RPCV's Brian Riley and Steve Gilchrest performed several songs of thanks to Francisco Garces for his retirement as APCD for Natural Resources.

We are fortunate to have links to all five songs here for the first time.

Brian Riley 1 01 Track 01.mp3
Brian Riley 2 03 Track 03.mp3

Steve Gilchrest 1 03 Track 03.mp3
Steve Gilchrest 2 04 Track 04.mp3
Steve Gilchrest 3 05 Track 05.mp3

The photos of Francisco's Retirement are also available here. Here's Sharon Murray's note about how to access and download them from Flickr.com.

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Date: Summer 2005

"After overcoming some technical difficulties, I'm happy to say that the images from the entire book are now on line! You can get there through the Friends of Ecuador website, or you can go directly to Flickr.com to see the the first in the series of images. Click here to go to Flickr.com

Once you arrive at this link, you will see the photo of the cover of the memory book. Look to the upper right hand side of that image, and you'll see some arrows to click forward through the "Friends of Ecuador photostream" --- this will allow you to view all 46 photos in the series (including the cover, a frontispiece, and about 84 pages of photos and notes from volunteers, in more or less chronological order of service). In order to view each page in a size large enough to read all the text, go down to the list on the lower right and click the link that says "See different sizes". Once there, choose the 'large' size and you will be able to read everything.

Unfortunately the process is a bit clunky and you have to return to the photo sequence to select the next photo and repeat the enlargement process, but if you're patient you'll be able to read every image in the book!!!! You can also download each page to your own computer if you are so inclined!

... [On] the Friends of Ecuador website, you can also see Francisco's heartwarming thank you letter to those who contributed to the book. And finally, attached to this email are a few photos Maria Eugenia Cobo sent me of the actual despedida event in Quito, including shots of Francisco and others looking over the book.

So with that, once again I'd like to thank each and every one of you who took the time to contribute and help put this together. Of course, a big thanks to Josh Busby and the team at the FOE website as well, for allowing so many people to enjoy the book from the comfort of their own homes, wherever they may be! Finally, I'd also ask everyone to distribute this email widely to all your ex-PCV contacts so as many others as possible can also enjoy the book (and check out the FOE website in general!).

It was great hearing about so many of your lives through this process, and I sincerely hope to run into many of you at some point along the way.

Cheers,

Sharon"