One Year Later...

So I glanced at my watch earlier today and realized the date today, Saturday May 16th, is pretty much exactly one year from when my class of 2008 graduated from Trinity University, Saturday May 17th 2008. So of course this threw me into a reflective attitude, and anyways, after getting my haircut I didn't really have much to do today. I came up with a short list of things that have occurred and changed in my life since one year....

- I have visited 9 countries in the last 12 months

- I received an undergraduate degree and am now making about $10 a day

- I am living on the other side of the world

- I am working where I am not 100% sure that people understand me....and vica versa

- After barely surviving a marathon the year before, I signed up and am currently training for another one

- I got my paramedics license....and didn't ever use it

- I have a secure (hopefully) job for the next year and a half

- 8 months after graduating from college I had my own business cards….but not in english

- Though I have bought and had one for 4 months....I still can't play guitar....

- I am damn happy to be living in Peru

Though there are still some uncomfortable times in site and I've been spending most of the time recently looking for new projects to get started, things are going very well.

One year ago I knew that I would be serving for the Peace Corps in Peru, but that was pretty much it. I thought that I may be working in a site where spanish isn't even the primary language (like some of my friends now). The Peace Corps experience to this point has been better than I could have ever imagined, I become friends with an amazing group of fellow volunteers and had the great privilege to be placed in such a great site (albeit it is raining once more as I type this). In the coming months I'm looking forward to becoming even further integrated in my community and starting longer-term projects....but now....a bit on what I've been up to recently:

About a week ago we had a training session called PDM...can't remember exactly what the acronym is but we (all the community health volunteers) brought community partners to a city on the coast and had a few days of meetings on how to formulate work plans for projects in the future. Pretty important stuff but for some reason it seemed to drag on forever. It was great to see the other volunteers of my program though. My community partner and I came up with a plan to give educational sessions to a group of health promoters, school teachers, and students in a remote community about 3.5 hours hiking away from my site. So hopefully that plan will come to fruition in the next few months. I also hope to work in other schools of the area communities to provide clean drinking water to the students and lower cases of diarrhea as a result of the lack of potable water. Here in Tacabamba I have been working with the kids of the colegio to draw a world map on a wall in the school, it's more than 5 meters wide by 2.5 meters tall. So it's a decent size, but luckily many of the kids from the school are more artistically gifted than I am. I hope to have pictures up soon showing the process of making the map from start to finish.

Beyond that I have been trying to improve my spanish by reading the harry potter books in spanish. It is quite helpful with learning the conjugations of verbs in the various tenses....and I also get to learn all kinds of fun words for magic....that will be absolutely useful in my day to day life in rural Peru. Luckily the cities have many bookstores and it wasn't that difficult to find all 7 of the books, I am currently about half way through the third and have set a goal to read all of them before the end of the year. I have a notorious habit of getting half way through a book, becoming bored with it, putting it down and never touching it again. Hopefully that will not happen with these books.

There are not too many vacations planned for the near future, the first would be the marathon in Pacasmyo on July 5th. I have been training for this more seriously recently, but I am still worried that I am starting a little bit late. To further motivate me, and to keep me from misbehaving, I have made a 5 sole (~$1.60) bet with another volunteer that I will not drink a drop of alcohol until after the marathon. I took it as a bad omen when I stepped off of the bus to my site and within two minutes I was talking to a neighbor that offered me to share a beer with him. We'll see how this bet goes.

I hope everyone is doing well back in the states, congratulations to those that recently graduated from college!!! I wish you all good luck in the job search, and if that doesn't pan out, go ahead and turn in your Peace Corps app and run south of the border....hasta la proxima!! (until the next time)