Near the End

South America » Ecuador
April 18th 2007

Published: August 10th 2007

Today is our last day in our communities and our last day of training in Cayambe. It is bittersweet. Sue and I have grown to love our family - it will be very difficult to say goodbye tomorrow morning. We bought our little brother all 4 Harry Potter movies (this weekend we watched 1 and 2 on TV). The Quad pack cost us $1.50 and is assuredly pirated from China. We also made some photos for them and got a few frames to put them in.

The end of training is exciting. All of us trainees are joyed at the prospect of getting to our sites and starting a new life. We have been living as though we are 15 year-olds with curfews of 8:00pm. It has been especially weird for Susan and I since we are married and have lived on our own for 10 years.

We had a family appreciation day this past weekend. All of the families came and we handed out certificates, had a hog roast, and played games. Somehow, I was incharge of games so I organized an egg-toss (lanza de huevo) and a sack race. They were big hits and magically, my Spanish was good enough to explain the games appropriately. The egg-toss was hilarious - because it was a new game for most of the Ecuadorians. This one Â¨fatherÂ¨was really into the game and was in the second to last group. His partner through the egg a bit to high and far, the father reached up to catch it, but was a little too forceful, the egg erupted on his face much to the delight of the 200 or so onlookers. The other humerous part was watching the sack race. The bigger they are the harder they fall. Nearly all of the gringo guys (PCVÂ´s) treated it like the Olympics and they all fell down at some point. All in all, it was a good time and the facilitators said that our training group threw the best party to date.

Tomorrow morning we head to Quito for 4 days of hammering out all the details and the swearing-in. I am sure there will be a little partying as well.

Adios for now,
Jeremy

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