A Breath of Fresh Air
My apologies for the extremely delayed blog post. Peace Corps training is no joke! Let me start by saying that Ecuador is an absolutely beautiful place. From the mountains surrounding Quito, the huge variety of fresh food, and the quality of the people I interact with on a daily basis, Ecuador is phenomenal. I have a lot to share, so get ready for a rather lengthy post. Pictures will follow once I load them into my laptop from my phone.
To start, I live with a host family in Nayon, a small quiet town on the side of one of the mountains. I live with a host mother and her three daughters. It’s confusing because two of them have houses of their own, but they spend random nights in my mom’s house. So randomly the house is either filled with their families, or it’s quiet. I seemed to have received a rather nontraditional placement...my host mother owns a gym, a pool, and has a three story house with a breathtaking view of the mountains and volcanoes that surround Quito. There is a small dog, Rufo, who is a stray that my host sister took in. He is a mangy little white schnauzer who barks and howls all the time...but he reminds me of my own dog, Emma, back home in Michigan (so I will tolerate the barking for a few weeks more). Something sad, my host mother’s husband passed away a little over a year ago. He was a semi-famous cyclist in Ecuador. He died in a car accident while riding his bike. The gym is filled with trophies and medals honoring his many tours/races/successes.
Training is difficult. The 8am-5pm training lectures, activities, tests, and Spanish lessons seem to blur together as we maneuver through each challenge. On the bright side, my Spanish has been increasing like crazy. I still have difficulty holding conversations, but I feel a lot more comfortable talking and listening to native speakers. Our training center is brand new, and extremely beautiful. We are well taken care of by our trainers, professors, and doctors. Every week we get a new vaccine...doesn’t that sound like fun! Three doses of rabies, two doses of Typhoid...I’ll be so immune after these next few weeks.
In addition to all of this, my host family surprised me last Sunday for my 25th birthday! They took me to a family friend’s house in a small rural area called Puembo, about an hour away from my house in Nayon. The property was beautiful! The owner was clearly very wealthy, with two different houses on the property. One of them was more of an outdoor cottage, with an outdoor kitchen and indoor hot tub. The other one had a courtyard with coffee trees growing inside. They just open the door, grab some coffee beans, roast them, grind them, and fresh coffee! I was so blown away by the property that I didn’t notice them preparing cake, ice cream, and a big birthday dinner for me! The whole extended family was there, plus some other family friends! We ate, they sang happy birthday in Spanish and English, and then they all gave me hugs! It suddenly started raining so we ran inside. Now, something to note, Ecuadorian culture does not value “personal space” so everyone hopped on two couches...which was probably meant for 6 people total, but somehow we fit 12 people on them. Then we watched a movie on Netflix. They played it in English for me with Spanish subtitles for them, I was very grateful for their kindness the entire day!
This weekend I will be leaving for the coast. From Sunday-Thursday I will be living on the coast with a new host family to get a taste of Ecuador’s coastal life. I’m very excited! Then I will return to my current host family’s house for the remaining 10 weeks of training before the swearing-in ceremony!
