Correo

Before I begin, a quick statement

My new host parents forgot my name in the month since I visited, so they asked me what I wanted to be called. Ian is hard for them to pronounce, but Yoni isn’t. Yoni is my Hebrew and what my family in the U.S. usually calls me. So around the house, at lease, I will be Yoni. They actually spell it Jhonny, but it’s pronounced the same.

Now, for your questions….

I know you take pride in your stomach’s ability to, well, stomach anything. How has it performed so far?

I am tied for the fewest stomach issues of anybody in my training group. We could have done a survey to figure this out, but when you haven’t had any problems, you don’t need to do any research to reach this conclusion.

Other trainees have had more trouble adjusting to the diet here than I have. A few reasons for this would be that I spent three weeks in Ecuador last summer and already knew what to expect (and more importantly, so did my stomach), my host family doesn’t really like to cook and gave me plenty of opportunities to cook for them (I never made lasagna before coming to Ecuador, but my host family there says they will never forget the first time I made it), and by staying vegetarian I have avoided a lot of the questionable meats that are common in the diet.

Some of my friends have had more than one bout with giardia (the common symptom is something frothy and sulphurous coming out of mouth and butt, sometimes at the same time). Luckily, I have avoided that bug.

I know you take pride in your T-shirt collection. Can you please update on the t-shirt collection progress?

Well, I started with five t-shirts.
· A blue shirt with maize “Michigan” across the chest
· A gray, Detroit Tigers t-shirt
· A gray, Detroit Pistons, 2004 Eastern Conference Champions shirt
· A red, Moosejaw shirt
· A white t-shirt that is now tinted red after a laundry incident.

There are two additions.

· A light yellow shirt that says “there’s no charge for awesomeness,” but in Spanish, across the front. The line is inspired by a quote from Kung Fu Panda.

· A blue shirt from our technical trip, with yellow writing, and an inside joke on the back.

It only costs $4.00 to make t-shirts in this country, so t-shirt collection expansion is highly likely.

I have heard that Peace Corps volunteers read a lot of books because they have time. Have you found that to be the case?

I have also heard the same thing, but I don’t think it holds true during training. We are very busy with sessions and spending time with our host families that reading time is limited. I have finished “Pride and Prejudice” and traded it for “On The Road.” I am about halfway done with “The Bourne Identity.”

My reading time has been limited by my watching the entire series of “The Office” and the fact that the time I would spend reading books is spent reading the news and e-mails I download from the internet. When I go to the interent café, I copy and paste personal emails and news stories of interest to my flash drive and then read them on my computer when I get home. I don’t see that system changing too much now that I am at my site.

Why don't you try and start up a dodgeball league? Or how about Ga-Ga, our favorite Israeli dodgeball game? Both soccer and volleyballs can be used for both…


This is a great idea and will be taken into consideration.

Do the PC folks play, rock, paper, scissor, shoot? Or do you shoot after scissors? It can really mess up your game if you don't know when you are supposed to go.


I completely agree with your stance on the subject. That is why it is important everybody involved is clear on the rules. The standard Peace Corps policy is to say ¨rock, paper, scissors, shoot¨ and throw on ¨shoot.¨

How long does it take to wash one garment, because in my head i think it would take me at least 1 hour to get all the soap out of one think; hence, would never attempt it?

This depends on the type of clothes. When doing laundry, I like to measure time in terms of songs (it should be prohibited to do laundry without music or some other form of escape). For instance, a shirt might take one song to soap and rinse while a pair of pants might be three. I understand the song isn´t the most exact unit of measurement, but laundry isn´t an exact science either.

This laundry detergent you speak of, this could be the answer to your "capoiera-smudge" shirt and many other stains.....

True. If you use a little bit of deja, I think I would be able to turn my capoiera shirt white. Now a little background on this question. Last summer, I spent three weeks in Rio de Janeiro, learning capoiera at night.

Because of my laundry situation at the time, I followed a different paradigm for hygiene. I didn´t separate my clothes into clean or dirty. Instead, I separated them based on usage. For instance, I had my clothes I would wear for capoeira. I had my clothes I would wear to the beach, and I had my clothes I would wear to the bar. Well, after three weeks of doing capoiera, my once-white shirt turned into a light brown. My capoeira name (everybody in capoeira earns a nickname that they referred to as) was cascao, named after a Brazilian cartoon character who was afraid of water.