Early In-Service Training

So this month has actually been pretty busy. I had a handful of official invitations to tallers and reuniones (aka workshops and meetings). Most of them were incredibly boring, but I was happy that I was invited. I talked with a lot of officials from my regional government during the month, and I feel like I developed a couple of really good connections. Other than that, this Friday I had my third Recycling Buy. This time I was able to advertise in the high school, going class to class with the science teacher to remind all the students earlier in the week. Then Friday mismo, I went around to each class myself and reminded them again. I also walked all around Vicco in the morning reminding people in the stores and Municipalidad. I did the entire Buy myself, which is a little sucky...BUT I managed to buy 400 kilos of recycling. A big chunk of that was used notebooks. The bag of white paper is only half full, but impossible to move. I'm pretty psyched that I doubled my total in one buy, and I feel that it confirms my hopes. Now that the high school is back in session; I'll have more people selling to me.

On another note, the closest Volunteer to me, and the only other one in my department of Pasco (aka state) is leaving to return to the US with his girlfriend who is a fellow Volunteer. This is more than a bit sad; he's an awesome guy and Volunteer. Now I feel like I'm even more hanging off the end of our little chain of Volunteers. The upside of it is that he sold me at a discount a lot of his stuff. I picked up a tank of gas to use with my new stove/oven, a pressure cooker, wooden boards to build shelves for all my cooking stuff, a potted plant, some school supplies, etc. I spent Thursday rearranging my room and building that shelving unit. After I sat down, exhausted from the long day, I had an incredible surge of sheer glee at having my own organized cooking area. I made myself tortellinis, and macaroni and cheese. I can't wait to use the oven; I didn't have time before heading here to Lambayeque for my training event. I shall be making a big batch of walnut chocolate chip cookies, courtesy of my mom for the chocolate chips and walnuts.

As a last note for this update, I had a very strange moment on the way to this training event. We had to bring a Peruvian with us to help spread the knowledge sustainably. So I was sitting on the bus chatting with her about potential work ideas when we pulled through Junin, in Spanish obviously. There, two other Volunteers from my group boarded the bus to head down with us to Lima. I went down to the lower level and chatted with them in English for awhile about our travel plans for a bus north once we reached Lima. Then a Peruvian down there told me, in Spanish, that I should just sit down there with them. I responded, back in Spanish after a 10 minute chat in English, that I had a seat upstairs, and then went back to my socio (counterpart). As I sat back in my seat, I had the moment. I realized I had just communicated in two languages easily. "I'm bilingual." I don't know why that thought awed me so much, but its not how I identified myself before. It's weird changing your own self-perception.

Anyways, with that parting personal mental struggle, I shall finish this. Here's hoping to an awesome week of training and vacation for Easter week (Semana Santa)!