June 10

So tired but I feel like I have a lot to write. I didn’t write yesterday. On thurs morning we were in our groups talking about PACA tools that we will use in our site. PACA stands for Participatory Analysis for Community Action. This includes a community map, FREEHOP (family, religion, education, health, organizations and politics), a 24-hour calendar, food recall and a wheel of resources. All of these are used to survey the community we will be in and to gather information needed on assessing our communities..was that redundant? Anyway they are really good tools to use and we did an activity where we made up our own communities applying a couple of these tools. Tomorrow we will have the chance to actually go into a community close by and practice them! A little nerve wracking because we will be released into Puembo to try to talk to people about their community…

In the afternoon some current PCV’s (peace corps volunteers) came to talk to us and answer questions we had. Each person is doing something different and they all seem to be enjoying it. A part from their main work they’ve all started different kinds of projects. It’s quite impressive and kinda intimidating. They all seem to be so successful. Some are urban while others rural. Rural of course meaning having to travel an hour to shower! One guy had chickens-all were eaten- a dog and wants to buy a pig for Christmas feast. Lol

After the talk I was just so excited to be in my site, integrating with the community and working on projects. If they can do it so can I!! I guess the hardest part to get through is training. I personally don’t think it’s bad at all but it is very structured with long hours and that definitely does not seem to be the case for the 2 year volunteer time.

That night Lucy and I went out with one of her friends Jose Luis. I was so tired but wanted to go out. We went to “all mirador” to a restaurant that looks over Quito. So beautiful. Jose Luis was cool, loaded and machista but really funny and nice. He’s headed to Brasil tomorrow for work/vacation..luck…

So today we had an extensive charla on diarrhea. Who knew there was so much to learn. We talked about worms and parasites too..ahh..the memories, lol. After this we got into our tech groups. Then we split up. My group went to Puembo, a community just 20 minutes away from Tumbaco. Bibi our program manager went with. She is awesome! She was telling us all about her experience as a PCV and life in Ecuador now. We were able to drive there-PC SUV’s, super nice. Took over an hour rather than 15 minutes because they were paving ½ the road and had to let each lane take turns….not sure if that makes sense but it was sure an adventure. At one point there was an ambulance that tried to get through. With so much traffic we had to get onto the median, then drive the opposite way down the other side of the street to find another entrance back into traffic!

We finally arrived at the Centro de Salud. The doctor who couldn’t have been more than 25 talked to us about all the programs they have. Med students in Ecuador start their 4 years of med school right out of high school and then have one year of “rural”. Apparently she was the top of her class and picked Puembo to work at for that year. They like her so much that they asked her to come back to work full time after she graduated.

For a clinic that serves about 20,000 people there are 2 doctors and 1 nurse. They offer everything from vacunas to exercise for los ancianos. She also goes out into the more rural areas on Thursdays to those who don’t have means of getting into town. They have FREE HEALTHCARE!!! Although one woman I talked to briefly said she had been waiting since 6 am and probably wouldn’t be seen till 3 or 4 pm. But still the fact that this “3rd world” country has figured out some kind of medica gratuita says something about the U.S. of A…just sayin’

We came back and shared our experiences. The 2 other groups went to Tumbaco-one to a Centro de Salud and another to a “natural store” (I guess it ended up being like a GNC) Then language class. So they divided the groups-our class has 5 students, im pretty sure we are avancado-intermedio.. We learned lots of random vocab today.

I ended up coming home early because I had understood that my family wanted to go to Quito and we would eat around 7 then go. So I rushed to get home found out that what my host dad said was that he and my hostmom were supposed to go into Quito for something and wouldn’t be back till 7..I rushed home for nothing..so I showered and luckily ran into Lucy on my way out to an Internet Café. When I was finished I met her at the grocery store ‘Santa Maria’ (huge walmart type). We came home and ate, I helped my host mom with the dishes-see mom I'm still doing them ☺ Kind weird how they wash dishes in cold water. Now time for bed, we are going back out into Puembo to use PACA tools tomorrow then get phones YAY..and possibly internet.

Night.