Night 2..things are going well We had a Security Agent that works for the U.S. Embassy come and talk to us about safety in Ecuador. It was a really good presentation. They do an amazing job trying to keep people safe. Not that they don’t ut it’s amazing the resources they have to help in case of emergencies.
We also did a language test-written as well as an oral one. My oral exam was long..but I think maybe that’s a good sign because some people said they got into the interview and 2 sentences into it the interviewer told them that was good enough.. We also got vaccinations. I only got the rabies one because I’ve had the others from the last time I was here. We had our pictures taken for our official PC (peace corps) I.D.s and opened bank accounts. I guess here in Ecuador in order to withdrawal money from the bank (not atm) you have to have the exact same signature on this special paper as your passport. So everyone was practicing their signature and some people had to re-do it so many times. I got mine on my first try
We also met with our specific groups. There are three main groups-Community Health (ME!), TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) and Youth and Families. The community health program sounds really fun. They talked about the plan of focusing on a few basics for Public Health to prepare us for our sites rather than discuss a lot of little things half ass..sounds like a good plan to me.
A new thing that they want to promote is nutrition and a way they are going to do this is with building gardens and cooking classes. What a neat way to promote nutrition and fight against the common diseases. Most people will be on the coast or highlands. We won’t be in super rural areas nor all by ourselves. Everyone will have running water and electricity so that’s a little comforting even though I was expecting the worst, lol. We will also be with host families the first three months of the volunteer time, which will help us, integrate into the community. After the 3 months we can decide to live by ourselves or stay with the family.
We will also most likely be by ourselves and about an hour away from other volunteers. I guess they are placing us in clusters and then those clusters are dispersed about an hourish away from each other.
The food here is great! The training center is awesome and it sounds like the PC is going to be so supportive through everything. We meet our host families tomorrow! I'm excited and nervous. Apparently our families will have internet but I don’t want to get my hopes up or anything. I would like to get in touch with people somehow!
Sounds like many people that have done PC end up staying another year because the first year is challenging and by the time the second year comes and goes they feel as though they’ve just established a solid start. Others stay because they get married! I have no plans of this but I guess we’ll just have to see. It’s kinda hard to look into the future.
Hast Luego
No comments:
Post a Comment