A Skype Date With Cultural Understanding

Peace Corps has gone 21^st century. While dad talked to his family once in two years on a coconut phone, things here are just plain technological. I'm coming to you live for chrissake. To my five readers in Russia—you're reading this tomorrow morning! Congratulations.

The Claro USB allows me to have fast, real world internet. No more playing three games of free cell while I wait for my attatchment to download.

I told everyone I purchased this USB stick for my “job search”--classic. So far my job search involves 20 months of back-logged time on facebook, g-mail and catching up with friends, or as our generation calls it: “networking.” Anyway—I'm on Linked In, I'm getting back into the swing of things, one step/procrastination at a time.

Anyway—this internet thing is not necessarily all vice. Today we connected the 6000 kilometers from Burlington, VT to Jangas, Perú. With my old DREAM friend Evan, we connected a class from Jangas, Perú to a class at the Lawrence Barnes school in Burlington.

For about thirty minutes, the kids stared at each other, asked each other questions about their free time, cheered when the learned they both loved video games, made farting noises, tried each others' languages, smiled at one another and generally had a rambunctiously good time.

After the skype call, Johanna and I talked about where these new friends came from—how not everyone from a “gringo” country is necessarily gringo, and how not everyone from a “rich” country is necessarily rich. The Jangas kids—the last students standing in 2012's Vacaciones Utiles are some of the most dedicated students I have met in my year and a half here. I'm glad we could reward their hard effort this summer with this skype call, and I think they enjoyed it a lot.

Knowing that your friends 6000 kilometers like playing video games just might be the first step to seeing that we're not all so different after all, and it just might spark a desire to learn, to travel and to meet.