Site Placement

Today we received our post assignments. Definitely the most anticipated day of training thus far, the staff did their part to add to each trainee´s excitement/anxiety. On the small soccer field at the training center, they had made a map of Ecuador using rose petals to delineate province borders, and they called us up one by one to bring us to our place on the map. Sort of felt like we were on a game show (¨Bob, tell him what he´s won!¨). Really interesting way to deliver information about where we´ll live for the next two years. But fun/funny. Some trainees skipped to their spot.

I won a post in Pichincha. It´s the province we´re currently in. The town is called Amaguaña and sits high up in the sierras - about 2100 meters - about the height of two Mt. Monadnocks. It´s just an hour and a half south of Quito. There are about 15,00 residents and the foundation I´ll work with is interested to have me help with introducing organic agricultural practices to the farms that surround the town. So far it sounds like an excellent site: sierras, small town, no malaria or dengue, and the work will be a hybrid of natural resources conservation and agriculture - awesome! Really excited. Tomorrow, all of us trainees are headed to our sites for a week-long visit. Some have to travel for two days to get to their posts. A couple trainees who´ll be serving down south on the coast will need to take boats for the last stretches of their journeys. I think my site is the closest. There´s a current Peace Corps Volunteer serving in Amaguaña who´ll I´ll replace in April, and the fact that she hasn´t ETed (early terminated) I think is a great sign.

In other news...

The US embassador to Ecuador met with us yesterday to offer up her support of our future activities as volunteers. She likes birding.

Been doing the 5 Tibet yoga stretches every morning and I highly recommend them to anyone. Thanks Emily for teaching them to me.

I may have a guitar lesson through the interwebs with a great trad music guitarist in NH - Flynn Cohen of the band Annalivia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-MfViFq3sc Incredible!

Really enjoying the book Jayber Crow by my favorite auther, Wendell Berry. It´s a novel about a barber in a river town in Kentucky. Beautiful. Read anything by Wendell Berry and your soul will feel rooted and uplifted at the same time.

Happy St. Patrick´s Day to all!