Welcome to the long anticipated and hopefully highly entertaining blog of my experiences in Ecuador for the Peace Corps! I figured since I am leaving for the Peace Corps next Monday, February 23, I might as well kick this thing off. For those who don't know me and randomly stumbled onto this blog...thanks for reading! Anyways, my name is Josh and I am going into the Peace Corps as a Sustainable Agriculture Volunteer in the country Ecuador. I hopefully will be working with small farmers to adopt sustainable agriculture practices to increase production, develop small business projects with agriculture, among other things that involve agriculture and sustainability. Sounds like a lot...and I guess it is...but the reality is that I will probably be shoveling around animal poop all day. As of right now, I am doing my last minute packing (who knew I needed a vegetable peeler...) and working on my español before I take off for DC next monday.
Anyways, here is what my schedule looks like (for the next few weeks at least):
February 23: fly to DC
February 24-25: Meet up with other volunteers, get shots, orientation and fly to Quito on the 25th
February 25-28: Hang out in Quito, get acclimated to the altitude, do language and culture training
February 29: Take a bus to Cayambe, Ecuador (a city about 1 1/2 hours north of Quito) and live with a host family and do the vaunted Peace Corps language and culture training for 9 weeks.
Throughout the next 27 months, I hope to update the blog as much as I can with posts and pictures. I will have a laptop down there but obviously getting on the internet will be a bigger challenge and who knows how often that will happen.
Til' next time...
