This month has been rather hectic with more travelling than I expected. Everyone jumped on the Compra de Reciclaje train it seems, and SERNANP (the Peruvian Park guards/Forest Service agency) wants to meet with us to establish a more formal working relationship. A Compra de Reciclaje is where the Volunteer advertises that they will be buying recycling at a central location for about 4 hours usually. You need to have a location to store the recycling, big bags to keep them in, a scale, and a ton of change. Then you just sit and wait while the locals bring you their stuff and you pay them by the kilo for it. Then, when you have enough to fill the back of a big hauling truck, you take it to the nearest city and sell it to them for a little bit more. This covers the cost of the transportation and hopefully generates a tiny income fund for something Environmental down the line. I helped with two already this month, and we have another one Thursday. I think I´ll start mine in January to make sure I have everyone well-educated and informed about it, as well as giving them time to collect stuff. Vicco has a major trash problem, and hopefully removing the recycling will start to fix it. However, with all this going to other sites, and Cerro to get settled in, I´ve had to get a good grasp on transportation to and from my site. I think I´ll take this blog as a chance to explain how it is.
First of all, the most important thing to realize is that Vicco is off the main Carretera Central, meaning that not a lot of cars go to and from Vicco. After about 5:30 or 6pm, you likely will not be able to find transportation to Vicco. A car MIGHT or might not leave from Cerro de Pasco as late as 6:30pm, but this is a very bad gamble. So anyways, lets start off with an explanation of how I would get to Junin, Junin to meet up with the main headquarters office of SERNANP. First, about 2 hours ahead of the meeting time, I would head to the Plaza outside of my Centro Comercial in Vicco. There I would get in the one Colectivo (public taxi) that is likely waiting there. Then I would wait for however long it took for 3 other people to also decide they wanted to leave Vicco. It is also possible that there isnt a car because one just recently left, and then you have to wait even longer. After waiting anywhere from one minute to upwards of half an hour, the car will leave Vicco. Generally, they go to Cerro de Pasco which is northwards, while Junin is southwards. So I have to pay an extra S/. 0.50 to get him to make an awkward dip south to the pueblo of Shelby before returning northward. At Shelby, I have to sit and wait until a big touring bus passes by. Again, this can take anywhere from one minute at the luckiest to an hour. I have already waited that long; its not all that fun. When one of those large double decker buses passes by, I flag it down and hop in, hoping there is an empty seat. But usually there isnt because they fill up in Cerro at their real stop, meaning I have to stand in the middle of the aisle while everyone stares at the gringa for about an hour to an hour and a half. When returning to Vicco, I catch a bus to the ¨Cruz de Vicco¨ which is where the Vicco road meets the Carretera Central just after Shelby. Here I´ll stand and wait until a Colectivo heading down from Cerro stops to pick me up. This is fun, because I´m practically gauranteed to have to sit in the back of the hatchback car, or sit ¨b-word¨ as they call it in the front passenger seat with another person. All Colectivos have a nice little rag folded neatly on the center console above the gear shift for just such an occasion.
Transportation is very fun, especially because even if you know the correct price, the money collector will still try to give you the gringo price. You have to debate asking before you get in how much he wants to charge you for where you´re going or just getting in and then giving him without comment the right amount. If you ask beforehand, he will almost always try to say a higher price, which you can dispute, but it´s always risky at the end if he´ll accept the right amount. Or you can just say nothing with confidence, and at the end give him the right price. Generally, this goes very well because you have confidence and just exit the car or bus after paying. However, if they decide to insist that its more money, you´ve already ridden either part or all of the distance, and so you have a lot less room to reject his demands. It´s fun. But so far I really haven´t had any troubles, its just another way of getting around. Once you get ahold of the ropes of it, you´re golden for the most part.
As for the food here, I have still yet to have Cuy, or guinea pig. I just really haven´t been presented the opportunity yet. But I have seen them being raised for slaughter, more than a few people in Vicco have them in their backyards. In fact we have at least one in our shed thing in the backyard. Maybe we´ll eat it eventually. They´re about the size of an Oscar´s burrito, or if you don´t know that reference, they´re the size of Chipoltle´s burritos. Sorry, I can´t think of another size comparision. I really want a burrito right now. The food here isn´t bad, but I very much miss having different cuisines within a week. Here its always rice, usually with potatoes and chicken, but sometimes another type of unidentifiable meat. I usually hope that means its sheep. I miss being able to have a hamburger, the next day burritos, the next day fettichini alfredo, the next day spring rolls and the next sushi. I really could die for some good sushi. Apparently, Lima has a very expensive sushi bar, which I will definitely be finding during my time here. I´m hoping to make veggie rolls in the near future in my site though. I just need to find rice vineager and the seaweed. I think I can likely find that in our regional capital so just have to hold out till the end of January. I´m also planning on making an Apple pie and potato salad for Navidad. Unfortunately, my host mom has assured me that pickles don´t exist here. I´m not sure I´m going to like potato salad without pickles. Hopefully, Huancayo, the regional capital has them in January.
Well, that is enough for now, time to work on typing up some official documents for the Municipality for workshops on recycling and the Recycling Buy itself.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Vicco-a Virtual Tour
As per the request of my mom, I think now is a good time to describe a little the layout of Vicco. I shall start from where you enter the town. The Carretera Central runs north-northwest through Junin to Cerro de Pasco, but shortly after a small little town (Shelby, which I may end up working in a little), a road breaks off to the southwest. This is my little stretch of road. After about a mile, you enter Vicco. The area is very wide open and flat, surrounded by ¨grassland¨ which is really very stubby, peat-like land. Vicco is mostly made of homes built from adobe, which is mud bricks, with metal sheeting as roofing. The main road takes you directly to the Central Comercial which houses my host mom´s restaurant on the first floor. The upper floors apparently have a hostal and offices, but I haven´t been up there. This Plaza directly connects to the Plaza de Armas on the left, which is a much bigger Plaza with a small green area in the center. The Church is on the corner of this Plaza and the one holding the Centro Comercial, I have a picture on Facebook with that and the Centro Comercial up. On the left side of the Plaza de Armas, from the persepective of the Church, is the Municipality, where I will have to submit lots of official paperwork to get stuff done. Heading right from the Church, or continuing Southwest past the Centro Comercial, you travel 4 blocks south to reach my home (one block east-ish if youre walking from the Centro). This walk is mostly on compact dirt and gravel road. The main streets are paved, but these back streets aren´t which I´m sure to regret the further we get into rainy season. Back at the Centro Comercial, if you head back northeast on the main road in two blocks before turning west, you will find the Escuela (Elementary school). This is a nice large complex housed in a green adobe wall. One block further east is the Colegio (High School), which is also a nice large complex housed in a green adobe wall although a part of it actually is brick and mortar. On the road between the Colegio and Escuela, heading north towards Cerro, you´ll find a pretty neat little technical school that teaches loom-weaving, knitting and other such crafts. Briana weaved a blanket there before leaving, and hopefully I´ll get a chance to learn too. Next door to this is my Posta Salud, a tiny little place that provides the only medical care in Vicco. Off further to the west near the Colegio is a stadium, but I´ve only seen this in passing. These are the only buildings I can think of that are of interest to mention. There are little shops all around Vicco, mostly run out of the living rooms of homes, that have an assortment of stationary, general cooking goods, and cleaning supplies. I still find it fascinating walking into these and gazing at the collection of stuff on the 3 walls. I always feel like I´m about to spot some amazing find among the mess that I didn´t know I could buy in Vicco, or didn´t know I needed.
That is my little slice of life right now. From my verbal map of the place, we can tell the most important places to me are the schools, my restaurant, my home, and the Municipality. It´s rather amusing actually, because doing one of these maps with my community is one of my tools to completing my ¨Community Diagnostic¨ that I have to complete in these first three months. I basically just used one of those tools on myself. We´re supposed to be able to learn what areas are important, what thing are missing, what things the locals would like to see improved, etc from this little tool.
The schools really are going to be the most important spots for me in these coming months. I´m currently writing and working on organizing my summer school classes. The paperwork is a big frustration, because nobody seems willing to actually sit down and do it with me or help me figure out how. The language and document style necessary is very formal and rather challenging for one who is falta (lacking) a computer, a template on the necessary paperwork, the language skills, or the understanding. On my numerous visits to both schools, the Director and professors have all been very helpful and nice, very encouraging and excited for my work, but nothings gotten done yet. It´s really starting to frustrate me, seeing as how this coming week is the last week of classes, and the students still haven´t signed up for my summer school yet. However, if and when I get to teach them, I´m very excited for what I´ve planned. I´m going to teach at the Elementary Mondays and Wednesdays, 2-5:30pm, and at the High School Tuesdays and Thursdays in the same time block. In the first hour and a half, I´m going to teach a combination Art/Exercise class with very strong Environment themes. Basically, all the art will be either recycled or focused on nature, and the exercise will either reference animal forms or be a game focused on Environment. After a half hour break (maybe, we´ll see how things go), I´ll teach an English class for the remaining hour and a half. I´m going to try to focus this on Environment themes at times too, although initially it will be much more basic. I´m thinking the classes will likely be very similar between the two schools, although with the High school Art/Exercise, I´m planning on doing more hands-on Environmental stuff, like teaching composting, and recycling. The High School is building a green house to have a garden, so its more important for me to start teaching some of the students there how to run this. Hopefully, once the school year starts back up, these kids from my summer school class will help me spread the word and influence to the rest of the kids.
So while planning and carrying out these summer classes, I´ll also be doing that Community Diagnostic to learn about Vicco more specifically. That, in a nut-shell, is going to be the next two and a half months of my life. Of course, I´m still spending time adjusting and learning Spanish in between stressing/working on those. As well as freezing my butt off of course!
As always, please feel free to provide me feedback: comments, questions or advice!
That is my little slice of life right now. From my verbal map of the place, we can tell the most important places to me are the schools, my restaurant, my home, and the Municipality. It´s rather amusing actually, because doing one of these maps with my community is one of my tools to completing my ¨Community Diagnostic¨ that I have to complete in these first three months. I basically just used one of those tools on myself. We´re supposed to be able to learn what areas are important, what thing are missing, what things the locals would like to see improved, etc from this little tool.
The schools really are going to be the most important spots for me in these coming months. I´m currently writing and working on organizing my summer school classes. The paperwork is a big frustration, because nobody seems willing to actually sit down and do it with me or help me figure out how. The language and document style necessary is very formal and rather challenging for one who is falta (lacking) a computer, a template on the necessary paperwork, the language skills, or the understanding. On my numerous visits to both schools, the Director and professors have all been very helpful and nice, very encouraging and excited for my work, but nothings gotten done yet. It´s really starting to frustrate me, seeing as how this coming week is the last week of classes, and the students still haven´t signed up for my summer school yet. However, if and when I get to teach them, I´m very excited for what I´ve planned. I´m going to teach at the Elementary Mondays and Wednesdays, 2-5:30pm, and at the High School Tuesdays and Thursdays in the same time block. In the first hour and a half, I´m going to teach a combination Art/Exercise class with very strong Environment themes. Basically, all the art will be either recycled or focused on nature, and the exercise will either reference animal forms or be a game focused on Environment. After a half hour break (maybe, we´ll see how things go), I´ll teach an English class for the remaining hour and a half. I´m going to try to focus this on Environment themes at times too, although initially it will be much more basic. I´m thinking the classes will likely be very similar between the two schools, although with the High school Art/Exercise, I´m planning on doing more hands-on Environmental stuff, like teaching composting, and recycling. The High School is building a green house to have a garden, so its more important for me to start teaching some of the students there how to run this. Hopefully, once the school year starts back up, these kids from my summer school class will help me spread the word and influence to the rest of the kids.
So while planning and carrying out these summer classes, I´ll also be doing that Community Diagnostic to learn about Vicco more specifically. That, in a nut-shell, is going to be the next two and a half months of my life. Of course, I´m still spending time adjusting and learning Spanish in between stressing/working on those. As well as freezing my butt off of course!
As always, please feel free to provide me feedback: comments, questions or advice!
Friday, December 2, 2011
My first week in Vicco
Well, I survived my first work week in my actual site. But just barely. I´m reminescent of my post about the first week in Peru, and I think that week went a lot better than this one. Mostly because I was very very sick the whole time traveling. Our group arrived in Junin, Junin together Sunday night, and we all planned to stay the night and head to our respective sites Monday. However, I spent the entire night in bed without eating, visiting the bathroom frequently as well as all of Monday doing the same. It was pretty miserable, but by Tuesday morning I had enough wind under my sails to catch some Colectivos (non-private taxis). Transportation to my site is a little interesting, because you have to take a couple different ones to get the whole way there. This means you have a chance of getting stuck at a couple different spots, so I´m not sure how much time to plan for travelling in the future. It can vary so widely.
Anyways, about my site. My room is pretty nice; Briana left me some decent things, including a down blanket. This means that every night I´ve spent here in site so far, I´ve ended up sweaty and overly hot. That could be because I had a fever (I didn´t check so its a possibility), but also that thing is very warm. I like that I´m not going to be miserable while sleeping due to cold at the very least. Once outside of bed, its a very different story. I haven´t spent any length of time out of socks; and I only remove clothes to put on new ones. I need to figure out a system of having drinkable water in my house, because we spend every meal in the restaurant at the Centro Comercial. My host mom didn´t have any gas for the stove, and I´m not quite sure how to manage the water. Not having running water in the house or for all hours of the day is a little sucky. Also, at the Centro Comercial, they don´t have sinks. I have a distinct lack of places or ways to wash my hands. This is another thing I will be working on to make my life comfortable here. Tippy tap here I come! A Tippy tap is a 2 liter bottle thats had the bottom cut off, inverted and cut holes in to be able to string it up. You fill it with water, loosen the cap and viola, sink. You can even use the bottom cut off portion as a soap dispenser. I very much need one, but I fear leaving it outside to become a block of ice. My host grandma works out in the fields (Champa) with her sheep, and apparently the last few days have been ear notching and shearing time. I watched her use a nice big knife to cut massive notches in lambs that were at least a few months old. More than a little bloody and disturbing, but I guess they wait to notch because they don´t know which will survive? I´m not sure, but I was a bit unhappy to watch that. Quite the contrary with the wool shearing though, that was really cool and I hope I'll get a chance to do it in my time here. I also watched a little bit as she spun the wool into thread, and I can´t wait to learn this too. Yesterday, my host sister re-taught me to knit, and I have begun knitting a scarf.
My first few days here I didn´t do much except sleep and unpack, but these last two days I visited the escuela and the colegio (elementary and high school). Today I even sat in on two different English lessons and helped out a bit. That was really nice, and the English professor, Nina, is incredibly awesome. She´s going to be an incredible asset and help to my time here; I can definitely tell. I´m getting my time in the schools now so that I can start Vacaciones utiles in the second week of January. That will probably be my first substantial goal here. But I´ve also helped these last two days with the construction of the organic garden/green house at the high school. I´ll be very excited when that is completed.
Alright, I´m out of time here at the internet cafe. I´ve posted a mailing address to facebook, so I really hope to hear by letters from a couple people soon. Especially considering what month it is right now. Hint...hint. I´m only asking for letters, with maybe some photos tucked in them. Love you all!!
Anyways, about my site. My room is pretty nice; Briana left me some decent things, including a down blanket. This means that every night I´ve spent here in site so far, I´ve ended up sweaty and overly hot. That could be because I had a fever (I didn´t check so its a possibility), but also that thing is very warm. I like that I´m not going to be miserable while sleeping due to cold at the very least. Once outside of bed, its a very different story. I haven´t spent any length of time out of socks; and I only remove clothes to put on new ones. I need to figure out a system of having drinkable water in my house, because we spend every meal in the restaurant at the Centro Comercial. My host mom didn´t have any gas for the stove, and I´m not quite sure how to manage the water. Not having running water in the house or for all hours of the day is a little sucky. Also, at the Centro Comercial, they don´t have sinks. I have a distinct lack of places or ways to wash my hands. This is another thing I will be working on to make my life comfortable here. Tippy tap here I come! A Tippy tap is a 2 liter bottle thats had the bottom cut off, inverted and cut holes in to be able to string it up. You fill it with water, loosen the cap and viola, sink. You can even use the bottom cut off portion as a soap dispenser. I very much need one, but I fear leaving it outside to become a block of ice. My host grandma works out in the fields (Champa) with her sheep, and apparently the last few days have been ear notching and shearing time. I watched her use a nice big knife to cut massive notches in lambs that were at least a few months old. More than a little bloody and disturbing, but I guess they wait to notch because they don´t know which will survive? I´m not sure, but I was a bit unhappy to watch that. Quite the contrary with the wool shearing though, that was really cool and I hope I'll get a chance to do it in my time here. I also watched a little bit as she spun the wool into thread, and I can´t wait to learn this too. Yesterday, my host sister re-taught me to knit, and I have begun knitting a scarf.
My first few days here I didn´t do much except sleep and unpack, but these last two days I visited the escuela and the colegio (elementary and high school). Today I even sat in on two different English lessons and helped out a bit. That was really nice, and the English professor, Nina, is incredibly awesome. She´s going to be an incredible asset and help to my time here; I can definitely tell. I´m getting my time in the schools now so that I can start Vacaciones utiles in the second week of January. That will probably be my first substantial goal here. But I´ve also helped these last two days with the construction of the organic garden/green house at the high school. I´ll be very excited when that is completed.
Alright, I´m out of time here at the internet cafe. I´ve posted a mailing address to facebook, so I really hope to hear by letters from a couple people soon. Especially considering what month it is right now. Hint...hint. I´m only asking for letters, with maybe some photos tucked in them. Love you all!!
Saturday, November 26, 2011
So, I´m a Peace Corps Volunteer
I guess now is a time to reflect my time spent here in Perú so far. It´s amazing that 10 weeks have already passed. I swore the oath to the US Constitution yesterday, and officially became a member of the Peace Corps Volunteers. Either tonight or tomorrow I will be leaving for my site, although I won´t get in until Monday due to the way public transport works (there are no cars into my site at night). So Monday will begin my next two years of life in Vicco, Pasco. Honestly, I´m a little scared of being all alone working in my site. I don´t know where I´ll start; it seems daunting. But I keep telling myself to take it one day at a time and soon I´ll be integrated and making a difference. I´ve made myself a little list of things I can accomplish in my first week in site, in case I get despondent. I will definitely be establishing my mailing address in that first week. I´ll be sharing it when I get it, in case anyone wants to write me letters.
I suppose I should feel pretty proud of myself, since I made it through training successfully. Not everyone in our entire group did. We lost two (to going home) from the Health program. I also wrote a 1500 word document in Spanish and presented it with the aid of a Powerpoint presentation. The presentation was about 10 minutes in Spanish as well. It was a big relief to get that accomplished, and it really was good practice for the real Diagnostic I will do in my site. That will be one of my focuses in these coming three months. I´ll be doing surveys, interviews, meetings, and informal chats to learn and gather information about Vicco so I know what my future projects should be. These will also establish me in the community, and help me integrate. Hopefully, I´ll also become more proficient in Spanish in that time, so that I can start the school year in March with more confidence.
I honestly don´t know what to write here right now. I feel like I´ve accomplished a lot, and I have a lot ahead of me. Right now I´m tired, mostly because I couldn´t sleep well the last night with my nose being clogged. I´m pretty sure my little host sister got me sick. She coughs over everything. However, I´m really really going to miss everyone here in Santa Eulalia, and all my fellow new Volunteers. I sincerely hope I´ll visit them and see them again very soon. I´m so bad about calling people by phone to stay in touch, but with the phone plan we have here, calls are free between PCVs so this is the most common form of communication. I hope I get better about calling people when I feel bummed or just want to chat. I have a feeling this will be important for my continued sanity.
I suppose I should feel pretty proud of myself, since I made it through training successfully. Not everyone in our entire group did. We lost two (to going home) from the Health program. I also wrote a 1500 word document in Spanish and presented it with the aid of a Powerpoint presentation. The presentation was about 10 minutes in Spanish as well. It was a big relief to get that accomplished, and it really was good practice for the real Diagnostic I will do in my site. That will be one of my focuses in these coming three months. I´ll be doing surveys, interviews, meetings, and informal chats to learn and gather information about Vicco so I know what my future projects should be. These will also establish me in the community, and help me integrate. Hopefully, I´ll also become more proficient in Spanish in that time, so that I can start the school year in March with more confidence.
I honestly don´t know what to write here right now. I feel like I´ve accomplished a lot, and I have a lot ahead of me. Right now I´m tired, mostly because I couldn´t sleep well the last night with my nose being clogged. I´m pretty sure my little host sister got me sick. She coughs over everything. However, I´m really really going to miss everyone here in Santa Eulalia, and all my fellow new Volunteers. I sincerely hope I´ll visit them and see them again very soon. I´m so bad about calling people by phone to stay in touch, but with the phone plan we have here, calls are free between PCVs so this is the most common form of communication. I hope I get better about calling people when I feel bummed or just want to chat. I have a feeling this will be important for my continued sanity.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Two Months in Peru- Nov. 13th
I've been here a few days short of two months, and I've gone through a roller coaster of emotions, thoughts, and homesickness. Life here is at once much easier and much more difficult than life in the States. I am constantly working to be able to communicate, and yet the daily routine is so much simpler. I've felt incredibly excited, ready and prepared, and the next day felt lost, useless, and co-dependent. I'm not sure how much training has really helped me prepare for what life will be like in my site, but I know I've needed the transition time to learn the language a little more, and build a network of support in the other Trainees. I'm going to really really miss a lot of the people here in Training that are being sent to other parts of Peru. Our Junin/Pasco group is going to be very isolated, I fear.
My site is very cold. While there, I was constantly wearing two pairs of socks, leggings under jeans, a long sleeve under a t-shirt. I always had my sweatshirt, beanie, and gloves with me to put on when not in the direct sunlight. Also, my site is at very high altitude. I was easily exhausted most of the time there, and couldn't muster much energy to be spontaneous. However, the people in Vicco are very nice. They all love Briana, and don't want her to leave. It was hard being there with her because of it, but it was also nice to see the end of a great two years of service. It was also very hard for me to understand the Campo accent. The campo being the country; they speak very differently. I think its because of the Quechuan mixing with the Spanish. I learned a handful of words in Quechuan my first night there and was able to pull them out and impress all the people I met after that. They got a kick out of the fact that I did know a couple words in Quechuan when I couldn't even fully speak Spanish.
Because of that, I very much look forward to learning more of the language, as well as picking up knitting and weaving. These are all very Sierran cultural things, and I want to learn and participate in it as much as I can. Plus...its not like theres a whole lot to do in my site after dinner. I do have an adorable puppy that I've posted a picture of. My family is pretty interesting, the mom and daughter are very much characters. Also, while I was walking around on my own, I met a very sweet older lady who invited me in to get to know me. While showing me her rudimentary garden in the backyard, she invited me to live with her or come over whenever I wanted. That felt really encouraging and touching,
Overall, I'd say that I'm very much excited to start working on projects in my site. I have tons of great ideas for future work, and I can't wait to start. I don't want to have these last two weeks of training that feel so useless and draining. On the other hand, I love being back here in Santa Eulalia's warmth with other Trainees. I'm very much not looking forward to LIVING in my site. Hopefully, that outlook will change when I start getting closer with the people, and develop my routine with a comfortable living space. I definitely need more warm clothes like thermal layers in order to achieve this and better appreciate my site.
My site is very cold. While there, I was constantly wearing two pairs of socks, leggings under jeans, a long sleeve under a t-shirt. I always had my sweatshirt, beanie, and gloves with me to put on when not in the direct sunlight. Also, my site is at very high altitude. I was easily exhausted most of the time there, and couldn't muster much energy to be spontaneous. However, the people in Vicco are very nice. They all love Briana, and don't want her to leave. It was hard being there with her because of it, but it was also nice to see the end of a great two years of service. It was also very hard for me to understand the Campo accent. The campo being the country; they speak very differently. I think its because of the Quechuan mixing with the Spanish. I learned a handful of words in Quechuan my first night there and was able to pull them out and impress all the people I met after that. They got a kick out of the fact that I did know a couple words in Quechuan when I couldn't even fully speak Spanish.
Because of that, I very much look forward to learning more of the language, as well as picking up knitting and weaving. These are all very Sierran cultural things, and I want to learn and participate in it as much as I can. Plus...its not like theres a whole lot to do in my site after dinner. I do have an adorable puppy that I've posted a picture of. My family is pretty interesting, the mom and daughter are very much characters. Also, while I was walking around on my own, I met a very sweet older lady who invited me in to get to know me. While showing me her rudimentary garden in the backyard, she invited me to live with her or come over whenever I wanted. That felt really encouraging and touching,
Overall, I'd say that I'm very much excited to start working on projects in my site. I have tons of great ideas for future work, and I can't wait to start. I don't want to have these last two weeks of training that feel so useless and draining. On the other hand, I love being back here in Santa Eulalia's warmth with other Trainees. I'm very much not looking forward to LIVING in my site. Hopefully, that outlook will change when I start getting closer with the people, and develop my routine with a comfortable living space. I definitely need more warm clothes like thermal layers in order to achieve this and better appreciate my site.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Pre-Site Visit Expectations- Nov. 2nd, 2011
So I now know officially that my site is Vicco, Pasco. I know that I'm replacing a female volunteer named Briana, and I believe she is still in site. I'm going to be living in the house she lived in, with a mother who is 40, and a sister who is 9. The mom is a restaurant owner apparently, which I'm pretty excited about. The family is pretty small, which I'm not sure is a good thing or a bad thing. I have a grandma and brother who stay "temporarily" whatever that means. Apparently, that they don't LIVE in the house though. My room apparently is accessed through another bedroom, which I'm really iffy about. Briana has lived there so I guess it must work out.
My site apparently has about 1,200 people in the pueblo, with an approximate total of 2,000 in my area. So it's not as big as I feared which I'm happy about. We do have a paved road, and all communication types, including internet. I have mixed feelings about having internet access in my own site. I definitely wanted it in my regional capital that I will visit twice a month, but to have it in my own site is a little weird. I didn't come here to spend a ton of time online. But then again, it is internet at a cafe meaning I'd have to pay and it's likely very slow. So it's doubtful I'd spend significant amounts of time on it. Speaking of which, I would want to keep somewhat updated on current events. Maybe I should ask someone to send me emails like once a month about the major news events of the month. Someone want to volunteer for that position?
Since I'm replacing Briana in the same house, I'm still curious if I can leave some books and manuals there. I'm going to bring them, and may have to bring them back with me if it doesn't seem safe to leave. I'm hoping since she is going to be leaving very soon, that I can buy her stuff off her. She has to have plenty of great things that are perfect for my new site. I don't know when she COS's (Close of Service), but I'm relatively sure she hasn't done it yet. If she has I'm going to be really bummed. I'd really like to meet her so I can get all the juicy info about our site and her work there for the last two years that I will be continuing.
Apparently, Cerro de Pasco, which is a large city very near my site, is ugly and relatively dangerous. Diego, our APCD (boss), said he didn't recommend me going there monthly to get stuff. However, Junin which is a large city close to the center of our cluster of volunteers apparently doesn't have a Banco Continental? We had to withdraw all our money for the trip today because we weren't going to have access to free withdrawal ATMs there. If this is true, while in my site, I'd definitely want to visit Cerro. Either that or I'd have to travel all the way down to our technical regional capital which is a 5 hour bus ride. Cerro is supposedly about a 30 minute ride from my site. I'm looking forward to being able to answer these sorts of questions.
Lastly, I got to read the Community Diagnostic that Briana did at the beginning of her service about Vicco. It had a lot of great info about the types of problems Vicco had back then. Apparently, she foresaw trash being a big area to work in, and also a tree nursery. I'm very curious to hear how things went and what the situation is like now. I will definitely be working in education though. Diego has told us that he very strongly encourages us to do a summer school class because it starts in our second month at site and lasts 2 months or so. This will help us build confianza in the community and in ourselves. I've been thinking a lot about what summer school class I'd want to give, and Diego helped me reach a decision. He took me aside Monday and asked about if I studied a martial art. He said he'd heard rumors, and was really excited when I said that I had. He strongly encouraged me to teach a class at my site, and said he'd support me in anyway I needed to do it. So I think that shall be my summer class. I'll start off small and once the normal year starts, hopefully I'll have a good routine down. Shout out to my Hapkido family, please email me ideas for Hapkido classes to give to kids of various ages. Every suggestion is welcome, from everyone in fact. Ideas for a sort of lesson plan would be nice. I think I'll combine the class to being an exercise class. Mix Hapkido, yoga, and perhaps some hiking field trips (yay for including Environmental themes)? I'm not sure, which is why all suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Email me at aleichele@gmail.com or just post comments!
My site apparently has about 1,200 people in the pueblo, with an approximate total of 2,000 in my area. So it's not as big as I feared which I'm happy about. We do have a paved road, and all communication types, including internet. I have mixed feelings about having internet access in my own site. I definitely wanted it in my regional capital that I will visit twice a month, but to have it in my own site is a little weird. I didn't come here to spend a ton of time online. But then again, it is internet at a cafe meaning I'd have to pay and it's likely very slow. So it's doubtful I'd spend significant amounts of time on it. Speaking of which, I would want to keep somewhat updated on current events. Maybe I should ask someone to send me emails like once a month about the major news events of the month. Someone want to volunteer for that position?
Since I'm replacing Briana in the same house, I'm still curious if I can leave some books and manuals there. I'm going to bring them, and may have to bring them back with me if it doesn't seem safe to leave. I'm hoping since she is going to be leaving very soon, that I can buy her stuff off her. She has to have plenty of great things that are perfect for my new site. I don't know when she COS's (Close of Service), but I'm relatively sure she hasn't done it yet. If she has I'm going to be really bummed. I'd really like to meet her so I can get all the juicy info about our site and her work there for the last two years that I will be continuing.
Apparently, Cerro de Pasco, which is a large city very near my site, is ugly and relatively dangerous. Diego, our APCD (boss), said he didn't recommend me going there monthly to get stuff. However, Junin which is a large city close to the center of our cluster of volunteers apparently doesn't have a Banco Continental? We had to withdraw all our money for the trip today because we weren't going to have access to free withdrawal ATMs there. If this is true, while in my site, I'd definitely want to visit Cerro. Either that or I'd have to travel all the way down to our technical regional capital which is a 5 hour bus ride. Cerro is supposedly about a 30 minute ride from my site. I'm looking forward to being able to answer these sorts of questions.
Lastly, I got to read the Community Diagnostic that Briana did at the beginning of her service about Vicco. It had a lot of great info about the types of problems Vicco had back then. Apparently, she foresaw trash being a big area to work in, and also a tree nursery. I'm very curious to hear how things went and what the situation is like now. I will definitely be working in education though. Diego has told us that he very strongly encourages us to do a summer school class because it starts in our second month at site and lasts 2 months or so. This will help us build confianza in the community and in ourselves. I've been thinking a lot about what summer school class I'd want to give, and Diego helped me reach a decision. He took me aside Monday and asked about if I studied a martial art. He said he'd heard rumors, and was really excited when I said that I had. He strongly encouraged me to teach a class at my site, and said he'd support me in anyway I needed to do it. So I think that shall be my summer class. I'll start off small and once the normal year starts, hopefully I'll have a good routine down. Shout out to my Hapkido family, please email me ideas for Hapkido classes to give to kids of various ages. Every suggestion is welcome, from everyone in fact. Ideas for a sort of lesson plan would be nice. I think I'll combine the class to being an exercise class. Mix Hapkido, yoga, and perhaps some hiking field trips (yay for including Environmental themes)? I'm not sure, which is why all suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Email me at aleichele@gmail.com or just post comments!
Expectations of my Site, pre-official knowledge- Oct. 30th, 2011
Despite my determined will to not form expectations of my site, since learning tidbits about it, I have been unable to stop myself from imagining what it is like. Tomorrow, I will learn a lot of good facts about my site, which may or may not dispel some of these expectations. Wednesday I travel with the Junin group to our Regional Field-based Training, and the following week I will spend in my actual site with my future family. Suffice to say that by the end of these next two weeks, I should know a fair amount about my future life of the next two years. This is very exciting news. But I want to take this moment in time to chronicle my expectations so I can see how dead-wrong I was, or conversely, how spot-on.
Things I think I know about my site:
I believe my site is in Vicco, Pasco. I know that this place is very high in altitude, a bit more than 4000 meters which is approximately 13,000 feet. It has a big rig race that is apparently pretty popular, this is practically the only information that can be found about Vicco online. My site will be very very cold. I think my site is relatively large, with more amenities than I thought I'd have. I think I very likely have electricity, and perhaps even a toilet or at least an outhouse with seat. I think I will be pretty close to my regional capital, so I might have access to more fruits and vegetables for myself than others. However, the food I get from my family will likely be pretty traditional Andean Peruvian cuisine with lots of potatoes and rice. My site has a very large mining influence. Silver was a very large industry, but now it is more lead and zinc. I'm replacing another volunteer, and I can't decide if I like this fact or not. I will be compared a lot to the former volunteer, but I also won't have to constantly explain what I'm doing there and what Peace Corps is.
Things I wonder or am anxious to learn about my site:
Is the volunteer I'm replacing a female? If so, that will make the comparisons that much worse. Who are my family? How many of them are there? Will I get a pet with them? Do they have animals already? How big is my site really? Do I have internet access? Will it be worth while to buy the USB internet? Can I leave some things with my family next week when I visit? Will my room be ready for me? What types of things will I need to buy for my room with my settling-in allowance?What issues will I have to deal with at my site?
Tomorrow, I will attempt to write down my thoughts about my site with the new information I gather.
Things I think I know about my site:
I believe my site is in Vicco, Pasco. I know that this place is very high in altitude, a bit more than 4000 meters which is approximately 13,000 feet. It has a big rig race that is apparently pretty popular, this is practically the only information that can be found about Vicco online. My site will be very very cold. I think my site is relatively large, with more amenities than I thought I'd have. I think I very likely have electricity, and perhaps even a toilet or at least an outhouse with seat. I think I will be pretty close to my regional capital, so I might have access to more fruits and vegetables for myself than others. However, the food I get from my family will likely be pretty traditional Andean Peruvian cuisine with lots of potatoes and rice. My site has a very large mining influence. Silver was a very large industry, but now it is more lead and zinc. I'm replacing another volunteer, and I can't decide if I like this fact or not. I will be compared a lot to the former volunteer, but I also won't have to constantly explain what I'm doing there and what Peace Corps is.
Things I wonder or am anxious to learn about my site:
Is the volunteer I'm replacing a female? If so, that will make the comparisons that much worse. Who are my family? How many of them are there? Will I get a pet with them? Do they have animals already? How big is my site really? Do I have internet access? Will it be worth while to buy the USB internet? Can I leave some things with my family next week when I visit? Will my room be ready for me? What types of things will I need to buy for my room with my settling-in allowance?What issues will I have to deal with at my site?
Tomorrow, I will attempt to write down my thoughts about my site with the new information I gather.
Friday, October 28, 2011
My first Peruvian Earthquake
Well, today I felt my first earthquake here. It was actually very comical, which I'm glad for. Peru doesn't need another serious earthquake like their one in 2007. They're still rebuilding. I didn't really understand that an earthquake was occurring while it happened; I only got it afterwards. I was in the middle of discussing my school plans with Kiryssa (I'll explain that in a bit) when I looked around wondering what guy was shaking my plastic chair. Not seeing anything, I continued the thread of my conversation without pause until about 15 seconds later, when my chair still felt wobbly, I looked around again and looked at Kiryssa. We both realized it was an earthquake at that moment, and all of us started talking excitedly. Of course by then, it was gone and done with, and Ivan standing two feet from me never felt it. It was the funniest feeling, just a wobbly sensation of someone slightly shaking my chair for perhaps 30 seconds. I still replay the conversation in my head, clearly remembering looking around in confusion for the person shaking my chair while talking and not understanding why there wasn't anyone. Very hilarious to me.
Anyway, on to what I actually accomplished today. I, with Kiryssa, gave an hour (-ish) presentation to 2nd grade kids in Colegio Secundario. This means, we taught approximately 28 7th graders (12-13 year olds). There were 38 kids on the roster, but I'm grateful not everyone was really there. Our presentation was about Climate Change (Cambio Climatico), and I thought it went really well. Other than the fact that our bus was late so we only got about 45 minutes. This ruined our lesson plan and made us rush the end, so I don't know how much they understood of the game at the end. But I think they really enjoyed it. We had a true and false at the beginning that required them all to go to either the left or right wall depending what they thought of the statement. I really loved how some of the statements that the whole class got right, we'd all cheer and clap. The first one, it was half and half and the correct group was very very happy about it. After this bit, we did an explanation of the gases of Climate Change, and what things contribute to those gases. Then we had them break into groups and make "papelotes" (literally, big papers) of things THEY themselves could do to decrease or help slow climate change. It was really cute when we had each group present. I could clearly see which kids were the natural leaders, which were the really smart ones, which were timid. It was a great experience overall. I think the important tidbit I learned from this experience for teaching at my site is that I should definitely write my name on the board when I begin. We introduced ourselves, but the girls at the end asked us our names again as they said thanks.
One more tidbit to share for this blog. Tuesday late afternoon, we were working on making recycled art. This is something we can easily do with kids, and can encourage to reuse things. I started this wonderful activity by going to our recycling bin to get some plastic bottles. While removing the lid, I managed to stab my middle finger on a screw that protruded around the mouth of it. This really sucked, and I managed to draw blood. If my life really were a story or blog, critics would say that the author used this event to foreshadow future events. I should have heeded the warning. Instead, I took my bloodily won (really it was just a pinprick) bottles and went to start cutting them into flowers. I had all different sizes and was going to nest them inside each other to create layers of petals. Because they were going to nest inside each other, I needed to cut off the caps on the smaller bottles. To this end, I was attempting to saw through the plastic with my scissors. I commented generally that I was probably going to hurt myself doing this, and about a minute later...I managed to cut off a pretty good sized chunk of my right thumb pad. By pretty good sized, I mean, when I looked down at my hand and said a word I won't type here (use your imagination), I could see a capillary that I had cut open. After about 5 minutes of trying to stop the bleeding, we got it bandaged and today the doctors got me a nice super strong antibiotic. Hopefully that will take care of the redness and tenderness...but yeah, I really am okay. It looked pretty bad, and hurt pretty bad at first, especially when I was washing it as per doctors orders, but I'm not super worried. More than a little embarrassed I cut myself so badly with scissors. Thought I was old enough to know better, but I guess I'm just old enough to know when something is dangerous and continue to do it anyway.
Okay one more story to end on a positive note. Today, I experimented with making Rice Krispy treats. I bought the marshmellows and rice puffy cereal Wednesday, and decided to make it tonight. We have a very similar cereal back home, but I can't think of the name for it. They're rice puffs. Anyways, I made a small batch, and they turned out great. I gave out a piece to all my family, and they all loved it. Especially Kevin, the 6 year old, who I heard in the kitchen while on here typing. Knowing what he was doing, I went in there to catch him red-handed trying to sneak a bit more. It was really cute; he was so sorry and close to tears, I gave him a second piece. My host mom thought it was hilarious when I shared that with her. I think I've mentioned that she doesn't know how to cook (probably the only Peruvian woman who doesn't) and so I was telling her I would show her how to make it when I go get more stuff. We were talking about how easy it is to make, especially that kids could do it with a bit of supervision. So I'm hoping I can share this with her and then have her make it with Hilary, my 5 year old host sister who absolutely loves sweets. I feel very content with this cooking experience; I'm glad it turned out nicely and its something they could easily make part of their life if they want to.
Site assignments Monday, followed by Field-based training at my regional capital, and a week at my site. Should be a great two weeks ahead of me!
Anyway, on to what I actually accomplished today. I, with Kiryssa, gave an hour (-ish) presentation to 2nd grade kids in Colegio Secundario. This means, we taught approximately 28 7th graders (12-13 year olds). There were 38 kids on the roster, but I'm grateful not everyone was really there. Our presentation was about Climate Change (Cambio Climatico), and I thought it went really well. Other than the fact that our bus was late so we only got about 45 minutes. This ruined our lesson plan and made us rush the end, so I don't know how much they understood of the game at the end. But I think they really enjoyed it. We had a true and false at the beginning that required them all to go to either the left or right wall depending what they thought of the statement. I really loved how some of the statements that the whole class got right, we'd all cheer and clap. The first one, it was half and half and the correct group was very very happy about it. After this bit, we did an explanation of the gases of Climate Change, and what things contribute to those gases. Then we had them break into groups and make "papelotes" (literally, big papers) of things THEY themselves could do to decrease or help slow climate change. It was really cute when we had each group present. I could clearly see which kids were the natural leaders, which were the really smart ones, which were timid. It was a great experience overall. I think the important tidbit I learned from this experience for teaching at my site is that I should definitely write my name on the board when I begin. We introduced ourselves, but the girls at the end asked us our names again as they said thanks.
One more tidbit to share for this blog. Tuesday late afternoon, we were working on making recycled art. This is something we can easily do with kids, and can encourage to reuse things. I started this wonderful activity by going to our recycling bin to get some plastic bottles. While removing the lid, I managed to stab my middle finger on a screw that protruded around the mouth of it. This really sucked, and I managed to draw blood. If my life really were a story or blog, critics would say that the author used this event to foreshadow future events. I should have heeded the warning. Instead, I took my bloodily won (really it was just a pinprick) bottles and went to start cutting them into flowers. I had all different sizes and was going to nest them inside each other to create layers of petals. Because they were going to nest inside each other, I needed to cut off the caps on the smaller bottles. To this end, I was attempting to saw through the plastic with my scissors. I commented generally that I was probably going to hurt myself doing this, and about a minute later...I managed to cut off a pretty good sized chunk of my right thumb pad. By pretty good sized, I mean, when I looked down at my hand and said a word I won't type here (use your imagination), I could see a capillary that I had cut open. After about 5 minutes of trying to stop the bleeding, we got it bandaged and today the doctors got me a nice super strong antibiotic. Hopefully that will take care of the redness and tenderness...but yeah, I really am okay. It looked pretty bad, and hurt pretty bad at first, especially when I was washing it as per doctors orders, but I'm not super worried. More than a little embarrassed I cut myself so badly with scissors. Thought I was old enough to know better, but I guess I'm just old enough to know when something is dangerous and continue to do it anyway.
Okay one more story to end on a positive note. Today, I experimented with making Rice Krispy treats. I bought the marshmellows and rice puffy cereal Wednesday, and decided to make it tonight. We have a very similar cereal back home, but I can't think of the name for it. They're rice puffs. Anyways, I made a small batch, and they turned out great. I gave out a piece to all my family, and they all loved it. Especially Kevin, the 6 year old, who I heard in the kitchen while on here typing. Knowing what he was doing, I went in there to catch him red-handed trying to sneak a bit more. It was really cute; he was so sorry and close to tears, I gave him a second piece. My host mom thought it was hilarious when I shared that with her. I think I've mentioned that she doesn't know how to cook (probably the only Peruvian woman who doesn't) and so I was telling her I would show her how to make it when I go get more stuff. We were talking about how easy it is to make, especially that kids could do it with a bit of supervision. So I'm hoping I can share this with her and then have her make it with Hilary, my 5 year old host sister who absolutely loves sweets. I feel very content with this cooking experience; I'm glad it turned out nicely and its something they could easily make part of their life if they want to.
Site assignments Monday, followed by Field-based training at my regional capital, and a week at my site. Should be a great two weeks ahead of me!
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Mini FBT
Our Mini Field-Based Training (FBT, you will see this acronym again in about 10 days) was more successful than I had feared. I thought since we'd only have a few hours to talk to people and then create a presentation for them about improvements to their problems, we'd surely miss the mark. Either because we didn't have enough time to properly learn about the town, or because we wouldn't be able to get anyone to take us seriously and come to our meeting. Peruvians are notorious for being late at least an hour, and only inviting people a few hours before the actual presentation was more than a little risky. However, these worries while valid, didn't stop us from having a great time and maybe even helping a little bit.
But first, let me describe to you the trip to San Pedro de Castro which is where the interviews and presentation took place. We got on a bus at our Center at about 7:30am. The rented combi bus smelled strongly of diesel or some oil. It was very hard to get on the bus knowing we had about two hours of travel ahead of us. For this reason (por eso razon) we all opened the windows as much as we could. While this helped dispel the smell and provided us an opportunity to take pictures, it also let in all the dust. Being covered in dust and feeling dirty at the start of two and a half days you know you're not going to shower was a little sucky. We exited Santa Eulalia headed northwest up the only road. At the beginning of the week, I started power-walking up the road for 40 minutes, so I'd gotten a decent ways up, but most of us hadn't seen any of the road past Santa Eulalia. The road is mostly dirt, although for a ways its partially paved. We curved along the left mountain, showing the steep barren sides of mountains with a deep valley of green and river. The view reminded me a lot of the foothills of the Sierras except to a more extreme level. As if all the hills were stretched out 5000 feet higher, but not forested. There was scrub and brush in some of the granite but for the first hour or so, the mountains remained barren.
During the drive, we had to make two pit stops for bathroom breaks which one of our Tech trainers was unhappy with, but the second stop allowed me the opportunity to breathe fresh air and take a nice picture of the river running along the bottom of the valley. Most of the trip was along the left mountain side as I mentioned, and I unfortunately sat on the left side of the bus. This provided me with a nice pretty view of dirt and rocks about a foot away from my window, while the other side of the bus got breath-taking views of steep drop-offs, and the beautiful winding valley getting lost among the mountains in the distance. The road was only wide enough for one vehicle in 90% of it, so at every curve, the bus driver would blast the horn, trying to ensure we didn't careen into an oncoming taxi. In the 5 weeks I've been here, we've heard on the news of at least 3 accidents on this stretch of road. Particularly, I remember one of a bus going off the side of the cliff because of an oncoming truck that was in a rush and being reckless. I think one kid survived that accident, but everyone else did not.
At about the one and a half hour mark, our door guy decided to pick up an Andean woman dressed in traditional garb, and then shortly thereafter an older gentleman. I was a little surprised at this, since I knew we had rented the whole bus, but I understood, since we were hours away from everything and climbing up steep roads. I wouldn't care to walk when I'd seen a bus that had room on it pass by too. Our tech trainer was a little upset about it since it's against PC protocol, but at that point there wasn't much she could do about it without being a terrible person. Soon enough we saw a decent sized town/city nestled on the top of a ridge above us.
San Pedro de Castro is bigger than I had anticipated, being home to about a thousand people, but it retains the small pueblo feel. You can walk the entire place on a few small streets, and there aren't any vehicles around except for the buses that bring people and supplies and one van I saw the Mayor (Alcalde) in. We stayed a hostel that was rather big, with 4 floors I believe. In the center there was a cool little courtyard, where a woman had a big pot of soup simmering on a fire. This is where we all gathered and grouped up to get our rooms. I roomed with Annie, who has been struggling with being sick. We were all happy she'd made it (and sad that another of our 17 didn't), but I knew she'd be sleeping most of the time. So I dropped my stuff off in the room, added a few more layers of clothing, because it was chilly, and headed out.
My group was tourism, and the five of us were to interview people who had to do with tourism in SPC. Then after lunch, we would have a presentation about solutions. I think here is a good spot to point out that we were now at 3500 meters which is roughly 10,000 feet I believe. You can look up the conversion if you want. We gathered in the Plaza, and then had to walk up a short incline to the Comite of Turismo building. Perhaps 10 steps up at a normal-stairs-level incline. Accomplishing this feat definitely made us all out of breath and had our hearts racing.
After climbing up the little hill to the tourist building, I briefly interviewed a tourist who was a pastor from Washington volunteering his sixth time here. It was a little interesting that he'd been here so many times and still didn't know Spanish. His one wish was that someone in the place spoke English; he thought this would provide a better tourism experience. After gathering this info, we also learned from other people that only one woman had internet there, but it was very slow. Also, they don't have very good advertising on the Web or in other places. Lastly, we learned that most of their tourists are actually Peruvians from Lima that throw trash everywhere and only come during certain times of the year like Semana Santa (the week around Easter) and overwhelm the local populace. These were all interesting pieces of information that we felt we could make suggestions about and so we easily developed a general idea of what we wanted to talk about in our presentation (charla).
40 minutes after the time we'd invited people for our presentation, nobody we'd actually invited was there. At this point, we went to the Municipality building and used the loudspeakers to announce it, twice. Also, we began shouting and shepherding random people into the room. This was pretty fun, and by an hour past our scheduled start time, we had roughly 15 people and were ready to start. We did a funny little skit at the beginning to break the ice and get our crowd relaxed and laughing. Sarabeth did an awesome stereotypical tourist and others of us played the guide and information desk. I added a little bit about how Marcahausi (the Stone Forest above SPC that people visit SPC to go see) is a special place and you need to pack out all the trash you pack in. This was one of our suggestions for improving tourism. This whole skit was a big hit and after that people were really willing to volunteer ideas and were engaged. They were leaning forward and nodding along, it was a really great feeling. I'm not sure how much will actually improve, because while the general populace we had there was very positive and happy with our suggestions, the President of the Committee of Tourism was very negative and liked to talk a lot. With him in control, I'm not sure if people will organize to get a project going with the Municipality to fund internet service, or fund an English program, or start a Web page.
Seeing the town and a bit of their troubles and political dynamics, I was very encouraged about my future site. If my place is anything like SPC, I think I can make a difference. The whole point of the mini FBT is to get us out in the field to see a bit of real town dynamics and start us acting as leaders individually. I felt like all of us really accomplished this goal, and I feel excited and motivated for the real FBT in two weeks.
Friday, we all got on horses and rode up to Marcahuasi. I cannot begin to describe this place decently, so I'm not really going to try. I took a lot of pictures, which I hope will be posted on Facebook eventually. Hopefully, all of the pictures combined will give you a little idea of what it's like. We saw ruins of a pre-Inca civilization, rocks in the shapes of faces and animals, and a lagoon nestled in the granite plateau. I watched the sunset while sitting on a granite boulder overlooking the entire valley below. The colors of sunset, sounds of wildlife and nothing else, and fog creeping up among the boulders was inspiring and incredibly tranquil. While it was incredibly cold, Jaymee, one of our two Tech trainers, did an incredible job preparing and had rented us blankets, as well as sleeping bags. With layering and the blanket, I managed to not be cold. I didn't really sleep either of the two nights, but that was due to my trouble sleeping in new places without a routine and not because I was cold. The last thing I'll mention about our time up in Marcahuasi was the night sky. We had a bonfire that I laid next to, wrapped in a blanket gazing at the stars. I could see the Milky Way, and as many stars as I've ever seen. I couldn't make out any constellations which was pretty neat to me. It all felt very different and curious. I could tell I was on the other side of the Earth from where I grew up gazing at stars.
If I do get placed in Junin, I now know I can survive it, although I'll be incredibly pale constantly wrapped in clothes.
But first, let me describe to you the trip to San Pedro de Castro which is where the interviews and presentation took place. We got on a bus at our Center at about 7:30am. The rented combi bus smelled strongly of diesel or some oil. It was very hard to get on the bus knowing we had about two hours of travel ahead of us. For this reason (por eso razon) we all opened the windows as much as we could. While this helped dispel the smell and provided us an opportunity to take pictures, it also let in all the dust. Being covered in dust and feeling dirty at the start of two and a half days you know you're not going to shower was a little sucky. We exited Santa Eulalia headed northwest up the only road. At the beginning of the week, I started power-walking up the road for 40 minutes, so I'd gotten a decent ways up, but most of us hadn't seen any of the road past Santa Eulalia. The road is mostly dirt, although for a ways its partially paved. We curved along the left mountain, showing the steep barren sides of mountains with a deep valley of green and river. The view reminded me a lot of the foothills of the Sierras except to a more extreme level. As if all the hills were stretched out 5000 feet higher, but not forested. There was scrub and brush in some of the granite but for the first hour or so, the mountains remained barren.
During the drive, we had to make two pit stops for bathroom breaks which one of our Tech trainers was unhappy with, but the second stop allowed me the opportunity to breathe fresh air and take a nice picture of the river running along the bottom of the valley. Most of the trip was along the left mountain side as I mentioned, and I unfortunately sat on the left side of the bus. This provided me with a nice pretty view of dirt and rocks about a foot away from my window, while the other side of the bus got breath-taking views of steep drop-offs, and the beautiful winding valley getting lost among the mountains in the distance. The road was only wide enough for one vehicle in 90% of it, so at every curve, the bus driver would blast the horn, trying to ensure we didn't careen into an oncoming taxi. In the 5 weeks I've been here, we've heard on the news of at least 3 accidents on this stretch of road. Particularly, I remember one of a bus going off the side of the cliff because of an oncoming truck that was in a rush and being reckless. I think one kid survived that accident, but everyone else did not.
At about the one and a half hour mark, our door guy decided to pick up an Andean woman dressed in traditional garb, and then shortly thereafter an older gentleman. I was a little surprised at this, since I knew we had rented the whole bus, but I understood, since we were hours away from everything and climbing up steep roads. I wouldn't care to walk when I'd seen a bus that had room on it pass by too. Our tech trainer was a little upset about it since it's against PC protocol, but at that point there wasn't much she could do about it without being a terrible person. Soon enough we saw a decent sized town/city nestled on the top of a ridge above us.
San Pedro de Castro is bigger than I had anticipated, being home to about a thousand people, but it retains the small pueblo feel. You can walk the entire place on a few small streets, and there aren't any vehicles around except for the buses that bring people and supplies and one van I saw the Mayor (Alcalde) in. We stayed a hostel that was rather big, with 4 floors I believe. In the center there was a cool little courtyard, where a woman had a big pot of soup simmering on a fire. This is where we all gathered and grouped up to get our rooms. I roomed with Annie, who has been struggling with being sick. We were all happy she'd made it (and sad that another of our 17 didn't), but I knew she'd be sleeping most of the time. So I dropped my stuff off in the room, added a few more layers of clothing, because it was chilly, and headed out.
My group was tourism, and the five of us were to interview people who had to do with tourism in SPC. Then after lunch, we would have a presentation about solutions. I think here is a good spot to point out that we were now at 3500 meters which is roughly 10,000 feet I believe. You can look up the conversion if you want. We gathered in the Plaza, and then had to walk up a short incline to the Comite of Turismo building. Perhaps 10 steps up at a normal-stairs-level incline. Accomplishing this feat definitely made us all out of breath and had our hearts racing.
After climbing up the little hill to the tourist building, I briefly interviewed a tourist who was a pastor from Washington volunteering his sixth time here. It was a little interesting that he'd been here so many times and still didn't know Spanish. His one wish was that someone in the place spoke English; he thought this would provide a better tourism experience. After gathering this info, we also learned from other people that only one woman had internet there, but it was very slow. Also, they don't have very good advertising on the Web or in other places. Lastly, we learned that most of their tourists are actually Peruvians from Lima that throw trash everywhere and only come during certain times of the year like Semana Santa (the week around Easter) and overwhelm the local populace. These were all interesting pieces of information that we felt we could make suggestions about and so we easily developed a general idea of what we wanted to talk about in our presentation (charla).
40 minutes after the time we'd invited people for our presentation, nobody we'd actually invited was there. At this point, we went to the Municipality building and used the loudspeakers to announce it, twice. Also, we began shouting and shepherding random people into the room. This was pretty fun, and by an hour past our scheduled start time, we had roughly 15 people and were ready to start. We did a funny little skit at the beginning to break the ice and get our crowd relaxed and laughing. Sarabeth did an awesome stereotypical tourist and others of us played the guide and information desk. I added a little bit about how Marcahausi (the Stone Forest above SPC that people visit SPC to go see) is a special place and you need to pack out all the trash you pack in. This was one of our suggestions for improving tourism. This whole skit was a big hit and after that people were really willing to volunteer ideas and were engaged. They were leaning forward and nodding along, it was a really great feeling. I'm not sure how much will actually improve, because while the general populace we had there was very positive and happy with our suggestions, the President of the Committee of Tourism was very negative and liked to talk a lot. With him in control, I'm not sure if people will organize to get a project going with the Municipality to fund internet service, or fund an English program, or start a Web page.
Seeing the town and a bit of their troubles and political dynamics, I was very encouraged about my future site. If my place is anything like SPC, I think I can make a difference. The whole point of the mini FBT is to get us out in the field to see a bit of real town dynamics and start us acting as leaders individually. I felt like all of us really accomplished this goal, and I feel excited and motivated for the real FBT in two weeks.
Friday, we all got on horses and rode up to Marcahuasi. I cannot begin to describe this place decently, so I'm not really going to try. I took a lot of pictures, which I hope will be posted on Facebook eventually. Hopefully, all of the pictures combined will give you a little idea of what it's like. We saw ruins of a pre-Inca civilization, rocks in the shapes of faces and animals, and a lagoon nestled in the granite plateau. I watched the sunset while sitting on a granite boulder overlooking the entire valley below. The colors of sunset, sounds of wildlife and nothing else, and fog creeping up among the boulders was inspiring and incredibly tranquil. While it was incredibly cold, Jaymee, one of our two Tech trainers, did an incredible job preparing and had rented us blankets, as well as sleeping bags. With layering and the blanket, I managed to not be cold. I didn't really sleep either of the two nights, but that was due to my trouble sleeping in new places without a routine and not because I was cold. The last thing I'll mention about our time up in Marcahuasi was the night sky. We had a bonfire that I laid next to, wrapped in a blanket gazing at the stars. I could see the Milky Way, and as many stars as I've ever seen. I couldn't make out any constellations which was pretty neat to me. It all felt very different and curious. I could tell I was on the other side of the Earth from where I grew up gazing at stars.
If I do get placed in Junin, I now know I can survive it, although I'll be incredibly pale constantly wrapped in clothes.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
The Headquarters of Potatoes and Peace Corps
Our first stop of the day today was to the Centro Internacional de las Papas. Literally the International place of potatoes, which I find pretty cool. They recognize only 4000 or so varieties of potatoes. Yes, only. Apparently, they used to recognize upwards of 17,000 varieties, but using genetic techniques, they've realized a lot are the same. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around 4,000 different distinct types of potatoes. I saw a good 25 of them today and that was astonishing enough. After this, we listened to a older gentleman talk about his work in Peru with a scientific organization and his experience in the Peace Corps 15 years ago. It was really really cool to listen to his advice and viewpoint. Peace Corps really changed his life, and has had a major impact. I really felt excited for my life after Peace Corps, and sort of proud that I'll be able to call myself a Peace Corps Volunteer.
After this, we all piled into a combi and made our way to the Peace Corps office. Headquarters are actually really nice. While there, we listened to a presentation from a lady about LOOP. She created this social enterprise to get rid of all the plastic waste that pollutes the ocean and injuries marine life, among other problems. LOOP stands for Life out of Plastic, meaning she's encouraging the reuse of plastic to bring new "life". For instance, LOOP is going to sell tote bags that are made out of recycled plastic (type 1, bottles). They were really awesome; I wanted to buy one right there. She also is promoting education of people to sort their trash and recycle, to increase the amount of bottles that are recycled instead of thrown away. She's working to develop education and advising of places that generate a lot of bottles and connecting them directly with recycling plants that will re-purpose the plastic to be more useful. She had a great point, that we're using petroleum to make plastics and 50% of plastic products are going towards single use things, like plastic bags. Its terrible, because plastic is so durable. I'll quote her because it's so true, "Plastic is like diamonds, its forever too". It's so much smarter to only use plastic for things we really want to last and use for a long period of time. Well anyways, that is what I found so interesting about her project, and I really hope it goes well for her. It really is a need of the people here, especially since they can easily make money off of recycling.
I have packed for our trip to Marcahuasi. A little nervous about the interviews and presentation we're supposed to do tomorrow before we venture up the mountain on horseback Friday. Also, wondering how much I'm going to freeze. Shout out to Linda for giving me some gloves to wear : )
After this, we all piled into a combi and made our way to the Peace Corps office. Headquarters are actually really nice. While there, we listened to a presentation from a lady about LOOP. She created this social enterprise to get rid of all the plastic waste that pollutes the ocean and injuries marine life, among other problems. LOOP stands for Life out of Plastic, meaning she's encouraging the reuse of plastic to bring new "life". For instance, LOOP is going to sell tote bags that are made out of recycled plastic (type 1, bottles). They were really awesome; I wanted to buy one right there. She also is promoting education of people to sort their trash and recycle, to increase the amount of bottles that are recycled instead of thrown away. She's working to develop education and advising of places that generate a lot of bottles and connecting them directly with recycling plants that will re-purpose the plastic to be more useful. She had a great point, that we're using petroleum to make plastics and 50% of plastic products are going towards single use things, like plastic bags. Its terrible, because plastic is so durable. I'll quote her because it's so true, "Plastic is like diamonds, its forever too". It's so much smarter to only use plastic for things we really want to last and use for a long period of time. Well anyways, that is what I found so interesting about her project, and I really hope it goes well for her. It really is a need of the people here, especially since they can easily make money off of recycling.
I have packed for our trip to Marcahuasi. A little nervous about the interviews and presentation we're supposed to do tomorrow before we venture up the mountain on horseback Friday. Also, wondering how much I'm going to freeze. Shout out to Linda for giving me some gloves to wear : )
Monday, October 17, 2011
Potential Site Ideas and Language Woes
First, I'd like to answer a few of the comments because I'm excited to actually have some :)
In my second week, I had two bouts of bicicleta (the runs), thankfully not in my pants. I am still in the running for the Don't Poop Your Pants pool. My one sole on the line is intact. My jaw felt fine after a few days thankfully and at the beginning of the fourth week, the cold I had finally went away. Its been heaven to be able to breath through my nose again. I definitely enjoyed the Hora Locas that we had, and got a few people telling me I could dance which was comical to me. Now, on to the regularly scheduled broadcast!
Well, I'm the type of person who likes to get the bad news out of the way first, so here it goes. I basically failed my Spanish interview. While I felt like I talked competently about my role and why it's important, I guess not using (because I wasn't asked!!) past tense was a deal breaker. While I sat in my new language class with Jacob (the other two hadn't arrived yet), she told me that I was only Novice-High now. I literally was holding back tears. I absolutely hate not living up to my own expectations of myself, but it's even worse when I fail others too. Claudia had said she was sure I was Intermediate-mid or low, and so not only did I fail in my own eyes, but I let her down too. I'm so ashamed. Others are trying to tell me that I've improved a ton, and I still did advance a level so I didn't fail, but for now, the words of consolation are definitely falling on deaf ears. I didn't do as well as I should have; its that simple. And now, it feels like I have so much further to go to be able to swear in.
Anyway, enough with that. On to the exciting news! I THINK I have an idea of where I'm going to live for the next two years. There is a cluster of 5 new sites in the Department (state) of Junin. Junin, Peru claims the highest-altitude PC Volunteers in the entire world. So while the new sites aren't going to have the ultimate title, I will be at very high altitude, in very cold and dry climate IF this ends up being my site. Since these are brand new sites, the people living there have never in their lives seen a foreigner. So, I might stick out a bit. Just a bit though right? Also, the bucket and latrine will be my new best friends, because there definitely won't be and showers or toilets. Even if I'm not placed in Junin, apparently only about 3 of the sites out of our 17 are going to have toilets, which basically guarantees that I won't. We already know for sure 2 people who are being placed in District capitals, and if any site is going to have a toilet it would be a capital. All in all, I'm incredibly excited to have learned a little bit about where I'll likely be. I'm very much looking forward to learning more in about two weeks. I'll keep you updated!
First questions about my potential site:
1. Will I integrate with my host family? Will they help me get into the community?
2. Will my socio (my professional counterpart) help me with my work? Will they show up at all?
3. Will there be any trees around? Will I get to see interesting wildlife?
Well, that's all I got for now. Despite the bad news at the very start of this week, I have high hopes for it. Marcahuasi should be pretty exciting; I should get some nice photos. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I don't freeze and that it doesn't rain!
In my second week, I had two bouts of bicicleta (the runs), thankfully not in my pants. I am still in the running for the Don't Poop Your Pants pool. My one sole on the line is intact. My jaw felt fine after a few days thankfully and at the beginning of the fourth week, the cold I had finally went away. Its been heaven to be able to breath through my nose again. I definitely enjoyed the Hora Locas that we had, and got a few people telling me I could dance which was comical to me. Now, on to the regularly scheduled broadcast!
Well, I'm the type of person who likes to get the bad news out of the way first, so here it goes. I basically failed my Spanish interview. While I felt like I talked competently about my role and why it's important, I guess not using (because I wasn't asked!!) past tense was a deal breaker. While I sat in my new language class with Jacob (the other two hadn't arrived yet), she told me that I was only Novice-High now. I literally was holding back tears. I absolutely hate not living up to my own expectations of myself, but it's even worse when I fail others too. Claudia had said she was sure I was Intermediate-mid or low, and so not only did I fail in my own eyes, but I let her down too. I'm so ashamed. Others are trying to tell me that I've improved a ton, and I still did advance a level so I didn't fail, but for now, the words of consolation are definitely falling on deaf ears. I didn't do as well as I should have; its that simple. And now, it feels like I have so much further to go to be able to swear in.
Anyway, enough with that. On to the exciting news! I THINK I have an idea of where I'm going to live for the next two years. There is a cluster of 5 new sites in the Department (state) of Junin. Junin, Peru claims the highest-altitude PC Volunteers in the entire world. So while the new sites aren't going to have the ultimate title, I will be at very high altitude, in very cold and dry climate IF this ends up being my site. Since these are brand new sites, the people living there have never in their lives seen a foreigner. So, I might stick out a bit. Just a bit though right? Also, the bucket and latrine will be my new best friends, because there definitely won't be and showers or toilets. Even if I'm not placed in Junin, apparently only about 3 of the sites out of our 17 are going to have toilets, which basically guarantees that I won't. We already know for sure 2 people who are being placed in District capitals, and if any site is going to have a toilet it would be a capital. All in all, I'm incredibly excited to have learned a little bit about where I'll likely be. I'm very much looking forward to learning more in about two weeks. I'll keep you updated!
First questions about my potential site:
1. Will I integrate with my host family? Will they help me get into the community?
2. Will my socio (my professional counterpart) help me with my work? Will they show up at all?
3. Will there be any trees around? Will I get to see interesting wildlife?
Well, that's all I got for now. Despite the bad news at the very start of this week, I have high hopes for it. Marcahuasi should be pretty exciting; I should get some nice photos. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I don't freeze and that it doesn't rain!
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Sorry for all the posts at once...-Oct. 15th
This post is actually being written today minutes before the post time, which cannot be said for any of the other blogs posted today. Sorry about that, but I'm happy to get them up I guess. They aren't the best by any means, but they are what I wrote at the time, so I guess they're accurate portrayals of my state of mind at the time. With that in mind, I didn't edit them. If you don't feel like reading all of them, that's fine. All that you really need to know is that I'm here in Peru, happy and still looking forward to my service.
The reason I'm able to get these blogs posted today is because I've finally gotten Wi-Fi for my iPad. I asked yesterday night about what Internet wi-fi service my iPad picked up. I wondered if I could rent an hour of it or something. Turns out you rent it by the month, for S./ 50. 50 Soles is only about $18.50. So while it may have been all of my money, it really isn't that expensive. And it means I can Skype, and post my blogs finally. So yay! Good day. Went to Chosica today with Shannon, the one who lives down the street with the two-year old (who had the birthday party). We bought a lot of stuff which we'd needed; it felt very very productive. Great feeling to check all your goals off for the day. I finally bought a coin purse, and we're splitting a bag of caramels to take with us to the high-altitude (that was a recommendation of our trainer and my family).
Overall, good feeling. Looking forward to my 2nd half of training, and the 2 years of service.
The reason I'm able to get these blogs posted today is because I've finally gotten Wi-Fi for my iPad. I asked yesterday night about what Internet wi-fi service my iPad picked up. I wondered if I could rent an hour of it or something. Turns out you rent it by the month, for S./ 50. 50 Soles is only about $18.50. So while it may have been all of my money, it really isn't that expensive. And it means I can Skype, and post my blogs finally. So yay! Good day. Went to Chosica today with Shannon, the one who lives down the street with the two-year old (who had the birthday party). We bought a lot of stuff which we'd needed; it felt very very productive. Great feeling to check all your goals off for the day. I finally bought a coin purse, and we're splitting a bag of caramels to take with us to the high-altitude (that was a recommendation of our trainer and my family).
Overall, good feeling. Looking forward to my 2nd half of training, and the 2 years of service.
Picarones are Amazing- Oct 14th
I know I wrote a blog yesterday, but I have to post this recipe, mostly so I have a very certain place I put the recipe for my future use, but also so any readers who care to try to make this can share the amazingness.
Ingredientes:
-1 kilo of harina sin preparer (I kilo of flour)
-1 kilo de camote amarillo (1 kilo of sweet potato, although it's unclear if its sweet potato or yam)
-1 kilo de zapallo (1 kilo of this ginormous squash, which one of the language instructors told me we have in smaller size, so I think it might be just squash, try google)
-Levadura (yeast, they have this fresh stuff, which she used a baggie full, she said with the "normal" dry stuff it would be 3 teaspoons, according to the bag's instructions for a kilo of flour)
-Chancaca y hoja de high (This makes a sweet sauce for pouring over the finished picarones, which is similar to maple syrup. Different places have slightly different tastes, some are very vanilla extracty, some are more fruity)
Preparacion:
*Okay so Picarones are basically donut-shaped ----(the food you buy on a plate thats batter all layered with sugar and such at the fair, blanking on the name), and I tell you this so you have a general idea of what you're trying to create. Making a bread type dough that you then fry as rings.*
-Sancocha el zapallo con 2 tazas de agua (Boil the squash in 2 cups of water)
-Sancocha el camote (Boil the sweet potato, they leave the peels on and whole)
-Aplasta el zapallo sin agua (Smash up the squash, without water ie drained)
-Pela el camote y aplastalo (Peel the sweet potato, should be easy since its boiled, and then mash it up)
-Mezcla el zapallo y el camote (Mix the mashed squash and sweet potato into one beautiful goo)
-En media taza de agua tibia dissolve la levadura (In half a cup of warm water, dissolve the yeast)
-An`ade a la mezcla poco a poco la harina y la levadura y realiza movimientos envolventes (Slowly add the flour and yeast water to the squash/sweet potato mix, folding it in like bread dough)
-Tapa la masa y dejala reposer hasta que eleve (Knead the dough and work it for a good 20 minutes until it starts to raise and is only tacky. Really smack the dough with a cupped hand until you're exhausted, then do it some more. After that, you cover it with a cloth and put it somewhere warm to raise for about an hour and a half, you want it to grow substantially, about double or more in size.
The last step is to put about an inch of oil in a pan and wait till hot. Then you dip your hands in a bowl of water with salt and take a small ball of dough, about golf ball sized. Poke a hole in the center with your thumbs and pull it into a ring. Drop it in the oil and hopefully with your hands had enough salt water on them the dough drops easily without losing the ring shape. Takes a bit of practice. Wait a few seconds and then use the back of a wooden spoon or similar implement to spin the ring in a circle and move it around in the oil. You should be able to flip it relatively quickly by which I mean within 10 or 20 seconds, when its golden brown, and then pull it out of the oil after the other side is also golden brown. Add a bit of that sauce, or just dip it in it, and enjoy immensely.
*NOTE: This recipe size made enough to give about 30 people a couple Picarones. You should probably half the size and could then expect perhaps 30 picarones which if you enjoy them like I do, would only satisfy perhaps 7 people. I only got to have two today because I was enjoying helping our language instructor make them so much, I definitely wanted more.
Ingredientes:
-1 kilo of harina sin preparer (I kilo of flour)
-1 kilo de camote amarillo (1 kilo of sweet potato, although it's unclear if its sweet potato or yam)
-1 kilo de zapallo (1 kilo of this ginormous squash, which one of the language instructors told me we have in smaller size, so I think it might be just squash, try google)
-Levadura (yeast, they have this fresh stuff, which she used a baggie full, she said with the "normal" dry stuff it would be 3 teaspoons, according to the bag's instructions for a kilo of flour)
-Chancaca y hoja de high (This makes a sweet sauce for pouring over the finished picarones, which is similar to maple syrup. Different places have slightly different tastes, some are very vanilla extracty, some are more fruity)
Preparacion:
*Okay so Picarones are basically donut-shaped ----(the food you buy on a plate thats batter all layered with sugar and such at the fair, blanking on the name), and I tell you this so you have a general idea of what you're trying to create. Making a bread type dough that you then fry as rings.*
-Sancocha el zapallo con 2 tazas de agua (Boil the squash in 2 cups of water)
-Sancocha el camote (Boil the sweet potato, they leave the peels on and whole)
-Aplasta el zapallo sin agua (Smash up the squash, without water ie drained)
-Pela el camote y aplastalo (Peel the sweet potato, should be easy since its boiled, and then mash it up)
-Mezcla el zapallo y el camote (Mix the mashed squash and sweet potato into one beautiful goo)
-En media taza de agua tibia dissolve la levadura (In half a cup of warm water, dissolve the yeast)
-An`ade a la mezcla poco a poco la harina y la levadura y realiza movimientos envolventes (Slowly add the flour and yeast water to the squash/sweet potato mix, folding it in like bread dough)
-Tapa la masa y dejala reposer hasta que eleve (Knead the dough and work it for a good 20 minutes until it starts to raise and is only tacky. Really smack the dough with a cupped hand until you're exhausted, then do it some more. After that, you cover it with a cloth and put it somewhere warm to raise for about an hour and a half, you want it to grow substantially, about double or more in size.
The last step is to put about an inch of oil in a pan and wait till hot. Then you dip your hands in a bowl of water with salt and take a small ball of dough, about golf ball sized. Poke a hole in the center with your thumbs and pull it into a ring. Drop it in the oil and hopefully with your hands had enough salt water on them the dough drops easily without losing the ring shape. Takes a bit of practice. Wait a few seconds and then use the back of a wooden spoon or similar implement to spin the ring in a circle and move it around in the oil. You should be able to flip it relatively quickly by which I mean within 10 or 20 seconds, when its golden brown, and then pull it out of the oil after the other side is also golden brown. Add a bit of that sauce, or just dip it in it, and enjoy immensely.
*NOTE: This recipe size made enough to give about 30 people a couple Picarones. You should probably half the size and could then expect perhaps 30 picarones which if you enjoy them like I do, would only satisfy perhaps 7 people. I only got to have two today because I was enjoying helping our language instructor make them so much, I definitely wanted more.
One Month Into Peru- Oct. 13th
Week four is practically done. Tomorrow some people have language interviews, but we're just learning how to make Picarones and having a little tech training about cultural adaptation. I'm very very excited about the picarones. I'm also very excited to be done with today. I feel like I've tackled a major hurdle. I can't believe how much weight I feel lifted off my shoulders, figuratively. Literally, my shoulders are actually very sore and tired. We did Power Yoga today and man the downward dog constantly was killing me. But yea, back to the figurative weight. The language interview is DONE. I don't have to think about it anymore. I think I did alright, and actually the last two days have felt really positive to me with regards to my Spanish uses. Ben and I went around the town square and interviewed people about the services here. I felt like I could talk and understand a lot of the answers we got. Especially the two ladies who worked at the Municipality (which is like the State government building), I felt I could really understand them. That is such a great feeling. Today, I felt like I was able to say what I thought of saying in my interview, so I didn't feel helpless or at a lost. I didn't use past tense, only present, and she didn't ask me to, so I probably won't advance too far in placement, but that's fine. I also taught a group of 2nd graders today with Andrew and Grant. We were told there would be 28 of them, but there ended up only being twenty or so hyperactive seven and eight year olds. Which, you can believe me, was more than enough to handle. It started out great, but quickly they became too excited and loud shouting out answers. It wasn't a failure, so I'm happy. I was able to form sentences there too, and even though I repeated them a lot, it still felt good.
With this week done and over with, I can actually be excited and look forward to next week. Monday we have our 2nd chats with our APCD, who is in charge of our placement. Diego is my APCD, and he's renowned for giving very direct hints about where he's placing people, very early in training. So I MIGHT have a good idea of where I'm going to live for 2 years by Monday night. That's exciting and a bit nerve-wrecking too. After that, we have field-based training wednesday to friday. We get to ride horseback and camp during that, which I'm very very much looking forward to. Next week should be pretty incredible. Hopefully, I'll get time to call home this weekend too. Got two more letters from my mom today, one postmarked the 6th of September, and the other the 5th of October. Not quite sure how I received both today, but I did.
Anyways, I think I've shared what's on my mind and reflected enough for one night. Time to relax a bit. I think I'll go to sleep early tonight, feeling pretty drained of energy.
With this week done and over with, I can actually be excited and look forward to next week. Monday we have our 2nd chats with our APCD, who is in charge of our placement. Diego is my APCD, and he's renowned for giving very direct hints about where he's placing people, very early in training. So I MIGHT have a good idea of where I'm going to live for 2 years by Monday night. That's exciting and a bit nerve-wrecking too. After that, we have field-based training wednesday to friday. We get to ride horseback and camp during that, which I'm very very much looking forward to. Next week should be pretty incredible. Hopefully, I'll get time to call home this weekend too. Got two more letters from my mom today, one postmarked the 6th of September, and the other the 5th of October. Not quite sure how I received both today, but I did.
Anyways, I think I've shared what's on my mind and reflected enough for one night. Time to relax a bit. I think I'll go to sleep early tonight, feeling pretty drained of energy.
Futbol Update- Oct 9th
Well I know I wrote yesterday, but today was pretty interesting for soccer fans. Since my mom has been writing me about the Davis games, I thought she and others might appreciate a little update about futbol here. Every Sunday there are organized games with 2 referees and lots of fanfare. Its a golden opportunity for the savvy to sell a ton of beer; an opportunity which is taken advantage of. I watched the end of one game, and two others. The last was definitely the crowd drawer. The first two games were Santa Eulalia teams against other neighborhoods teams. But the last game was two teams from right here in this very small town. Best friend was playing best friend. It was tense from the get go. Actually, I really like both of the two friends that I'm speaking of too so it was hard to pick a side. One of them was Danny, who is the dad of Loami who had the birthday party with my first Hora Loca experience. And the best friend is Aldimar (I think thats how it is spelled) who is even cooler, though I'm not quite sure who he is family-wise. I ended up rooting for Aldimar because Kail and Shannon who live in Loami's household were rooting for him. It was a tough game for them; the first half they were getting stomped. 3 goals and lots of yellow cards for Aldi's team. They were pissed and I guess one of the guys said something very bad because he got a red card. The language was going over my head at that point but it was very very tense in the crowd. Nobody was happy. They went into halftime screaming at the ref, and yelling with each other. But then the 2nd half was a whole new game, they were determined and focused. They had better ball control and movement and actually scored. They had a ton of close shots that the other goalee very deftly kept blocking. Another goal went in for Aldi, and things were getting heated again. It was getting incredibly interesting because it was fast approaching the end and it looked possible that they might tie it up. And then, they did. There was a foul called, and Aldi's team had it on the right sideline just outside where the goal box would be if there were one. The stands were on the opposite side of the field, so I'm not entirely clear on what happened, but it seemed as if the guy kicked it directly into the goal on the ground, through a few defenders and the goalee. He may or may not have passed it off to someone else to take the kick, like I said, I'm not entirely clear on it. Regardless, this enraged their goalee. Everyone was screaming, and it looked like game was resuming, because they put the ball in the center and started it off. But somehow the guy I presume scored the goal ended up at our sideline, on his knee, and the goalee walked over to him yelling and shoved him, while the guy was getting up from his knees. This totally incited the already tense crowd and people immediately got up and grabbed players to pull people away. I was definitely not sure who was getting up to help and who wasn't. Like I said at the beginning, interesting day. They managed to pull people away and I guess called the game there because of tempers. Not sure how much time was left on the ref's watch, but that was the end. Tied, and everyone pissed. It was rather impressive though, because the whole second half Aldi's team played with 5 players instead of their 6 (its a small concrete field) and thats when they scored their three goals to tie it up from behind. Very dramatic. Both Danny and Aldi were both very good forwards, but Danny's goalee was definitely the better of the two. Soccer is so fun when you know the people or have some attachment to watching the game, and definitely better live, although the probability of a fight hovering at 50/50 is a little nerve-wracking.
Guess thats it. So ends the weekend. Tomorrow is the beginning of the fourth week here, with language interviews Thursday. Yay...........
Guess thats it. So ends the weekend. Tomorrow is the beginning of the fourth week here, with language interviews Thursday. Yay...........
Miraflores and the end of Week 3- Oct 8th
It's difficult for me to believe 3 weeks in Peru have passed already. This third week has been pretty busy and hectic. We got a bit of hands on training with composting; we presented a puppet show to family and fellow trainees, and conducted interviews in the community using FREESTOP (each letter stands for a question about a person's life). The really awesome day though was today. We went on our Urban Excursion to Lima today.
First, we saw the Plaza de Armas of Lima which is literally the town square. It has the Palazzio del Goberierno which is the White House of Peru. The buildings there are 400 years old, and have amazing cedar balconies and gold gilt. We checked out a few churches that were incredible, and also the Museum of Gastronomy. That place was pretty cool because it had so many pictures of different types of food in Peru, but it made us all super ready for lunch. After that, we went to Parque de JF Kennedy, but it was getting near lunch time and we had to ask questions of random people which was really starting to drag. We persevered and our language instructor took our class plus Meredith, another trainee, to a Market, Marcado de Serquillo (I think) for lunch. We were all very excited for this part of the day, so far it hadn't gone so well. The Market has a festival or something there every weekend that has food from every region of Peru, it was really really cool. We all (including Claudia's husband and son) bought different dishes, and shared. I got to try dishes like Causa, which is basically two "buns" of mashed potato-ish potatoes, with a center filling. The one we tried which by far was the most delicious sounding, was with lobster and some other Mariscos. It was very yummy; I will definitely be eating it at some point. Also, we tried Leche de Tigre, which is a cup of ceviche with chicarrones on top. There was a fried rice with a ton of different seafood in it that I will be having next time for sure. Also, I had fried plantains which I absolutely adore (they're sweet, very common in Costa Rica too). After filling our bellies and generally feeling much much better, we wandered around the Market. It was very clean and looked great. Grant (one of the trainees in my language class) was given a "fish eye" to try at one of the fruit stalls. Apparently, that is a tiny pepper, one of the hottest, and Grant found that out the hard way. He caused a large scene when he spat it out and was pacing frantically (the scene was only because we were all dying laughing and everyone around joined in). After that, Mama Claudia took us to the beach and we got to see the Park of Love. They have a pretty awesome statue that I hope to post a picture of soon. We also saw paragliders, I think they were. Where they have a chute deployed and run off the edge of a cliff with the parachute lifting them into the air? Anyways, we watched this for awhile, and I definitely had a bittersweet moment because one of the trainers had a German Shorthair. I miss my dog so much. Big hugs and tears for Riley back home. I hope my family is paying attention to her (hint hint nudge nudge). After that, we went down to the ocean and played in the surf and rocks for awhile. Sarabeth managed to get herself soaked after twenty minutes of standing on rocks waiting for a big wave, finally giving up, and then getting swamped at the last moment. Another absolutely hilarious moment of the day. Once we got back to Santa Eulalia, the Pachamancha festival was in full swing. There was easily over a hundred people in the town center listening to the live music and drinking themselves silly. My family was there, and I had a good time chatting with some of the Peruanos around my age. It was good practice for me, and after that I spent time with my family (both the ones living with me and the ones next door with Jake). We figured out that both Milenka and Kevin, who I've called my cousins (aged 12 and 6) are actually my tia and tio. Which makes Jake's dad and mom my grandparents, and the two women I've thought as my aunts, are really my "Tia abuelas" which literally means aunt grandma. It was pretty hilarious. My "abuelo", Jake's host dad, was getting pretty drunk, but it was really adorable, because he kept telling us how he respects the two of us and we're totally family and we're great. He also kept telling me I was his "niete linda", his prettiest granddaughter. Poor Hilary and Miley haha. After hanging around for a little longer, it quickly became time to leave. People were getting very very drunk, and the music was too loud. Also, early in the day on the bus ride, my left contact was hurting my eye so all day I had to wear my glasses, and my eye is now red and hurting. I really hope its better tomorrow. We'll see. Apparently, I'm going to Jake's and we're going to all share and chip in for Pisco Sours or vodka. They kept switching between which it was going to be. We'll see how they feel tomorrow haha. With that thought, I need to get to bed myself. I made myself a "tortilla" omelette and tea, and have been watching Mission Impossible in Spanish, so its now almost 11am. Definitely too late for me here when I wake up with the sunrise and roosters.
First, we saw the Plaza de Armas of Lima which is literally the town square. It has the Palazzio del Goberierno which is the White House of Peru. The buildings there are 400 years old, and have amazing cedar balconies and gold gilt. We checked out a few churches that were incredible, and also the Museum of Gastronomy. That place was pretty cool because it had so many pictures of different types of food in Peru, but it made us all super ready for lunch. After that, we went to Parque de JF Kennedy, but it was getting near lunch time and we had to ask questions of random people which was really starting to drag. We persevered and our language instructor took our class plus Meredith, another trainee, to a Market, Marcado de Serquillo (I think) for lunch. We were all very excited for this part of the day, so far it hadn't gone so well. The Market has a festival or something there every weekend that has food from every region of Peru, it was really really cool. We all (including Claudia's husband and son) bought different dishes, and shared. I got to try dishes like Causa, which is basically two "buns" of mashed potato-ish potatoes, with a center filling. The one we tried which by far was the most delicious sounding, was with lobster and some other Mariscos. It was very yummy; I will definitely be eating it at some point. Also, we tried Leche de Tigre, which is a cup of ceviche with chicarrones on top. There was a fried rice with a ton of different seafood in it that I will be having next time for sure. Also, I had fried plantains which I absolutely adore (they're sweet, very common in Costa Rica too). After filling our bellies and generally feeling much much better, we wandered around the Market. It was very clean and looked great. Grant (one of the trainees in my language class) was given a "fish eye" to try at one of the fruit stalls. Apparently, that is a tiny pepper, one of the hottest, and Grant found that out the hard way. He caused a large scene when he spat it out and was pacing frantically (the scene was only because we were all dying laughing and everyone around joined in). After that, Mama Claudia took us to the beach and we got to see the Park of Love. They have a pretty awesome statue that I hope to post a picture of soon. We also saw paragliders, I think they were. Where they have a chute deployed and run off the edge of a cliff with the parachute lifting them into the air? Anyways, we watched this for awhile, and I definitely had a bittersweet moment because one of the trainers had a German Shorthair. I miss my dog so much. Big hugs and tears for Riley back home. I hope my family is paying attention to her (hint hint nudge nudge). After that, we went down to the ocean and played in the surf and rocks for awhile. Sarabeth managed to get herself soaked after twenty minutes of standing on rocks waiting for a big wave, finally giving up, and then getting swamped at the last moment. Another absolutely hilarious moment of the day. Once we got back to Santa Eulalia, the Pachamancha festival was in full swing. There was easily over a hundred people in the town center listening to the live music and drinking themselves silly. My family was there, and I had a good time chatting with some of the Peruanos around my age. It was good practice for me, and after that I spent time with my family (both the ones living with me and the ones next door with Jake). We figured out that both Milenka and Kevin, who I've called my cousins (aged 12 and 6) are actually my tia and tio. Which makes Jake's dad and mom my grandparents, and the two women I've thought as my aunts, are really my "Tia abuelas" which literally means aunt grandma. It was pretty hilarious. My "abuelo", Jake's host dad, was getting pretty drunk, but it was really adorable, because he kept telling us how he respects the two of us and we're totally family and we're great. He also kept telling me I was his "niete linda", his prettiest granddaughter. Poor Hilary and Miley haha. After hanging around for a little longer, it quickly became time to leave. People were getting very very drunk, and the music was too loud. Also, early in the day on the bus ride, my left contact was hurting my eye so all day I had to wear my glasses, and my eye is now red and hurting. I really hope its better tomorrow. We'll see. Apparently, I'm going to Jake's and we're going to all share and chip in for Pisco Sours or vodka. They kept switching between which it was going to be. We'll see how they feel tomorrow haha. With that thought, I need to get to bed myself. I made myself a "tortilla" omelette and tea, and have been watching Mission Impossible in Spanish, so its now almost 11am. Definitely too late for me here when I wake up with the sunrise and roosters.
Too Much??- Oct 3rd
I started wondering today if I even should post all the little summaries of my day that I've written. I mean does anyone really want to read any of it other than me in 5 years? Perhaps, I should just summarize them all into a once weekly thing or something. I don't know. Next time I'm at on the internet, I guess I'll ask on Facebook.
Well, other than that, today went a lot better than yesterday night. I'm still feeling a little overwhelmed with stuff. However, we had 4 current Volunteers come and give a presentation about teaching english at your site in the afternoon today. They have reinitiated the Teach English committee and gave a very excellent presentation. I wish more of the training was as smooth and clearly laid out. As a group, the other MAC volunteers (stands for Manejo Ambiental Comunitario, our program name) and I hope to make a few recommendations about the information we'd like to receive in our trainings. However, I don't know how necessary it is because it's only week three, and I know for a fact our trainers are doing their best to prepare us. But different people learn better from different methods, I guess.
We received our bank cards today. I officially have a bank account in Peru. Wonder if I can make it an offshore account for the future? Haha, okay just kidding, but I do find it really cool to be able to say I have a bank account in an entirely different country. I guess it makes me feel more worldly.
I really really need to study Spanish as hard as I can, but I'm not sure what more I can do to absorb it faster. I knew this would be my most stressful factor, and time will make it go away, but I want to minimize that agony. I hate not understanding whats going on, especially when around other trainees that do because they're better qualified than me. It's tough. For example, there was a community meeting in the Municipalidad today about the Environment, and about 8 of us trainees went to observe and learn about formal meetings. In that respect, I gained insight, but so much of the presentation I couldn't understand. It may have been easier if I could have easily heard them (there was a lot of echo and outside competing noise) but even still, I know I wouldn't have been able to follow all of it. Just need to daily rededicate myself to learning as much Spanish as possible.
Well, other than that, today went a lot better than yesterday night. I'm still feeling a little overwhelmed with stuff. However, we had 4 current Volunteers come and give a presentation about teaching english at your site in the afternoon today. They have reinitiated the Teach English committee and gave a very excellent presentation. I wish more of the training was as smooth and clearly laid out. As a group, the other MAC volunteers (stands for Manejo Ambiental Comunitario, our program name) and I hope to make a few recommendations about the information we'd like to receive in our trainings. However, I don't know how necessary it is because it's only week three, and I know for a fact our trainers are doing their best to prepare us. But different people learn better from different methods, I guess.
We received our bank cards today. I officially have a bank account in Peru. Wonder if I can make it an offshore account for the future? Haha, okay just kidding, but I do find it really cool to be able to say I have a bank account in an entirely different country. I guess it makes me feel more worldly.
I really really need to study Spanish as hard as I can, but I'm not sure what more I can do to absorb it faster. I knew this would be my most stressful factor, and time will make it go away, but I want to minimize that agony. I hate not understanding whats going on, especially when around other trainees that do because they're better qualified than me. It's tough. For example, there was a community meeting in the Municipalidad today about the Environment, and about 8 of us trainees went to observe and learn about formal meetings. In that respect, I gained insight, but so much of the presentation I couldn't understand. It may have been easier if I could have easily heard them (there was a lot of echo and outside competing noise) but even still, I know I wouldn't have been able to follow all of it. Just need to daily rededicate myself to learning as much Spanish as possible.
Trip to Lima, Personal Opinions- Oct 1st
Well, I made it back safely. No harm, no foul. It wasn't that amazing, honestly. The lecture from the professor at the University was nice; he showed us native trees and told us about them. But the four hours we'd spent on Friday were effectively covered by him Saturday, so it felt a bit inefficient. Overall, I think this week was a little off with training, and my own motivation to study Spanish. I've been talking with my family everyday, but after Training I wouldn't be formally studying on my own. I need to improve that, which was why I started studying out of the 501 Spanish Verbs dictionary Friday night. Today, I'll be doing a batch of either pizza crust or bread, haven't quite decided yet. I want to practice before making the actual pizza. That would be because the ingredients are incredibly expensive given my "salary". They give us enough to get to training, and to buy a meal or two for ourselves. Buying the yeast, one small ball of mozzarella, small bag of cheap tomato sauce, a pineapple, and mushrooms was half of my money for this week. Thankfully, I had only spent a sole or two out of my first weeks money so I had it to use. I do have dollars I could use but I'm trying really hard not to. I'm not making money here, so I shouldn't be spending more than they give me in allowance. You might think it weird that I bought mushrooms and a pineapple, but my family said they wanted a Hawaiian style, and I'm going to make them provide the ham. For the mushrooms, I'm not sure what I'll put on that pizza, but I don't know if I'll have enough tomato sauce. Maybe they'll provide another ingredient for that one and more tomato sauce. We'll see. Either way, I'm excited to make some bread. You guys should email me some bread recipes or ideas. Like making a cinnamon roll or something. Has to be pretty simple though, no fancy ingredients. If it has rice, potatoes, and chicken it will go over very well with my family, but I'd perhaps like a novel version or combination. We also have a lot of carrots, green beans, Greek olives, eggs, strange fruits, and avocado.
Things on my mind:
1. I need to study Spanish vocab. or grammar more, or review my notes.
2. I'd like to solicit ideas about a self-defense class (from any readers of this, if you exist). My fellow Peace Corps people have settled on Belly dancing Monday, Yoga Tuesday, and Power Yoga Thursday. A couple people have expressed interest in a self-defense class, but I'm not sure I want to try.
3. How do I get these blogs onto the Internet safely?
Well, that's all for now, I suppose.
Things on my mind:
1. I need to study Spanish vocab. or grammar more, or review my notes.
2. I'd like to solicit ideas about a self-defense class (from any readers of this, if you exist). My fellow Peace Corps people have settled on Belly dancing Monday, Yoga Tuesday, and Power Yoga Thursday. A couple people have expressed interest in a self-defense class, but I'm not sure I want to try.
3. How do I get these blogs onto the Internet safely?
Well, that's all for now, I suppose.
Worst Evening Yet- Oct. 2nd
I guess I had it coming, with everything going smoothly until now. Nothing had really gone wrong, it was simply time. The day started out fine, I slept in a bit, took a good shower, and even made an experimental batch of bread. The bread didn't turn out amazing, but it was edible and my host mom seemed very excited and enthusiastic about it. The others weren't as enthusiastic, but she loved it. The kitchen oven doesn't get hot enough, or have a temperature gauge in anyway, so the bread cooked but didn't brown. She said next time we'll use hers in their house below. I'm not sure if I've explained that there is a main house with a patio. The patio has our clotheslines and the entrances to the 3 bedrooms. The bathroom is right in front of my bedroom, and opposite us are stairs down to the river. We're at the top of a little hill. Jossy and Guillermo have two or three small cabin things down the stairs that are separate from the main house. They live in one of them, and I guess have a better oven down there.
Around 3pm we went over to watch Guillermo's team play soccer. They won, and the juvenile team after them won too, so it was a good day for Santa Eulalia soccer. However, during the juv game, Jossy moved to sit next to me and commented to me about the annoying biting insects (which they call mosquitos, because moscos are bigger insects and any word with the -ito is just the smaller version. Our "mosquitoes" are actually called zancudo). So I looked at her while she talked because its generally easier for me to comprehend Spanish while giving my full attention. With what must be the worst luck ever, at that exact moment one of the players blasted a kick right into my mouth and right side of my jaw. There was definite ear ringing. Since then I've developed a massive headache and my left jaw up near my temple hurts nonstop. I worry that my jaw dislocated briefly, either that or I just have massively damaged muscle attachments. Also, wondering if I'll bruise on the side of my face. It hurts to touch still, so I might. But I could completely shake that off. That's soccer; that's sports in general. The real icing on the cake was going to the internet cafe, paying 1 of my last few soles of the week, just to find out that Google in its amazing wisdom, has decided to freeze my gmail and blog. The internet is all in Spanish of course, and when I tried to get it unfrozen, it said that I had to give a phone number for them to call with an automated phone number. Great right? Considering the fact that I don't have a phone. I spent the whole hour trying to get the stupid thing to unlock, and was completely and utterly unable to. It's so frustrating being helpless. Not only that, but I can't retrieve my notes on the iPad where I've typed these blogs to the computer through iTunes syncing. Even after deciding I could wait and ask my prima to let me send it to her cell and she could translate for me, I couldn't help breaking down. It was an utter waste of time. I wish I had just brought my laptop. It probably doesn't help that I've been sick for more than a week now either.
Rationally, I know this is just one of those hard times, the bottom part of the rollercoaster, and I know things are far from bad. That isn't stopping the tears of frustration though. Hopefully, I feel better soon; I don't like this feeling.
Around 3pm we went over to watch Guillermo's team play soccer. They won, and the juvenile team after them won too, so it was a good day for Santa Eulalia soccer. However, during the juv game, Jossy moved to sit next to me and commented to me about the annoying biting insects (which they call mosquitos, because moscos are bigger insects and any word with the -ito is just the smaller version. Our "mosquitoes" are actually called zancudo). So I looked at her while she talked because its generally easier for me to comprehend Spanish while giving my full attention. With what must be the worst luck ever, at that exact moment one of the players blasted a kick right into my mouth and right side of my jaw. There was definite ear ringing. Since then I've developed a massive headache and my left jaw up near my temple hurts nonstop. I worry that my jaw dislocated briefly, either that or I just have massively damaged muscle attachments. Also, wondering if I'll bruise on the side of my face. It hurts to touch still, so I might. But I could completely shake that off. That's soccer; that's sports in general. The real icing on the cake was going to the internet cafe, paying 1 of my last few soles of the week, just to find out that Google in its amazing wisdom, has decided to freeze my gmail and blog. The internet is all in Spanish of course, and when I tried to get it unfrozen, it said that I had to give a phone number for them to call with an automated phone number. Great right? Considering the fact that I don't have a phone. I spent the whole hour trying to get the stupid thing to unlock, and was completely and utterly unable to. It's so frustrating being helpless. Not only that, but I can't retrieve my notes on the iPad where I've typed these blogs to the computer through iTunes syncing. Even after deciding I could wait and ask my prima to let me send it to her cell and she could translate for me, I couldn't help breaking down. It was an utter waste of time. I wish I had just brought my laptop. It probably doesn't help that I've been sick for more than a week now either.
Rationally, I know this is just one of those hard times, the bottom part of the rollercoaster, and I know things are far from bad. That isn't stopping the tears of frustration though. Hopefully, I feel better soon; I don't like this feeling.
Something a Little Different
I'm simply going to list here interesting sayings for the verbs I'm studying tonight out of the 501 Verbs book.
-Bien esta lo que bien acaba- All's well that ends well.
-Poco a poco se andas lejos- Little by little, one goes far (all the host families tell us poco a poco when we're trying to talk to them and struggling)
-Cada dia se aprende algo nuevo- You learn something new everyday.
-Comer para vivir y no vivir para comer- Eat to live and not live to eat.
-Comprarte un calvo y peinalo!- Buy a bald man and comb his hair! (Used as "beat it!" apparently haha)
-Cuentaselo a tu abuela!- Tell it to your grandmother! ("I don't believe you!")
-Debo estudiar esta noche pero estoy cansado y no me siento bien- I should study tonight, but I'm tired and don't feel well (I've said this to myself a lot in the last week)
-Gato que duerme no caza ratones- A sleeping cat doesn't catch mice ("You snooze, you lose")
-En boca cerrada no entran moscas- Flies don't enter a closed mouth ("Silence is golden")
-El ejercicio hace al maestro- Practice makes perfect (Clearly it should really be "El ejercicio perfecto hace al maestro" though as Sa bu nim would say)
That's more than enough for tonight I think. I know I can switch the keyboard to international and be able to use the accents and such, but I don't feel like messing with it and figuring out the format just yet. That'll be a thing to learn a different day, learned enough today.
-Bien esta lo que bien acaba- All's well that ends well.
-Poco a poco se andas lejos- Little by little, one goes far (all the host families tell us poco a poco when we're trying to talk to them and struggling)
-Cada dia se aprende algo nuevo- You learn something new everyday.
-Comer para vivir y no vivir para comer- Eat to live and not live to eat.
-Comprarte un calvo y peinalo!- Buy a bald man and comb his hair! (Used as "beat it!" apparently haha)
-Cuentaselo a tu abuela!- Tell it to your grandmother! ("I don't believe you!")
-Debo estudiar esta noche pero estoy cansado y no me siento bien- I should study tonight, but I'm tired and don't feel well (I've said this to myself a lot in the last week)
-Gato que duerme no caza ratones- A sleeping cat doesn't catch mice ("You snooze, you lose")
-En boca cerrada no entran moscas- Flies don't enter a closed mouth ("Silence is golden")
-El ejercicio hace al maestro- Practice makes perfect (Clearly it should really be "El ejercicio perfecto hace al maestro" though as Sa bu nim would say)
That's more than enough for tonight I think. I know I can switch the keyboard to international and be able to use the accents and such, but I don't feel like messing with it and figuring out the format just yet. That'll be a thing to learn a different day, learned enough today.
Learning New Things
Today we went to the local Agraria which is a tree growing center. They taught us how they prepare seedlings for Molle, a native tree that they grow. It was pretty awesome. We prepared the soil by mixing dirt, sand, and compost, then spread it out and laid out baby seeds. They told us tons of secrets and tips and then we got to move to the next stage. Bagging the seedlings and even planting. It was incredibly helpful, since we all will definitely be doing that at our communities. Before that, our language group went to Chosica as a class excursion. It was interesting because I got to see the mercado. There were cuy for sale; you could buy a male and a female (guinea pig) for 20 soles! It was so incredibly cheap I couldn't believe it. That is approximately $7 for a breeding pair! And they really looked nice, not as if they were sickly (glossy coats, active, alert, eyes clear, etc). Also, I bought a Mickey Mouse shampoo because I'd forgotten that Kail and Shannon's family had found one for themselves, for their two year old who had the birthday party. So I'm going to give it to Hilary, my 5 year old sister, for a parting gift. I know she will love it; disney characters are well-liked here with the children especially Mickey and Minnie.
Now to talk about what I got out my iPad to write about in the first place. I got to watch how my Mamita makes omelets tonight. She calls them tortillas, and she makes them with espinaje (spinach). She chops up the spinach and adds about a tablespoon full of salt. Then she cracks the eggs (in this case two) into the bowl and adds about half a cup of flour. Then she adds maybe 2/3 cups of milk from a can. With these amounts, she made three omelets, mine being full plate sized. It was really really good and I will definitely be making tortillas de este manera en el futuro.
Tomorrow, we're going to a school to observe an elementary school class, which in two weeks more we have to give an environmental presentation to (in groups and in spanish of course). Also, we have to be developing our "mini" community diagnostic of our community right now, in our "spare" time. I'm finding it hard to find this time. I'm spending most of my time with my family or in classes to improve my spanish. Learning important things like they call mayonesa and ketchup mixed together "salsa golf". LOL. And yes, I do know I'm mixing Spanish and English. I'm only using easy/obvious words for you guys to understand, but I figure it still helps me.
I understand my family tree a little better now so I'm going to take this opportunity to explain it a little better. My mama anfitriona is Jossy, and is married to Guillermo. They are in their late twenties, and have Hilary (5 years old) and Miley (1 year old) as daughters. They live with Doris, my mamita who makes 98% of the food, who is Jossy's aunt. However, Doris raised Jossy, for reasons I haven't quite figured out. Another of Jossy's aunts lives with us, Lorena, and she has a daughter who is 12, Milenka. Milenka looks as if she is well into her teens, and is way more mature than I would expect of a 12 year old. Lorena also has a son, Kevin who is 6. He is a little crazy and hard for me to understand. Living next door is Jossy's sister and one of her uncles (Feliz who is awesome). Next door to Feliz is the Discoteca which is owned by another uncle. It's a strange situation that I'm not sure how evolved, but its working well.
Guess that's enough for tonight. Hasta la proxima vez.
Now to talk about what I got out my iPad to write about in the first place. I got to watch how my Mamita makes omelets tonight. She calls them tortillas, and she makes them with espinaje (spinach). She chops up the spinach and adds about a tablespoon full of salt. Then she cracks the eggs (in this case two) into the bowl and adds about half a cup of flour. Then she adds maybe 2/3 cups of milk from a can. With these amounts, she made three omelets, mine being full plate sized. It was really really good and I will definitely be making tortillas de este manera en el futuro.
Tomorrow, we're going to a school to observe an elementary school class, which in two weeks more we have to give an environmental presentation to (in groups and in spanish of course). Also, we have to be developing our "mini" community diagnostic of our community right now, in our "spare" time. I'm finding it hard to find this time. I'm spending most of my time with my family or in classes to improve my spanish. Learning important things like they call mayonesa and ketchup mixed together "salsa golf". LOL. And yes, I do know I'm mixing Spanish and English. I'm only using easy/obvious words for you guys to understand, but I figure it still helps me.
I understand my family tree a little better now so I'm going to take this opportunity to explain it a little better. My mama anfitriona is Jossy, and is married to Guillermo. They are in their late twenties, and have Hilary (5 years old) and Miley (1 year old) as daughters. They live with Doris, my mamita who makes 98% of the food, who is Jossy's aunt. However, Doris raised Jossy, for reasons I haven't quite figured out. Another of Jossy's aunts lives with us, Lorena, and she has a daughter who is 12, Milenka. Milenka looks as if she is well into her teens, and is way more mature than I would expect of a 12 year old. Lorena also has a son, Kevin who is 6. He is a little crazy and hard for me to understand. Living next door is Jossy's sister and one of her uncles (Feliz who is awesome). Next door to Feliz is the Discoteca which is owned by another uncle. It's a strange situation that I'm not sure how evolved, but its working well.
Guess that's enough for tonight. Hasta la proxima vez.
Finally Got to Cook!
I didn't realize how much I missed being in the kitchen to get my own food until today. It's not even that I wanted to make my own food, but being constantly at the mercy or control of someone else to give me food has been rough without me realizing how much it bothered me. I don't even serve myself here, they ask me if I want to eat at the set time (which always ends up being yes, because I say I don't mind, whenever they want) and they bring out my food and drink without me having a say. Its been rather frustrating when I've been given things I really wouldn't have served myself, also, every time its more than I would have served myself. This is something that I'll live with here, but hopefully when I get stationed (assuming I survive training, fingers crossed) I'll be able to set things to be a little more comfortable for me. I'd really rather not get fat for the sake of excess politeness. Anyway, now that I have that mini-rant out, I can talk about what I got to learn how to cook today!
We had language class at Andrew's place, but his mom still hasn't had her baby. Class was very long today and everyone was burned out by lunch time. Sarabeth, Andrew, y yo went upstairs to eat lunch and saw that Sarabeth's mom and Andrew's mom were making their lunch. I immediately went over to watch and ask questions. Eventually, Andrew's mom, Carmen, asked me to wash my hands and let me do it. "It" was papas rellenas which literally means filled potatoes. It was pureed potatoes in little balls that you would flour with and make into a pancake. Then you spooned the filling into it, sealed it, adding more flour as you go to keep it from sticking to you and then coat it in egg. After that you drop it in about a half inch of hot oil in a pan and ladle oil over it. I got to do every step except man the pan (I didn't ask). It was incredibly fun, and undescribably exciting. That most likely sounds really weird to others, but I can only explain it with my first paragraph above. I really was just excited to learn an interesting dish they ate and get to do it MYSELF. I guess this is one of the American filters that they've talked about in training, that Americans really like to be self-reliant (and by Americans I mean of the United States, even though I fully acknowledge that every person in all three American continents are Americans. I simple don't have a better word for USA-ians). The filling in the potatoes had carrots, onions, olives (greek with pits), egg and I wasn't quite sure what else. Carmen said she'd get me a list.
After lunch, we sat around a lot and talked about the project we were supposed to work on for the afternoon. We didn't need to go to the Center today because the work was in the community. We were to gather at least 3 people together and practice using the tools they taught us yesterday. These tools are supposed to help you get to know your community and help you at the beginning to get out there and get integrated. The two we had to do were the community map and "FODA". The community map is relatively simple, you ask the group to draw a map of the community and then talk about what things they highlighted because they found them important. You can add further steps to find out from them things they want in the future, where they go, where are places people gather, etc. FODA is in regards to a specific project idea, like a recycling center. You ask them what are some strengths in the community, opportunities outside, weaknesses from the community, and threats from outside that can't be controlled. I guess this is a thing in English too, called SWOT. Anyway, the idea is that we are the facilitators, they do all the talking and deciding and writing. It really worked out for us that they did that which was exciting. They got into it and discussed amongst themselves etc. It was neat. Also, they were all 30 minutes late and only 4 people showed up out of the 6 or 7 we'd asked not 30 minutes prior to the set time. They all said they'd go but that's not how it worked out. Even this was a helpful experience, because it's what my host community will be like most likely.
After that, I had Spanish tutoring with Grant. Karina is really nice and it wasn't bad at all. She actually speaks English so when we're confused or don't know a word to finish a sentence, she can actually provide it for us. That very much increased the flow of conversation and made things more enjoyable for me. After that, we had our first yoga session, thanks to Laura a fellow Environment trainee who has taught yoga before. It was really wonderful, and I feel so relaxed and content now. I think that's why I don't feel like doing things on my mind for this blog. I'm content, not worrying about anything at the moment. Except maybe setting up times to exercise regularly, like playing more voley like we did last night, and yoga, and hikes. It was a very productive and interesting day.
Excited to see what's next.
We had language class at Andrew's place, but his mom still hasn't had her baby. Class was very long today and everyone was burned out by lunch time. Sarabeth, Andrew, y yo went upstairs to eat lunch and saw that Sarabeth's mom and Andrew's mom were making their lunch. I immediately went over to watch and ask questions. Eventually, Andrew's mom, Carmen, asked me to wash my hands and let me do it. "It" was papas rellenas which literally means filled potatoes. It was pureed potatoes in little balls that you would flour with and make into a pancake. Then you spooned the filling into it, sealed it, adding more flour as you go to keep it from sticking to you and then coat it in egg. After that you drop it in about a half inch of hot oil in a pan and ladle oil over it. I got to do every step except man the pan (I didn't ask). It was incredibly fun, and undescribably exciting. That most likely sounds really weird to others, but I can only explain it with my first paragraph above. I really was just excited to learn an interesting dish they ate and get to do it MYSELF. I guess this is one of the American filters that they've talked about in training, that Americans really like to be self-reliant (and by Americans I mean of the United States, even though I fully acknowledge that every person in all three American continents are Americans. I simple don't have a better word for USA-ians). The filling in the potatoes had carrots, onions, olives (greek with pits), egg and I wasn't quite sure what else. Carmen said she'd get me a list.
After lunch, we sat around a lot and talked about the project we were supposed to work on for the afternoon. We didn't need to go to the Center today because the work was in the community. We were to gather at least 3 people together and practice using the tools they taught us yesterday. These tools are supposed to help you get to know your community and help you at the beginning to get out there and get integrated. The two we had to do were the community map and "FODA". The community map is relatively simple, you ask the group to draw a map of the community and then talk about what things they highlighted because they found them important. You can add further steps to find out from them things they want in the future, where they go, where are places people gather, etc. FODA is in regards to a specific project idea, like a recycling center. You ask them what are some strengths in the community, opportunities outside, weaknesses from the community, and threats from outside that can't be controlled. I guess this is a thing in English too, called SWOT. Anyway, the idea is that we are the facilitators, they do all the talking and deciding and writing. It really worked out for us that they did that which was exciting. They got into it and discussed amongst themselves etc. It was neat. Also, they were all 30 minutes late and only 4 people showed up out of the 6 or 7 we'd asked not 30 minutes prior to the set time. They all said they'd go but that's not how it worked out. Even this was a helpful experience, because it's what my host community will be like most likely.
After that, I had Spanish tutoring with Grant. Karina is really nice and it wasn't bad at all. She actually speaks English so when we're confused or don't know a word to finish a sentence, she can actually provide it for us. That very much increased the flow of conversation and made things more enjoyable for me. After that, we had our first yoga session, thanks to Laura a fellow Environment trainee who has taught yoga before. It was really wonderful, and I feel so relaxed and content now. I think that's why I don't feel like doing things on my mind for this blog. I'm content, not worrying about anything at the moment. Except maybe setting up times to exercise regularly, like playing more voley like we did last night, and yoga, and hikes. It was a very productive and interesting day.
Excited to see what's next.
Hora Loca x3
Okay, so it's getting a little ridiculous. Three horas locas in two days is just too much. I mean I'm not saying they weren't all fun because they were. Everyone here gets so in to it; its a complete excuse to act ridiculously risque and just dance with abandon. The hora loca that was tonight was for Deivi (which I originally thought was David said with a Spanish accent, but it's not, saw it written on the Feliz Cumpleanos banner tonight). They invited me while we watched the futbol games. Every Sunday they have several matches that are actually referred and I think there is a money prize. Don't know if that is every time, but at least today there was. My papa anfitriono played as keeper in the last match, but unfortunately they lost from the two goals he let in. Their team scored one, but they had a lot of great shots on goal. Other than that the day was relatively chill. Tried to go swimming at another Trainee's private pool (Deedee's) pero she told us her family is pretty strict about large groups of visitors. So used my piscina behind my house for the first time. Its super shallow and a bit scummy but it was nice to hang out by the pool. Would have been much more awesome with a cocktail or margarita. At the party tonight they handed out a "cocktail" (word they used to explain to me) that had Pisco in it. So while I don't know quite what was in it, I've now tried Pisco and liked it a lot. Tomorrow begins week two of training, and I'm looking forward to it. I'm not looking forward to the "private" (or not so private) tutoring that takes me out of the last 30 minutes of the day everyday this week though. I have to miss stuff and I hate that.
Things I'm looking forward to:
1. On Saturday we have a fieldtrip to Lima to learn from a agro-professor about planting trees and such. After the learning, we get set free in Lima to make our own way back. It's part of training and also gives us time to shop and sight-see a bit.
2. Thursday afternoon, I think there's another fieldtrip about tree planting too. Hands-on experience before they drop us in the field.
3. Spending time on the internet and getting to talk to family and friends. So far I haven't really had any communication from the States. The card from my mom on Tuesday was really sweet but it wasn't really a letter.
The dancing the last few nights and the volleyball were good exercise but I need to find something I can do regularly. Also, need to insist with more force and less niceness that I want smaller portions. I fear two years without a scale or set form of exercise
Things I'm looking forward to:
1. On Saturday we have a fieldtrip to Lima to learn from a agro-professor about planting trees and such. After the learning, we get set free in Lima to make our own way back. It's part of training and also gives us time to shop and sight-see a bit.
2. Thursday afternoon, I think there's another fieldtrip about tree planting too. Hands-on experience before they drop us in the field.
3. Spending time on the internet and getting to talk to family and friends. So far I haven't really had any communication from the States. The card from my mom on Tuesday was really sweet but it wasn't really a letter.
The dancing the last few nights and the volleyball were good exercise but I need to find something I can do regularly. Also, need to insist with more force and less niceness that I want smaller portions. I fear two years without a scale or set form of exercise
I Didn't Pack for a Funeral Service
This is a long one, sorry.
I Didn't Pack for a Funeral
So far there are clothes I wish I had with me from home, but I think this takes the cake. I wish I had a black jacket or blouse. I have black dress slacks but only colored blouse or other nice shirts. The reason this matters is because today is the one month remembrance for my abuela anfitriona (host grandma). She passed away exactly a month ago, and as Catholics apparently they have a one month service and fiesta in her honor. It took me a few times of them explaining it to me this week for me to get it. In Spanish they kept saying "cumple" and so I thought they were talking about a BIRTHday celebration. Wrong day though. I'm going to do my best to be respectful and do the right things, a little nervous about not understanding and being rude inadvertently. Cross your fingers it goes well for me. There's a big gathering at our place after the service and so my family has been cooking and cleaning all day. I helped prepare cebolas (onions) and this fruit that I need to ask them to spell the name for me. You have to meticulously remove the cascara dura (hard outside) and keep the inside. It was reminscent of a pepper, being mostly hollow inside, but with a somewhat tougher skin that you have to carefully peel away. It was a LOT of work for not very much product. I'm very curious to see how it turns out, to see if it's worth it. I really like my Tio, Feliz. He speaks slowly and explains things different ways when its clear I don't understand it. It seems easier to talk to/understand him. He lives next door to us and is hosting Jacob, another Trainee. He also will tell me different verb tenses and make me/let me repeat them till I get it instead of just moving on with the conversation. It's nice. Everyone is nice of course, but some people are better at helping me understand them with my limited grasp. I'm still sick from yesterday, the runny nosy is really bothering me, and the throat feels a little worse now than before. Ugh. Hopefully, with more water and tea before bed it will go away soon. Like tonight. Tomorrow I have plans to go on a hike to an altar up the nearest mountain, swim, and watch them play futbol at the field. Going to be fun, I hope.
(Time passes)
Well, I feel much better than I did earlier yesterday. Still have a slightly runny nose, and my throat hurts. But wow last night was awesome. I don't think I can convey here the scope of last night. I mean the day started normally enough with me helping them cook and hanging out with family. Then the church service which was as uncomfortable for me as I figured it would be. It wasn't bad; just not my cup of tea. After that, we all walked back to my home and sat in the living room in a big circle and ate snacks, drinks and then dinner. There wasn't music or anything. I guess people were reminscing but I couldn't really tell. I talked with some family from Lima out on the patio, then with some of Lorena's coworkers from Chosica. When Jossy headed to Loami's birthday party at the house of Kail and Shannon I was happy to escape. That was when the awesomeness began. They had lots of music going, and I mean party/dance music some of it popular American songs. They were passing around things like Cheetos puffs (they were a knock off I'm pretty sure) jello, chicha morada, and other sweet things. There were balloons everywhere and all the kids had Mickey Mouse ears on. There was easily 30 adults and a solid 10 kids below the age of 10. Shortly after we arrived, the clown started. I will never think of clowns the same way again. This was a young guy in the typical big shoes, baggy shorts with suspenders and a tight referee shirt. He had a baseball hat on sideways (logo'ed something like Volcom). His makeup was pretty low key as was his red nose. He came out let the family introduce themselves and such and then began some music competitions. He made two of our Trainees have a lip-sinc competition. They got up and were dancing and lip-sinc-ing like crazy. Shortly after, the hora loca began. The true craziness. We all had to get up and the piyaso put on music and they starting handing out party gear. Things like crazy hats and ties, facemasks, whistles. We all had long balloons to wave around. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention the piyaso had a whistle that he used constantly and loudly, to the rhythm of the music to give us a beat. As we all started dancing, he was spraying foam everywhere, and a loud party popper went off covering us in glitter and such. Soon everyone was whistling and dancing. Let me describe the dancing by example. The clown grabbed the dad of the birthday girl (who is two if I haven't mentioned, so the dad is a very young guy not much older than me) and started grinding with him. The dad was actually really good, leaning to the right as they faced each other and got low. The hip action from both was impressive. Anyway, that is the type of dancing that the clown was encouraging. After a solid 30 minutes of this dancing in very tight quarters, the pinata was emptied into the crowd. I hope I've conveyed some of the craziness of that party, but maybe one quote will help more. Kail said, "It was the most fun I've had at a party without alcohol ever". And it was a two-year olds birthday party. Pretty awesome. A bit before 9pm, everyone was too hot so we were standing around outside. Since the party was breaking up, we decided to head to Buenos Aires to the party for Tina's abuelo. About nine of us as a group with party gear still on did the 30 minute walk over to the nieghborhood of Buenos Aires. Their house was really nice, a two story thing with the party being upstairs on a patio that was very nice. They had a live band of 5 saxophones, a violin, a harpist and one other I believe. Everyone danced the traditional circular dance while they played. You hold hands and alternate lifting your hands while stepping and twisting your body to match your hand movements. It was interesting and pretty fun because there ended up being a solid 15 or more Peace Corps volunteers at their party with about 7 or so Peruanos. They taught us their dance and made us integrate. Soon they passed out more party gear and it was time for round two of Hora Loca. They were two clowns at this one along with a woman in a tight purple suit with a tutu. These guys were worse than the first clown, since the birthday boy was turning 70. There were more than a couple lapdances, and grinding sessions. All in the spirit of dancing, laughing and having fun of course. There was beer and sangria at this party, although I don't think anyone got really drunk. I only tried a single small glass of sangria, and I was surprised how much I liked it. But I was too dehydrated to have more. Lots of people took pictures but it was during the dancing sessions. I'm sure all of them look pretty bad because it was live action. Anyway, suffice it to say it was a very very fun night. And I only spent 1 sole, on the collectivo ride back (actually I owe that to others since I hadn't had my money on me due to going to the funeral earlier in the evening).
I Didn't Pack for a Funeral
So far there are clothes I wish I had with me from home, but I think this takes the cake. I wish I had a black jacket or blouse. I have black dress slacks but only colored blouse or other nice shirts. The reason this matters is because today is the one month remembrance for my abuela anfitriona (host grandma). She passed away exactly a month ago, and as Catholics apparently they have a one month service and fiesta in her honor. It took me a few times of them explaining it to me this week for me to get it. In Spanish they kept saying "cumple" and so I thought they were talking about a BIRTHday celebration. Wrong day though. I'm going to do my best to be respectful and do the right things, a little nervous about not understanding and being rude inadvertently. Cross your fingers it goes well for me. There's a big gathering at our place after the service and so my family has been cooking and cleaning all day. I helped prepare cebolas (onions) and this fruit that I need to ask them to spell the name for me. You have to meticulously remove the cascara dura (hard outside) and keep the inside. It was reminscent of a pepper, being mostly hollow inside, but with a somewhat tougher skin that you have to carefully peel away. It was a LOT of work for not very much product. I'm very curious to see how it turns out, to see if it's worth it. I really like my Tio, Feliz. He speaks slowly and explains things different ways when its clear I don't understand it. It seems easier to talk to/understand him. He lives next door to us and is hosting Jacob, another Trainee. He also will tell me different verb tenses and make me/let me repeat them till I get it instead of just moving on with the conversation. It's nice. Everyone is nice of course, but some people are better at helping me understand them with my limited grasp. I'm still sick from yesterday, the runny nosy is really bothering me, and the throat feels a little worse now than before. Ugh. Hopefully, with more water and tea before bed it will go away soon. Like tonight. Tomorrow I have plans to go on a hike to an altar up the nearest mountain, swim, and watch them play futbol at the field. Going to be fun, I hope.
(Time passes)
Well, I feel much better than I did earlier yesterday. Still have a slightly runny nose, and my throat hurts. But wow last night was awesome. I don't think I can convey here the scope of last night. I mean the day started normally enough with me helping them cook and hanging out with family. Then the church service which was as uncomfortable for me as I figured it would be. It wasn't bad; just not my cup of tea. After that, we all walked back to my home and sat in the living room in a big circle and ate snacks, drinks and then dinner. There wasn't music or anything. I guess people were reminscing but I couldn't really tell. I talked with some family from Lima out on the patio, then with some of Lorena's coworkers from Chosica. When Jossy headed to Loami's birthday party at the house of Kail and Shannon I was happy to escape. That was when the awesomeness began. They had lots of music going, and I mean party/dance music some of it popular American songs. They were passing around things like Cheetos puffs (they were a knock off I'm pretty sure) jello, chicha morada, and other sweet things. There were balloons everywhere and all the kids had Mickey Mouse ears on. There was easily 30 adults and a solid 10 kids below the age of 10. Shortly after we arrived, the clown started. I will never think of clowns the same way again. This was a young guy in the typical big shoes, baggy shorts with suspenders and a tight referee shirt. He had a baseball hat on sideways (logo'ed something like Volcom). His makeup was pretty low key as was his red nose. He came out let the family introduce themselves and such and then began some music competitions. He made two of our Trainees have a lip-sinc competition. They got up and were dancing and lip-sinc-ing like crazy. Shortly after, the hora loca began. The true craziness. We all had to get up and the piyaso put on music and they starting handing out party gear. Things like crazy hats and ties, facemasks, whistles. We all had long balloons to wave around. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention the piyaso had a whistle that he used constantly and loudly, to the rhythm of the music to give us a beat. As we all started dancing, he was spraying foam everywhere, and a loud party popper went off covering us in glitter and such. Soon everyone was whistling and dancing. Let me describe the dancing by example. The clown grabbed the dad of the birthday girl (who is two if I haven't mentioned, so the dad is a very young guy not much older than me) and started grinding with him. The dad was actually really good, leaning to the right as they faced each other and got low. The hip action from both was impressive. Anyway, that is the type of dancing that the clown was encouraging. After a solid 30 minutes of this dancing in very tight quarters, the pinata was emptied into the crowd. I hope I've conveyed some of the craziness of that party, but maybe one quote will help more. Kail said, "It was the most fun I've had at a party without alcohol ever". And it was a two-year olds birthday party. Pretty awesome. A bit before 9pm, everyone was too hot so we were standing around outside. Since the party was breaking up, we decided to head to Buenos Aires to the party for Tina's abuelo. About nine of us as a group with party gear still on did the 30 minute walk over to the nieghborhood of Buenos Aires. Their house was really nice, a two story thing with the party being upstairs on a patio that was very nice. They had a live band of 5 saxophones, a violin, a harpist and one other I believe. Everyone danced the traditional circular dance while they played. You hold hands and alternate lifting your hands while stepping and twisting your body to match your hand movements. It was interesting and pretty fun because there ended up being a solid 15 or more Peace Corps volunteers at their party with about 7 or so Peruanos. They taught us their dance and made us integrate. Soon they passed out more party gear and it was time for round two of Hora Loca. They were two clowns at this one along with a woman in a tight purple suit with a tutu. These guys were worse than the first clown, since the birthday boy was turning 70. There were more than a couple lapdances, and grinding sessions. All in the spirit of dancing, laughing and having fun of course. There was beer and sangria at this party, although I don't think anyone got really drunk. I only tried a single small glass of sangria, and I was surprised how much I liked it. But I was too dehydrated to have more. Lots of people took pictures but it was during the dancing sessions. I'm sure all of them look pretty bad because it was live action. Anyway, suffice it to say it was a very very fun night. And I only spent 1 sole, on the collectivo ride back (actually I owe that to others since I hadn't had my money on me due to going to the funeral earlier in the evening).
I Survived Week 1!
There is a betting pool being started; the winner will be the last Peru 18er who doesn't poop their pants. Apparently, it will happen to people. Everyone will have "la bicicelta" at some point. So far I've already experienced a change in my normal cycle, but I haven't had the complete runs that would make someone have an accident in their pants should they try to fart. While this may make some uncomfortable to talk about, it is my reality at the moment and all of us cannot help but laugh at it. Call it a coping mechanism or whatever you want, but we've seen several hilarious videos about Volunteers who have pooped themselves, in public, on busses, anywhere you can imagine. I woke up this morning with a runny right nostril (just the right one mind you) and the back of my throat hurt a bit. Its been that way all day. Yesterday, I spent the day with Tina, who had the same symptoms, so I can only hope I fight it off quickly. I suspect it will soon be among the other Trainees, although, hopefully not.
I've integrated into my host family, I think, although I still struggle to understand them and form sentences. I wish my language class was more helpful. I don't feel as if it is doing much for me. We're going over super basic things that I've learned before. And while they're helpful to remember and be able to recall quickly; I feel bored. Next week, we get "individual tutoring" towards the end of the day. However, my tutoring is with another Trainee, and I have to be pulled out of 30 minutes of other training in order to do it. So it really sucks. The other Trainee has a very strange mix of language skills. In certain things he really struggles, but then at others he'll pull out full sentences including a past tense. I don't know how useful the personal tutoring will be when it has to be split with him. Also, next week I have the interview with the director of the Environment program, Diego. I'm a little nervous about it, although I don't think I need to be.
I really want to cook something here now. But we have to go buy stuff for that. I wonder how things will cook here, in their stove, at this elevation. Guess I'll just have to experiment and hope they give me some slack.
Things on my mind right now:
1. Will my Spanish language class really prepare me as much as I need it to? What should I do to better prepare myself?
2. What things should I try to prepare for them to share? I've eaten pretty much rice, chicken, potatoes and carrots everyday. Generally in the same preparation. Some variety would be most most welcome.
3. I need to get international stamps and calling cards and figure out how to send them and call home. I think I should set up a method to get calls from home so its free here, need to get that set up though.
Guess that's it for now; going to study more spanish now.
I've integrated into my host family, I think, although I still struggle to understand them and form sentences. I wish my language class was more helpful. I don't feel as if it is doing much for me. We're going over super basic things that I've learned before. And while they're helpful to remember and be able to recall quickly; I feel bored. Next week, we get "individual tutoring" towards the end of the day. However, my tutoring is with another Trainee, and I have to be pulled out of 30 minutes of other training in order to do it. So it really sucks. The other Trainee has a very strange mix of language skills. In certain things he really struggles, but then at others he'll pull out full sentences including a past tense. I don't know how useful the personal tutoring will be when it has to be split with him. Also, next week I have the interview with the director of the Environment program, Diego. I'm a little nervous about it, although I don't think I need to be.
I really want to cook something here now. But we have to go buy stuff for that. I wonder how things will cook here, in their stove, at this elevation. Guess I'll just have to experiment and hope they give me some slack.
Things on my mind right now:
1. Will my Spanish language class really prepare me as much as I need it to? What should I do to better prepare myself?
2. What things should I try to prepare for them to share? I've eaten pretty much rice, chicken, potatoes and carrots everyday. Generally in the same preparation. Some variety would be most most welcome.
3. I need to get international stamps and calling cards and figure out how to send them and call home. I think I should set up a method to get calls from home so its free here, need to get that set up though.
Guess that's it for now; going to study more spanish now.
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