gracias!

well after 6 months of talk, planning, waiting, waiting, getting the approval from peace corps, waiting some more...the shredder project has finally been funded! i found out from peace corps that my project got fully funded on my birthday and i couldn´t ask for a better birthday present than that. Peace corps is going to send me a list of all the donors and how much they donated but for the people who donated...thank you sooooooooo much from the bottom of my heart, there are not words to describe my gratefulness to you all. I promise to get this project running and am determined to make it sustainable and will try to post pictures when i can.

More or less, the plan with the project is develop an ecological club using young men and woman (jovenes) in the community to help construct the compost beds and help with the collection of organic wastes from families one time a week. There is already a truck that comes every thursday to pick up the trash and recyclables (i can´t spell haha)...why not a truck that picks up the organic wastes too? Figure I am not asking too much here. We´ll see what happens but i am excited because this will be the first thing in the community that has my footprint on it. Gardens with families and school, workdays with the canal, giving talk about organic agriculture and teaching english are fine but i feel that none of these actually have a shelflife and can be sustainable...i am hoping this project can.

On another note, it was my birthday on the 12th and it was great to celebrate it with my host sister, who turned 21 on the same day. Actually there was another kid that turned 22 on the same day...amazing, i never knew somebody with the 12th as a birthday in the states and here i find two people in the same community of 300 people in ecuador...small world.

anyways...till next time (i am going to withhold a comment about obama and healthcare, don´t live in your country right now haha)