I think I was asleep before I sat down in the bus for our hour long bus ride home and don’t think I really fully woke up when I got off the bus and dragged myself the 300 yards to my house and into my bed, where I slept the entire night.

The next day…

The following morning was an event that will only happen once in my life, my 30th birthday. As I lay there in my bed getting motivated to head to work I couldn’t help but reflect on my past 30 years, how I was getting older and the depressing fact that most of my peers in the Peace Corps were between the ages of 22-26. But when I finally did persuade myself to rise from my comfortable bed, my body would not function. My legs felt like two stiff 2x4’s, my hips would only rotate about 10% of their normal distance and my feet were sore with blisters. So not only was my demeanor a little depressed because my 30th birthday had finally arrived but my body was also fulfilling its role in reminding me that I was turning into an old man.

So, in conclusion, the moral of this story is that when you are coming up on an event or birthday that is a milestone for you getting older, do yourself a favor and take it easy the day before so at least your body won’t reinforce that fact!

Yeah right.

So when you are in the Peace Corps you have the option of joining one of a couple of different groups, VAC, GAD, or TIPS to name a few. Most are acronyms that I have no idea what they stand for (by the way the Peace Corps doesn´t believe is using common english, everything MUST be in the form of an acronym). There was a group that did stand out to me though, and not because it wasn´t an acronym, but because it was the only group that looked like fun and that was ¨El Clima,¨our quarterly newsletter.

The bad news is that after I got on the committee and went to Quito for my first issue we learned 2 things. One, our CD(another acronym that stands for Country Director, aka The Big Boss) got reamed by his boss because our newsletter needed to be more ¨professional.¨ Which is a definite bummer considering the previous issues contained very professional topics ranging from the worst diarhea stories to roasting the incoming and outgoing volunteers. ¨El Clima: was definitely a fun read that the volunteers looked forward to.

The other bit of bad news was that due to budget cut backs, ¨El Clima¨was probably either going to be cut back to being issued twice a year or cut altogether.

So I figured I would put two of my articles on my blog so they would get national recognition. Who knows maybe someone from The Washington Post or The New York Times is keeping track of me, I will be discovered and become the next Hemingway. (Or maybe just my Mom will add another comment about how talented I am. Thanks Momma, keep´em coming!)

Anyway, here you go! (Oh and Almuerzo means lunch)

Volunteer Interest

The Almuerzo Calculator

Andy Hood, 99

I am a newer volunteer and am still getting used to living off of my monthly allowance. This still poses somewhat of a challenge but I am working on it. But what I have discovered, as I am sure most of you have, is the beauty of the cheap almuerzo. What better deal is there that you can get soup, a decent meal of chicken (insert other random meat here) and a drink, all for about $1.50. Can’t beat it!

Now, as time is progressing and I grow more accustomed to life here in Ecuador I am consistently finding myself comparing the price of just about anything against the price of an almuerzo. It literally has turned into the second form of currency I use, just behind the almighty US dollar. How many times have you been in the store and said to yourself, “….that is like 5 almuerzo’s” or “Why would I buy this bag of cheese doodles for $3.20 when I can get an entire almuerzo for $1.50.” Keeping this in mind, I contacted the mathematics departments at both Princeton and Harvard and they helped me come up with the following equation to help you, my fellow volunteers, utilize the almuerzo currency tambien. (Also if your almuerzo price is mas o menos than $1.50 go ahead and insert your own amount in there).

# of Almuerzos = x/1.5

X= the dollar amount you are comparing to see the number of almuerzo’s this adds up to.

In order to make this more relevant, below are some examples of what things cost in almuerzo’s:

ITEM Price in Almuerzo’s (almz)

An apple 0.2 almz

Meat on a stick 0.33333333333333333 almz

Pilsener Grande 0.66666666666666666 almz

The new Indiana Jones Movie, Ecuadorian Price 1 almz

Big Mac meal at McDonalds 3 almz

Bus ride from Loja to Quito 11.3 almz

Category B Peace Corps Living Allowance 153 almz

Sony 37” flat screen television 354 almz

#1 selling vehicle in the US, the Ford F-150 16,000 almz

Average annual income in the US 32,134 almz

Highest Paid Professional Athletes:

NFL: Dwight Freeney 20,500,000 almz

NBA: Shaquille O’Neal 23,333,333 almz

MLB: Derek Jeter 19,333,333 almz

GDP of Ecuador 29,456,000 almz

Total Expenditure up to this point for the War in IRAQ 2,000,000,000 almz

US Deficit 108,000,000,000 almz

I was having a hard time with the photos in these articles but the caption on this pic is supposed to read: ¨Alright Honey, so do you want the Chicken, the Chicken or the Chicken?

My Promise to the Readers of El Clima

Andy Hood, 99

The moon was full and the rain was just starting to fall as I was washing my last dish from the beautiful four-course dinner I had just prepared for myself that night (peanut butter and jelly sandwich). I had been in my site for all of about two weeks and had had a long hard day of fulfilling my role as the deaf, mute gringo, whose main talent is lifting heavy objects, feeling very similar to Lenny from Of Mice and Men. It was then that the thought occurred to me that I would engage in one of my favorite Peace Corps pastimes, Sudoku. I recently had done the impossible and completed the Sudoku book that I had brought from home, even finishing the appropriately named “diabolical” or “fiendish” puzzles. So I opened an older issue of El Clima that had been gifted to me by our ravishing good looking and intelligent new Editor-in-Chief, Jeanette Warner.

I began my Sudoku ritual, just as I always do, by first grabbing a bottle of my finest wine out of my wine cellar (Clos from my kitchen shelf), lit a fire in the fireplace (burned a candle in an old tuna can), and curled up on my chaise lounge with matching ottoman (plastic lawn chair with a cardboard box) to see what kind of Sudoku challenge El Clima could present me with.

That night, just as I had done a thousand times before, I went about the usual strategy that I, unlike others, find to be effective. You know, finding the easy numbers first then employing the long, drawn out process of utilizing a calculator, an abacus, long division and the Pythagorean Theorem to methodically discover each additional number. So here I was, concentrating heavily on my new Sudoku puzzle, ignoring the moths flying around my head and the dogs that seem to be barking at the roosters who in turn seem to be cock-a-doodle dooing right back at them in some sort of vicious cycle that they agreed upon to make sure the gringo only sleeps about 3 hours a night. Anyway, I had been working on this puzzle for about 20 minutes and was deep in a trance of concentration when I realized the unthinkable and unforgivable. Somehow of the millions of Sudoku puzzles that are in the world, our staff at El Clima included what we like to call in the industry, a “tainted” puzzle. That’s right, in puzzle number 2, column #3 of the Winter 2008 issue of El Clima there are two 9’s, yep that’s right, two. After taking a couple of minutes to get through the initial shock of my discovery, I immediately contacted my local authorities and sent both a handwritten, notarized letter and an e-mail to the International Committee for the Security, Administration, and Collaboration of Sudoku Puzzles, more commonly known as ICSACSP, to alert them of the situation. I still have yet to hear from them but continue to check my casilla twice a day for their response.

Many of you readers may be wondering why I titled this article “My Promise to the Readers of El Clima” and then telling this story of one of my first and probably most unforgettable nights in my site. Well, being a new member of the El Clima staff, I felt it was my duty to inform you that such a mix up like this will never happen again while I am onboard as a part of El Clima. Now I may not have the most well-written, most thought-provoking articles in this publication (for example this) but I guarantee that I will personally (or with the help of other smarter people than yours truly) go through each and every Sudoku puzzle in our new and upcoming issues in order to prevent such a catastrophe as the one that happened in the Winter of 2008. I feel it is our duty as Peace Corps Volunteers to spread peace by digging ditches and putting condoms on cucumbers instead of sitting at home toiling over Sudoku puzzles that are in fact “broken.” That my friends is my promise to you, the readers of El Clima.

Unfortunately I couldn´t get the pic to come over for this one but just imagine a sudoku puzzle filled with nothing but 9´s. Then the caption read that it took me an hour of working it before I figured out it was ¨tainted.¨

An interesting thing happened in my house the other day which I thought might be a good experience to share with all you folks in the good ole U.S. of A. Something to give you a little perspective as to the difference in the lifestyle down here versus what we are used to in the US.

My host mother is a seamstress and the other day she was ironing something that she had been working on, when by accident she dropped the iron on the floor. When she picked it back up and tried to use it again the outside of the iron got extremely hot and to the point she wasn´t able to use it anymore. They tried and tried to take it apart but unfortunately the only real way to get it apart was to break the plastic molding because it was all held together by one screw that was designed only to be tightened and you couldn´t take it out with a standard screwdriver. They came and talked to me to see if I maybe had this special screw driver and unfortunately I couldn´t help them as I had never seen a screw like this. We all then sat down on the bench in front of my house and the mother was practically in tears because the family could not afford the $15 or so to get a new one. This whole situation was very eye opening to me in the fact that even the smallest, simplest thing in their lives, like breaking the iron, can have a huge impact on their well being.

The good news is that I actually had a friend in the PC who had an old iron which she didn´t use. You could say that the family was very appreciative when we gave it to them.

So the next time you are in Lowes or Target, picking up all those seemingly meaningless items that may have little or no relevance to you, think of this story and how in many other places in the world people have to save for months, sometimes years to purchase something similar.

Quoting #19 on the “Twenty Things to Remember During your Time in The Peace Corps” list, “Buy a Machete. You may need one, you may not. But trust me, you will probably never again have the chance to semi-legitimately own one in your life.”

I decided to take their advice and fork over the whopping $5 and get myself one. I mean if I can live in a place where is it accepted, almost customary, to walk around town with a giant knife hanging from my belt then I figure I better take advantage of it (and yes mother, I have a cover for it so I won’t cut my foot off). Plus you never realize how many times I get to use the Crocodile Dundee signature line of “That’s not a knife, THIS is a knife,” I mentioned it the other day when buttering a piece of bread with my host mother. Didn’t really translate too well and she pretty much thought I was crazy when I said it but it amused me and that’s all that really matters. The cool thing is that I have also found ways to incorporate the Machete into my daily life, shaving with it (Croc Dundee Style!!!) and cooking with it….

Also some of you have been asking to see what my living situation looks like, here are some pics. Check out the excellent craftsmanship of that furniture! My little apartment is really great, the only real downside is that my family’s dog is chained up about 5 ft from my door and keeps me up half the night. I decided to leave the pictures of my bathroom out cause I need to clean it. Is it weird when you have to use a broom to clean your shower? Only in Ecuador…

If he was a Native American, that would be his name. I would like to introduce you all to my new friend, Jaime aka Chavez (Why Chavez I have no idea, it isn´t his last name, but he asked me to call him that which he only asks his friends to do so I guess we are now BFF´s). My new friend and I have been busy the last couple of weeks working with my organization, Colinas Verdes, making Coffee Drying buildings.

Just to give you an idea of how good you have it with Home Depot. In order to make one of these secadora´s (coffee drying building), we have to hike into the woods about 3 miles, cut down the trees, and then Chavez uses his giant chainsaw (now nicknamed ¨Hijo de Puta¨after a day of working and joking around, I will let you figure out the translation) to cut this tree up into usable planks for the buildings. We then have to carry the planks down the mountain to the road, load them on to a small box truck, which has to drive across the sketchiest (sp?) bridge ever (totally wish I got a picture of this, the bridge was totally bending under this truck) and then they are taken to the worksite. Anyway, you all should be kissing the floor of Home Depot the next time you go there cause you have no idea how good and easy it is to have it.

I took this pic after Chavez helped me cut up some wood for my furniture (saved me about 3 hrs of labor and cursing with a handsaw). He is actually pretty amazing with this big saw, he can work all day just manhandling this giant piece of equipment like it was nothing. I have also seen him scale a mountian holding it on his back and tip toe across the rafters of one of these buildings we are making, effortlessly.

Oh and by the way, the same day that we gave his saw the nickname, Chavez gave me the nickname of ¨gordita.¨ Which basically means ¨little fat woman¨.......sweet.

Alright I think I have left you all in suspense long enough, actually I just really wanted to do this hike to take some pics that would do my site proper justice and finally I was able to do it the other day. Plus I am sure all of you are grossed out by the picture of rotten cuyes.

Well, I have been in my site for almost three weeks now and the truth of the matter is that I cannot believe I get to live here for the next two years. My site is called San Pedro de Vilcabamba which is about a mile away from the tourism town of Vilcabamba, a place nationally known for its tranquility and beauty. The population of my site is about 1500 and about 4000 in Vilcabamba, but every day there are hundreds of tourists coming in and out of town to enjoy the rest and relaxation this place offers. I have yet to indulge in world class massages and facials but from what I hear they are first rate. ($18 for 75 minutes of massage, not a bad deal). It is located about an hour away from the city of Loja so I truly have the best of worlds, a small, quiet little town to live in and a large city to get a taste of “faster” living.

As for work, I am currently in touch with three groups that are going to provide me with more than enough things to occupy my time for the next two years. The primary one is Colinas Verdes and is an organization that is dedicated to the development of the community both on an economic and social level. The second group is the community bank which is basically an organization set up to give the local population a financial option that keeps their money local and helps with the town’s economic situation as well with their personal development. Last but not least is the Association of the 23 of June (I know it is a weird name but they absolutely love naming companies down here after certain significant dates), this is a women’s association that makes recycled paper products. Their products are very cool and I think they have the most potential for me being able to help them! (More to come on this, there products are amazing and I guarantee all of you women out there will love their stationery and other goodies).

As you may have guessed I am super siked to be placed here and every day I wake up and walk outside to enjoy the view of this beautiful valley. I am currently renting a small apartment from a great, supportive family and imagine that I will be passing my entire 2 yrs in the apartment attached to their house. I am slowly getting it in order, but I am finding that things like refrigerators and furniture are somewhat similar priced to the States, so I have decided to try to make some of my own furniture. My first piece was a bedside table that is so off level that it drastically rocks back and forth when you set something on top of it. I blame it on the fact that the cement floor is off-level, it would never be through fault of my expert design.

I feel as though I am truly blessed for getting such a great place to live. When talking with other volunteers I try hard not to brag about where I am living but it is hard when you live in such a miraculous place. If you are family or friends reading this you now have even more reason to visit me and if you are a parent of another PC Volunteer reading this you definitely need to put this place on your “Must See” list when coming to visit, you will not be disappointed!!!

I would like to dedicate this blog entry to all those readers out there (I know it is just you Mom & Dad) who had Guinea Pigs for pets as a child because.... they were delicious!!! (Bridget this means you).

For my going away dinner my family in Tabacundo decided to give me a true Ecuadorian feast! I have to say the meat was good but very rich and in the future I think I would only want a half of Cuy (preferably the bottom half so I didn´t have the head looking at me while I ate the rest of its body). Anyway this was an amazing gesture on my family´s part, especially since it probably cost them about $40-50 dollars which is pretty expensive here, and made the goodbye even harder.

On another note after these pictures were taken, some friends and I headed off to a birthday party. Needless to say we drank a little bit at the party and it was kind of a rough morning (Chu Chaki is the saying for hung over here). So you could imagine my delight when I was trying to enjoy (and when I say enjoy I mean force down) my usual tea with ham and eggs breakfeast when my Tabacundo father sat down next to me with just a plate of Guinea Pig heads and some potatoes. I swear all their faces were pointed in my direction and the smell alone almost made me lose it!

All in all the meal was a great experience and I can only foresee more Cuy (Guinea Pig) in my future.

Hey everyone,

Unfortunately I have been a little under the weather this week so it has taken a while for me to get around to my blog. In truth I think my body is still recuperating from all the bug bites I received in the coastal area and from the extreme temperature change we endured going from Ecuador’s coastal area (beach and rainforest) to the sierra (mountains). Anyway I have healed enough now to finally spend some time at the computer.

Our first week we spent in a town that is about 2 hours to the Northwest of Quito, called Puerto Quito. Our jaws immediately dropped once we saw the place we were staying , picture a really nice summer camp with a pool, soccer fields, basketball and volleyball courts, a beautiful river running right by it, men’s and women’s bunk houses, separate buildings with classrooms and multiple trails to take nature hikes. Oh and last but not least they hired a Chef to serve us almost every meal of the day, so let’s just say that we were really roughing it.

As much as it does sound like a vacation we actually did have to go to class during the day and learn about agriculture and other meeting facilitation type topics. The Monday we were there was definitely an eye opening experience, for the first time in my life I got to catch, kill and gut a chicken. (See the attached picture of my friend Chris and I, that is our chicken, we treated it as if it was our child and its name was Cheech the Chicken).

We were in a small tourism town called Mindo where a volunteer has been working with an organization to develop their small animal facility. Right now he has worked with them to build a number of buildings for their chickens, another facility for their cuyes (guinea pigs) and he also helped them build a fish pool for a kind of fish they sell in the markets here called Tilapia. All in all it was really cool to see that, with a little bit of hard work and know how; one person could really make a difference in the lives of the people here. The next two days of Puerto Quito we spent in some Peace Corps technical training nothing too exciting here, but then we headed to an integrated farm where we learned all about land conservation, land terracing, and organic fertilizers, definitely very interesting. After our Puerto Quito adventure, our class split up in 5 different groups. Everyone going to a different part of the country that represented where we were going to be living for the next two years, I went along with the Agriculture Sierra group and on our first day we made the 6 hour trip to a small city south of Quito, called Riobamba. This town is where the famous tourist train leaves from in which you can enjoy the mountains and scenic views of Ecuador by sitting on top of the train. We heard rumors though that they stopped this because of a Chinese tourist getting decapitated last year. Anyone want to go?!!! Anyway, Riobamba is a very safe feeling, clean city in which we were able to see some of the local sites and visit their museums. The next two days we went into the country where one of our teachers is actually from and learned how he has been working with a German organization on developing land conservation techniques and other small animal production, very interesting. On Thursday, we headed off to a small town in the mountains called Salinas. Approximately 1000 people live here and they are nationally known for their success in the small business arena, having about 80 small businesses altogether. They have everything you can possibly think of, sausages, cheese, wool clothing, compost, mushrooms, salt mines, chocolate, soy products, paper, let alone a booming tourism industry (well booming for a small town in Ecuador). I really enjoyed this town because it was here where things were made a little more relative for me since I am going to be working more with small businesses in Vilcabamba, than in agriculture.

As you can imagine we were all exhausted (and some sick) when we got home from this fun/information packed two weeks. I still cannot believe we have been here for only 2 months, I feel like I have already had a lifetime of experiences just in this short amount time. Both trips were great because they brought our group together and I was able to get to know some people who I wouldn’t have gotten to know otherwise. All in all, I feel truly honored to be a member of Omnibus 99 and in turn I am also dreading even more the inevitable day that is coming in the next two weeks where we are ALL going our separate ways in different parts of this foreign country to experience the culture shock of living in a new community all over again. Oh well I guess that’s why they said it wasn’t going to be all swimming pools and chefs in the Peace Corps pamphlet I got over two years ago…

I just thought I would let you know that your daughter is really acclimating well to the culture down here by drinking cold budweisers and watching the Simpsons.

Actually we took this picture as a joke in your honor because she thought you would enjoy it. In all honesty we were unwinding from a long day of digging holes in a field on the side of a mountain. Oh and for all of you out there that say all you do in the Peace Corps is dig ditches everyday, you are WRONG! We only do it every other day...

It was a blast hanging with your daughter on our tech trip and I am sure she is going to make a great volunteer. And as for all those other people reading this, keep those comments coming and you may just get a tailor made blog entry in your honor too!

Whats up everyone, not too much happening down here. I am getting ready to go on a tech trip to learn more (or at least something) about agriculture for the next two weeks. Should be pretty fun but I am not sure I will have too much access to the internet.

The other day we went on a 9 mile hiking trip the other day around a lagoon, aka a lake on top of an active volcano. (Don´t worry Mom there was only a little bit of lava spilling out onto the trail). Anyway it was beautiful and here are some pics.

Dear Family, Friends, Parents of other PCT's and other random people who I have no idea who you are;

Well the Peace Corps has finally done it, they have matched me with a place that is right up my alley, somewhere that is nationally known for its facials and massages. I asked a couple of our teachers and volunteers about the city and they have all said that it is beautiful and many are planning to come and visit me once I get settled. So I think I can take that as a pretty safe bet that it is an awesome place.

The population is approx 4000 people and the town of Vilcabamba is known for it's "Fountain of Youth" and apparently there are a number of residents who are 100 yrs old or older (some are 120 yrs old). The local rivers are said to have some kind of magical powers for longevity and health. "So I got that going for me, which is nice." I read up on the city some and there are a ton of hikes very close to the city and a number of horseback riding outfits that offer everything from an afternoon ride to a 3 day excursion. (Don't get any ideas Molly). As for my job, I will be working with one of the local coffee companies down here to help them penetrate new markets, there is also a newly started recycled paper company and a community bank that are looking to develop further. These jobs are just what I asked for and I am definitely looking forward to working in these areas.

Next week we were supposed to go on our site visit but due to all of the recent rain causing landslides on the highways the trips have all been cancelled which is a bummer. But I figure I will get there soon enough.

And for all of those people who had Guinea Pigs growing up, we went to our first Cuy (guinea pig) class the other day. They taught us how to castrate the cuyes (which all the guys in our class enjoyed) and then they showed us how to kill them. Let's just say that it is like squashing a tomatoe on a table that is full of bones. I swear the sound that it made will haunt me for years to come.

On that note, I need to go and eat dinner. Things are great down here and I am super siked about my site. So excited in fact that I have already started to prepare, below is a picture of me getting ready.

I was thinking last night that I forgot to add two other items to the list:

-Always throw your tp in the trash can

-If someone has change for a $20 they are probably a thief (Got that little bit of advice when we got off the plane and on the bus....nice...)

As for the Yapa, you all are just going to have to come down here and find out for yourself...

Hello everyone, sorry it has taken me so long to update this, as you might have guessed I have been super busy. I definitely have been enjoying the emails from all of you asking where my updates have been, it is good to know I have so many people checking up on me and interested in what I am up to.

These past couple of weeks have been packed with Spanish lessons, Agricultural classes, field trips, as well as all of the other Peace Corps training segments about safety and other administrative stuff. I am going to try to answer all of your questions but if I miss one don’t hesitate to ask me in the comments.

Right now my number one priority is learning Spanish and this is definitely coming along at a slow and steady pace, just like they told me it would. The other day I coined the term to classify my Spanish as “Yoda Spanish,” named after the Star Wars character. The reason I have named it this is because when I talk to people I know I am saying things like “Eating, I like” , “To go, I will do,” or “Dancing, I will go.” It is probably not that extreme but I guarantee it is very broken but they still seem to be able to understand and answer me which is the ultimate goal.

People have been asking me what the food has been like down here. Let’s just say that it has been very interesting and they eat many things for breakfeast that we probably would not. For example, the other morning I had sliced hot dogs and French fries for breakfeast. I usually have some kind of egg with ham and bread with cheese for breakfeast. This morning I was served the usual but I also got a little surprise which was a cup of liquidified Jello. For lunch we usually go to the restaurant across the street from our school which is made up of a soup (today's had cow skin in it...mmmm), main course plate (usually rice and chicken), and some kind of juice all for about $2.50 which is actually pretty expensive down here. In fact my Mom down here told me that we need to stop going there because the “Gringos” are raising the prices for the locals. For dinner we usually have some kind of meat (usually chicken) with rice. If you haven’t noticed, there is a definite theme of rice being served with every meal, so if you are planning on visiting and going on a low-carb diet down here, Latin America may not be the best choice.

In regards to my family, things are going very well. After dinner every night we usually sit and talk for at least a half an hour about everything from world politics to where I should get my haircut. They are very patient with my Spanish and are helping me a ton each and every night. It has actually gotten to the point where some days if I am frustrated with class or my Spanish they are a great help to lift my spirits. Some of you wanted to see pictures of my house and of the family so here you go!

The Agricultural class that we have all been a part of has been very interesting. Over the past couple of weeks we have been to a couple of organic farms. Each of them is operated under a specific set of rules that states that they are only to use solely organic material in the cultivation of their crops. One farm even went as far as to say that nothing could be killed on the grounds, anything from a crow in the tree to the worms eating the lettuce. They stood by the belief that they were maintaining a complete ecosystem where each organism served a purpose and the crops would be protected by this premis. And sure enough they were, it took about 10 years to accomplish, but this farm was completely self-sustained and EVERY crop was very healthy and produced an abundant amount of produce. (And for all my frat brothers reading this, yes I am slowly becoming the hippee that all of you accuse me of being).

Some have asked me about the culture down here and I jotted down some points to help distinguish how we live in the US from how they live down here:

- We had a field trip where we went to a poor, small town and were supposed to walk around and gather information about the town. Almost immediately after getting off of the bus we were approached by a little old woman who welcomed us and invited the six of us into her home solely to “conversate.” This didn’t just happen in one case but there have already been numerous times where we have been invited into people’s homes just because they enjoy the company of strangers. Something that I think would be unheard of in the US.

- Whether they are young adults or older, the people here love to dance. Many in the US take a lot of coercing to get out on the dance floor. These people down here love it and would not miss a chance to cut it up.

- The children are not expected to work until they are done with their schooling.

- The houses are made of 99% concrete and very few have any kind of heat.

- Sandwiches don’t exist here. (neither does ice)

- The children all enjoy coffee with about 4 tablespoons of sugar in the morning.

- Restaurants on the main street of town are rarely open for lunch.

- There are pretty much no rules or regulations on the highways for passing. (very scary, I choose to sleep).

- Rather than use the turn signal they use the horn

- The yogurt here is made fresh every day and is excellent!

- When drinking a beer with the locals, you buy one beer and have one glass and all share the same beer/glass.

- Don’t ask questions about the mystery meat on your plate, just enjoy it. (or try to).

- The children never complain, always share and always take care of one another.

- It is ok for your child to climb on the roof of your house.

- Never leave your cookies out for your drunken grandma to bury in the cemetery.

- A motorcycle is considered a good mode of transportation for a family of 4.

- A pickup truck is considered a good mode of transportation for a family of 8.

- When in the market, always ask for the “Yapa,” who knows what you will get…

- Be careful of every dog in the street and never stare one down.

That is about it for now, I am sure there will plenty more of these to come on down the road. Please drop me a comment if you want, it is great to hear from everyone!!!!!!!!

Hey everyone, just checking in. Nothing too crazy to report, my spanish is slowly coming along. Had a pretty good day today, I am finding that I definitely have my good days and bad days with it.

The funny story is this, so we are all living with families down here and my one friend lives with a very interesting group that has a drunken, crazy, break dancing grandma. Apparently she is full of rude remarks that the family has just told him to ignore. Anyway the other day he bought a bunch of cookies (and a sprite) for his family and after dinner that night they all enjoyed them. Well the next evening he asked his family for a cookie and they were already all gone. No one in the family knew what had happened to them or the sprite. Finally the father went and asked the grandma what had happened to the cookies and after alot of pleading she finally told them what she did. Apparently in the middle of the night she grabbed the bag of cookies, sprite and a shovel and headed to the local cemetery. Once she reached the gravesite of one of her friends she proceeded to dig a hole about a foot deep, then she dumped all the cookies in along with the sprite as a refresher. The reason she did all this was because she said one her friends talked to her in a dream and said the were hungry....

Just to give you an idea of some of the interesting people down here....

Alright everyone first off I apologize for not getting this posted sooner, but as you might have guessed I have been pretty busy. I can’t believe I have only been here for a couple of days, it feels like I have been here for months already. Anyway here is an update on what has happened to me since I left the States.

Last Wednesday was when it all started. I was dropped of by my parents at our “staging event” in Washington, DC. This is an initial training for us where we can get a feel of what we signed up for and can get to know everyone else in our group. The demographics of my group are about 50/50 male to female and we come from all over the US, everywhere except the deep south. From what I gather we are all very similar in our mindsets, each of us has a very independent/adventurous personality and is very excited about what lies ahead of us.

After a day and a half of training in DC it was finally time for us to get on the plane and head to Quito, the capital of Ecuador. Our plane flew out at about mid-day on Wednesday, Feb 6th and after a brief stop in Miami we were finally on our way to Ecuador. As we approached the city we where dealt a brief glimpse of what we were in for, on the left side of plane, sticking out above the clouds, was a snow capped volcano surrounded by nothing but clouds. A couple of minutes later we ducked below the cloud cover and we got our first view of Quito, a surprisingly large city tucked into a valley. Upon landing and getting through customs we were immediately made aware of a Peace Corps custom down here where many of the current volunteers wait at the front gate for us cheering and handing out roses with funny or inspirational sayings attached to them. I have to say it was nothing I was expecting but definitely got me and the rest of my group very excited. After about 20 minutes of hearing/watching the current PC volunteers sing, dance and do a congo line through our bus we were on our way to spend the night in a hostel in Quito.

The next day was full of more training and information about Ecuador as well as receiving my first round of shots. We then all piled into a bus and headed to a town called Tabacundo, about 45 minutes North of Quito. This is where we are going to be in training for the next 3 months, learning Spanish, about the Ecuadorian culture and about our future jobs (mine is agriculture/agribusiness).

After spending a couple of nights at the training facility we got our assignments to go and live with our host family. I lucked out by getting a family that is literally a quarter mile from the training facility which means I will only have a couple minute walk every morning. After being dropped off by my PC rep, I made my way up their driveway that was filled with 3 trucks and an old station wagon and I have to say that I haven’t been this nervous in a long while and it was there on their front steps that I first met the Vaca/Cadena family. My family consists of 5 boys the ages of 16, 15,11,6 and 6 and one girl who is 13, and let’s just says it is a house of high energy! I still cannot believe the parents would want to add one more person (me) into the mix but they have welcomed me with nothing but open arms. Open arms that speak very little English….. Even though they are a very nice, accommodating family, having dinner with them on the first night was by far the most awkward night of my life. Imagine sitting a table where you understand one out of every 10 words (mostly words like “the” and “at”) and then simultaneously they all look at you expecting a response and all you can say in your broken Spanish is “I no understand.” This is pretty much how my first night went and even though it was rough and pretty overwhelming I got threw it. Now, after just two nights with them we are all laughing and comparing cultures which is extremely interesting for both sides. (Last night we even got into a discussion about inflation, the housing crisis in the US, and the USD (also the Ecuadorian currency) compared to the Euro and the Peso. How I was able to speak about all of this I still have no idea.) My Spanish has improved exponentially in just a couple of days though and I have to say the classes where both the teachers and students speak nothing but Spanish work wonders for how fast you pick up the language.

On Sunday the boys from my family and I headed into the mountains to see the lagoons which are a pretty big attraction here. The are very beautiful and just getting there and down from there was an experience in itself. Attached are some of the pics of both the lagoons and my new brothers.

Well that is about it for now, in the up and coming weeks we have all kinds of language, technical and cultural training so I probably won’t add to much to the blog until we start going on our field trips. Like I mentioned earlier, I still cannot believe that is was only a week ago that I got dropped off in DC, it literally feels like I have been here for a month! My time here has already been filled with nothing but excitement and I am sure will continue to be the experience of a lifetime.