I know, i know...

…it has been a while. A lot has happened in the last month and I left my external hard drive in an internet cafe. (I really wish Ecuador had lost-and-founds like in the States...instead people just usually take things they find). I had stored all my blog posts and a few extra new ones about general topics that I could post at anytime… along with many other recent files. Crap.

Anyway…I have been really busy lately! "Busy” is not what it means in the US…it is more of a relative state of exhaustion. People laugh when I tell them I had a busy day because all I did was a small meeting with farmers, a run, and then go to town to get groceries. (I used to do things like that on my way home from work...here it takes a whole day.) This involves preparing for the meeting and being ready at the time they say even though they will more than likely be an hour late. Then I have to talk technical Spanish with people who don’t understand my accent. Go to my house change and run for an hour or more. Then travel for an hour to get groceries and then carry all groceries to the bus just to travel an hour back.

My project is flying. We have finished most of the excavating. A backhoe dug out the location for the tank and the farmers have excavated the new location of the canal. I have been meeting with an engineer in the “municipio” (similar to a county office the states.) Turns out they do have more technical building codes than I had originally thought. (When I first asked questions about concrete mixes, I was answered….oh about 2 wheelbarrows of rock and 2 more of sand then some PCC. It is mixed in a pile on the ground and water is added until it is workable.) The new concrete mixes change some quantities but it is managable because all of the materials for the concrete are being donated by the local governments and does not involve the USAID grant funds. So no biggie.



There have been some pretty severe landslides near me. The rainy season here was especially intense. In my two nearest towns approximately 12 houses have been destroyed. No one was severely hurt in these landslides, there was just a lot of property damage. It is interesting to see the affects of water when things aren't designed correctly. Both landslides were in part caused by poorly placed tanks and sewers (...and bad rains, steep slopes, erosion from agriculture, and on and on.)

Landslide newspaper article http://www4.elcomercio.com/pais/Deslave-via-Chimbo-Guaranda.aspx



Surprise! (at least to me)...Steve came to visit!…more about that in the next blog…it is a good one!

I had my mid-service conference outside of Quito. We met up and talked about such things as site progress, concerns, goals for the second year, several technical lessons, and even about things we need to start thinking about after Peace Corps. Less than a year left. Wow.

We also have our one year medical checkups. They test us for parasites and clean our teeth.

I have many friends who have recently left or will be leaving in the next few months…including all the volunteers within 2 hours of me. The World Teach program in our province was shut down unexpectantly…my friend Amanda writes about it in detail in her blog. (ecuatiempo.wordpress.com) It is really sad to see so many of my new friends leave.