When was the last time you milked a cow?

So, I haven´t forgotten about you. The reason for limited blogging has been limited internet access. In fact, this is the first bit of internet I have had in five days. And in that time so many bloggable things have happened that I know I will be playing catch-up for the next two years.

I´ll give you a brief overview of what we have done until now. Right now, I am sitting in an internet cafe outside of Cayambe, which is in the mountains north of Quito. We are living with families in our training villages. I will write more about that soon.

Last Tuesday, we had staging in Washington, D.C. It´s pretty weird to think that was just a week ago. We received some basic information and did a bunch of icebreakers with the 44 other trainees in my group. A few specific outstanding icebreaker moments were:

We were asked what we did to prepare for our Peace Corps service. One of the trainees said that he achieved inner peace. I said that I got a hair cut.

Another question that we were asked was about something we brought with us that was the most ridiculous. I said a baseball mitt, but, in reality, the most ridiculous thing I brought was a box of matzah ball soup mix.

After successful traveling, we reached Quito and had a few days of orientation. Not really any tremendous stories from that.

Well, I have to catch the bus in three minutes. So, I have to go. To give you a flavor of the kinds of things I have done the last few days:

I milked a cow for the first time in my life.

The shower in my house is broken, so my host mom put some water on the stove, then put that water in a big bucket so I could bathe, which is nice because I hadn't washed my hair in a week.