As stated in the last blog post, my site will be in San Lorenzo, a tiny pueblo of about 800 people 6 hours south of Quito by bus. This week I got to visit my site for a few days, meet my counterpart, and look at some of the projects that I will be continuing. On sunday I headed down with Mary, who is one of our co-trainers and the PCV which I will be replacing. The bus ride was long...but once I got there, it was all worth it. San Lorenzo is a nestled in the mountains of the sierra, on a clear day you can see Chimborazo, which is the highest mountain in Ecuador. I arrived to meet my host-family, who is all super nice and welcoming. It helped to know that I am the 2nd PCV to ever be there, so everyone is down didn´t seem to shocked to see another gringo...I think. My host-mother is my counterpart (the person I am working closely with) and she also happens to be pretty amazing. She is a single mom, raising three kids (20 year old daughter, 13 year old son, 5 year old daughter) and is also the president of the cooperative that I am working with. I honestly don´t know when she sleeps but it has to be sometime during the night. I got along with the family instantly even though my spanish is not where I want it to be (which is to say...perfect) but it helps to be able to laugh at yourself.
I got to see the canal that I will be working on, it extends about 5 km back from the city in the hills...beautiful hike with amazing views of the city and surrounding communities. So if anyone comes down to visit me...you know of one place where we are going. Checked out the gardens at the schools...i said i would offer to help out teaching english...don´t be surprised if I am english teacher to go along with peace corps volunteer in a few months. I am really excited about a few reforestation projects that I can be involved with and the vermicomposting project as well. Basically we would take food waste from the city and chop it up in a shredder and use it in worm beds to make compost. We would still need to design and make the shredder, which mary would help me with.
As far as the cooperative goes...I will be helping Maria (my counterpart) make value-added products to help create small businesses. Two of the highlights are making marmelade out of sambor (similar to watermelon) and making wine. Wine is usually not grown in this part of Ecuador but it will be interesting to see what happens with that.
I am really excited about everything right now...I always thought my peace corps experience would be living in some shack by myself in the middle of nowhere with no running water and electricity. I don´t know if I got lucky or not, maybe I should of applied to go to Africa then. I guess I came in with such low expectations that everything I recieve is a luxury, I don´t know. Anyways...I got a week then we head out on our technical trips (a week learning agricultural practices with other volunteers that will be living in the Sierra)...stoked about that.
Ciao
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