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Just returned from an incredible week in my future site. I spent the week hanging out with Dan, the current PCV whom I will replace in two weeks. He is a great guy and an excellent volunteer, and I am truly excited about the possibilities before me.

Sucre is my regional city, to which I will travel occasionally to visit the PC office, pick up mail and take care of odds and ends. It´s a beautiful town, called the ¨Athens of South America¨ for its wealth of historical architecture and majestic feel. I much prefer Sucre to the mundane hustle and bustle (dust and diesel) that is Cochabamba.

My pueblo in southeast Chuquisaca is a small town of a few hundred people, a quiet little town set within some of the most gorgeous countryside I have yet seen. Dan´s place, soon to be mine, is sort of an apartment setup: A landlord owns the place and lives on the first floor, and a family lives in the complex too, but basically I am independent. The second-floor place has its own bedroom, bathroom and kitchen, and Dan is pretty much leaving behind all of the furniture and supplies I will need. There´s also a patio on the roof where Dan washes his clothes: It´s also a perfect place to sit and strum the guitar on quiet evenings. It´s a modest place, not too fancy, but with most of the comforts of home. I couldn´t ask for more.

Basically Dan and I spent the whole week 1) meeting Bolivians and 2) talking for hours and hours about Peace Corps. He has an amazing relationship with the people in town, and is actually padrino (godfather) to a couple of kids, including the son of my official counterpart, beekeeper and construction worker Don Valerio Moscoso. I really feel lucky to be replacing this guy: I feel confident in gaining people´s trust and making friends, thanks in large part to the fact that Dan is so well loved and trusted.

We spent much of our time discussing the pueblo, the people, and the trabajo: Dan´s successes, struggles and failures, and how they relate to the possibilities for the next two years. I am coming in following four years of PC Agriculture service in town, and inherit a beekeeping project at a critical stage. There´s a group of about 15 beekeepers who do basic colony management and honey harvesting, but Dan has also been working with three advanced beekeepers on more technical bee activities, such as royal jelly harvesting and queen rearing. These guys will need help developing those projects and then, most importantly, finding a market for their relatively obscure products. Beekeeping will be a main focus of my two years of service. There are other exciting opportunities, too: Dan and the volunteer before him worked to promote forage crops, which are not common in town but are essential as feed during the dry season. The farmers have tried it before with mixed results, but Dan and I think that if we can convince the local cooperative to give alfalfa another shot, we could see some really positive results for the local campesinos.

Like many PCVs, Dan has mixed feelings about his service: Some projects have succeeded, others have failed, and some are hanging in the balance. Like many PCVs, Dan had to learn to accept failure, and realize that he could not singlehandedly lift the campesinos out of poverty; in Dan´s words, he had to ¨make peace with his service.¨ We talked extensively during the week about the frustrations of Peace Corps service, and even got into a few deeper conversations about the ultimate goals of PC. Basically we just had a solid time. Dan´s a hell of a guy.

Okay, I´ll wrap up this discourse. En fin, it was just an amazing week: What was an abstract idea of PC service is now a set of concrete objectives; what was an idealistic dream of helping ¨the poor¨ is now a desire to see Don Tomas succeed with his alfalfa crop, and to help Valerio send his kids to college. Basically, I feel ready for Peace Corps service. Well, as ready as I´ll ever be, anyway.

Another week and change of training. I´m restless and excited: As a new volunteer, I have, in the words of local beekeeper Don Cirilo said, pilas cargadas (charged batteries).

Love you guys.