Well, we have all left the comforts of Nayon, our training town ( which we did not appreciate until now) and arrived in our sites where we will toil away for the next two years.  Many of us came to the "coastal" region,  fewer stayed in the Sierra ( Andean) region and two of us went to the Orient ( the east) which is really the Amazonian region.....its eastern Ecuador.  I want to take a guided tour there before too long...guided for sure.  According to what I have heard...it is still pretty undeveloped.  There are a few roads and of course Mobil and Exxon have made their indelible marks                           ( desafortunadamente)  that means unfortunately in Spanish.  Try practicing that in syllables---there are 8 of them.

Three of us traveled together from Quito to Portoviejo.  It was a longer trip than usual because the bus had to take roads that were not closed....there have been heavy rains in our region and some of the main roads ( there are not that many roads to start with) had been closed due to landslides .   But, a complication for us was an accident that appeared to involve at least two trucks and a couple cars.  Some ambulances came thru but I don't know who was transported.   We started to worry when tow trucks kept coming.  We were sitting in a bus, which thankfully had A/c but still......11 hours...ack !!  We got here about 10:45 pm  ( had left at 11 am)  and the next day we had to attend some teacher trainings ( just to sit there...we did not have to do anything other than stay awake and look interested).


 The teachers here have not been paid for at least a month.....Ecuador has fallen on some difficult economic times...its economy was supported by the petroleum it exported which is now at a very low price.  They are trying to make up for the lack of income by raising a lot of other taxes and that is making it hard on a lot of people.  A can of L'Oreal hairspray was offered to me at  $29.00...I declined, to say the least.

But the seminars were for English teachers so they were presented in English which is nice.  I"ll be speaking English all day which will be a lot easier than what I was trying to do in Nicaragua.  But, I do want to keep working my Spanish..I"ll just have to work harder at it.

One of  the presenters has Serbian heritage and had spent 4 monts there before she came into the Peace Corps.  I told her about my Bulgarian experience so we exchanged a few phrases.  The Serbs use the Cyrillic alphabet like the Bulgarians- i just love peace corps at times like this.

The teachers are great..just like ours in the US...some very outspoken and fearless and others did not say a word.  But,very collegial, all.  They have between 40 and 50 students in their classes...not easy.


Now, I am trying to find a gym with a rowing machine...you should hear me asking people about that.  Remar...that's the Spanish word for row...Macina de remar.....thats what I"ve been saying.  Getting lots of smiles.  This afternoon I ordered a small order of papas fritas y "coke zero."  The kid behind the counter got the cutest look on his face when I was talking...but the cashier defended me....bastante, she said.. That means....enough, enough Spanish..as in, " you speak well enough."  

I have texted with my counterpart and he and I are going to get started with some stuff at the University next week.  Not sure what that will be but......gotta stay loose.  School ,  they call high school, "colegio" here,   for the students does not start until May 4.  I'll go in to at least meet the teachers and become familiar with the school but they don't have their schedules yet so we can't really figure out my schedule until they have theirs.  Also, I am supposed to work with at least 3 teachers and they have to be willing to work with me so...it will take some time to figure out who wants to put in the extra time it takes to have a new person with you.   I can add a lot but I know its easier to just do stuff yourself.

One thing that keeps these teachers on their toes and also pretty nervous, is that they all have to take an English test and get a certain score to keep their jobs.  In the past, it has been the TOEFL which is the test high school kids have to take in order to come to a US university ...their English has to be good enough to take their classes in English...so its a high bar.  Most, waaaay most, of the Ecuadoran English teachers did not pass it when it was given a few years ago, so now they are under the gun.   Some rumors are that they will be suspended with out pay until they can pass the test.  So, one of the things I'll be doing is teaching test taking strategies and giving them lots of practice tests...timed like the real one.

Peace  Corps' goals for us are three fold...improve the students' English, improve the teacher's english and teaching strategies and thirdly, develop activities for the "community" of English teachers and students.  That is pretty broad, and I have to do a survey to see what they want, but I can develop the survey so I am going to list the things I want to do and have them rank order them.  Of course, ...blah, blah, blah,  ....I'll leave some space for them to add their iideas but.......

I have to work on those goals at least 25 hours a week so i'll have plenty of time to look around this country too.  I want to save some vacation time to go back to Nicaragua to some of the sweet people.

 I am hoping some family will come down to go to the Galapagos Islands and I want to at least visit some of the other famous places.  I really really want those grandgirls to come visit me, and sweet Liza has shown some interest, so we'll see. Katy has shown some interest in Peace Corps so I am  hoping I can get her here in May, 2017 at our Mid Service meeting so she can meet some of the young people in my group and hear their stories after they have been here a full year.

  I am just an hour from Manta which is on the Pacific and supposedly a great beach town, and other less developed beach towns with good snorkeling are near by.   I' ve been told tons of whales swim by here in July and put on quite a show so i want someone to come here to watch that with me. My niece Hanna has shown an interest in marie biology so I hope she comes for a visit.  Anyhow... I am planning to have a little place with an extra bedroom , or two, after 4 months in my current location ( photos below) so I'll have room for visitors....as long as they are not too picky.   I also know that there are a lot of really inexpensive hostals around soooo......we should be able to accommodate almost everyone !!!!.

 Here are a few photos.....

This is my host family in Nayon, with Natasha.  She lived upstairs with another host family and my family was intrigued by her ethnicity....they could not get over the fact that she could speak English so well...they called her the Hindi...which she is but..she is also from San Francisco.  Funny.   I had invited her down to learn to make those little brown things on the table.  Garapinadas..sugar coated peanuts...yummm.  They have another thing that looks like this which they call, caca de perros, dog poop, but it is sugar coated toasted corn..also good I've been told tho I have not tried it.

We had our swearing in ceremony on April 12th.  It was held in the driveway of the Ambassador's residence.  He is not living  there...it has been determined to be non earthquake proof so he is living somewhere else.  He showed up in that hat and kept it on the whole time.  I think its about a half size too small.  He is sort of a nerd but seemingly a very nice nerd.  He gave a very nice speech.

These two pictures are just some of the young people who went thru training with me.  in the lower picture:  the girl in the black is from New Mexico in the middle is from NY city and Madison has been livingin Hawaii for many years.

Thisi s the "chiva."  Its literally a party bus.  Our group, sin yo, went out on it the night of swearing in.  They had done it once before for some birthdays and its great fun.  Wonder if it would fly in the US.....or would it be considered  too dangerous.  The back is just a railing, there are benches for seats along the sides, there are "poles" in the middle...everyone brings their own booze...a booze cruise...updated !!!!

Natasha again with Rachael...from Atlanta, the day of the swearing in.

THis is Robert, a volunteer,from South Bend, who presented.   He got himself assigned to a community onn the beach and he could not be happier...hes a surfer.

This is my room, bed with mosquito net, clothes hanging in the window because there is no screen or curtain on this window.   On the other window, there is a screen but at night, the street light is positioned just exactly so that it lights up my face when I lie in bed so I've hung a blouse to stop the light.  The other is the view from my window....you taxpayers don't have to worry that my life is too soft right now....I'm suffering plenty !!!!

Zack, the volunteer who put the conference together...working with  the Ministry of Ed., of course.  Can't remember where he is from either but another good guy. And so dedicated...its great to see.

This is Tamara,  the gal who speaks some Serbian.  She is doing Peace Corps mid education..is going back to finish here graduate degree in Kinesiology...so she can be a Physcial Therapist.  I told her my story about how much I appreciate a good PT now that I have had my hip experience.

This is Allison, another presenter - she is from San Diego but had been working three years in Baltimore....community development...we chatted about poor ole Freddy Gray...she wants to return to Baltimore and continue working ...she loves it.

Margaret, a great gal, in my class.  She is assigned not too far away.  She was working in Wisconsin when she joined...Her family is from Mexico so her Spanish is perfect.

A view at  the swearing in ceremony.  Marvin in front and Brooke right behind him are in Porto viejo

THis is the moment the earthquake hit.  I was sitting on my bed, writing this blog post, under the mosquito net, it was dark outside the net, the only light coming from my laptop.   All of a sudden, my mosquito net started swinging wildly from side to side.  I thought someone was playing with it, I could not see beyong the edge of my bed, then my bed started bouncing  and I  still thought some was playing with me, then my laptop bounced about a foot into the air, I looked over at some clothes I had hanging in the window ( my curtains) and saw them swinging wildly, all the street lights went out, ti was dark, dark dark and then I knew ....this was something serious.  I got out from under the net and apparently instinctively felt I had to get downstairs and outside.  I somehow ( and truly don't know how I did it under the conditions) went down two flights of stairs barefoot,  bracing myself on walls that were swaying , got to the door to get outside and my host mother had other ideas,,,,she wanted to stay inside, said the electric poles would fall on us, and she pulled my hand away from the door.  I recall giving her a good shove and getting out into the middle of our dirt road...The houses around us were no more than two levels os that is where we belonged...in my humble opinion.  Anyway, the major shaking stopped, we stood in the doorway watching to see what would happen next, finally pulled up our plastic chairs and sat there for a while.   We finally went inside and figured out how to sleep downstairs so we could run out if tremors started again.  Her neice called came to get us and we went out to the campo ( country) to stay with them...we ended up out there for a couple days.

I have some terrific pictures but can't find the cable I need to connect my phone to my computer.  I had to pack in 20 minutes after Peace Corps told us to evacuate and when my ride out of there came for me.  I left a lot of stuff behind but Peace Corps will get it for me in a week or so.  I must have left the cable there.....I know I had it out in the campo so it might be there too.  Will get another asap. 

I'll try to get to a mall tomorrow and get a cable...the pictures are great..some of the rescue dogs and teams, some nurses and medic, some great photos.

We were in XXXXXX, Manabi last night, tonight we are in XXXXXX, Guays and tomorrow morning we fly to Quito where we'll be staying for at least another week.  The bottom line is taht it is not safe for us to return to our sites in the province of Manabi so they are looking for other sites for us.  Not sure how that is going to go but we have to wait and see.

We just learned tonight that the training center in Nayon, where we were for 2.5 months , suffered some damage in the quake and we can't use it until the architects check it out.  .  The fear is that  altho the damage is minor at this point, if a "replica" hits, it will collapse.  

The hotel we stayed in last night was the hotel used by the navy, police, rescuers from other countries, people from Spain, Mexico, Peru...all rescuers....so we felt we were as safe as posible altho the hotel had sustained damage in the quake.  Manta suffered a lot of damage but most of it was to the older structures.  The newer hotels and buildings seemed to suffer cracks and loss of windows but did not collapse.  Our hotel tonight seems to be in perfect shape althought this city did suffer some damage...a major bridge collapsed.

The really sad part is the families we left behind.  I have one picture of my host mother, standing in her door way with an electrical cable draped over the roof of her house.  While she and I were there, right after the first tremor , the poles and the cables were fine  ( no electricity, but they had not fallen down).  When she and I returned to her house , to pack my things to evacuate,  we found a pole on her corner had fallen and had taken the cables with it...they were draped across the houses and lying in the streets, apparently from an aftershock, a replica.    She assured me they were not dangerous because there was no electricity.

I went upstairs to pack and a truck came by, apparently unaware of the wires that were down, and somehow touched some of them and electric sparks flew everywhere.  Neighbors who were sitting outside of their houses, saw and heard the sparks,, ran to the truck and as it pulled away, chased it, shouting and throwing large rocks they found in the street.  It occured to me that I was witnessing the "civil unrest" that Peace Corps had warned us about in emergency situations.  I packed as fast as I could and got downstairs and out as fast as I could.

For now, I am safe and I have talked with the folks in Portoviejo..they have electricity and water in the pipes ( tho it is not potable) so they are not miserable.  They still have a lot of falled buildings around them, many dead who have not been recovered, lots and lots to do.  We will not likely be going back anytime soon.

I'll post pictures tomorrow......

I am exhausted and have the flight tomorrow..its short...and then checking into another hotel.  Not all bad...especially considering what the Ecuadoria folks are facing.  More tomorrow.

Love and thanks for paying your taxes,
Love, me