Questionnaire for Mollie
Trip Start
Jun 12, 2005
1
21
40
Trip End
Ongoing
Quito,
Ecuador
Tuesday, December 6, 2005
Why did you choose to join the Peace Corps?
I chose the Peace Corps for many reasons. I can not arrange the reasons in order as more important than others. Reasons include picking up a foreign language, learning about how others live, helping where they need help, and other such Peace Corp'ish reasons that you can find on their website.
I would say though what pushed me away from joining the work force in accounting/business is that I had a wide range of work experience before hand, and during university I really burned myself out working upwards to 25 hours a week in a financial services company in Tucson while I studied full-time. On a more personal level I really saw where I didn't want to be too early, making money and paying bills; I saw wealthy individuals who didn't really appreciate their lives and what they were doing with it.
Did you have alternate plans or ideas that you wanted to do if the Peace Corp didn't work out?
My backup plans included moving abroad and finding a random job with the possibility of other travels, or to go to a city such as NYC or Seattle in which I thought I may have wanted to experience. Nothing too binding was the overall theme.
How did you hear about it and decide it was the right decision for you?
I don't really know how I heard about it at first.
After a Game of Futbol
I knew that I wanted to do something "different" then to get serious with a "career type" job however. I decided to look further into PC though when a TV personality Chris Matthews was talking about it on Hardball. Funny right. He really just mentioned his service in the Peace Corps in relation to a larger issue and it urged me to log on... if PC was a stepping stone for my favorite TV personality why not check it out, right? ;-)That being said, I wouldn't really have applied to PC and thought seriously about it without listening to some advice of one of my family members (as only one was really behind such a crazy idea at the time). Then after talking to random Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and having to ask about the negative aspects, for they all exuded nothing but the amazing opportunities that they had, I decided to finish the long application process and make it my alternative to getting a real job and paying real bills.
What exactly are you doing over there?
My latest post on Travelpod.com can tell you what I have been doing during my first three months. However, due to some complexities and the on-goings out at that high school, I recently decided with my counterpart that it would be best to resign my position as a volunteer with them. The ever increasing presence of the Ecuadorian government is forcing many of my roles to be more formal and accredited, understandably, but disappointingly so; therefore, classes with my counterpart were affected most forcing me out of my computer classes and the possibility of eventually teaching english in the highschools.
Birthday Fiesta
I am currently at the Peace Corps Headquarters in Quito and will be checking out a couple new sites on the coast in the upcoming days as selected by my coordinator. I am very interested in small business development among the sex education and HIV/AIDS education also... A response to this question will be more interesting in a few more months, when is your paper due? ;)
What kind of training have you done?
One thing you need to know is that Peace Corps is drastically different among the 70 different countries that PC serves in; even experiences with-in the same country change immensely. For example, a volunteer in an Urban city will clearly have a much different experience than a typical rural volunteer living without reliable electricity, running water, etc.
This goes the same for training. For me and my fellow volunteers, training was exceptional. We were trained in Spanish with native speakers/teachers and received training on presenting all of the PC material on all of the issues that PC Ecuador is promoting. However, PC Ecuador is known for being the most organized and together, largely because we have gone the longest without interruption of service such as major violence and political uprising. I just spoke with a volunteer who served two years in Micronesia and she is amazed at how plush we have it. I had to agree with her. It is pretty amazing how together everything seems.
What has been the most rewarding part of your experience so far?
In three months of actual volunteering, I would say the friendships formed with the locals of my community and the cultural exchange that occurs.
Computer Lab
Coming from the comforts of middle class America and forming ties with people of different fortunes, you find a common ground that for me, has been sometimes positively overwhelming.The most challenging?
The most challenging aspect of my service during the first three months is the lack of a consistent role to concentrate on. Ask me this question a month ago and I would have said the language. The lack of a well-defined role is a common dilemma for volunteers to have to deal with; for some it is easier then others of course depending on your site placement and personality.
I was put into a really big project with a brand new boarding school that provided students with great opportunities of a high school education in a province that really doesn't provide for such opportunities. This project has 8 teachers and three other volunteers (non-Peace Corps.) working with the 35 students and really, I struggled with finding an upright role for myself. When it comes down to it, there is no question that the decision to leave my first site and begin the process of finding a new site was one of the more challenging decisions I have had to make in recent memory.
Are you glad you decided to join?
Yes. I am very happy that I made the decision to go for something that seemed so risky just a year ago. It was actually the night January 1st when I decided that I was going to pursue this and I got online and nervously started the application process. In just a short period of my life I have seen and experienced things that I will hopefully remember long after I leave Peace Corps, and this was a huge "Peace Corp'ish" reason for joining.
Conservation
Also, this whole process has taught me not to be afraid to change things up and give something a try. I now believe that it is much easier to go back and do what you would have done if you didn't make a decision then to live on asking yourself "should have I done this instead". If I was to go home tomorrow, I would be satisfied in the thought that at least I gave it a try.
Where you are from originally?
I am from fishing and oil town in South-central Alaska, Kenai.
When did you graduate?
May 2005
Where you are now?
I am in the computer lab at the Peace Corps. Headquarters/compound with guards and monitors, a couple dozen of government owned Toyota Forerunners, all surrounded by 20 foot concrete walls and guarded gates... it can be pretty trippy at times.
Did you have any background in the language before you went over?
Not really. I came into PC without remembering much from my one semester of college level Spanish during my first semester at the University of Arizona.
Also feel free to include as much more as you want..stories, interesting experiences.
Most of the experiences that I find easiest to remember are those simple things like rock jumping into the Napo River with indigenous friends or singing "Row Row Row Your Boat Gently Down the Stream, Merrily Merrily Merrily Merrily Life is But a Dream" with a bunch of students in the schools of Mondana; or just coming up on a man filleting his 250 lb cat fish as it hung from the tree by the river... I was pretty alarmed that something of such massive size can be swimming in the same waters that I swam in.
The larger picture of where Peace Corps takes you, for me was to one of the most rural sites in Peace Corps South America, doesn't really hit you and keep your attention. It is those things that many may view as insignificant that I have learned from and will remember the most.
