Friday, February 29, 2008

February 29, 2008 in Tabacundo

Hola to everyone! Craig and I have been in Tabacundo, Ecuador for three weeks now. We are living with a fantastic family the same age as us. They have a 16 year old son. We have enjoyed a lot together so far . . . cooking pancakes, pizza, dancing in the living room, doing Yoga and LuJong every morning at 6:30 a.m. and long conversations about this that and everything. Our Spanish is improving, I think, even though somedays it seems to go backwards. Also, I am learning Kichwa, a native american language that is spoken widely in Ecuador.
This is my first attempt at starting a blog. One of our fellow Peace Corps aspirantes told me to just go to the site and follow the directions and it would be "easy". We´ll see.
Training here in Tabacundo is full-time, Monday to Friday and sometimes includes weekend excursions. At night, we converse and eat with our host families and we also have other homework assignments. Truthfully, it is exhausting. They say that once we get to our sites (April 15) that we will be wishing we had more to do. We´ll see about that too. At any rate, the training is excellent and valuable for our success as Peace Corps volunteers.
Today, the highlight was a visit by the U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador. She spoke very eloquently about U.S. involvement in Ecuador over the 3 years that she has been here. Then there was time for questions. Craig and I questioned her about WHINSEC and expressed our concern about this School of the Americas. Her opinion was not in agreement with ours but rather that the school is of benefit to Ecuador and that they currently have 20 or 30 students there. At any rate, expressing our concerns brought the topic out and many of our fellow aspirantes spoke to us gratefully afterwards.
Well, this is my first entry. I will try to bring some photos soon and see if I can get them onto this blog. Hasta pronto. -Lucy