Saturday, May 8, 2010

Over halfway there...

Like they always say, time sure does fly when you’re living in Ecuador while constantly humbling yourself with the language and playing with animal poop on a constant basis, or do they? Well anyways, on april 30 was the end of the first year at San Lorenzo (I wasn’t there for the big celebration…sure everyone there missed me a lot) and I can honestly say that, well I hope to get more stuff done in my second year than the first one. Most people say that the first year at your site in for integration and building the base for the projects that you and the community want to do and the second year is to implement them and hopefully make them sustainable. We’ll see about the sustainable part, especially when it comes to this shredder project. The good news is that the company in Quito that is building the shredder, Arthur Fried (they have a website is you are completely bored and want to look at farm equipment for awhile), has built the shredder and I have seen the finished project. Within the week, my community and I will have to find the transportation from Riobamba (where Arthur Fried will send the shredder) to San Lorenzo, where it will be its home to many incredible sustainable projects in the future…not sure if that will happen but it sounds really good.

On a personal note…I am dating a mona (female monkey, people call people from the coast monkeys…well people from the sierra do, lots of jokes that go back and forth from people from the coast and sierra) and I very happy. Her name is Marta and she is a cousin of my host sister, Mamuchi. She came to San Lorenzo for her vacation days from college for a few weeks and well…there you go. She lives in Guayaquil, so there is a distance but so far, so good. A mona and a gringo…only in peace corps I guess.

One down, one to go…