June 6, 2011

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATALIE!!!

First day of “school” today. I woke up at 6:30, had breakfast and then Lucy drove me to school. We were going to follow the bus route but lost the bus and ended up on some pretty crazy roads. It still amazes me how they can drive these little cars on such rough terrain!

Classes were intense today-so much information. Parmer our director went over policies, many of them common sense. HE also elaborated on the prohibited areas…half of which I’ve been to from my other study abroad…amazing I am still here, lol lunch was at a small restaurant nearby. When I say restaurant don’t be fooled. It most def means the back of someone’s patio with plastic furniture. Health inspection would probably give it an F but the food’s good and I'm not sick yet (knock on wood)

We came back to a presentation on development and what we will be expected of. I don’t know about other PC countries but Ecuador has their shiznit down. Their vision is so in line with how many other organizations should run! “Development is a process not a project” in this PCV’s (Peace Corps Volunteers) are to go into communities and support those in need..whether that be health educators, teachers, organizations etc..Training and feedback are important, especially in the 1st year. After the first 3 months we make surveys and evaluations on what the community needs. We all come back together after these 3 months to make sure we have knowledge/resources on how to help implement the projects. We then meet after the 6-month mark to evaluate progress, etc. then at the one year mark the same. The second year we are pretty much on our own. Rightfully so because that 1st year we are provided with support and resources, ideas, etc. I think this helps for a very successful 2 years. We

We then split up into our groups (community health). We talked about our learning objectives and all the different activities we will be doing! These next 11 weeks are aimed to help give us knowledge and tools to use in our sites. We will be going out into communities to practice (tech trips). They want us to be able to practice and process so that we are confident once we get into our own communities-isnt that awesome!?!?! Then there will actually be a week where we go to our future sites to meet with our counterparts and look at needs of the community. That way we can jump start research for the remainder of training. I'm going to be learning so much!!

I took the bus home with some other volunteers, rather we all piled on. Portia and I went to an internet café. Tomorrow I will look into a flash drive Internet. It’s just really hard to us ethe internet café’s because by the time we get back into town it’s already almost 6 and since it gets dark at 6:30 that doesn't leave a lot of time. Alrighty I’ll write more tomorrow..im thinking about you Nat, hope everyone got together and did something fun for you 