2 down: 25 to go

Friday was the 2-month mark since I arrived in Miami for our pre-departure training. Tomorrow is the 2-month mark since I arrived in Ecuador. (For those keeping track, with two months down I have 25 more to go) It really doesn’t seem like it has been that long, yet at the same time it seems like I’ve been here for a long time. Having been two months means that it is almost that special moment: when I (along with the rest of Omnibus 98) am sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer. This coming week I’ll still be in my training community living with my host family but the week after I’ll travel back to Quito for a couple of days of meetings. After swear-in, I’ll travel all 20 hours and officially move into the community in which I’ll be living and working for the next 2 years. I am more excited than I am able to express in words. It will be nice to settle. As a result of moving to my site… the mailing address I gave you back in June will no longer be valid. If you have already sent something to me, great. If you haven’t but plan to, please hold off until I get my new address. Once I have this new information, I’m going to be sending a mass email with my address, my new phone number, and other more personal information I can’t post in the blog. If you didn’t get my first mass email and want to make sure you receive future emails (they are definitely not frequent, only when there is information that I can’t post online), please leave me a comment with your email address and I’ll be sure to add you.

Okay, enough with that. This last week I went on another technical trip. We headed back to the jungle (excuse me: tropical rainforest). Despite the fact I have mosquito bites all over my ankle area, the trip was pretty good. The first day our final destination was Archidona in the Napo province. However, our bus broke down along the side of the highway about an hour outside of Quito and we spent two hours entertaining ourselves in everyway possible. Finally a new bus came to pick us up and we continued on our way. Instead of transferring buses to Archidona, we decided to spend the night about 2 hours away in a really cute town in an amazing hostel.

This is when I have to break off onto a little tangent. The hotel we stayed in had an amenity like no other: hot water. I had forgotten how amazing it is to take a shower with hot water. The electric shower that heats up water as it is coming through the spout does take the intense coldness off the water and sometimes does get pretty hot… but it will never compare to a legitimate hot shower. Over the last two months I have mastered the art of short showers. However this one particular morning I spent an entire half-hour showering in hot water. It was amazing. I have never felt so clean. When you live in a country like the US you take for granted simple things like hot showers. My life here is really not that hard, but do remember me when you’re taking your hot shower every morning. Remember that for some of us it is a very rare commodity.

Anyway, back to the trip. We essentially spend the week learning about tropical diseases, particularly malaria, dengue, and chagas. The place we spent the rest of the week functions as a health center for expectant mothers, often indigenous women. A group of midwives run the center and provide traditional pre- and post- natal care as well as perform births. It was really interesting to learn the traditions of these women and their work as midwives. We also visited various health centers and branches of the health ministry to learn more about the tropical disease situation here in Ecuador. With the likelihood for a return of El Nino this year, the probability of working directly with these diseases is high, so it was interesting to hear what the federal and provincial governments are doing to help the situation.

Overall, the trip was good but I´m glad to be back ¨home¨. I´ll be even happier when I´m settled into my community and I can start living my life here in Ecuador.

That´s all for now. If you´re on facebook--check out the pictures I posted last week. Hopefully I´ll be able to upload some from my recent trips.

--Stacie