THE ARRIVAL

8.23.10

I spent day at Cleo's office and caught up on the internet met Miriam, a community leader in San Vicente and talked with her and Cleo about the CAT Tools= very overwhelming at first to read everything, but it does offer a lot of options and flexibility to make things my own in a sense. CAT Tools is a book that Peace Corps gave us to do an assessment of our communities to see where the needs are and what projects might be appropriate to fulfill the needs. Organized a meeting with the mayor in the morning for tomorrow at 8 and to have Zeneida come too to get his support and input on the situation in Salinas. At 5 pm, Zeneida’s cousin, Eduardo, and his wife Betty, drove me to Salinas, they live in Portovelo which is a small town on the way to Salinas. I finally arrived and met Zeneida’s mother (I’m staying at her mother’s house), her name is Pastora. Mirtha was there as well and when we drove up a few people said that they were excited that I was back and that they have been waiting for me to arrive, so that definitely helped to calm my nerves. The people are so sweet! And the fact that I wasn’t shocked like I was for my site visit also helped that I had been there before and had met some people. I pretty much ate dinner and went to bed after a while. Met Mirtha’s dad, Juan, who reminds me a lot of my uncle Tom back home, he kind of has the same build, look, and body movements I guess. Talked to Zeneida about the meeting and she will come along, we also talked about what had happened over the weekend and it all worked out fine, I don’t think she was mad or anything. I was nervous she was going to think that I didn't want to come to site and stayed in San Vicente to put it off for the weekend. I was definitely anxious to get settled and organized in the house, but it worked out for the best to talk with Eik and have a couple days to calm down and mentally prepare.