Down to SIx Trainees & Our Future Site Visit: Warning Long Post!

A few weeks back we lost one of our fellow trainees.  We aren't sure what really happened-why she decided to early terminate. She was the only other woman in the group and also the other trainee assigned to Guanajuato, so now Antoine and I will be the only "pioneers" going as the first volunteers to the new center there.  I think she was struggling with the language and I also think she had not pictured her Peace Corps experience being the kind of unique experience the technology transfer program here is in Mexico.  It is a fairly technical, professional program, although many people in our program who are seeking the more "typical" PC experience find that in their secondary projects working with children in the pueblos or building houses with Habitat for Humanity programs that some people work with here.  In any case, we wish her the best.  I am sure it was not an easy decision to early terminate after the long process of applying to Peace Corps.

We also had a chance to visit our new center and future home city of Guanajuato, and also to meet our new host "mom"!  Unfortunately, the town is just as hilly as I feared! the picture above is a picture of the monument to El Pípila.  He was a miner and hero during the Mexican Independence.


The bigger issue is that it is really mostly a tourist city and a very youthful university city, so staying in the center can be really noisy. And of course then there are the famous "callejones", the little narrow streets only accessible by foot or steep staircases.  So the topology may make it very hard for us to find a place to live that is relatively accessible and not too far from shopping and the bus we need to go up to the centro.  So fingers crossed that we will find something we like. 

Up at our center we met one the employees that we will be working with whose family is a very old family from Guanajuato and she has promised to help us house hunt, so that would be terrific!  And in addition, she lived 8 years in Ashland Oregon, which is the sister city of Guanajuato, so she we have some northwest memories in common.  She actually took us to her family's home while we were there.  She is the oldest of 7 girls and 1 boy in the family, so her mom's house was a beehive of visiting family. We met Suzy's 1 year old niece, who was adorable and who was wearing this cute little crash helmet they had bought her since she is just beginning to walk.  Her neighborhood is one that we are targeting.  It is about 10 minutes from the center.  We would have to take 2 buses to the center where we will work but it would be worth it to be able to live in a little quieter part of the city.  We will see how things develop.  We have been told that it is harder to find housing in Guanajuato than in Querétaro since it is really much smaller-probably only 70-100,000 people versus a million, and then you have all the limitations caused by the hills-there just isn’t enough room in the valley to build anything else.  So will just have to wait and see. 

We won’t be facing looking for a place right away, anyway, because we will be staying with another host family for the first month.  We met our new host “mom”, Rosie on our future site visit as well. She seems great.  She is a single mom with three sons, although the two oldest ones are living and studying in Querétaro.  So she lives with her youngest son who is finishing high school.  They live up the hill from the center of Guanajuato on the road that goes up to our center, CIMAT.  Their house is situated on a hill with stunning views of the city and it feels surprisingly rural.  To get to and from the center, we walk about 2-3 minutes down this kind of dirt road to the main road where the bus runs up to the center and down to the city.  Along the way we pass donkeys and cows and chickens!  So it definitely gives you that more traditional PC experience!  Her house is very modern, with satellite TV, internet, etc.  Where we will be living seems much more comfortable than our room here in Querétaro because she has a little private kind of one bedroom apartment in the bottom of the house where we will be staying.  It is two rooms connected by a bathroom (very low ceiling in the bathroom, so Antoine may have to stoop to shower!).  One of the rooms is set up as a living/dining room with a refrigerator and the other room is the bedroom.  The little apartment has a couch and a dining table with 4 chairs and desk.  So compared to our 8 x 10 foot room here with only one chair and a stool-it will almost be like having our place, so we are excited about that!

Last but not least, we got to visit the center where we will be working which is called CIMAT.  The first thing you notice about the center is that it is a collection of buildings built on-you guessed it, a steep hill!  And the architect in his wisdom decided he didn’t want to block the amazing views by putting in any handrails, so I spent two days huffing and puffing and teetering up and down cement stairs between floors!  The good news is that I definitely won’t have to join a gym here-I will get all my exercise just living in the city and going to the center!  It is going to be a challenging assignment on many levels.  Since it is mathematics research center, the researchers who work there tend to be relatively shy introverts and “in their heads”.  No joke that when our counterpart introduced us to one of the pure mathematics researchers, he said “hi” and them turned around and almost ran into a door because he was obviously thinking of some esoteric mathematical thing!  In addition, the center was built like a series of little rabbit hutches-so no gathering around the water cooler there.  So, it could be very challenging to meet with people and figure out how to interact with them on projects. 

The good news is that we really liked our Director.  He is this brilliant guy who has won the national prize for mathematics here in Mexico and written a number of math texts.  He seems really interested in our backgrounds and hopeful that we can help the centers focus on how to put more of mathematical research to work in the commercial area.  So if we have his support in that, we may actually be able to get some interesting things going.  Meanwhile, our counterparts have got a few starter project ideas for us to collaborate on. We are going to be helping with a web site project and also looking at some of the project management processes and software testing procedures!  So it feels very similar to the kind of work we have done back in the US.  They all want us to get some English discussion groups going.  That is one of the charters of the TT program here in Mexico because all of the researchers in the CONACYT centers need to speak and write in English to present at conferences and to publish papers.  So we will be working pretty actively with the post grad students to help them improve their English skills.

Our First Week in Querétaro

We haven't had too much time to communicate during our first week here in Mexico.  Our first week's training schedule was jam packed between meeting our new host families, Spanish classes, meeting all the new people here at the Peace Corps office and training center, getting vaccines and trying to learn our way around the city.  I will try to give you at least a brief overview of at some of the highlights.

Querétaro itself is a modern, large city.  We are staying with a family who lives about 10-15 minutes from the center here (walking) which makes it relatively easy for us to get here everyday.  Most of our group of seven trainees live fairly close, although one of our group members has to take a bus everyday since he lives quite a distance from the center.  Our family consists of a couple who is retired and also the mother of our host mom, who lives with them.  They are building her a small little "in-law cottage" right behind the house.  The house, like many others in the city, has a locked front gate and walls around it with an open patio area.

The first weekend after arriving, we went with our host family to visit one of the local Costco stores and Walmart.  So at that level, shopping life here is not that different from the US.  However, since we aren't allowed to drive, we will only be going out to the large "big box" stores when we take a cab.  Luckily there is a pretty modern shopping center not too far from where we are living which is about a 15 minute walk. It has a fairly large supermarket with pretty much everything we need in the way of everyday things.

 The first weekend our host mother drove us around to help us get oriented to the city.  She took us to a really interesting local market called the mercado de la cruz.  Here is a photo of one of the many fruit stands inside the market:

The market itself is basically in a large cement building with a mixture of things going on-people selling fruit, small restaurants, people selling DVDs, clothing and jewelry.

I also took a few photos of the Peace Corps center here where we attend class every day.  We start at 8:30 most days and finish at 6PM, so the days are pretty long and packed with classes of all sorts.  Last week, for example, we had 2 medical sessions (and also got 4 shots!), some safety sessions, some cultural trainings sessions, language classes of course, and we took a field trip out to visit one of the centers where some of the current PC volunteers work.  The PC center here is in a property that used to be a large house.  It has been renovated to accommodate both offices and training class rooms.  

The teachers have put labels on many of the items around the center to give us an opportunity to absorb some more Spanish as we take our breaks in the garden area:

The center is made up a few clusters of buildings around a central garden area

We have a volunteer lounge where we can relax and take a break in the few minutes we have.  And the death stairs (as I call them), lead up to the area where many of our classes are held.

Otherwise, I have not gotten out much to really see the city yet.  Querétaro is famous for its aqueducts, which are nearby to where we live, so we have seen those:

 

They are really impressive and run about 3 miles through the city and end at a convent in the center of town.

So that has been more of less the first week here. I have been having a pretty strong reaction to the flu shot I was given and have not been feeling my best-very tired, sleeping a lot and feeling like I have the flu.  But hopefully I am getting over that.  We are having a transportation rally tomorrow where we are supposed to take buses throughout the city to discover some of the historic sites. That should give me a chance to see more of the city.

Last but least for the news of the week, we discovered last Friday our new permanent sites!  This is the place where we will be living and working for 2 years once we are through training and are sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers in mid-April (April 18th I think in our case).  

We found out that we will not be staying in Querétaro.  We will be moving to a city called Guanajuato.  It is a much smaller town than Querétaro, with around 70,000 people.  It is also a UNESCO world heritage site and is a city that is famous for both its Cervantes festival and its mummy museum!  It is also unusual in that it is a city with many tunnels and little tiny alleys and curving streets, so hopefully I will be able to find my way around.  We will be working with a one of the Mexican government research centers there called CIMAT.  We are pretty excited about the work assignment since it is an institute that focuses on mathematical research and actually grants degrees (Masters and PhDs) in various mathematical specialties.  It is a brand new partner for Peace Corps and they seem to be interested in figuring out more ways to liaison with industry.  We will be going there with one other woman from our training group who will be focused on testing I believe.  We are happy that it is more of an educationally oriented site than an engineering one.  Here are some pictures of the city itself:

It is supposed to be a very fun city that lots of people here in Peace Corps like to visit.  So we are hoping to be able to find a place where we have at least 1 guest room.

This is a picture of the CIMAT campus where we will be working.  Apparently it is situated up above the city.  Hopefully we will be able to get a bus to take us there easily!

 

So that is it for now.  I will try to post something over the weekends, although maybe not as packed full of news as this posting :)

So Many Places, So Little Time!

Monday February 6th, 2012 Washington D.C.
Staging day for our departure to Mexico in 2 days on Wednesday February 8th!

As I so often read on the other applicant's blogs, our last few weeks getting ready to arrive here at staging have been unbelievably hectic! So any visions we might have harbored about being the "cool, calm, prepared volunteers were wiped away in either a: mental sweat of trying to get the new electronics set up and working together (new laptop and tablet/reader) or b: a physical sweat of hauling around way too much luggage.  Luckily, we were able to take some of the clothing we took with us to Europe last spring to our storage, now that we know we will be going to a relatively warm climate versus one of the "cold" countries.

We also are a bit jet lagged from all the place rides.  So where have we been?

We stopped in Paris for a few days to say goodbye to friends and family and buy some little presents for our new friends and host family in Mexico.  I hope they like French stuff :)














Starting on the 12th of January, we flew from Paris to Florida where we spent a week, just enjoying some of the pleasures of being back in the US and taking advantage of the beautiful beaches in Miami and Sarasota.  It was a bit chilly to swim, but made for some great short walks and just hanging out for a week.  We had the added bonus of knowing that since we decided to stop in Forida, we didn't end up in Seattle during the only week this winter so far that they were hit hard by snow.  So we didn't have to worry about power outages and slippery roads.  Thank goodness!

Next was Seattle.  We mostly spent the week there visiting friends, and attending meetings at the company I advise for, Ivy Corp.  We even flew in our new French consultant and got to attend the belated holiday party, so that was really special!  Again, it was hard here to say goodbye to family and friends.  Luckily, we are confident we will be able to coax many of them down to visit us in Mexico once our initial settling in period has passed.

After rainy Seattle, we got to spend a few days drying out in Los Angeles.  The highlight there besides seeing friends and going to eat at many of our favorite foodie haunts, was being able to check in and see our house.  It gave us a chance to check in and make sure everything is okay there and reassured us there was nothing more to do on the home front before we flew back to the East coast.

So, last but not least, we landed in Washington D.C. last night!  We came out a day early so that we could feel a bit more rested and catch our breath.  We met a woman on the plane from LAX to Dallas who is part of the PCM-12 Mexico group!  So that was really fun to be able to compare notes.  And at least we now know we aren't the ONLY ones going! It will be fun to meet the other volunteers tomorrow.  We found out that there is also another peace corps group staying here at our same hotel that is going to Zambia. So eventful days for both groups!

I will write another post when I can either before we take off for Mexico once we have met the other folks in our group, or after we get there.  We will just see how the time and internet connection goes.

On the Road Again

Crazy travel coming up in the next month.  We decided that we wanted to come back to the US for a bit to see friends and family in Seattle and LA before our Peace Corps staging in February.  When we came to Europe we weren't sure of where we would be going, so we packed clothing for all kinds of climates, so stopping back in Los Angeles will allow us to pick and choose what to take and what to leave in our storage.

Since we were able to make a stop with our airline ticket for no additional charge, we decided to take advantage of the the opportunity to visit southern Florida.  We haven't spent much time there before so we figured this would give us an chance to check out that part of the country for a few weeks. So the travel turns out to be a bit of a "crazy quilt" between January and February.  Paris to Miami to Seattle to LA to Washington D.C. to Querétaro in early February.  Luckily we will have more than a few days in each place to readjust, relax and enjoy the places!

We have loved hanging out in Europe, especially spending time with family here in France.  Once we can have visitors during our time in the Peace Corps, we are looking forward to them coming to visit us the next time in Mexico!

It's Official, We Accepted Our Invitation to Serve in Peace Corps..........

 

Mexico!

We received our invitation to serve as part of the Peace Corps Mexico group in a program focused on technology transfer in Mexico.  We will be leaving for Mexico February 6th or 7th, 2012 for training in Querétaro, a town in a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million people, with around 700,000 people living in the city limits proper.  

Here is a photo of the city from Wikipedia and a link below to more information about the city itself.

Link to Wikipedia-Querétaro: 

Needless to say we are pretty excited about our placement.  The program work seems interesting and although, since we are fluent in French, we had not expected a placement in a Spanish speaking country, we are excited to start learning the language.  We will post more details as we know them, but for now we just wanted to share the news! 

A Little Bit of News-More Waiting

Antoine got an email from a placement officer from the business desk yesterday who told him that all business assignments in programs departing September 2011 to March 2012 time frame have been filled.  So that means that it is likely that we won't be departing until sometime between April-June 2012 and possibly even as late as September 2012.  I haven't heard anything yet from my placement officer, but given the news from Antoine, I assume it will be the same news.  We are okay with the time frame and basically we will try to figure what kind of things we can do during the waiting period to enhance our placement profile.

Meanwhile, we are patiently waiting.

No News is Good News We Hope!

Okay, so it is officially over the 4-6 week window when we told we would be contacted by the placement officer to discuss possible program placements.  We recently "pinged" the assistant we have been in contact with just to remind her that we are still here and still interested in serving.  The response was essentially "great-we will be in touch."  So for now we are just trying to practice being patient and flexible, enjoy the rest of the summer, and we continue to follow the blogs of the current applicants and volunteers who are already serving.  At least it is fun to see other folks receive their invitations!

Stay tuned-we will let you know when we have any other news!