In February of 2010 I joined Peace Corps Ecuador knowing very little about what I was getting myself into. To my surprise, my first few months as a volunteer proved to be more difficult than I could physically endure after eight months in Ecuador I was medically separated due to illness. I went back to the States to recover for what I thought would be just a few weeks, but what turned out to be 11 months.
I returned to Ecuador in September of 2011 to finish my Peace Corps service. I was moved to a new site, about three hours from Quito in the transitional zone, where I plan to live for the next year and a half.
My blog used to be titled 27 months, as that’s how long I expected to be in Peace Corps, (two and a half months training and 24 months of service). Just before I returned to Ecuador a friend pointed out to me that counting the months is not a very good way of looking at things. I agreed. I don’t feel the same way about Peace Corps as I did when I first started this blog. It’s not about making it to month 27 anymore; it’s about what I can do with the next year and a half of my life. So I’ve changed my blog to ‘Zero Degrees North: Living in the Middle in the Middle of Nowhere.’ Because Zero degrees is the latitude of where I live, which is in in a village that feels like the middle of nowhere. Oh and also that is what this blog is about; living.
