The news we have all been waiting for...

So, today was the big day! We finally had our sites revealed to us and I am headed to the Coast of Ecuador! I am so incredibly excited! I am about a 85 KM from the largest city in Ecuador, Guayaquil, and about two hours away from the playa (the beach!)! I am so excited! Wait, I believe I may have already said that… ha

My site is located in Colimes, which is a fairly large town (for the Peace Corps anyhow) of a total population of about 21,490 people. I will be working in Public Health with a concentration on nutrition, tropical diseases and parasites, teen pregnancy and sex education. All things that I have a great interest in and am very excited to learn more about and get my hands dirty, so to speak. For all you who are interested, there is running water, phone service, and internet in my town, so everyone should be delighted to hear that! Especially those of you who will be coming to visit *Hint Hint*

Saturday is the big day that we are leaving to go visit our sites! Some of us will be leaving Saturday; while others who have closer sites will be leaving on Sunday. In total, I have 13 hour overnight bus ride... so, that is going to be pretty intense! But we will be traveling through Quito and Guayaquil so maybe we will have the chance to hit up some nice food locations!

The agencies that I will be working with are Plan Ecuador Santa Lucia and NUTRINNFA. With these organizations and my counterpart, who is an Ecuadorian who the Peace Corps has assigned to me, I will be giving presentations about nutrition with high school teachers and also giving presentations regarding themes like sexual and reproductive health to youths in three high schools. I will also be working with the promoters from Plan International/Plan Ecuador in sexual and reproductive health. My secondary projects are to work in technology and communication, which we all know how much I love technology, in high schools and work to create new business ventures. So, basically I have my hands pretty full for the next two years! Needless to say, all of this can change whenever I actually get to my site, even my counterpart and the agencies that I am working with. Overall, I am ecstatic, but I am obviously pretty nervous as we are going through two of the largest bus terminals in Ecuador this weekend in one trip! Also, of course this is my first time to visit my site, so obviously all of this is new and exciting, but also a bit nerve racking.

There is apparently one volunteer that is already there that is pretty close to me that was actually a volunteer in Bolivia before they were evacuated. I hear he is pretty cool, so I am definitely excited to meet him! Also, I am very excited to meet my counterpart and I hope we get along very well, or at least professionally! I believe my host family has four members, but I cannot be sure until I arrive this weekend. My host mom will be meeting me at the bus terminal, so that is a pretty sweet setup. I will be living with her for the first three months at my site, and I will be staying with her for the five day visit at my site this coming week. I am so excited to get some fresh seafood and fruit, and I guess I will have to begin my long journey to love bananas this week as well!

Other than site visits, which have obviously been the major highlight of this week, there was a small disturbance in Cayambe, which is the town we travel through at least twice a week to get to our technical training and general meetings. Here in Ecuador there is a large Indigenous population and they are known to take justice into their own hands when someone from their community commits a crime. Earlier this week three Indigenous teenagers were accused of murdering a camioneta driver (camionetas are like taxis, except they are trucks) and the community wanted the one captured teenager back in order to execute their own form of justice and locate the others who were accused. Obviously, the police did not want to give the suspect back because he has not formally been proven guilty. So, various members of the Indigenous community rioted in the streets of Cayambe yesterday and there was tear gas thrown and other things that were definitely a first experience for me. It was a little scary, but it was also a reality check for many of us who, up until this point, had not really considered that things of this nature happen in Ecuador. Obviously the Peace Corps has an amazing emergency action plan and they were able to get all of us out of harms way without any problems.

This week we have a day and half of language classes left before we head to our sites! Everyone is very excited and ready to visit our sites! I will update everyone on my adventures as soon as I return!

Peace, Love, and Ecuador

Ciao

Tiffany :D