The first week in site...

I arrived Monday evening to my site after traveling for 24 hours. My host mom offered to pick me up from Loja, which is about 5 hours on a bus from Santa Ana (I think that’s what I decided to call my site… alas, it is now). I was so happy to not have to take another bus, especially with all of my suitcases that I jumped at the offer. The 5 hours by bus turned into 9 by truck. We stopped in Zamora, the capital of my province to do some work at the provincial Department of Education. My host dad happened to be passing though Zamora after doing some work in another city, so he hooked up with us as well. We then had lunch, more work, and finally, hours later, we headed out. However, as I woke up from one of my numerous naps in the truck (if you know me at all, I can’t stay awake ever, especially in moving vehicles) I realized that we were arriving in a community that is about an hour drive from my site, the community I went to visit in August. Unfortunately, the volunteer that lives in this community was on his way to Quito when I called him, so we weren’t able to meet up. Finally, we arrived in my site. I was so excited to be there that about an hour after arriving, I was already in bed.

The last couple of days have been pretty good. My counterpart is on vacation this week, so I don’t have much to actually do around the office and we’ve been unable to actually plan what my goals should be. I’m having a meeting on Friday with the health promoters to discuss what topics they want me to support them with and work out a schedule for when I will be traveling with them to the outside communities. Then on Monday I will have a meeting with my counterpart and discuss these plans and solidify what my job will actually entail. But because none of this has happened yet, I have essentially been hanging around the office; awkwardly sitting by people and making them talk to me and using the internet whenever no one is on the one computer in the office that has access. The question that remains to be answered… is now me, of all people, got the job that starts at 7:30am? All municipal employees show up for work at 7:30am, break at 12:30pm for lunch, return at 2pm and then leave for the day at 5:30pm.

Outside of work time, I have successfully been the awkward gringa. My omnibus has the motto: “Whip it out… and get some”, which referred to being outgoing, going up to people and introducing ourselves (A Texas university, Texas A&M maybe, uses this motto and apparently everyone knows everyone and school spirit is extremely high. Our trainer went to this school so is all about it.). Let me tell you, Whipping it Out is harder than it seems. Not only am I complete stranger to these people, but I’m also a foreigner, and I also lack the ability to speak their language with fluidly. Add to that the fact that I am shy… and well, we don’t have much whipping it out happening. I’m working on it. I know it will take some time, but eventually I will integrate into this community and people will like me, because, well, how could they not?

One point of information, I don’t have cell phone service in my site unless I’m standing on the roof of my house (which, don’t happen all that often, surprisingly). We’re suppose to be getting a tower “ya mismo”… but I’m not holding my breath. A language/cultural lesson (this is 1/3 of the PC mission... for me to tell you about the culture here)… Ya mismo can roughly translates to mean already/right now/soon. In Ecuadorian culture (and maybe other Spanish speaking countries, I’m not sure)… it actually means sometime in the future. Mix these together and you could reasonably assume it means sometime in the near future. So theoretically we should have cell phone service in the next month or two. Well, if you reasonably assumed this, you would be wrong, at least partially. Ya mismo here in Ecuador means anything ranging from five minutes from now to never happening (or at least happening so far in the future that we’re around to see it). So ya mismo we’ll have cell phone service could mean that we’ll have it by the end of the year, by the end of my service here, or by the time my grandkids are born. So I’m hoping for a shorter time, but I’m not holding my breath.

The question I leave you with is this: How does one dry her clothes on an outdoor clothesline when she lives in the rainforest and it rains at least twice a day? (It’s a question I must propose to someone here soon… I’m running out of clean clothes and my clothes just won’t get dry on the clothesline.)