Training generally takes place from 8am to 5pm at the Peace Corps training center in Monteserrin, which is a compound that the Peace Corps rents in a somewhat bougie neighborhood of Quito. I say "compound" because it appears to be a large house where many of the rooms were converted to offices and additional bathrooms were built as outdoor attachments. It is also completely walled/gated-in (as most properties of any significance in Quito are) and comes with private security. The soon-to-be-former president of Ecuador lives nearby. We take a bus from the community of Nayón, where we all live with our host families (or almost all–some people live in San Pedro, which is a ways down the valley from Nayón), and we walk up a series of steep hills every morning to get to the training center.
The topics covered in training mainly consist of Language & Culture, Safety & Security, Medical, Peace Corps objectives, and, of course, TEFL. You can swap out the TEFL portions with whatever your sector is (Youth & Families or Community Health), but all the other information they throw at you pretty much stays the same. Sometimes, current volunteers come to lead sessions on various topics, and sometimes we have guest lecturers on things like history, culture, and the law in Ecuador. We get to take some trips during training. We go on a coast cultural trip to see a different landscape and climate than the one we are exposed to in Quito, which is in the Sierra; a PCV visit to shadow current Peace Corps TEFL volunteers at their site and their job; another cultural trip to indigenous and/or Afro-Ecuadorian communities so that we can learn about marginalized communities; and a site visit, where, for the first time, you visit the community you will be assigned to live and work in for the next two years. The site visit is also sort of an inspection of your host family, workplace, and community. The Program Managers don't have time to visit every site, so if you arrive and conditions do not adhere to Peace Corps policies, or your host family has a dog and you're allergic to dogs, or your counterpart or the community are hostile to you, it is important to let your Program Manager(s) know so that they can place you in an environment where it will be possible for you to be successful.
Another thing we do during training is potlucks. Everybody is expected to bring something, though if you're not much of a cook, your contribution could be chips or soda. If you do like to cook, it might be a good idea to bring hard-to-find ingredients to make a specific dish. This is advice that I wish I would have paid attention to while packing. Yes, they told us it might be a good idea to bring ingredients if we wish to cook a dish for our host family, but they neglected to mention that there would be multiple opportunities to demonstrate our cooking skills for our entire omnibus and training staff. As I was feeling quite far from home and quite proud of southern food, I decided to make shrimp & grits. However, as you might have guessed, grits do not exist in Ecuador. Still, I was determined to make my shrimp & grits, so I tried my best with the ingredients I could find. I had to hand-grind dried corn (I used morocho) in a molino borrowed from Abuelita, and by the time my "grits" were cooked, they were closer to polenta in texture. Loaded down with butter and cheese, they tasted okay, and seeing everyone's reactions to my efforts was great. They ranged from Northerners who pondered curiously at this thing they had only ever heard of, to fellow Southerners who thanked me for bringing a little taste of home, to Ecuadorians who eyed this substance with skepticism and didn't quite get that the shrimp goes on top of the grits.
Training can often feel like study abroad. You're in a controlled environment, surrounded by your American peers, and overloaded with assignments when all you want to do is explore your new city/country. But for Peace Corps trainees, the adventure doesn't end after three months; that's when it really begins.
