(Monday, November 22, Day 154)

"The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. Government or the Peace Corps."


Phrase of the day: De quien fuera este idea?... Whose idea was this again?

That was definitely the reoccuring theme throughout all of last week. (But not in a bad way).

It's been 3 months now as a volunteer, so everyone from my training class met in Quito for our "Reconnect".
Reconnect, being a time for volunteers to present their future work plans for the upcoming year, and the office to give more workshops. Definitely their first mistake. Another week of training? No thank you. Everyone definitely winged his/her presentation. They were all pretty good though!
It definitely reminded me of college; lots of information that we already knew. Unfortunately, this time I didn't have Willy sitting next to me to wake me up!
I did, however, have ridiculous skits to keep me entertained. The best ones were by this guy, Mitch, pretending to be macho. (Is "macho" an adjective in English even?)
Because of the budget/the office not wanting us to be near the center of the city, we stayed at a convent in the suburbs of Quito during the week. Mistake number 2. No real issues with the convent itself, but we had to be back on the convent's grounds by 9pm! Yeah, they were just asking for trouble. After we almost got eaten alive by some crazy guard dog though, I decided to listen to them and stay inside, ha. Luckily they fed us 5 times a day to make up for keeping us on lock-down (breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner). (And I only ate rice like two times all week!)
One day we decided to go to the TeleferiQo!
It's this sky tram from Europe that goes up the side of Volcan Pichincha. I only say "from Europe", because the safety instructions are only in German, Italian, French, and English.
Yeah, mistake number 3. Why would anyone go when it's raining? Oops. We will have to go if you visit. You can (supposedly) see all of Quito from the top. There are some crucial hikes and bike trails as well.
I'm back in San Isidro now, and very ready to get to work! We can write grant proposals now and actually get stuff done. (hopefully)

But first, another quick trip to Quito Thursday, perhaps?...

Happy Thanksgiving!!