PUYO it is

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Well, it is final, barring any unforseen sicknesses or getting ourselves kicked out of the Peace Corps, Sue and I are headed to Puyo in the Oriente. We found out today and will be visiting our site next week. Puyo is in the heart of the rainforest. We have been told that within 10 minutes of the city you hit virgin rainforest. I am sure that it is going to be incredible. We are happy that the waiting game is over.

For those of you who still have not figured out where Puyo is, find a map of Ecuador. Find the Captial - Quito. Head south from there until you hit Ambato. Ambato, look to the right in the lowlands of Ecuador and you should see Puyo. It is a town of 20,000 + people. Obviously, I don´t know that much about it at this point, but I´ll be sure to fill in all the details soon.

Sunday, we went with about 25 other Gringos to a small town that had a bar with Direct TV. The plan was to find some basketball and see the tournament selections. Unfortunately, the bar had 600 channels, but no games. I could watch HGTV in spanish, but I couldn´t get NCAA hoops. We made the best of the situation. I drank a few beers and played Euchre for 3 hours with Kris and a couple PCV from Wisconsin (little did we know that at that same time, OSU was destroying Wisconsin). Euchre was fun, my partner, Molly and I were a good duo. Kris was his normal competitive self and we must have Euchred him 7 or 8 times during the course of the day. His partner, Ryan, was getting pissed. It was all good fun.

Monday, we changed language facilitators. All the volunteer groups did this. Our new facilitator is Elizabeth. She´s pretty cool and I feel like I´ll continue to learn from her. We ate lunch in the town next to ours called Tabacundo. We ate at a pizza place (if you could call it that). Sue and I actually ate there on Saturday as well. Anyhow, we struck up a conversation with the owner and she took us all to her hacienda near Esperanza. She has 20 hectares of land that is mostly a huge gorge. Her driveway was a winding twisting road that was essentially a sheer cliff with a slope of about 15%. It was nuts getting to her house, but the view was unbelievable. Unfortunately, we did not have our camera with us to take pictures. If we go back there - we´ll be sure to document it.

Tomorrow, Sue and I start indigenous language training. As if learning Spanish wasn´t already enough. Now I have to learn a few more languages, or at least learn a few important phrases. Oh well, it is all good, I am sure it is going to be fun and interesting.

Signing out for now.

Jeremy

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Comments

[Greg]

Care package on its way
Jeremy, we got the letter from you and Sue yesterday. Elisa and I are putting together a care package which will hopefully get mailed out to you tomorrow. It includes some newspapers, Reese's cups, Twix bars and a couple of books. Glad to hear that things are going well for you. Cool to hear you are going to Puyo. You'll have to tell me if the morning mists are as cool as they are said to be. Now you can get Bryan to come visit you for sure. A couple of my outdoor/adventure friends have said Puyo has some awesome biking. That part of Ecuador was one of the least penetrated by the Spanish, so I understand that it still has a large indigenous population. (At least it did when I was still in college.) But you probably know all this and more already. I did haul out one of my old history books which has some pictures of Puyo. WOW! Take care.

[scienceking]

Puyo it is
Greg, yes, the area around Puyo is indigenous central in Ecuador. We are very excited about the opportunity. Living in a relatively large town/city and venturing out into the rainforest to work with the indigenous cultures combines the best of both worlds.