Twelve weeks ago Justin and I, and 35 other Peace
Corps trainees, arrived to a small town called NAYÓN to start our Peace Corps adventure.
Before we got to Ecuador I couldn’t find anything about Nayón on the internet.
It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. The only thing we knew was that it is
located about 20 minutes outside Quito, the capital city.
Now, we feel that
Nayón is our home here in Ecuador. Everyone is very kind, they tell you good
morning with a smile. The lady who sells fruits in a store near the park gave
us a dozen bananas for free just so we could try them. They have beautiful
flowers for sale everywhere you go in town. We even have the opportunity to take part of
the town festivities that included box cars races, live music, dancing, a
beauty pageant, and an event where people throw oranges at each other. It is
truly an amazing town.
Justin and I have an incredible host family. They have
opened the doors of their house to us, and fed us amazing food. Our host mom
even takes into consideration Justin’s gluten free diet. They took us to the
middle of the world and the hot springs in Papallacta. They laugh with us, and at
times they laugh at us. We couldn’t ask for a better place to spend our first
months in a country we have never been to, in a country that we will spend the
next two years of our lives.
On top of
everything we were so lucky to share the experiences of this new journey with
35 other amazing human beings that we can now call our Peace Corps family. We
went from being strangers meeting for the first time in a hotel lobby in Miami
to some of the closest friends we could ever imagine which cry, laugh and share
amazing moments together in Ecuador. Now we are getting ready for our new
adventure, to serve as a volunteers each one in a different part of Ecuador. Now
we have to say good bye to all the wonderful people have grown close to, and
it’s not as easy as we thought it was going to be. We heard that after
training, everyone is ready to go to their site, however for OMIBUS114 it’s not
the same. We got used to seeing each other every day, to having lunch, to working-out
together, to playing soccer every Thursday, to watching a movie every Wednesday
night, to running into each other on the street. We even got used to hearing about
our stomach problems.
Nayón makes us feel good, safe. It is a place we can
call home!
Here is a video my Spanish class and I put together
about Nayón.
We sincerely hope you enjoy!
