IT'S CLOBBERING TIME!!

Hi.

Okay, so it's still January. It's the 30th, and I'm sitting in the Peace Corps office in Quito at 6:11 pm EST where I will spend the next few hours until my night bus leaves at the oh-so-fabulous hour of 11:00 pm. It's pretty sweet though, because, as you've probably guessed, I have internet access so I can write you this UBER-sweet blog posting... I have about 5 hours, so let's see if we can make this interesting, shall we?

So this last month, I practically did nothing work related, but you should know why if you're avid blog-reader or if you happen to be Mari who never read my blog until she was sitting in this office with me a week ago or Mama who was falling asleep on the couch behind us... anyway, confusion aside, Mom and Mari were visiting, and it rocked. We went to the beach and my ladies touched the Pacific for the first time. Mari and I took Kenobi (that's my horse by the way... short for Obi Wan Kenobi. I asked Santa for a pony, and Mom and Dad got me a horse...) to the river where we rode bareback as he swimmed. We went simply to wash him off and the next thing I know, Mom's got the camcorder, I'm holding on for dear life, and Mari 's waiting for her turn. We also got to see Quito, Guayaquil, my host family during training, and a bunch of weird random things for which Mom had the camcorder (such as roosters on the buses, piglets hanging out in the cab of a camioneta with us, to name some). My town also threw them 2 dances (a welcome and a despedida)... overall, Mari loved it, and Mom loved being with me, but missed the conveniences of life. SO good visit. Oooh and they brought me books! And Christmas lights! And Snickers! And a bunch of goodies. It was Christmas!

Okay, but I had to say goodbye in Guayaquil on Tuesday. That was tough, I'll be honest. I kept it together for the most part while we said goodbye in front of security, but then I cried. It was a good thing that my bus to Quito didn't leave for another hour so I was able to pull it together, and after the 10 hour bus ride, I was somewhat back to normal. So the rest of this week has been Peace Corps meetings. A lot of it was boring, learning how to do stuff that I already felt that I had accomplished, such as language learning (taxi drivers tell me that I'm a Manabita from the slang I use), integration (did I mention I have a horse, that my favorite food is seco de gallina, or that mis primos y amigitas siempre estan llamando me?), and how to get along with counterparts (I live with mine...). However, I have to admit, yesterday was pretty inspirational, And now to explain my title for this particular blog (see above):

Britany has decided to take on the Municipio Provincial de Manabi, and she's not going to stop fighting until she gets her way.

What am I talking about? I'm talking about some paved roads to increase accessibility to Sub Centros de Salud. I'm talking about bridges. I'm talking about trash pick-up.

I'm still in planning and contemplation phase, but with February coming in and my self-given vacation officially over, all I can say is, It's Clobbering Time. I'm planning on getting way busy. I might not be a caped crusader, but I can harrass government officials with the best of them :-P.

WOOO.

Okay, so good. Well I'm spent. Writing is done. Sorry. I'll be writing more at some other point in time, in the ambiguous future. I'll let you know how my nagging goes with future postings. Until then, Godspeed. Live long and prosper.