Today marks the day we arrived from the United States to Peru. We had a quick Peru initiation (meeting the doctors, the staff, our bosses, learning some Spanish) and then moved into our host families where we lived for 11 weeks during training. Then, we were sent to the far ends of Peru...from Arequipa to Piura. I as you know have been in Piura.
One year later, I have to say Peace Corps is everything and nothing like I expected...a cliche response. I realized that Peace Corps would be frustrating, difficult, rewarding, exciting, challenging and that was part of the draw. I didn't realize Spanish would be this difficult, projects would be so hard to start, and that people would want to party so hard with me (I don't really party too much here, but there's always the pressure in site).
I am a replacement volunteer and am supposed to work in the library which the previous volunteer started. This would be great if there was community cooperation. I open the library, check out books, clean and let the kids use the computer (S/.1.00/hour). But I'd like to expand the library, hire a librarian and bring more people/readers into the library. It's a challenge because the current space is so small and there isn't really another good space to relocate too.
I've also been working with my Youth Small Business which is a lot of fun, though the bubble oven (I don't know how to explain it, it looks like a flying saucer) keeps breaking and I'm not sure for how much longer it will last.
I'm going to be starting two new projects come this week when I'm resettled from vacations and have more than two days to spend in the 'Rumbe. I bought seeds to start a garden and we are going to start drafting a grant proposal to fund a computer lab in the Secondary School.
So a year in Peru and I can for sure say it's worth it. I'm really happy as a PC Volunteer and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else!
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Back to reality
Machu Picchu:
Ruins/Sunset in Ollanta
I'm ready to get back to site. Before leaving for vacation we had a lot of plans for projects which I'm hoping to work on in the coming months. Today, I am going to buy seeds (Squash, Spinach, Tomato, Peppers, Carrots, etc.) so that I can plant a garden in my community with the help of the students from the secondaria (basically high school). I've also discussed the possibility of creating a computer lab in the secundaria so that there is a space to learn computer skills which I'm hoping to teach. In order to accomplish this we will need to install electricity in the space which we are hoping to use, buy voltage stabilizers (or maybe just a surge protector), buy desks, hopefully a few more computers and a projector would be ideal for teaching the students how to use the Internet. So, that's what I'm going to be working on in site.
I left site to travel. Mary and Kristin came to Peru and we got the opportunity to visit Machu Picchu. It was beautiful and the ruins are pretty amazing. We had an awesome tour guide and learned a lot. We also ate at some really nice restaurants and got some great food. But we are in Peru, so things don't ever really go as planned...
We had finished with Machu Picchu and were staying in the nearby town of Aguas Calientes. In order to return to Cusco, you have to take a train; there are no roads out of Aguas Calientes. While we were down there, the local campesinos (farmers) were holding a protest because the government wanted to raise the price of water (or something that had to deal with water, the government and money...I didn't entirely understand what the cab drivers were telling me). Their chosen method of protest was the close down the roads and train the following day. I'm not sure how they were able to shut down the trains, but we were forced to change our ticket to the day before the strike and not stay in Aguas Calientes...We had a train ride which was supposed to leave at 9 PM and arrive in Ollantaytambo (or just Ollanta), at around 11 PM. Well, the bus rolls into the bus station at about 11:30 or 12 and we don't get into our new town and hostal until 2 AM. We had to double pay for hostals that night since we weren't able to be refunded for our hostal in Aguas Calientes.
Anyway, Once in Ollanta, we weren't able to get to Cusco because of the protests. The locals had felled trees and laid them across the road in piles roughly 3 feet high. More common, they placed large stones across the road so that cars were not able to pass. Between Ollanta and Cusco, there were so many rocks that it felt like a video game or something just to avoid them all. Sometimes, avoiding rocks required a little bit of offroading on the part of the cab driving.
And in total, we wasted the better part of a day dealing with the transportation issues and decided that it may not get better and may be worse or more dangerous later and decided to fly back to Lima and cut our vacation short by 3-4 days (we didn't end up going to Lake Titicaca/Puno). It was a bummer and I'm hoping at some point I'll be able to go.
Anyway, I'm back in Piura now and we had two full days of meetings for a Youth Leadership Camp which we are holding next weekend for male youth. It is a huge planning challenge and takes a lot of time, but the camp should be amazing. We have 22 participating volunteers, most bringing 2 or 3 youth. We should have 39 youth participating. It will be a lot of fun. I've been in town working on some of the money stuff for the camp and am leaving tomorrow.
I'll probably be in on Saturday (just for the day) to take care of some last minute things in Piura. So, my life has been pretty busy lately and there's a lot of work to be done. I'm also training for a half-marathon which I'm running on July 5th! It should be cool...
Ruins/Sunset in Ollanta
I'm ready to get back to site. Before leaving for vacation we had a lot of plans for projects which I'm hoping to work on in the coming months. Today, I am going to buy seeds (Squash, Spinach, Tomato, Peppers, Carrots, etc.) so that I can plant a garden in my community with the help of the students from the secondaria (basically high school). I've also discussed the possibility of creating a computer lab in the secundaria so that there is a space to learn computer skills which I'm hoping to teach. In order to accomplish this we will need to install electricity in the space which we are hoping to use, buy voltage stabilizers (or maybe just a surge protector), buy desks, hopefully a few more computers and a projector would be ideal for teaching the students how to use the Internet. So, that's what I'm going to be working on in site.
I left site to travel. Mary and Kristin came to Peru and we got the opportunity to visit Machu Picchu. It was beautiful and the ruins are pretty amazing. We had an awesome tour guide and learned a lot. We also ate at some really nice restaurants and got some great food. But we are in Peru, so things don't ever really go as planned...
We had finished with Machu Picchu and were staying in the nearby town of Aguas Calientes. In order to return to Cusco, you have to take a train; there are no roads out of Aguas Calientes. While we were down there, the local campesinos (farmers) were holding a protest because the government wanted to raise the price of water (or something that had to deal with water, the government and money...I didn't entirely understand what the cab drivers were telling me). Their chosen method of protest was the close down the roads and train the following day. I'm not sure how they were able to shut down the trains, but we were forced to change our ticket to the day before the strike and not stay in Aguas Calientes...We had a train ride which was supposed to leave at 9 PM and arrive in Ollantaytambo (or just Ollanta), at around 11 PM. Well, the bus rolls into the bus station at about 11:30 or 12 and we don't get into our new town and hostal until 2 AM. We had to double pay for hostals that night since we weren't able to be refunded for our hostal in Aguas Calientes.
Anyway, Once in Ollanta, we weren't able to get to Cusco because of the protests. The locals had felled trees and laid them across the road in piles roughly 3 feet high. More common, they placed large stones across the road so that cars were not able to pass. Between Ollanta and Cusco, there were so many rocks that it felt like a video game or something just to avoid them all. Sometimes, avoiding rocks required a little bit of offroading on the part of the cab driving.
And in total, we wasted the better part of a day dealing with the transportation issues and decided that it may not get better and may be worse or more dangerous later and decided to fly back to Lima and cut our vacation short by 3-4 days (we didn't end up going to Lake Titicaca/Puno). It was a bummer and I'm hoping at some point I'll be able to go.
Anyway, I'm back in Piura now and we had two full days of meetings for a Youth Leadership Camp which we are holding next weekend for male youth. It is a huge planning challenge and takes a lot of time, but the camp should be amazing. We have 22 participating volunteers, most bringing 2 or 3 youth. We should have 39 youth participating. It will be a lot of fun. I've been in town working on some of the money stuff for the camp and am leaving tomorrow.
I'll probably be in on Saturday (just for the day) to take care of some last minute things in Piura. So, my life has been pretty busy lately and there's a lot of work to be done. I'm also training for a half-marathon which I'm running on July 5th! It should be cool...
Monday, May 4, 2009
Rainy season stopped...then started again.
So, I haven’t really been doing too much lately. I’ve still been working with the library in the secondary school. We have all the books organized by category but no materials (stickers, notebooks, preferably a computer) to mark and catalog the books.
I also still work in the community library. I don’t know if I wrote this last time, but I began lending the books to the kids to take to their house. This actually ended up being a lot more work than I had though and I’m still creating a good system for it. The main problem is that I am not in Pambarumbe everyday that there should be library hours. And when I’m not here, usually it remains closed……I also recently talked to someone who said she can connect me with someone from the Municipality of Piura to help locate books and other resources.
Me being idealistic about the library: Find new space which is larger, have 4-5 computers and eventually have Internet installed in the library. This would serve several purposes. It would bring more income to the library which would allow for a salary for a librarian or two and it would also bring the Internet which could be used as a resource tool since it currently is not available in my town, this would be a good long term project and it’s kind of my goal….I’ve begun researching sources of funding and have been in talks with people in my town about relocating to a larger space….we’ll see.
I recently talked to the obstetric nurse in my town and we discussed starting an Escuela de Padres (Parent school?). I’m not entirely sure what all this encompasses, since I’ve only just become interested in it. I think we would teach families about nutrition and other healthy lifestyle practices. I’ve only talked with the nurse once about this. My goal for May is to have a more concrete work plan and hopefully start with the project by the end of the month.
The nurse and I also talked about doing healthy lifestyle workshops with the kids in the secondary school…Again…a goal for May.
I’m also going to teach Chess in the secondary school. We painted Chess/Checker boards on one of the tables and we made checkers so the kids play those during recess. Making Chess pieces is a little bit more complicated…so I’m hoping to buy them while I’m in Piura these next few days.
I don’t know what else. Spanish is coming along. Depending on how articulate the person is, I understand almost everything. But then one of the guys in my town who I hang out with a lot talks too fast and uses almost exclusively slang and I still barely understand him.
Yeah, Macchu Picchu with Mary and Kristin in just over two weeks! I’m excited.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Worst Vacation EVER. Though it was adventurous and actually kind of fun.
Playing frisbee on the beach:
Sunset in Huanchaco:
The extent we saw of Amazonas:
So, it all started in the madrugada (the hours between 12 midnight and about 6 AM). I was supposed to hitch a ride down the mountain with Misael. He has a truck and rides down to Morropon every morning at 4:00 AM. So, heeding Isoe’s (my host dad) advice, I decide to wait at 3:30.
I wait for an hour and once 4:30 rolls by and Misael doesn’t drive by I decide to jump on the next transportation that comes by. The next transportation is a camioneta (a transportation truck in Peru with a large truck bed where they store things like 50 kilo bags of flour, cases of beer and a sleeping person…or maybe just the one I took). I jump on board to ride just an hour an a half. It was the most violent, painful descent from my site ever. I’m still healing some blister wounds and I think my butt was black and blue.
After a whip-lash inducing hour and a half I am let out in the plaza of Morropon and fortunately jump immediately onto a bus headed to Piura. I get to Piura no problem, meet up and talk to Marian for about 10 minutes and get some Malaria pills from the post office. Then, I hustle over to Trasnportes Chiclayo to board a bus to Chiclayo and meet Micah, Alisha, Elizabeth and Tim who are my travel buddies heading to Chachapoyas, Amazonas. The bus is pretty fancy and S./2 less than Linea (which means like $.60) which is awesome.
I get off the bus in Chiclayo and meet up at the mall (Chiclayo has a mall with Starbucks and this place that is basically Target). We get some awesome Goat for lunch and then the fun really starts. We head to the mall again (we left to get lunch) and claim Starbucks as our own. We throw our numerous packs in the corner and take all of the comfortable chairs. We remain largely immobile for the better part of several hours because our bus to Chachapoyas doesn’t leave until 7:30 PM.
We head to Movil Tours and this is where the fun begins. We board the bus and begin a 10 hour bus trip into the jungle. In order to accomplish the drive, we drive North through Lambayeque, touch just the corner of Piura, cross the department of Cajamarca and head into Amazonas and begin making our way south. Most of the road is paved. But that’s not as exciting. To make things exciting, the non-paved road decides it doesn’t want to be a road anymore and returns itself to the mountain. AKA, mudslide. Therefore, 8 hours on the bus and we have come to a complete standstill.
The bus stops at 3:30 in the morning and doesn’t move. We figure something further ahead has happened, but it will clear up in an hour or so. We heard the road was bad or something. We sit on the bus (sleep on the bus) for another 3 hours. At 6:30, having not moving an inch and sitting in the bus which has become a sweatbox we decided to investigate. We learn about the road up ahead washing out. It’s holiday in Peru, so the road wasn’t going to be repaired for another 4 days.
We weigh our options. Shall we hike across the collapsed road or shall we turn around and hike to Bagua (a large city we had passed about an hour before coming to a stop). Both of these options suck. The first one means that we get to experience our vacation more or less, but will have trouble getting back to where we need to be. Some of us had things we had to get back to, so couldn’t afford to get trapped in Amazonas. The other option sucks because 1 hour by car means roughly 8 hours walking. We suck it up and decide to walk.
We grab all our stuff off the bus and begin an 8 hour hike to Bagua. Luckily, when we reach the end of the traffic (which is apporoximately 3 minutes after we began hiking) there is a bus turned around and selling tickets to Chiclayo and Trujillo. Elizabeth makes the executive decision that we are going to Trujillo and we climb on board. (This is around 8:30 AM)
We decide that since we are a group of five, we should sit in the last seat since it sits five across. And this is awesome…….Anyway, the bus starts driving and 9 hours later we arrive in Chiclayo. This is cool, but we’re going to Trujillo so have another 4 hours before we arrive at our destination. In total, we were traveling by bus for 25 hours. It was kind of the worst day of my life.
In Trujillo, we get off of the bus and take a cab to Huanchaco which is my favorite Peruvian Beach town that I’ve seen so far. We all go to bed. The next day, we wake up sore from the intense sitting we had done the day before. We play Frisbee on the beach, eat the best pancakes ever and lots of vegetarian food.
We go into Trujillo at night to watch a Peruvian Eric Clapton cover band….hilarious. I don’t remember what day, but we also went to a microbrewery.
Highlights of the trip:
-A lengthy discussion of burial practices including how we would like to be buried (or disposed of) including Viking burial and enormous pyramids.
-Bonfire on the beach (did you know there are tropical vanilla marshmallows, what does that even mean?)
-I open a beer bottle (actually 2) with a log.
-Frisbee
-Friends
Anyway, afterwards I came back to Piura and then to Chulucanas because I had a meeting called PEPFAR. Which means President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief. The director of the school in my town and the obstetrician came. It was cool. I learned a lot and will hopefully start some workshops in my site with the help of the other two. Now, I’m just sweating profusely though Piura has cooled off a lot (meaning its probably only in the 90s….). Heading back to the ‘Rumbe tomorrow where I’m going to be working further with baking.
And libraries.
The end.
Sunset in Huanchaco:
The extent we saw of Amazonas:
So, it all started in the madrugada (the hours between 12 midnight and about 6 AM). I was supposed to hitch a ride down the mountain with Misael. He has a truck and rides down to Morropon every morning at 4:00 AM. So, heeding Isoe’s (my host dad) advice, I decide to wait at 3:30.
I wait for an hour and once 4:30 rolls by and Misael doesn’t drive by I decide to jump on the next transportation that comes by. The next transportation is a camioneta (a transportation truck in Peru with a large truck bed where they store things like 50 kilo bags of flour, cases of beer and a sleeping person…or maybe just the one I took). I jump on board to ride just an hour an a half. It was the most violent, painful descent from my site ever. I’m still healing some blister wounds and I think my butt was black and blue.
After a whip-lash inducing hour and a half I am let out in the plaza of Morropon and fortunately jump immediately onto a bus headed to Piura. I get to Piura no problem, meet up and talk to Marian for about 10 minutes and get some Malaria pills from the post office. Then, I hustle over to Trasnportes Chiclayo to board a bus to Chiclayo and meet Micah, Alisha, Elizabeth and Tim who are my travel buddies heading to Chachapoyas, Amazonas. The bus is pretty fancy and S./2 less than Linea (which means like $.60) which is awesome.
I get off the bus in Chiclayo and meet up at the mall (Chiclayo has a mall with Starbucks and this place that is basically Target). We get some awesome Goat for lunch and then the fun really starts. We head to the mall again (we left to get lunch) and claim Starbucks as our own. We throw our numerous packs in the corner and take all of the comfortable chairs. We remain largely immobile for the better part of several hours because our bus to Chachapoyas doesn’t leave until 7:30 PM.
We head to Movil Tours and this is where the fun begins. We board the bus and begin a 10 hour bus trip into the jungle. In order to accomplish the drive, we drive North through Lambayeque, touch just the corner of Piura, cross the department of Cajamarca and head into Amazonas and begin making our way south. Most of the road is paved. But that’s not as exciting. To make things exciting, the non-paved road decides it doesn’t want to be a road anymore and returns itself to the mountain. AKA, mudslide. Therefore, 8 hours on the bus and we have come to a complete standstill.
The bus stops at 3:30 in the morning and doesn’t move. We figure something further ahead has happened, but it will clear up in an hour or so. We heard the road was bad or something. We sit on the bus (sleep on the bus) for another 3 hours. At 6:30, having not moving an inch and sitting in the bus which has become a sweatbox we decided to investigate. We learn about the road up ahead washing out. It’s holiday in Peru, so the road wasn’t going to be repaired for another 4 days.
We weigh our options. Shall we hike across the collapsed road or shall we turn around and hike to Bagua (a large city we had passed about an hour before coming to a stop). Both of these options suck. The first one means that we get to experience our vacation more or less, but will have trouble getting back to where we need to be. Some of us had things we had to get back to, so couldn’t afford to get trapped in Amazonas. The other option sucks because 1 hour by car means roughly 8 hours walking. We suck it up and decide to walk.
We grab all our stuff off the bus and begin an 8 hour hike to Bagua. Luckily, when we reach the end of the traffic (which is apporoximately 3 minutes after we began hiking) there is a bus turned around and selling tickets to Chiclayo and Trujillo. Elizabeth makes the executive decision that we are going to Trujillo and we climb on board. (This is around 8:30 AM)
We decide that since we are a group of five, we should sit in the last seat since it sits five across. And this is awesome…….Anyway, the bus starts driving and 9 hours later we arrive in Chiclayo. This is cool, but we’re going to Trujillo so have another 4 hours before we arrive at our destination. In total, we were traveling by bus for 25 hours. It was kind of the worst day of my life.
In Trujillo, we get off of the bus and take a cab to Huanchaco which is my favorite Peruvian Beach town that I’ve seen so far. We all go to bed. The next day, we wake up sore from the intense sitting we had done the day before. We play Frisbee on the beach, eat the best pancakes ever and lots of vegetarian food.
We go into Trujillo at night to watch a Peruvian Eric Clapton cover band….hilarious. I don’t remember what day, but we also went to a microbrewery.
Highlights of the trip:
-A lengthy discussion of burial practices including how we would like to be buried (or disposed of) including Viking burial and enormous pyramids.
-Bonfire on the beach (did you know there are tropical vanilla marshmallows, what does that even mean?)
-I open a beer bottle (actually 2) with a log.
-Frisbee
-Friends
Anyway, afterwards I came back to Piura and then to Chulucanas because I had a meeting called PEPFAR. Which means President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief. The director of the school in my town and the obstetrician came. It was cool. I learned a lot and will hopefully start some workshops in my site with the help of the other two. Now, I’m just sweating profusely though Piura has cooled off a lot (meaning its probably only in the 90s….). Heading back to the ‘Rumbe tomorrow where I’m going to be working further with baking.
And libraries.
The end.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
So What Goes on in the Campo?
The Quebrada:
I’ve been in site again now for two weeks. What exactly does “being in site” mean? What do I do? A cross between nothing and something. There are a lot of grey lines. I discussed the creation of a trash management system. I had intended on doing this and talked to the leader in Pambarumbe and fortunately, the NGO who I hoped to work with also made an appearance and I talked to them about it. So far, for this project, they have distributed trash receptacles for recyclable material, organic material and regular waste. There is no system of trash collection, there isn’t a land fill yet, and there is no way to get the recyclable material out of Pambarumbe to Piura. This is one project I’m hoping to work with. And have just started with.
I have my youth small business group which I haven’t met with for a while. It’s kind of hard because of the reality of my living situation. It rains. And by rains, I mean that often the power goes out and the plumbing gets clogged shutting off water. Since I use an electric oven and would like to wash the dishes after I bake, we tend to have to cancel our baking. Side note/store: The other day, the power had been out the entire day and I didn’t even notice. It was 3PM when I went to the library and someone told me that the computers there won’t work because “No hay luz.” (this is how you say that there’s no power). I guess I’ve adjusted to campo living when I can go for an entire day without realizing there isn’t power. Anyway, hopefully water starts flowing through the taps and relatively clear water, none of that mud filled water which we have been getting when it does work. Then, I’ll start this again.
Computer classes aren’t going to start until later. There is some problem with the computers in the Primaria and I have to wait for a technician to come and look at the computers. I don’t really know how to fix computers, so they have to contract someone to come and do it. Who knows if/when this will happen, but I would really like this to start.
Library/Art classes: This is the one I currently work on the most. I open the library and the kids come in to read and use the computers. I also do art projects with the kids and it’s really fun. I’d like to expand the library, that’s one possibility or if I get really ambitious find an NGO willing to install Internet…vamos a ver (we’ll see). I help really little kids (4,5 and 6 years old) how to do Origami and it’s awesome. We also do other little projects with drawing and mosaics and stuff. I teach older kids how to make friendship bracelets, which I don’t even really know how to make…
I’ve recently started helping with English homework (probably since school started two weeks ago…). I’m hoping to make this more formal and have more students because normally I only help 4 or 5 students and I can help a lot more than that…
Not so much Peace Corps projects but other things I’ve done/taught: Chess, Speed, Go Fish, Memory, Dominos, Monopoly, Connect 4, yo-yo, and how to swim. I need to have a bit of fun too
The swimming? Yeah, we have what they call a quebrada (I don’t know what it is in English, a creek?) which during the rainy season is about 3 feet deep. When there isn’t water, this is where people bathe, wash laundry, get water, etc. We also use it to swim which I do probably 5 days a week. I’ve taught the kids how to swim and how to hold their breath under water.
I keep pretty busy in my site. I think the adults feel like I do nothing since I spend most of my time hanging out with kids between the ages of 2 and 15. But I do a lot and am pretty active in my site. It’s awesome and hopefully my projects come together and that the rains stop soon! I want to start running again…..
I’ve been in site again now for two weeks. What exactly does “being in site” mean? What do I do? A cross between nothing and something. There are a lot of grey lines. I discussed the creation of a trash management system. I had intended on doing this and talked to the leader in Pambarumbe and fortunately, the NGO who I hoped to work with also made an appearance and I talked to them about it. So far, for this project, they have distributed trash receptacles for recyclable material, organic material and regular waste. There is no system of trash collection, there isn’t a land fill yet, and there is no way to get the recyclable material out of Pambarumbe to Piura. This is one project I’m hoping to work with. And have just started with.
I have my youth small business group which I haven’t met with for a while. It’s kind of hard because of the reality of my living situation. It rains. And by rains, I mean that often the power goes out and the plumbing gets clogged shutting off water. Since I use an electric oven and would like to wash the dishes after I bake, we tend to have to cancel our baking. Side note/store: The other day, the power had been out the entire day and I didn’t even notice. It was 3PM when I went to the library and someone told me that the computers there won’t work because “No hay luz.” (this is how you say that there’s no power). I guess I’ve adjusted to campo living when I can go for an entire day without realizing there isn’t power. Anyway, hopefully water starts flowing through the taps and relatively clear water, none of that mud filled water which we have been getting when it does work. Then, I’ll start this again.
Computer classes aren’t going to start until later. There is some problem with the computers in the Primaria and I have to wait for a technician to come and look at the computers. I don’t really know how to fix computers, so they have to contract someone to come and do it. Who knows if/when this will happen, but I would really like this to start.
Library/Art classes: This is the one I currently work on the most. I open the library and the kids come in to read and use the computers. I also do art projects with the kids and it’s really fun. I’d like to expand the library, that’s one possibility or if I get really ambitious find an NGO willing to install Internet…vamos a ver (we’ll see). I help really little kids (4,5 and 6 years old) how to do Origami and it’s awesome. We also do other little projects with drawing and mosaics and stuff. I teach older kids how to make friendship bracelets, which I don’t even really know how to make…
I’ve recently started helping with English homework (probably since school started two weeks ago…). I’m hoping to make this more formal and have more students because normally I only help 4 or 5 students and I can help a lot more than that…
Not so much Peace Corps projects but other things I’ve done/taught: Chess, Speed, Go Fish, Memory, Dominos, Monopoly, Connect 4, yo-yo, and how to swim. I need to have a bit of fun too
The swimming? Yeah, we have what they call a quebrada (I don’t know what it is in English, a creek?) which during the rainy season is about 3 feet deep. When there isn’t water, this is where people bathe, wash laundry, get water, etc. We also use it to swim which I do probably 5 days a week. I’ve taught the kids how to swim and how to hold their breath under water.
I keep pretty busy in my site. I think the adults feel like I do nothing since I spend most of my time hanging out with kids between the ages of 2 and 15. But I do a lot and am pretty active in my site. It’s awesome and hopefully my projects come together and that the rains stop soon! I want to start running again…..
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
This is what really happens.
Tim and I right before horseback riding.
Just to let you know that for all of eternity, it will be under construction.
A river now runs through my town. That didn't start til just recently.
My friend Juan.
I started writing a blog. Then my computer broke, so I have to start over. I was mostly done and don’t feel like being as elaborate a second time so this blog will be lame.
It’s been a busy few weeks. Site is same old same old. School starts this week, so everyone will be back when I return tomorrow. That’s exciting. But for the good stuff, which is vacation and such (my projects are still kind of boring, they’ll be better this month).
I took a vacation to Cajamarca for Mardi Gras, called Carnaval here in
I had some awesome pizza in the city. And turkey sandwiches. Um, what else? Oh, we went to these thermal baths which was weird. You get a bathtub and then fill it with thermal water so it wasn’t really anything like I had expected. But Cajamarca is cold, so a hot bath was nice. And just hung out with some people there. After that, several of us went to
Then, I came to
Oh, I sort of speak Spanish, that is some good news. I started a youth small business. We bake cakes and cookies. And by that I mean we will bake cakes. We already baked some cookies. I’m hoping to work really hard this month starting two or three projects. I’ll go into detail later. If the month isn’t a failure.
It was nice, I actually talked to a lot of people from home on facebook chat, so that was cool. I’ve discussed the kidnapping of a volunteer from her site so that she has to go on vacation with us. A horse fell on my leg and it hurt really bad. If I press where it fell, it still really hurts. I’ve been sick, I won’t go into further detail because I’m considering the possibility of non-Peace Corps people reading this and it would gross you out. I drank hot maracuya juice mixed with canaso (alcohol that makes your throat burn 10x worse than vodka), Oh, aside from the horse falling on my leg I actually went horseback riding too…for the first time.
This is probably incoherent; I wrote it in ten seconds while not paying attention. This actually should be a preface but who copies and pastes? Seriously.
Oh we totally went to ruins. I forgot. They were the most underwhelming ruins ever. We saw this one hill so we decided to climb up it. And realized that the hill was actually the ruins. And we weren’t allowed to climb them…
Monday, January 19, 2009
Rainy Season
I live in the mountains but one day a crab was just outside of my room in site. The doctors thought I was lying because there shouldn't be crabs in the mountains...
Where I live in Peru (The coastal mountains) there is this thing which is known as Rainy Season. What this means is that it rains...essentially all day. It only started a ten days or so ago, but the pattern which I have noticed is that it rains from about 1 or 2 in the afternoon until about 7 in the morning this gives me about 6 or 7 hours where it only drizzles. Because when I say it rains, what I mean to say is that it is downpore like I've never seen before. I can't leave my house, the streets turn to mud and because this is obviously the same for everyone in my site many of the people have peaced out and won't come back until the school year starts.
So, basically the month of December has been spent playing card games with a few kids who are still in town, reading lots of books and wishing for April or May. They'll come soon enough!
This past weekend, the volunteers put on a camp called ALMA (Actividades Liderazgo para Mujeres Adolescentes - Leadership Activities for Adolescent Women). It was a lot of fun and it was a great weekend. 14 volunteers helped with the weekend and most brought girls from their site so that there were 22 girls. I helped with the background stuff for this camp setting up the room, buying supplies and helping with the camp as best I can. We are going to do a similar camp for guys hopefully in a few months.
We think that some of the food gave us food poisoning. Nearly all of the volunteers were sick and I was sick all last night and this morning. I slept a lot and think it has passed.
I'm not looking forward to going back to site. This isn't because I don't like my site but the rains extend the amount of time it takes to get there. Normally the bus ride is 3 hours. My friend who lives about 15-20 minutes further away from me (without the rain) rode on the bus for 8 hours to get down into the city the other day...that just doesn't seem that fun but I'll be making the trek soon enough!
Life is good, Piura is hot and I'm loving my Peace Corps life still. I'm excited because next month there is a huge Mardi Gras celebrating in Cajamarca (one of the departments/capitals) and it'll be nice to see everyone (or a lot of people).
Pictures aren't loading so well...again
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