My site!

I´m at the beach!!! Start planning to visit :) I´m in the Esmeraldas province southwest of Atacames in a small town of about 500 people. And it´s near the Galera San Francisco Marine Reserve. (And I think of few hours north of Mompiche, for those of you who were there with me.) We leave tomorrow (Sunday) for week long site visits, so I´m going to wait until I actually go there to give any more detail. But I´m super happy with what I´ve heard so far. There are 4 other volunteers in Esmeraldas- April and Amber are inland and Steven and Reyes are also on the coast. Reyes´ site is close to mine and we have the same counterpart (boss). And there are some current volunteers in the area too. Our projects, as well as some other people along the coast in Esmeraldas, Manabi and Guayas, are broadly under USAID, which is exciting and I´ll talk about that more once I know how it works.

We found out our sites yesterday- the way they did it was they made a huge map of Ecuador and the provinces outlined in tape and then with rose petals. They called our name and sites one by one and then we walked down a rose petal path by all the staff and facilitators and then went and stood on the map at our sites, so we could see where everyone is and who will be near us. It was very well done and a lot of fun. Then they gave us some more info about our sites and projects and then cultural information about the part of the country we´ll be in- either the coast, sierra (mountains), or oriente (rainforest). The other 5 people from my community now are all far away, which is sad, but they´re spread throughout all 3 regions so I´ll have cool places to go visit :)

Also, my apologies for not posting any pictures yet, I´ve been having trouble getting it to work. Someday…