Acting Intentionally

"Daily Reminder," a typographic woodburn plaque by Becky Murphy

On the eve of our Swearing In, I've got a lot on my mind. I don't feel thoughtful enough to elaborate much at the moment, because its the first free one I've had in 11 weeks! Almost. What I can say is that I'm not taking this experience lightly and I feel truly determined to make the most of my time here in Ecuador. We've discussed the Role of the Volunteer in Development ad naseum during training, but the truth is I'm just beginning to grasp the enormity of my job and the potential difficulties I'm going to face in the months ahead. And I really think it's going to be an awesome challenge.

I saw the piece above on Design is Mine (a delightful design blog by a fellow Portlander) and thought that it really captured the importance of acting intentionally, which is a crucial part of being a PCV. Why do we do what we do? What's the end game? We've talked a lot about sustainability in terms of project design and implementation and I think that asking "Will I be proud of this in a year?" could be a really useful question to analyze not only the validity of a project, but your personal motivations for doing it. I don't think that the answer always always need to be "yes"... but having some foresight, or at least attempting to have some, is important.

I swear in as a Peace Corps Volunteer Wednesday morning! I move to Alausi for reals on Thursday! Let the games being.

Also, my new address is:
Chloe Pete
Correo Central
Alausi-Chimborazo
ECUADOR

Send me a letter and I will send you a kiss! Plus, I just uploaded a bunch of pictures to my Flickr. Yes, everything is as beautiful as it looks.

Week 10

Hello! I really thought I'd be better at posting updates more consistently since I've got an embarrassing amount of blogging experience, but it turns out that I don't really like writing about daily events. Its boring. I prefer to write about Ideas and Things. Maybe one day I will do that.

So I've got just 6 days left of training! Its very weird to think that in 2 weeks I will be moved into my new host family's house in Alausi. For many weeks it has felt like training would never end. Ever. And yet here we are, in week 10, and the passage of time shocks me once again.

Anyway, last week was our second technical trip so I was in Ecuador's biggest city, Guayaquil, for a couple days with the health program. The trip from Quito is 10 hours by bus so Monday and Friday were traveling days and we only had 3 days to work. I gave a couple charlas (talks/presentations) on HIV/AIDS and STIs to teenagers in high school. One class had 45 kids. Ridiculous! The charlas didn't go all that bad, but there were plenty of awkward moments considering my Spanish is not totally capable of facilitating sex discussions just yet. Especially when you throw in the coastal accent, which is faster and less anunciated. I had little to no idea what the students were saying. The good thing about these experiences is that so many funny and weird things happen during the charlas that could never happen if we were more prepared. You just have to laugh when a fellow volunteer says "huevos" in reference to female eggs leaving the ovaries, when in fact that translates to "balls" in Spanish.

In other news, I have some intestinal problems again, which is always fun. I ate well in Guayaquil, lots of fish and shrimp, but I guess it was too much. Or maybe it was the fried fish I had for lunch on Friday at the bus stop in the middle of nowhere on the way home. Personally, I think it was the combination of many, many hours of traveling with little sleep and several stressful days of work. My host family sort of hates the coast (because they live in the Sierra and its like some kind of regional rule or something) so they think its the seafood and people that made me sick. Probably.

Well, I suppose thats all for now. I will try to get inspired to write more soon! Let me know if there's anything specific you'd like to know.