Puyo. Hot, humid, and the one nice resturant.... closed (as we arrived). Your mildewy hostel has only one thing of interest, a 24 hour porn channel. What would our parents say? We are leaving straight away in the morning. [View Full Entry]

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Four weeks in Ecuador and I am one week away from home. I am writing this in my Hostel in Quito, waiting to fly off to the Galapagos Islands tomorrow until I return to Quito on Saturday, This has been an unsettling experience in some ways, Ecuador ties with Mozambique as the poorest country that I have been to and the project I have been on is the only one where the conditions I have stayed in have reflected this. After an 11 hour long and very confusing flight to Santiago in Chile, I had a four hour wait for my [View Full Entry]

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Feeling slightly more human today after the drenching we got yesterday but it´s amazing what a hot bath and good night´s sleep can do. Absolutely gorgeous sunny weather today which was just a slap in the face coming the day after our soaking jungle venture. Still, better weather meant we could actually do something today instead of skulking in the hostel as we had planned so we decided on visiting a nearby exotic bird sanctuary to see some of the jungle inhabitants who were so shy yesterday at closer quarters. Started off a bit weird as they seemed to have [View Full Entry]

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Arrived in Puyo expecting jungle. Was surprised to find out that the Lonely Planet description of a large town obsessed with the internet and American jeans was actually closer to the truth that monkeys and mosquitos. In fact, miracle of miracles, I managed to escape from the jungle without a single mosquito bite (this truly is a miracle as I´m normally the buffet for any kind of insect.) Have an amazing hostel in Flor de Canela which is full of little bridges and walkways with cabins hidden everywhere - figured it´s better to pay more for a decent hostel than end [View Full Entry]

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PHOTOS COMING!!!! Just didn´t have time to download them today. So my service is winding down rapidly. Peace Corps just recently approved our March 20th Close of Service date which means that we will be leaving country soon after that. The last month or so has gone exceptionally well - some of the best experiences of my Peace Corps service. To start, a few weeks ago I was in the community of San Pedro to collect some GPS data points for one of CODEAMAs projects. I went on a 5 hour hike with one of the teachers in the school, the [View Full Entry]

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Greetings to all blog readers. As many of you know, I have written about fellow Puyo Volunteer, Matt, in a few of my blogs. He is working on a project along the same lines as my Env. Education guide. My project was to train teachers, his project is to provide ¨workbooks¨ to actual students who lack any real materials. It is a worthy project that was started by former Volunteer Katie Wallace and Matt has refused to let her hard work go for naught. I know that economic times are tight, but I´ll ask you anyhow to take a look at [View Full Entry]

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Sorry no pictures this time - this is a long blog, I warn you, but definitely worth the read. Our Close of Service Conference (COS) came and went in Quito this week. Each Omnibus has a COS conference to talk about the paperwork that needs to be filled out, how to prepare resumes and describe your service, and to provide feedback to Peace Corps. Normally, the standard for this conference is 3 days. However, since our group is the most beloved we got 1 day. I have done a lot of complaining during the last year about PC Administration, so in [View Full Entry]

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So Susan and I have celebrated another Christmas in Puyo, as well as, ushered in another New Year. Just like last year, we invited friends down to Puyo to spend Christmas with us. Last year, there were 8 of us, this year we numbered 20. Somehow, Susan and I have become social chairs of our Omnibus, or so we have been told. People heard about the great Puyo Christmas of 2007 and thus, more wanted to come this year. We invited people to come anytime from Christmas Eve until the 27th, when the real party would occur. Our friend Roger came [View Full Entry]

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Sue and I are about to begin our travel adventure to Peru. We leave Puyo tonight (Friday) on an overnight bus to Guayaquil (the largest city in Ecuador). From there we are going to attempt to find a place to watch the OSU-Michigan game. Susan´s brother Tom and his wife Hannah fly in later that night. The next day we head to Lima, Peru and from there to Cusco and the Inca Trail. We will spend 4 days hiking to Machu Picchu. I am very excited to see Tom and Hannah and excited to actually be taking a real vacation from [View Full Entry]

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Well, I am having one of those weeks. On Sunday, I was shaving with new razor on my upperlip and managed to slice the hell out of my nose. It bled and bled - I am still trying to figure out how I did that. On Tuesday I woke up with an incredible pain in my right eye as though I had a piece of glass in it. I must have scratched it with something and after multiple flushings and standing under the shower with my eyes open I think I cleared out whatever was in my eye, but am left [View Full Entry]

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