A brand new month, how exciting! I arrived at the office this morning around 9 because the meeting went so late last night and I didn´t feel like coming in super early. So to finish up yesterday, I went downtown to meet Sharon and Julie for lunch. Crappy day, cold, cloudy adn rainy. Julie never showed up. So Sharon and I went to get copies for the mailbox key and to scan and send my site locator form. The internet cafe was really nice and the owner even recommended a place for us to eat next door!
It was the cutest little place in one of the old colonial buildings. $2 for soup, plato fuerte, drink and dessert, such a deal!! WE then went to the casa de cultura to see if we could find a list of events, which obviously there wasn´t one..I then headed back up to the office.
Surprise surprise there was water all over the floor. So I cleaned it up but as I mentioned before the mops here suck, so I had to sit by Eulalia´s desk for like 2 hours, lol. Which was really fine by me because there wasn´t any work for me to do. She then told me about OAE-Organización de Estados Americanos. This program that essentially gives grants to institutions looking to train their peers. Sounds like the project we are doing at the University would qualify, along with the volunteer group that meets every Wed. She had me research it so I could preent a litel bit about it at the meeting tonight. I looked at it, checked e-mail and was able to get on facebook (which is usually blocked here at the Univ). We had bread and tea AGAIN at like 5, which was probably a good thing because I wasn´t going ot get dinner since we were going to the meeting right from work and it ended up going till 9 pm.
The meeting was very productive but also long. The gruop´s name is Red de Voluntarios para la prevención y atención de emergencias. WE also elected a "coordinator", secretary and financial person adn someone in charge of training facilities (or something like that). Each org was represented to do each of the tasks. Eulalia wanted me to do one of them but to be hoest I don´t think it´s a good idea. Even though Im here for 2 years, it´s tech not sustainable and quite frankly I don´t want that kind of responsibility. I told her I would still go to the meetings and be as involved as possible.
Lets see 10 Am. Floor is just about dry and it´s starting to rain..great..the weather is so strange here..so sunny this morning and now it´s raining. I really have no idea what i´m going to do the rest of the morning.lol
8:30pm (later that day)
So the rest of the day it rained. Water came back into the office. I went outside to investigate. Problem 1-the building has no gutter system, problem 2- the overhand attached is not tight against the outside wall, so when the rain runs down the side of the building it also runs down the door and into the office, problem 3- 1/4" of space at the bottom of the door, problem #4 the floor is slanted INTO the office. Apparently they sent some kind of "oficio" to have them fix it but obviously no one has done anything about it.
Before lunch I met Juan-he´s one fo the professors at Ingahurco (campus down by the bus terminal). He´s going to be working with us on addictions adn mental health. What they want to do is have a survey on Survey Monkey and make all the students take it. From there we wil analyze the results and hopefuly can hire a psychologist to help with seeing students that need help. The proposal was approved, even for the University to pay the 300 dollars a year for the account. We went to go talk to Dr. Pullas, head of our dept. so he could sign some things, had lunch then headed downtown.
First we went to IESS Hospital. They are doing this program where every employee fo an institution in all Ambato are to get medically checked up. So we´ve got to put together a list of each facultad- which we (I) already did, some 1200 employees. Then they also want to do the children of the employees! The nurse that we met was really nice. She invited me over on saturday and has an apt she want to rent out! I might stop by just to develop a good relationship with her. I then met the doctor that is working on the project. She was also super nice adn welcoming.
By the time we left it was almost 4. The time I had wanted to be at the gym. WE had to still go down to the Ingahurco campus. Irealy wanted to go to meet people! So we heded over, went to the financial people to talk about the survey monkey thing. They said they couldn´t do anything until we had a receipt, so they sent us to another department. The guy ther sent us to another guy who pretty much told us it was impossible because it was over the internet and someone would need to sue a credit card to pay. He told us to go back to the finance people and see if that was possible. So we went back and they seemed skeptical. They said it would have to be someone high up in the University so they could deposit the money into their acount.
After that I was so ready to go but we still had to go to the medical facultad to talk to them about forming the brigade for Prev and Atention de emergancias. Imet a bunch of important people, all really warm and welcoming. That´s one of the cool things here, everyone is so nice! The neat thing is they will remember me even if I don´t exactly remember them because Im the gringa, lol Finally around 5 we headed back. WE got a taxi and Eulalia got out early to grab a bus and I took the taxi all the way to the gym. I thought it would be packed but it was dead, prob because it was such a gross day out. This whole week has been awful. Cold, rainy, windy. I sleep in Underarmor..wish I would´ve brought Ruth´s pants but Im sure she will need them more than me once winter weather hits the midwest..hehe..
Had a good workout. Walked to the restaurand to hang out with the fam. That was nice, Tere (Raul´s fiancee) and her 2 kids were there. The girl must find some interst in me because seh warmed up to mer eally fast. Tey headed off to church and I came home. I took a shower, heated up some water and ate apple with peanut butter adn some yummy multi-grain bread. There was only soup for dinner. Seems that there won´t be a lot of food at night, lol
Speaking of food, I did the unthinkable..I weighed myself the other day. I´ve gained weight, surprise surprise...Im not revealing how much but it´s enought to be more conscious of the amount of bread and rice i eat! I think those will be my 2 e3nemies..the rice won´t be too hard to control, but the bread! Uh the bread is so good and fresh here! So I´ll just have to eat healthy bread. Tomorrow is friday! The new FullBright gets here so hopefully I´ll get to meet her!
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