Evaluation that is your creation (with the Barbie Girl melody)

(written 10 Mayo 2010 EL DIA DE LAS MADRES!)

Beautiful people,

I decided to write this email in English for all my lovely english speaking friends :) Well Today is my first day actually doing evaluation stuff and it was quite interesting. Today Logan and Jeff told me about all the stuff they worked on while I was gone and it was a lot. We are working primarily with two villages called Tamaula and I always forget the name of the other one but I think it's something like Huaricho. Anyways, we are evaluating projects and leadership in these communities based off the goat cheese project.

The people get a loan of goats and then they breed them and make cheese from the milk and then sell it. They are able to make enough money to pay back the loan and also have their own goats to keep with profit. It's really a great project. I know some of you think my work here is boring... cough cough jon, but it's really cool. It's a lot of work--more work than I expected. There are a lot of difficulties like building leaders with trainings because it's not in their culture. The interesting thing about Mexico or at least the area I'm in is that there are no indigenous people. It's different from Guate. Still, it's cool.

Anyways I know you guys love to hear details about what I'm doing here .... naa I won't bore you but it's a lot. We have to put together like 3 reports: one for CHOICE (the org I'm here with), HIP (a org that help loan goats) and the CHOICE up in UTAH not to mention We have to do it in English and Spanish. It's going to be quite a busy 5 weeks.

It's SUPER hot here. We sweat a lot. Well I don't really but I should drink more water. Logan sweats like a pig (in his words) and Jeff wears shorts. I left my shorts home so I only have some soccer shorts and basketball ones. Anyways that's not important.

I am going to watch Iron man 2 in Spanish today and in the weekend were going dancing with some friends I made. Laura (YSA leader in my ward) has cousins that are salsa instructors so I'm so excited. She says we are going to go dancing on Saturday. I'm really excited!

I just gave you those two lines of my leisure so you don't get bored with the rest of what I'll say.

I'm going to Tamaula and Huaricho both tomorrow! They are about 2 hours from here and not very close to each other so it's going to be great! We are going to leave really early in the morning. AFterward we will be returning back to irapuato and then el Miercoles we are going to Huaricho and we'll probably stay there until Friday at some pueblito. We barely know about Huaricho and this is the first time that Choice works with them so there's a lot to learn. The sucky part is that they live in a more segregated community so that means they have less access to water so their goats aren't as nourished so the project might not thrive as much as it does in Tamaula. We'll see. There's a lot we have to do. I get tired really easily because the heat kills! However, I supposed I'll get used to it. I hope I do because I'm dying right now and I slept in (till 10 today) and I'm still tired. I think it's because I dreamt too much. Dreaming is exhousting when you are doing lots of things. I even dreamt of abuelito y que era su cumple it was weird. Anyways.... I have to apply for a scholarship and then look through los archivos de HIP and then review all the interviews (that JEff is typing up) and THEN talk about what we are doing tomorrow in more detail. FUN FUN FUN.

It's so hard not to get involved and just to evaluate because I'm so development oriented. I'm really glad I took the SOC class because it helped me a lot. Anyway. I must get to work.

HOPE YOU ARE DOING GREAT!!! WRITE BACK AND I WILL REPLY. Sorry this was so long but if you loved me you'd read it all :P naaa I'm just kidding pero bueno... adios!!!

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