Well I am once again lonely, after a great few weeks of Stefanie being here, she has finally returned home. But the good news is she says that she wants to come back and live in Quito so my fingers are crossed!
The past few weeks haven’t really seen much work, just a lot of fun rather. The last weekend in February we celebrated our 1-year mark of arriving here in Ecuador. A good handful of us got together in a little town outside of Quito for the weekend and celebrated our accomplishments thus far. It was a great weekend and a lot of fun to see some faces and catch up others’ experiences and stories. That was Stefanie’s and mine’s last travel for the Wednesday following we packed up and dropped her off in Guayaquil to go home. So sad.
In the time that she was here though, I did manage to continue working with the students and the chickens. It’s been a lot of fun getting to work and “play” with the students. They really are great kids; when they show up that is. It's the same group that we’re hoping to start the beekeeping project with and I finally figured out how I can apply for funds so I am super excited that the project might actually have a chance of making it from our heads into reality. The funds are called partnership funds and I have to apply and if I get approved, they basically open up an account that anybody (NGO’s, USAid, friends, family etc) can donate any amount until I reach the amount that I applied for. I’ll keep ya’ll posted…
The best part about this past week was when my counterpart asked me to type up our business plan for the dehydrated Oritos project and while I was confused as for why he wanted me to re-type this 30 page manual when its obviously been typed and printed before thus easily located on a computer somewhere, I thought I would be nice and please him and do the work anyways. Turns out, I need to clean my ears, because he asked me to TRANSLATE the plan into English (which while typing it in Spanish, I realized having a copy of it in English would be really beneficial). I swear though he never said to translate it or put it in English. Hmm no wonder he thinks I’m incapable of anything….
Well, that's about it from here. These next two weeks I’ll be working on retyping the business plan, in English this time, and anxiously waiting for my parents’ arrival!! Current countdown is 11 days. Guess I better get started on their Spanish-English cheat sheet I promised them.
Hope all is well, wish you all a very merry March!! Love love.
