Yes, I do work....

Um, when did it suddenly become October? I can´t believe it, I´ve been in site a month now! So crazy...time has definitely flown since I boarded that airplane at CVG in June.

Anyway, this week was busy. I have been traveling a lot between Zamora, Yantzaza and Zumbi for work (I´ll talk a little bit about work since apparently some people think I am just galavanting through the country no doing anything...) In Zamora, I am working for the Ministerio de Salud Publica, or Health Ministry, and have basically become their in-house graphic designer. I´ve been designing a lot of t-shirts for them, for health fairs...not exactly what I expected but hey, I get to play around on Photoshop for a good portion of the day. I am also helping with designing manuals and health guides.

Then in Zumbi I met up with the FODI girls and we traveled to three communities to assess their FODI centers, or preschools. It was pretty interesting to meet these people, as they all live really far out in the campo. One community we visited, Santa Cruz, had a lot of drama. We got there to see how things were going and it turns out they don´t even want FODI to stay there anymore. All of the neighbors basically hate each other and were fighting the whole time; at one point I thought I was in an Ecuadorian episode of Jerry Springer...

So we quickly left.

But things move a lot slower here, so it seems like I am not doing much. They say the first three months are an adjustment and you are supposed to build rapport with the communities and people you are working with. So now I´m just trying to get my face known and people become used to seeing me.

On Thursday night was the election of the Reina of Zamora, or their beauty queen. Very different from the competition of Reinas that I competed in. The girls were gorgeous and they even had a swimsuit category! One 16-year-old strutted out in a bikini, but the bottom was see through and she was wearing a thong! I was shocked. Didn´t get to stay to see who won, it started pouring halfway through.