7-15-2011 (evening)

So Diego and I didn’t end up leaving till around 8:15, which meant no breakfast for me. We walked to the University, which only took about 15 minutes. I met Eulalia (my counterpart) sitting outside her office. I wasn’t really sure what she was doing so I sat down and we talked for awhile. Then she was like, “ok I’m rested, lets go in”. She mentioned something earlier about having walked to work, so maybe that’s why she was resting..lol

Eulalia is really great! She loves to converse and most of the morning we talked a little about the programs. Quite a few people were coming in and out so I observed and read the newspaper. She always has hot water for tea so that’s awesome. Then lunchtime rolled around and she had to run an errand downtown so I went with. We had lunch at some nice vegetarian place- $2.50/plate, kind of high class.

You’ll never guess who I ran into! Edison! My host brother from Tena! Apparently he was visiting some girl, lol what a coincidence to see him!!

All the time we were sitting there eating I couldn’t help but to wonder if this was o.k. I come to another country to give my service for 2 years and look where I end up.. a fancy (fancy for Ecuador at least) vegetarian restaurant working for an almost prestigious university?! It’s only the 1st day and I'm trying to not pass judgment and justify that my work is needed..these are just my very first gut reaction.

We came back to the office and went over paper work. She explained all the different projects at work-well at least on paper. The main one is that I will be working with is the promotion of health and prevention of diseases. Within that category are different subjects like mental health, maternal health, cuanto sabes de HIV/Aids, which is a really neat program where we train youth in HIV/Aids prevention so that they can then teach other youth. There’s also a program to promote the prevention of cancer esp. uterus, cervix, etc.

On top of that there is this program that we have to work with the 4 different “facultades” on campus. It’s to train certain brigades what to do in terms of an emergency. CPR, escape routes, etc. There is also a student group that they want to put into place to help with certain summer camps. A lot, I know. All of these ideas are on paper, it’s now my turn to help get them started. Eulalia is very aware tha tall of this cannot be done in the 2 years that I'm here and that everything akes time. So that’s good that she doesn’t expect me to do it all! I really think we will work well as a team and of course there are a million and one resources, not only from the University but within Ambato itself. The work def excited me and I’m happy to be here I can’t help to feel a little guilty…

The rest of the afternoon we spent talking about all kinds of stuff. She told me a lot about her life. She is divorce and has 2 kids. Her daughter is my age and her son is 10. Her daughter is recently married and already 1 mo. Pregnant! Apparently she’s always given the daughter whatever she wants and now it seems to be coming back to her because the daughter thinks she can rely on her mom, when in actuality she needs to take responsibility. After all, she is married with a child on the way, so sad because she seems way too young, just going to be graduating from college this winter. So many cultural differences, I could never imagine being in the daughter’s position. I was able to meet her when she picked us up from the university.

The family was waiting on a group to arrive. I was introduced to one of the woman, who apparently is an English teacher at a high school. She felt the need to converse in English, which was horrible and I continued to speak in Spanish. It’s so awkward when people try to speak in English because 1-it’s usually bad and 2-if I were to answer back in English they probably wouldn’t understand anyway, so I’ll just stick to Spanish, that’s what I'm her to learn.

It seems to rain in the afternoon/evening and then once the sun sets it’s pretty chilly. I refuse to ask for coats to be mailed to me but I guess we’ll just have to see how long I can last…The good thing is during the day it’s usually sunny and warm! I just hope I don’t have to be in an office all day everyday, oh what an interesting 2 years this will be.