Swearing in and Ancash

Hey Everyone,

My rate of blogging is pitiful, I know.

That is mostly because I am incredibly protecting AND Defending the Constitution of the United States of America--or so we sweared to do at our swearing in ceremony at the embassy in Lima. This was pretty cool--nice to be back in America even for a short while. The ambassador wasn't there, we had some business

We have left Lima (Chacalacayo) and I am now back in Huaraz, Ancash, before heading to Jangas, my official site. It was very sad to say goodbye to my wonderful host family with whom I've shared the past two and a half months. I definitely plan to stay connected.

Will start teaching English and writing my community diagnostic for the first three months of service. The idea behind the community diagnostic is that we get to know the community and its needs in before we start setting up too many projects.

I am very excited to work with my health post, it is fairly active in the community, and I'm also excited to get inside the schools. The town where I'll be is a mix of the modern and the incredibly rural--as seems to be the case in Perú thus far. My house has a nice set-up w/ a fairly modern room and a toilet w/ a Cold shower. My family fairly nice w/ a couple older brothers, though the family is much more reserved than in Lima, which I'll miss a lot.

Looking forward to playing a lot of soccer and volleyball as well. Hope everyone is doing well back home, send me your stories as well, I might buy a USB which'll give me internet access all the time--yeah the Peace Corps' changed quite a bit, but I'm not gonna complain if I get to talk to y'all more.

Much Love de Huaraz. Talk to you soon(er).

¡Site Placement!

Jangas, Ancash. Looks B-E-A utiful.

¡Site Placement!

Jangas, Ancash. Looks B-E-A utiful.

¡Site Placement!

Jangas, Ancash. Looks B-E-A utiful.

A Lazy Saturday

Hello from Yanacoto Again.

[Pictures coming later--Internet is slllllow as we're all on right now-->look above for reason.

While we anxiously await for our site assignments—essentially where we'll be living for the next two years, I found myself with a free Saturday.

The initial plan was to go to a host aunt's house in Chaclacayo at 10 and therefore wake up at 8 and do laundry for an hour or so. These plans quickly changed.

In a household with a two, five, and eight year old, you DO NOT wake up past 8:30 regardless of what you do or how good of a sleeper you thought you were before coming. Therefore a hangover is never muy recomendable. As a short side story—The Hangover movie here is not called “La Resaca”--(the direct translation of hangover as one would assume it would be called) instead it is called ¿Q pasó ayer? (What happened yesterday?)--Anyway that was pretty funny to try to find in a pirated DVD market—it basically involved me describing the plot line in a memorable Spanish conversation –4 huys that get drunk in Las Vegas, y lose an amigo... Just like all conversations here—eventually you get the point across and get what you need—sometimes your neighbors think you just asked them if they are burying a dead body instead of planting a garden (in my defense, I have a Vermont accent mixed w/ español and huerto-garden y muerto-dead person sound pretty similar) but it all works out in the end.

Anyway—back to Today. After stretching my sleep as long as I could until 8:27, I pulled myself out of bed to face the world. I quickly learned from my host mom that we were not going to the aunt's house—plans seem to change pretty quickly around here, and that aunt failed to tell us that she actually wasn't in town until 11 p.m. the night before we were headed over there. Therefore that left more time for laundry—which ended up coming in handy. Washing by hand is no easy task, and when you're lazy and don't do it for several weeks it makes for an even more difficult task. Fortunately, my host mother likes Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers as much as I do, so music helped pass the time as I washed my entire wardrobe that was covered with two weeks of Yanacotan dust (see picture of underwear washing and drying). At least two to three hours later I was done and we had a nice lunch together. After lunch I showered by bucket—I'm surprised how clean you can get after one bucket of water— that's shampoo and shaving--yes ladies, still single :), no still not growing an impressive Peace Corps beard. Recently I constructed a tippy-tap (I call them drippy-drop cause that's more fun)--it's basically a sink and helps wash hands, and is more effective than washing them with a bucket.

After the shower, I walked down the hill w/ Matias the 8 year old to go help w/ one of the other trainee's mini-community projects—painting the soccer concrete field with a map of Perú. Unfortunately we didn't get a jump with this today—things tend to move slow, but we are all set to paint tomorrow and it should be a lot of fun.

After going down, I went to the ferreteria (hardware store—one of the few non-food stores here in Yanacoto—which I think demonstrates one of the key stages of development--Construction..). I asked Elmer, the owner's son if he could fix my computer charger which recently broke. He said he could so Matias and I climbed the hill and returned. Matias and I sat and shot the shit (they need an expression for this down here, cause we seem to do it a lot) w/ Elmer while he fixed the broken cord for easily over an hour. We talked about US culture, and I received plenty of questions about the US—wars, politics, racism etc, and I brought up almost as I always do that “depende de la persona o la región”.

Afterwards I returned w/ Matias, got my computer and went back down to see if the fix would work.

Thanks to Elmer's hardwork and saudering skills, my plug now works again and I can write this blog entry. How much did 1 hour and a half of repair work cost? The friendly conversation and a picture. Elmer only wanted to help, and he told me he likes challenges—all he wanted was to give me his business card and take a picture to remember the day. He also threw in an extension cord—most people are very generous here.

In a good mood I climbed the hill and bought a few ingredients for a cake for tomorrow's get-together and called my real sister Katherine to ask for her famous recipe for chocolate chip cookies. It still amazes me that with 13 numbers and a phone I can call anywhere in the world.

After this success, I went home and ate dinner—fried bananas and rice and we watched some Discovery Kids—Channel 37 is pretty popular in this house. We also decided to watch some of our pirated version of Toy Story 3—lucky for me the version we bought is in English, and it's not dubbed in Spanish, so we put on Spanish subtitles, but for some reason all the signs in it are in what I think is Russian—what do you expect for 1 dollar?

After shaking out my bed for bed bugs, my bed should be free of bichos, my clothes are drying, I'm listening to SK6ers, and the dogs are barking. Good night from Yanacoto. ¿Q pasará manaña?

To Piura and Back

Hey Everyone back home.

After a 16 hour bus ride I am back from Piura, Peru. This past week was Field Based Training. What does Field Base Training mean?

For our FBT we went to Piura on a camabus (bedbus) which was pretty comfortable. You leave at 6:30 p.m. and hope you don't need the real bathroom until 9:00 a.m. the next morning, cause that's when you arrive at your destination. For us that was Piura, in the north, one province away from Ecuador. In Piura it's pretty hot, but being a bad packer, I forgot flip flops, which sucked during the day, and my sweatshirt, which sucked at night, luckily I coped--though it really hurt when I stepped in Shiiiit on one of the last days.

We visited four Volunteers´ sites, some closer to the coast, with drier climates, and one in the mountains. We went to a place called Pambarumbe in the mountains--this was by far the highlight (minus the bicicleta I rode--bicicleta is slang for needing to use the bathroom, the idea being that when it comes you´re gonna want a bike...)

The town is about 300 people--and imagine what that´s like when 12 Americans come. I felt like a member of a delegation--at an inauguration ceremony for a computer lab, we sat up front as the honored guests, and even had to dance while about 80 or so Pambarumbian's looked on. Mostly I followed my Peruvian language instructors´steps and hoped I didn't pee myself infront of the crowd (2 cups of tea before hand may not have been my best idea).

The next day we ran a session at the school. Our activity was trash art and Origami--and it had some great results, with the kids having to represent the idea of keeping Pambarumbe clean with trash art. I'll post a picture, they were really amazing.

On the trip to other sites, we visited a Special Education school, and a couple other schools.

In a picture I will post soon, you can see us performing a play in front of about 100 school children. The play was about healthy lifestyles and was named Al Fondo Hay Baño, a play off the popular Al Fondo Hay Sitio telenovela here (I am told that I look like one of the characters on the show, although I think that's mostly cause we're both white).

Finally we hit up the beach for a short trip which was a beautiful fishing beach, ate a lot of good food--ceviche is as good as the books say and trecked back 16 hours.

Tonight is my host sisters' 2nd birthday, so that should be exciting.

I hope everyone is doing well, and I look forward to hearing from all of you as well.

Take Care, lots of love from South America.

¡Hola Todos!

Hello everyone from Yanacoto, Peru. This is a picture that I took in my new town, about a block from where I live. Life has changed quickly from college, and instead of Suite H with four dudes, I now live with a family of five-Ronald, Viviana (los padres) and Matias (8), Valentina (5) and Antonella (soon to be 2). I also have a 19 year old host uncle Josué who keeps me up to date with the latest "jerga" (slangwords). Things are good south of the Equator, with relatively hot days and cold nights, lots of rice and chicken and cold showers. Lots of new friends, Peruvian and American alike. Next week I´ll be in Piura in the north to go on site visits. Hasta Luego--I plan to write about once a week, and hope future entries will be a lot funnier. Take Care, or as they say here Cuídate!