Well, I´ve made it. Or I´m just beginning, depending on your perspective I guess. On Wednesday we put on our fancy clothes for our swearing in ceremony, held at our training center rather than at the ambassador´s residence due to the lack of an ambassador. The country director, acting head of the embassy, and two of my fellow trainees spoke. All in all it was essentially a graduation, complete with crossing the stage to get our certificates. I can now call myself a Peace Corps Volunteer without technically lying.
The afternoon was spent finishing packing and making lunch as a last thank you for my host family. Peace corps rented a bus to take us, and our luggage to the main bus terminal in Quito, which was quite busy with everyone travelling for the holiday weekend. Peace Corps has a rule prohibiting arrival in the middle of the night, so many of us ended up waiting until almost 11 to get on our respective busses to our sites.
El Oro, my province, is on the boarder with Peru. When we visited our sites a month ago team El Oro was three people, but since then one had her site switched because it was an island with no potable water, and the other decided that island living in a community of 100 wasn´t for him, and decided to head back to the US. As such, I as the lone surviving memeber of team El Oro, made the bus ride all by my lonesome. I got in about 10:30, dragged all my stuff 3 blocks to my host familiy´s store, and got a ride from there to the house. They took me out for cevice for lunch, and I spent the rest of the day unpacking, resting, and shooting hoops with my 14 year old host brother at the high school down the street.
My host family left for a mini-vacation this weekend at 6:00 this morning, so I´m here by myself. When I spoke with them on the phone I wasn´t sure if they were planning on taking me, but it turns out that they were heading to one of the towns Peace Corps has banned, so it´s probably better that they weren´t. Sarah, the other volunteer in Arenillas, left this afternoon for a 2 week trip to Machu Pichu. It being Good Friday, much of the town was shut down today, so I finished unpacking and spent some time reading.Peace Corps manuals with tips on how to integrate into your community! Really, I just didn´t want to leave my air conditioned bedroom because it´s about 10 bazillion degrees here during the afternoon.
Nonchronological bullet time
* I sweat more than the average person. I´ve never been more aware of this than when I visited Arenillas a month ago and was half drenched on my 15 minute walk between my house and office. Like right now, it´s almost 6 at night and I´m perspiring while typing shirtless. Ah the joys of being home alone. Then again, the men of my host family don´t seem to have an issue with shirtlessness in general.
* I have cable here and the Celtics game is about to start, I´ll finish this later... OK, it´s later. As in the next day. I went to the market this morning and picked up some eggs, vegetables, and a pineapple. Have I mentioned how I´m going to be eating fresh pineapple and avocadoes almost daily for the next couple years? I´m pretty stoked about it. Bargaining is common at the market, and I talked my way from $1 for two avocadoes to $.80. I have no idea if that´s a good price or if I´m still paying the gringo tax, but for comparisons sake, I paid $1 for a pineapple, $.80 for 2 avocadoes, and $1 for a head of brocolli, tomato and carrot, and $.10 per egg. I suspect I can do better for the eggs. I also made copies of my house keys so that I´ll still have them once my host family returns.
*I moved in here just in time for the NBA playoffs, of which I can watch about 4 games per week. I got to watch the Celtics last night. Needless to say, I´m pleased about this. Soccer is still pretty much a background noise to me that I don´t pay attention to unless the announcer gets excited.
* It´s not too unbearably hot here when it´s cloudy all day. Unfortunately, of the 10 or so days I´ve been here, this is the first one that´s been mostly cloudy.
*I´m going exploring this afternoon.
