5.3.10

As I’m settling in here in Tena, I want to give all you readers an idea of what it’s like here. Tena is a city of 22,000 people in ‘el Oriente’ region of Ecuador. It’s in the Napo province and the next largest city is Puyo, about 2 hours south. I’ve been here permanently for about a week now and everything is going pretty well.

I will live with a host family for the first 3 months and can then look for a place of my own if I want. My host family is really great here, I’ve been very lucky that I’ve had 2 great families to live with in Ecuador so far. Now I live with a woman and her 11 year old daughter who are happy to have me and excited to learn how to make things like lasagna and good salads from me. The 11 year old likes to talk a lot (she especially loves to tell me all about plot lines of horror movies). My host mother is very patient with my Spanish and has made me feel very much at home in her house. She also has a lot of good advice like which men to stay away from in town, and has introduced me to a lot of her nice friends.

I’ve been going to the office on weekdays but am feeling a little lost about what sort of work I should be doing (it appears this is a common theme among my other Peace Corps colleagues as well). I know there is a lot of investigation to be done into the environmental education curriculum here and a lot of potential work to do. Right now, i feel like my lack of spanish skills are holding me back from being able to do meaningful work but i’m supposed to be solely “integrating” these first few months anyway.

My leisure time here usually consists of reading, writing e-mails (I should do more of that though…), cooking and eating with my family, sitting around and talking to people or watching telenovelas. Life here is very tranquilo.

I’m happy to have a regular schedule now and have come up with a good way to respond to e-mails. So please keep them coming! Sending love from Ecuador to you all.