Mis aventuras (and misadventures) en Peru

Happy New Year!!

2010-01-13T18:11:00.001-08:00

The sound of a rooster crowing a little bit too early in the morning does a few things to my previously sleeping mind. Obviously, I am awoken, I am quite sure that we will be eating this rude alarm clock for lunch, and lastly it reminds me that once more I am back in site.

After a wonderful two week trip with my family I am finally back in site (have been for about 10 days now but have been too...lazy...to get a blog post up earlier). The vacation was great and I felt quite spoiled as we flew around the country and spent more than the usual $9/night that I spend on accommodations when traveling. As a family we were able to visit Trujillo, to see several ruins and relax on the beach. After that followed a trip to Cusco and a detour by bus to the city of Arequipa. I spent thanksgiving in Arequipa with some other volunteers and liked it so much that I wanted to share it with my family as well. Unfortunately we made the changes in plans quite late (2 days before), and were forced to take a bus. I didn't think the bus ride was too terrible (the road was paved and it was only a 9 hour trip...piece of cake). But my family, not quite as accustomed to the way of life, had some difficulties. After enjoying some museums in Arequipa with the parents (the siblings were quite sick and confined to bed), we headed back to Cusco (by plane). We were able to spend Christmas Eve perusing the once a year market that takes place in the town square and Christmas day touring the Sacred Valley with the Hanrahan family. The Hanrahans happened to plan a family trip to Peru that coincided with my families, though we did not travel to Machu Picchu together, we were able to spend time together in Cusco and Lima. On the 26th we traveled to Machu Picchu and had a great time touring the ruins and almost killing ourselves trying to take handstand pictures with the ruins in the background. Our trip wrapped up with a few days and nights in Lima before the family headed back to the states on the 30th of December.

Though it was a lot of family time, it was really great to see and travel with them. I can barely believe that within 4 months I will be back with them during a short trip to the states. But until then there's work to be done in site...

I returned to site ready to get down to work, but that motivation fizzled quickly in the face of the year end reports that consume the attention of my community partners. So I was left with a week of playing with the host siblings, catching up with friends in the community, and brainstorming on activities. In the coming months hopefully we will see a radio program, work towards a relleno sanitario (landfill), and perhaps a couple more libraries. Until then hopefully the rain continues to be tolerable...

Currently Reading: Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Read since last post: Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, Heft on Wheels by Mike Magnuson (do not recommend), Banana by Dan Koeppel, The Wisdom of Whores by Elizabeth Pisani (highly recommended history of the fight against AIDS), El cojo y el loco by Jaime Bayly

Pictures from Thanksgiving and Family Adventures

After a jaunt to the beach...

2009-10-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

So I arrived back in site yesterday morning after a brief trip to Tumbes, the most northern (and hottest) department in Peru. As I mentioned in my last post, we were heading out that way to see some of the projects that fellow volunteers have going concerning PEPFAR (Presidents Emergency Plan for Aids Relief). The volunteers in that area have done a great job coordinating with community members to form committees that are working with various activities to promote education about HIV/ADIS in the general population. This might involve working with youth groups that give educational sessions to other youth, radio spots (we were on the radio twice in three days, and I got the laugh track from the DJ after goofing on some spanish), parades, and even a graffiti mural contest. Tumbes is situated along the ecuadorian border of peru and is a hub for commerce and trade, sadly those locations are often hotbeds for STD's and other communicable diseases. Fortunately this area is a bit more open minded to talk of sexual education, which makes the work of these volunteers somewhat easier. Here in the sierra of Peru such educational tactics wouldn't be greeted so warmly by the general population, so us volunteers in the mountainous areas might have to be a little more tactful with our presentation of such ideas.

After 3 days of touring volunteers sites and chatting with health personnel in Tumbes I made a mad dash to get back to site to open the library during the town anniversary, yesterday the 17th of October. It took about two days to get home and I picked up the books (donated by the peruvian government) on the way back. As I hop off a truck, and finish the 20-hour trip back home, I walk straight into the whole municipality staff including the mayor as they are dressed very nicely and parading around the plaza. I on the other hand, looked very much as if I had just traveled 20 hours of buses over the last two days (with very little sleep). I was juggling various bags and boxes but I was able to snap a picture before scampering off to ditch my things in my room and set up the library for an opening ceremony that was going to take place that afternoon. A fellow volunteer James from a neighboring town came by to help me organize the library. We were able to get it done in time and set to waiting for people to show up, as I understood various important people from the community were going to show up as well as the mayor and a priest who was going to bless the books (something I never forget to do before reading my books :) ). The bummer of the deal is that I had to have a community member organize the ceremony while I was gone in Tumbes, community members aren't peace corps volunteers and usually have another job that takes up most of their time. This ceremony wasn't terribly well planned, the professor responsible for planning it showed up (after drinking a couple early afternoon beers), as well as a 2-3 other workers from the municipality but it was not enough to conduct the ceremony. So we're going to try again tomorrow afternoon and focus more on students than adults, the target population of the library is students anyways. I surprised myself by not really being that irritated that the ceremony fell through, I was actually relieved just to get the project finally (almost) completed. There has been rumors of repeating the project in a couple of the communities surrounding tacabamba, but we'll see if that actually comes together. I will hopefully have some pictures up of the completed library being used by students in the next few days. (Until then you guys can enjoy these wedding pics from a wedding I attended earlier this month.)

Today has been pretty calm, was able to clean up the room a bit as well as get some clothes washed that have been neglected for quite some time. Tomorrow will be quite a bit more busy, so I'm going to take advantage of the down time and knock out some reading.

Currently Reading: Crepúsculo (Twilight) By: Stephenine Meyer

Yep...same book...kinda sad...

So...guess it's been awhile

2009-10-01T17:30:00.000-07:00

Well my last blog post was in July, and I've been quite a busy guy since then. Since my last post, I turned 24, ran my second marathon, passed our one year anniversary in Peru, attended two more bull fights, enjoyed my town party, as well as continued my work with hand washing education in town, self-esteem sessions in the elementary school, and very very slowly completing a library project.

Time has really been flying by but as much as I feel like I have grown accustomed to the life here I still have trouble with the slow pace of work here, this sentiment was recently exacerbated by the town party that we celebrated during the second week of september. This is the party that everyone has been talking about since I arrived in site (last december). It is officially to commemorate the town saint "Señor de la misericordia", but the manner in which they celebrate is drinking for about 6 days straight while holding rosaries and masses. There were also three days of bull fights and a concert by grupo 5 (one of the most famous music groups from peru). This coincided with my groups one year anniversary in peru and a few other volunteers came to my site to join in on the festivities. All in all it was really enjoyable, but it pretty much knocked out any possibility for work for about 3-4 weeks. In the week or so before the parties the whole town was occupied with preparations and any coordination that I had with the municipality (who organizes most of the fiesta) pretty much came to a halt. I was hoping to make house visits to a few families in the rural communities but I was told that they would not be home as it was sugar cane harvesting season, these families also wanted to take advantage of the town party to sell their sugar cane. Of course after the party the whole town took about a week to recover. I guess I'll know for next year, but it was still somewhat frustrating.

The good news is that things have been progressing quite well recently. The library is finally coming together. We have been working with a branch of the ministry of education that will provide us with the materials for a library (books, etc.) if we are able to find a space, equip it with tables and shelves, and find someone to attend to the library during working hours. Now this is something I have been working on for awhile now but that mainly involved listening to a carpenter give me various reasons why he couldn't finish the work. This carpenter kept blowing deadline after deadline but I couldn't feel like I could really get that angry because his name was jesus, and I think there is something wrong with yelling at jesus the carpenter. Eventually he finished the work and we were set to actually install them (nail them to the wall). I mosey on over to jesus' house to let him know we need his help, help that he agreed he would provide, to find that he had been drinking quite heavily and wouldn't be able to help us. Luckily the one other carpenter that I knew in town was able to throw in a hand and help us out. We're in the process of getting the last few things done and hopefully we will receive the materials from lima within a couple weeks.

In the next few months I will also be involved in a program called "familias saludables" (healthy families) which will be run in coordination with the health center. During the last two weeks we have been hiking out to the rural areas looking for families that want to participate. I found that it is much easier to go to the campo with the health center employees because I can fall back on them for explications if my spanish isn't doing all that hot that day. During these outings we have convinced about 15 families that they should participate in the program, it will involve a series of sessions addressing themes like hygiene (more hand washing!!), nutrition, and how to organize your house (to separate rooms, have soap at the ready, etc.)

I am quite content to be busy right now because I feel like I will be out of site for most of November as well as part of October. During the third week of October, a couple volunteers from the sierra will be traveling up to the costal department of Tumbes to visit some other volunteers and learn how to conduct sessions on HIV/AIDS education. Though the rate of AIDS prevalence is about on par with the United States, the knowledge of how STD's are transmitted is not as well understood here. For that reason Peru, and some Peace Corps Volunteers, have received funding from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has been successful in many countries in Africa. Hopefully us mountain volunteers will be able to learn a few things to use in the sexual education sessions that many volunteers get involved in during their second year of service. The month of November seems to be already quite booked as well, between training a new group of volunteers, a leadership camp for adolescent males, medical checks in lima, and a trip to the southern peruvian city of Arequipa, I think I will be lucky to be in site for about a week in November. That'll be followed by a visit from the parents in December which I'm sure will be quite exciting, it'll be great to see some familiar faces and get out and enjoy the touristy side of Peru that us PCV's don't see too terribly often.

Alright, I think I'll wrap this up with my usual promise to start posting more and something new. I'm going to start including the current book that I'm reading on the bottom of each post. Hopefully this will encourage me to post more as well as read more, so that everyone doesn't think I have been reading Twilight for the last 3 months. I hope everyone is doing fantastic back in the states, enjoy ACL tomorrow if you're lucky enough to have gotten tickets.

Currently Reading: Crepúsculo (Twilight) By: Stephenine Meyer

A schmorgasborg of pictures!!!!

2009-07-02T14:24:00.001-07:00

So it´s been quite awhile since I´ve been able to get some pics up and I apologize for that. Unfortunately I don´t have any pictures from the bull fights. I took plenty, but my camera lens decided to promptly jam, effectively locking up my camera. I will eventually be able to pull the pictures off the memory card...but not just yet...

Blogger is not letting me easily caption the photos so Ill give you a run down of all of them.

First off weve got a picture of me at a hand washing theater presentation at the local health center.

Second is the same presentation in the town plaza, had a great turn out, and its a beautiful backdrop for a theater act.

3. Picture of a don manuel, a peruvian that I am working with in some local schools with a project that will provide clean drinking water to the students.

4 - 6. Pics from my two year old host brothers bday party, it was pretty interesting, the 6th is him breaking a pinata...they do not hit them with a stick here. Instead they sing songs and the bday boy...or honored guest of the party be it who it may....pulls the bottom out and the candy and confetti comes out. Then follows the typical scramble for goodies.

7. Cuy (guinea pig) con papas (with potatoes)...a very typical dish of the region.

8 - 9. Pictures from a handwashing parade in which all the young students of the town participated. The first sign roughly says...mom, if you love me, wash my hands with running water and soap each time you see that they are dirty

10-16. A quick progression of photos that shows the world map project that I have been working on. I have many more and will post them soon. We should be finished within a week or two.

Been awhile...

2009-06-29T08:39:00.000-07:00

I apologize for being terrible with my blog updates, seems to be the running theme of my blog. Recently I have been quite busy with family time, giving hand washing seminars in the rural areas, and attending some local parties.

First the bit about work. I have been giving a series of charlas (informative sessions) with a group of rural mothers. One obstacle that I´ve had to overcome with them is that the great majority of them are illiterate, and because of this I´ve had to change the way that I present ideas and topics to them. There is much more reliance on pictures than on words. Also my spanish is not very easily understood by them. But I was able to finish up a series of three charlas, we do so many because we really want to drive home the importance of washing hands with soap. Along with this I´ve been looking into the possibility of installing a water system in a local community so that they will not have to drink out of pozos (holes in the ground that are not near as deep as wells, and then more suseptible to growing bacteria and other gross slimy stuff). Also we have been working to try to install a community library in Tacabamba. This is a town of more than 4,000 people and not even the colegio has a library, this is probably because no one here reads for pleasure. We will have books donated by the peruvian government and hopefully a few people will catch the reading bug.

It seems like it has been the season for social events recently. We kicked it off with my two year old host brothers bday, which was surpisingly impressive. We spent most of the day before preparing the decorations for the party and my host grandmother didn´t sleep at all the night before because she was so busy with the preparations. I will get up pictures soon, but if you can imagine a two year old dressed in a tuxedo and being the guest of honor to about 40 children and adults of all ages that´s about how it was. Following the peruvian custom, this party turned into a dance party that lasted until the electricity went out all across the town. We ate cake by candle light and then the adults had their own celebration by drinking beer until about midnight.

We also recently celebrated the large annual party of the local province capital. This involved concerts from some of the biggest groups in peru as well as bull fights featuring matadores (bull fighters) from all over the world. It was interesting and my first bull fight. I wasn´t such a big fan of the bull fights, I see that it demands quite a bit of courage in the face of possible injury. Especially after seeing a mexican matador mauled by a bull (he recovered...the matador, not the bull). A friend that I played lacrosse with at trinity happened to be traveling in peru and was able to make it out for the celebration. One downside of the party is that almost everything in the town shuts down and work is almost impossible.

In the coming weeks I hope to start working with another group of rural mothers with hand washing charlas as well as working with some health center employees to train some health promoters in local communities. The idea is that they will be a resource to their own community, it should work better than a strange looking gringo that speaks funny. Hopefully it works out. Oh...and then there´s the marathon that I will be running this sunday. I thinking that will be quite difficult considering I haven´t been able to run in about a week. I believe I will be walking quite a bit and trying to avoid a knee injury. I´ll keep you all posted on how that goes.

Hope everything is going great back home!!

One Year Later...

2009-05-17T14:48:00.000-07:00

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)

Quick Post...

2009-04-25T16:53:00.000-07:00

So it´s been awhile since I´ve been able to get a post up, I should apologize for that. I´ve actually been somewhat busy recently. The focus of my work recently has been preparations for a theater group that will be coming to Tacabamba this weekend to give a few presentations on the importance of hand washing. I´ve been in contact with some higher ups in the organizational scheme and they only told me that they would like to do 4 presentations in my town and that a reasonable number of people should attend. So with that alone I set off to find a few communities and places in town that would be friendly to a theater presentation, especially on Saturday, the slowest day of the week. But I´ve been able to secure 4 locations, get the word out to a few mothers clubs, the students from the schools, and get a few radio ads out on the local radio station. So I´m hoping for a good turnout….as long as the rain doesn´t rear its ugly head and have one last laugh. Hopefully we are at the end of the rainy season, which robs me of any excuse to make the long hikes to the communities to do some training for health promoters and do work with mothers groups, but that´s a good thing, and will open up some more work opportunities for me. Over the last few weeks I´ve been talking to people of the community about painting a world map on the wall of the high school, with the help of the high school kids of course. It should be fun and get the kids involved in learning some geography. I heard some statistic somewhere that said something like one fourth of the united states population cannot find the US on a world map (but 94.4567% of statistics are made up on the spot), and I´m thinking education on geography might be a little bit worse here. It´s a great plan and everyone wants to get involved with it, but the rain and paint don´t mix too well, so I´ve just been sitting twiddling my thumbs and waiting on that project.

But of course it´s not all work here, recently we had our easter vacation, for which we received a couple free vacation days as volunteers. A large number of us made the way to the coast to a beach town called Mancora, rumored to be one of the best beaches in Peru, and I sure was not disappointed. It was great to be able to get away from site and relax for a little bit. Being in site, as great as it is, is a 24/7 responsibility, you´re always supposed to be on your game because you´re representing your country and working hard to find your place in the culture. Honestly it is nice every once in awhile to be able to relax and just act like a tourist, and Mancora was the perfect place to do it. It seemed like everyone spoke English (catering to the usual crowd of tourists that don´t know Spanish) so I didn´t even have to speak Spanish if I didn´t want to. We stayed at a hostel popular with international travelers and met a bunch of really cool people from Canada, Sweden, Germany and Australia. But after a couple days the vacation came to an end and we made our way back to the mountains and the rain.

All in all life is going great, still healthy, still trying to train for that silly marathon and looking forward to getting some new projects going in the next few weeks. Hope everyone is still doing well back home, and I hopefully will be able to get the next blog post up a lil´ quicker!

Readjustment and lessons on running etiquette...

2009-03-26T07:59:00.001-07:00

So I returned to site a little under a week ago from a volunteer conference on the coast and have been having some trouble readjusting to life back at site. Our conference was called "reconnect", it's an opportunity for the volunteers of my training group to get back together and chat about what's going well in site, what's not going so well, and have a good time seeing each other for the first time in 3 months. The fact that the conference took place on a beautiful beach and included St. Patrick's Day were added bonuses. Some other volunteers and I showed up a day early to "enjoy" some surfing and relaxing on the beach. I say "enjoy" surfing because as it was the second time of my life that I went surfing, I didn't have quite as much success as the veteran surfers, but it was fun just the same. Unfortunately this reconnect conference took place two days after "theater camp" (see last post). So between the two conferences I was away from site for almost two weeks. When I returned a couple things had changed around here. After spending two weeks on the coast it seemed like it rained so much harder than I remembered. My family, who rents out rooms in the house, found two new tenants. The first is a physical education teacher at the local elementary school, who should be a great connection for future programs at the school, and the other is a young architect who works in the municipality. She can't quite figure out why I don't also have to work 9 to 5 like she does, she should get used to it soon enough. Also in the health center, I went to visit a friend of mine but found his office was moved in the building because they were knocking down walls to accommodate the expansion of the building, they are adding 7 more offices on the second floor as well as an operation room and expanded areas for patient care on the first floor. This is a very very big expansion for the health center, most volunteers have health posts that maybe have 4 or 5 rooms for everything necessary at the post.

Recently I have begun training for a marathon here in Peru that will take place in July. I ran the austin marathon in february of 2008, but haven't been running much since then. The last few days I've been going on short runs around site and the first was on sunday, that just happened to be market day here in Tacabamba. This means that all the families were coming down from their communities to sell cheese, cows, milk, fruits, vegetables, and all sorts of other things in Tacabamba. Because of this, every road out of town was crowded with cows, goats, sheep, horses and people walking and giving funny looks at the gringo that seems to be running for absolutely no reason. Around here the people "control" their cows by wrapping a piece of rope around their horns or neck and using that to guide them, I say "control" because these large animals can really do whatever they want if so motivated, a piece of rope around their horns held by a 12-year-old will only slow them down a little bit. A motortaxi might appear suddenly on the road and this cow will jump across to the other side of the road, because of this at times I would have to slow to a walk and carefully make my way around cows and horses. All the while with the lyical poety of Busta Rhymes playing in my ears. I think I'll avoid running on Sunday mornings from now on.

After looking forward and preparing material for the reconnect conference for the last three months, it's taken some time to get readjusted to life and working in town, it doesn't help that it rains heavily every morning and afternoon with only a few hours of sunlight between. Also a friend of mine on the coast was able to hunt down a hammock for me that I was able to hang on the roof of my house, that's been quite a motivation killer, as sitting in the hammock and reading (yes, peace corps is very hard)is much more appealing to hiking around the campo in knee high mud. This video project with the kids of the colegio (high school) should be taking off soon. It also recently occurred to me that a town of this size (7,000) should really have a library, not even the colegeio has one. Creating a library has been a daunting task for other volunteers, so hopefully the challenges created by that will be enough to get me out of my hammock and start working. All in all I don't really have many complaints, I'm still healthy and besides the rain, everything is going great. Take care, and I hope everyone is doing well back home!!

Here are a couple pictures from the reconnect conference, the sunsets were amazing...

And we enjoyed a couple green beers for Paddy´s day...

Watching the final sunset of the conference at the end of a rickity pier...

This one time at theater camp....

2009-03-13T16:02:00.001-07:00

So I arrived back in my site yesterday morning after more than 17 straight hours, with very little sleep to be had, from what I thought was going to be a course for health promoters put on by world bank. This course was put on by world back but instead it was training by a group called teatrovivo (living theater), who were training professional acting troupes and groups of student actors in ways to present the importance of hand washing in a new and different way. This came as quite a shock to the peace corps volunteers who expected to be sitting in 4 days of lectures.

But first, a trip to the beach and an unfortunate discovery. Alright, the bad news first, I lost my first cell phone of my life. I've been carrying these things around for 7.5 years now and have always kept pretty good track of 'em but after getting of a 12-hour bus ride at 5:30 in the morning my wits weren't about me and I left it in a bus station, only discovered this about 4 hours later....back to the good stuff....Due to a miscommunication between us volunteers and the higher ups in Peace Corps, we arrived a day and a half early to the conference. I had traveled to Piura with a volunteer named Julie, whose site is about 2.5 hours from mine, and we were able to meet up with our buddy from training Eric whose site is only about an hour from Piura city. We had heard so much about piura being close to the beach and decided to head out to check it out. By chance, on the street we ran into the one peruvian we knew that lived in piura, she was the girlfriend of a volunteer and we met the couple a week or two back at the carnival celebration in cajamarca. She directed us to a beach called San Pedro, we took a bus for about 45 minutes and got dropped off in what seemed to be in middle of no where. After some haggling with a moto-taxi driver we were able to get him to take us to the beach and wait for us to take us back. It turned out we hit the beach at a good time and had it completely to ourselves, well, us and the groups of dolphins about 20 yards out from the beach. We started to swim in that direction, but gave it a second thought as eric advised us that dolphins sometimes cluster together to protect themselves from sharks and other predators. But plenty of fun was to be had soaking up the sun and playing frisbee on the beach. The volunteers of Peru 12 have something of a youtube video competition going on, so we shot a couple scenes that we will hopefully use in an upcoming video. After awhile we called it quits, took our moto-taxi back to the middle of no where, and hitched a ride on a truck hauling bags of salt back towards civilization.

The next day we had free, Eric headed back to his site and Julie and I were free to wander the city. Julie was hunting for a hat and I was sent on a mission by my host parents to find some pink shoes called "Bubblegummers" for my host sister. The pronunciation of english words down here can be twisted at times, and it was weird when I had to repeat the shoe brand a couple times in different ways before the salesperson recognized what I was saying....even though I knew the right way to say it....but we both struck gold and found what we were looking for. And i had another unfortunate discovery, it looked like I was developing pink eye in my left eye after swimming in the ocean. Luckily I still had some antibiotic eye drops in my bag from my last 'bout with pink eye, when I took a dip in the gulf of mexico at 5 in the morning after a friends wedding in Galveston, Texas. So I set to diagnosing myself and medicating myself as soon as we got back to the hotel.

Saturday morning we were joined by another volunteer from our group, Jessica, and set off to see what this course was about. The only things that we knew was that it was four days long, funded by world bank, about hand washing, and a small note on the bottom of an email told us to bring zancos and baldes. We recognized baldes as buckets (we were introduced to those during the carnival celebration), but we had to look up to word zancos....it meant stilts.

Within 30 minutes of arriving to the course we found ourselves seated cross-legged in circle with about 45 other youth our age, there was a single candle in the middle of the circle and we were passing a xylophone around, each person had the strike a note, tell a bit about themselves, strike a note once more and pass the xylophone along. Here we discovered that most of the people in the circle had a bit, or a few years of theater experience, and when it came my turn, I just made a bad joke about how hot it was, struck my note and passed it along.

The days were pretty long, starting around 8 and usually getting back to the hotel around 10. The activities of the first day included some ice breakers with some of the actors from universities in Piura and Cajamarca, it was actually really nice to be around educated people of our own age. I have interviewed illiterate 22 year-old mothers in the campo who are on their 3rd or 4th child and it's not quite the same. We learned how accenting different parts of your body while you walked could help you better act the part of a different character, and a lot of other things that quite honestly I hadn't ever taken the time to really think or care about, during the first day it was hard to figure out what we were doing there. It got easier in the coming days as we knew what to expect. The final part of the first day involved separating ourselves into three different groups, and each had to use their bodies and creativity to form a monster that can walk, eat, love, and sleep.....but it didn't have to wash it's hands. In the coming days, the coordinators worked in the theme of washing hands and the acting troupes put together some pretty good skits about hand washing. The second day was interpretive dancing and what not, and the third day involved a little bit more dancing as well as some circus tricks. They actually provided stilts for us and some people picked it up pretty quick. I was a little worried about it because the stilts were made for peruvians, half of my big american foot hung off of the part where you secure your foot. I decided to pass and instead trade some juggle tricks with a friend. After three long days of acting classes and on our last night together, we decided to hit the discoteca. We had a pretty large group and pretty much took over the whole disco, there might have been 15 people there that weren't in our group. After three days of interpretive dance and making human dragons, I needed a beer. I ordered one and was walking back to my seat and was passing by the dance floor when I hear people clapping and saying my name to urge me to dance. Now I'm not going to say that I'm a good dancer, it's actually quite the opposite, it's just that Peruvians like to see gringos do stuff that make them look silly, and this was right up my alley. So I reach out for a hand and start twirling someone around the crowded dance floor. Now, due to my bout with pinkeye, I was still wearing my glasses. Anyone that wears glasses and contacts knows that no matter what, vision with contacts is far superior, so there I am with glasses, in a dark discoteca. That's when I discover the hand that I grabbed and started spinning was attached to a much older and very drunk peruvian woman who is immediately enamored with me, the gringo that picked her out of a group of college aged girls, you could say I wasn't quite feeling the same about her. Instead of just walking away, I decided to bust out the worst dance moves I could think of to make sure she knew very well that I couldnt' dance and it would be no fun asking me to dance again, I was trying every stupid disco move I could think of but it just didn't work. Eventually the song ended and for the most part I was able to avoid her the rest of the nigh. We soon had to leave because our large group that was not buying any drinks was upsetting the management, it was a short but very enjoyable night out with our new friends.

Julie and I took of early the next day to make the long trip back home, and because of this we missed the culmination of the course, a trip to a local school to show off what we had learned. Luckily the acting group will be coming to my site in April to give a few presentations to the community, I still have not decided if I will be dancing and acting in the presentation.

Like I mentioned previously, I arrived back in site yesterday morning, and spent most of the day sleeping. I spent most of today running around town and apologizing to people for returning late, missing meetings, and not calling to advise them (lost my phone and all my phone numbers). And tomorrow I will be leaving for our Reconnect conference, it takes place after a new group has been in site for 3 months and is a time to....reconnect....and share stories about successes and....things that haven't gone so well...(don't believe i should use the word failures). It's on the beach, and I'm sure once more I will get sunburned and have a good time, but hopefully this time less acting lessons will be involved.

Unfortunately I don't have pictures from the conference, I was letting Julie play photographer for the weekend, but as soon as I can get those from her, and possibly some videos as well, I'll put them up on here. I hope everyone is doing great back in the states!!!!

Carnival and a couple pics...

2009-03-01T10:33:00.000-08:00

The big news recently was the celebration of carnival in the capital of the department, Cajamarca city. Until recently, to me, carnival was the fair they unfolded from a bunch of 18 wheelers on the highway near the neighborhood, which looked so enticing as a child but the parents wisely never let us kids go to. But around here it is the celebration before ash wednesday, it's a fat tuesday kinda thing, trying to get all your partying and sins out of the way in one big blow out before the observance of lent. In the states, fat tuesday is celebrated, especially among the college crowd by excessive drinking. Here in peru each neighborhood of the city gangs up and attacks the groups of other neighborhoods with paint, water balloons, and buckets of water. Somehow, all of the opposing forces know that paint is only permitted on saturday, the rest of the days are reserved for water only. The only people safe from this onslaught are those with small children, because of this I saw many parents carrying children that seemed to be a little too large to be carried, solely for protection against attacks of water. What amazed me is how rarely people would get irritated after being soaked with several buckets of water, or hit by a water balloon by an unseen assailant. With the right attitude, it's actually a lot of fun. We were able to get a good group of volunteers together, which is actually pretty fun, because we usually only see the volunteers that live very close to us. It was a chance to meet some new faces from some different places. As gringos, we present a very obvious target to water attacks, especially the girls. Usually the rule is that you attack those of the opposite sex, but for us they very often made an exception, in one instance, chasing us down the street yelling "get the imperialists!!"

While we were in the capital we had the chance to go to the mall. This mall feels very american, it has a food court, movie theater, and an escalator. An escalator doesn't seem to odd to us Americans, but to Peruvians from rural areas, a ride on an escalator is a very daunting task. There was actually a mall employee whose sole duty that day was to stand at the food of the escalator and assist those trying to ride it. Other than that...and that everyone was speaking spanish...it felt just like an american mall experience. We saw the new movie "Seven Pounds" with Will Smith, which I thought was a very good movie. I hadn't heard of it before, but it could have been released in the states several months ago without us knowing.

After a long weekend in the capital, on monday I decided that I start my 7 hour journey back to my site. It turns out I was trying to leave the same day of the biggest parade this city has all year, and my bus stop was on the other side of this parade. After being reassured by several people that the cars were still running, I devoted the 45 minutes necessary to cross the parade, all the while being a target for water balloons. When I arrive on the other side of the parade I am quickly informed that the cars aren't working today. Luckily I stumble across a couple peruvians that allow me to pass the time with them, sharing beers, watching the parade, and throwing water balloons at people. A few hours later the parade subsides and I can cross and find my friends to spend another night in the capital.

After returning to my site on tuesday it took a few days to adjust from relax and speak english mode, to work and speak spanish mode but I think I'm finally there. But....this wednesday I'll be traveling to the coast to attend a conference for health promoters put on by world bank, so I'll have this whole adjustment process to do once more in about a week. But I'm excited to get to see the peruvian coast, aside from Lima, I have not yet had that opportunity. I'm pretty sure I'll still prefer to live in the cooler climate of the andean mountains, but it might be nice to have a few days in the sun and out of the rain.

Alright, I'll stick a few photos on here to show how a smaller parade on sunday looked, as well as some older pics. I hope that everyone is doing well back at home.

Some of the costumes were quite unique...that´s a barbie doll being eaten by a dinosaur on top of that guys head.

Members of a band dressed up like cuyes (guinea pigs).

Me posing with one of me many dancers of the parade.

A mill powered by bulls walking in a circle is used to press sugar cane and extract the liquid that will be used to make miel de caña (somewhat like maple syrup, but tastes like it will immediaely cause diabetes), I think they also make a liquor from it as well.

A pretty Peruvian sunset, snapped this one because it reminded me of Texas.

Hiking at a friends site about 3 hours away.

An example of how muddy some of the paths are that I use to travel to the outlying communities, I may be walking on something like this for 30-45 minutes at a time

So apparently I'm an urban legend...

2009-02-17T15:25:00.000-08:00

So a fellow volunteer, whose mastery of spanish is a little better of mine, was telling me about an urban legend they have around these parts of a man they call pishtaco (not sure how it's spelled but it sounds like fish taco with a p). It's my understanding that parents use this legend to scare their children....if you're not careful the pishtaco will get you or something like that. The legend tells of a man that will suck the eyes out of children and use their fat to power rockets and modern factories (the belief is that nothing that technologically advanced could exist without the use of human fat, kinda silly). Unfortunately for me this pishtaco is supposed to be tall, white, with blue eyes, blonde hair and a red beard....and that's an exact description of me. Now this legend isn't extremely prevalent, but I find it humorous to chalk it up to the legend when children shy away from me, rather than the natural timidness that many people have around here.

Legends be damned, it still hasn't stopped me from working with a few groups of kids. I gave two charlas (brief sessions with educative theme) to a couple groups of kids about the importance of nutrition and variety in the foods they eat. It's fun working with smaller groups of kids (I crashed and burned pretty good when I tried to teach english to a class of almost 40 kids). But the trick is figuring out games or...pretty much tricks...to get them to participate in the lectures. As mentioned above, until they get to know you, many people here have a natural timidness. This doesn't bode well for a charla where I am attempting to get participation, or even responses to very easy questions. I would ask a girl, 10 or 11 years old, what her favorite food was, and the reaction about 60-70% of the time is to blush and turn her face away or start giggling with her friends. I know my spanish is still a long way from perfect, but I'm positive that it was understood by everyone. It seems that every volunteer that I have spoken with quickly noticed how different the children act here, the natural leadership and assertiveness that seems to be fostered in young folk in the US seems to be absent here at times. This is frustrating because all of the techniques that I have used with working with kids, be it swim lessons, boy scout camps, or whatever, don't work as effectively here. A game of jeopardy worked pretty well with nutrition-oriented questions, but I will have to get creative with other activities in the future.

We've had a rare couple days of sunshine and I've been taking advantage of the opportunity to wash some clothes by hand up on the roof of the house. I'll be out and about in the town later, but gotta always watch the sky so I can take off towards home and take down the clothes on the line before it starts raining, or just hope that the host family will do it for me.

This weekend we will be celebrating the fiesta of carnival in the capital of the department, Cajamarca city. It'll be great to see some other volunteers, get together to speak english, eat some pizza and take a break from our communities for a couple of days. I believe that I have mentioned this celebration in previous posts, but it involves the youth of the city taking to the streets and engaging in a huge water balloon battle for an entire weekend. A couple people have started the festivities early and a majority of the street corners near the plaza in my town have boys sitting and waiting with balloons for some unsuspecting victim.

All in all things are going very well here, I am looking forward to the end of summer vacations for the kids, which will hopefully allow me to get a youth group together to do a couple activities, and hopefully coordinate with a couple US high schools for some cultural exchange activities. I'm still pretty healthy, had a small cold during the week last week after a few interviews with rural families who had children with colds, thinking I might have caught it from them. But I feel pretty lucky if that''s all I've got to complain about on the health front.

Alright, I'm off to get some work going, hope everyone is doing well back in the states!!

Adventures in the Campo

2009-02-07T14:48:00.000-08:00

It is pretty obvious that my goal for weekly updates to this blog was a little ambitious, but maybe I'll make it my new years resolution....that starts the second week of February. (just checked my last post, and I made the same joke last month, sorry about that)

Things down here in the southern hemisphere have been going pretty well. Last weekend the volunteers of Cajamarca had a meeting in the capital city and the majority of us were able to attend (26 of the 28 volunteers of this department). It was nice to meet some volunteers we hadn't met yet and got to see a bit of the super bowl (the million-dollar-english commercials weren't shown to the spanish speaking population of peru). About half way through the game we had to leave to start making our way back to site. There are about 7 of us that live within two hours of each-other, the downside is that our central town of Chota (population about 20,000 people) is 7-9 hours from the capital city depending on the weather. Because of this we usually take a night bus that leaves at 9 (from Chota or Cajamarca city) will arrive around 4 or 5 in the morning (in Cajamarca City or Chota). Like the doorframes, bicycles, rubber boots, and many other things here in peru, the buses are made for peruvians and I find that it is quite uncomfortable for my 6'2" American body. So I usually pass these bus rides listening to music or podcasts on my MP3 player and pray that the batteries don't run out before we reach our destination. We usually only spend one night in the capital city, so 2 out of 3 nights are spent sleepless on a bus. Because of this I try to avoid going into the capital city as much as possible, it is also much more expensive than life in site. Some recent purchases in site were 7 bananas and two HUGE mangos for 4 soles (about $1.33) and a haircut for 2 soles (about $0.66), don't think I'll ever beat that price anywhere.

So now that I'm back in site I've been continuing with my community diagnostic, which involves getting integrated in the community as well as interviewing families in the rural areas about health, especially the nutrition of their young children. One of the biggest health problems here is malnutrition, which causes not only physical stunting in children but also handicaps their abilities to learn in school. My site is a reasonable sized town of 7,000 people and our target population for this activity is the people living in much more rural conditions. So to conduct my interviews with families I have to hike out to these outlying communities. One bad part is that Tacabamba is located in a valley, which makes for a really pretty landscape, but a tough hike because no matter which direction I go, I have to hike uphill. Another downside is that I need to conduct 100 interviews with families, to this point, I have completed 15. I'm finding it somewhat difficult because these families have been educated before on the correct answers for the questions, and, of course, these are the answers I am receiving during my interviews. The mothers all know that their children should have nothing but breast-milk for the first 6 months and then afterwards can eat other foods. They all know that they should boil the drinking water before consuming it and that any animals in the house (cuyes, chickens, rabbits, dogs, etc.) should be kept out of the kitchen. I'm not all that convinced that these mothers are actually practicing these things, but that's what they've been telling me. So I've been trying to change the survey around to try to get the real answers.

This last thursday I took a hike out to a community I had never been to before, but just assumed that it was easily hikeable. Three hours later of hiking up and down hills on paths will mud that would completely swallow my boots at times, I arrived at the community. I was able to do a couple interviews and was hanging out at the health post with a nurse that was working there, it turned out she was the only employee working there that day and there were quite a few patients standing around waiting to be seen. I though, hey, I did paramedic stuff, I bet I could take vitals and what not to help her out a lil' bit. I volunteered and she quickly put me to work, something was lost in translation though. I was not only taking vitals and history on a few patients, but thought I would be making diagnoses as well. So I've got this old lady saying that she's got pain running from her right flank down her right leg to her ankle and she's asking me if I think it's a problem with her nerves or just the muscles and I give her a blank faced stare that I've been using quite a bit when I don't really know what I should do in a certain situation. After consulting with the nurse we (the nurse) decided to call it muscular pain and we got the lady some pain pills. A short while after that I made the three hour hike back home, using a different route than when I hiked there. Luckily the people are extremely helpful, I'm sure it helps that I obviously don't fit in with the other people hiking between communities (the people that are using a sheet of plastic as a rain jacket and usually are walking barefoot).

The next holiday that we have here in Peru is Carnival, I'm not exactly sure about the cultural root of carnival, I think it has something to do with fat tuesday and the big party to get everything out of your system before ash wednesday and lent. But here the tradition involves throwing water balloons at other people, who don't know they're playing. This stuff started soon after new years and now it is very common place for younger boys, even older ones at time too, to be walking around the town plaza with water balloons in their hands waiting to hit some unsuspecting victim. Though there are a couple rules to the game, usually a person can only target a person of the opposite sex, and they cannot have very small children with them....but that's pretty much it for rules. I luckily have not been hit yet (the girls here don't have too good of aim), but I've heard the game keeps going until the actual celebration of carnival, which is in late February. The water attacks are also much more vicious in the city, there are actually trucks that will drive around the plaza with kids (or drunk adults) in the back who will throw balloons, or use squirt guns and buckets of water on whoever they can. The most surprising thing of all is that no one really gets that upset, I can not imagine that happening in the states. All the volunteers of the area will be going to the city for the actual celebration of carnival, so that should be pretty interesting.

That's about it for now, I know I've promised several times to have more frequent updates, but this time I'm actually gonna stick to it (hopefully). I hope everyone is doing well up north.

Happy New Years!!!

2009-01-07T11:25:00.000-08:00

Well....I guess my new years resolution will be to be more religious about my blog updates. It's been a busy holiday season which is nice because it keeps my mind of the holiday happenings back home. There are also much fewer clues that the holiday season was happening. In the states you've got holiday tunes everywhere, radio, tv, elevator music, as well as the decorations everywhere. Around here we've got none of that, maybe a few nativity scenes in peoples houses, and the weather is actually quite warm.
Christmas eve around here is more of a big deal than actual christmas day. We went to mass around 9:00....and it actually started around 10:30. There was a short service and then everyone lined up to pay a few centivos and kiss the plastic baby jesus before returning to their houses for a champagne toast at midnight and the opening of gifts. I had gotten a toy wooden car for my 1.5 year-old host brother and some cd's of popular spanish music for my 6 year-old host sister. I was very happy when the host brother at times chose to play with my gift over the fancy electronic plastic one his parents gave him, and I woke up christmas morning to hear my host sister playing the music I gave her. We had christmas dinner at about 1:30 in the morning christmas day and I had to get to bed soon after because I was falling asleep at the table. Christmas day was a time for family, as my host dad said, and then he spent most of the day drinking with the other men of the neighborhood in the street. As I walked to the internet cafe at around 10 in the morning to call the family I was pulled into a drinking circle, and you think toothpaste and orange juice is bad...
New years was spent in the capital city with our peruvian friend jose, and a few germans that we met while walking around the city. The tradition here for the new years is to wear yellow (preferably your underwear), and eat 12 grapes at midnight for good luck. Since we were in the capital and felt like tourists, we fully embraced those traditions. Other traditions involve burning a doll dressed up like a person as a way of saying goodbye to the old year, another is running around the block with your luggage as a way gaining good luck for your travels in the coming year. It was a bit weird that there wasn't a countdown at the discoteca where we passed the new year, our group of 7 people rang in the new year with a countdown on my timex, a lil' different from back home.
While I was in the capital I treated myself to a christmas gift of a new guitar. Now I had a guitar with me all 4 years of college, but somehow never got around to learning how to play it. I'm hoping with my bountiful free time here I should be able to put some of it to use. I think between the guitar, training for a marathon I'm running in early July and reading through the stack of books I brought from the states, I should have enough activities to occupy my free time.
As far as actual peace corps work goes, it's starting to get going, which I am actually very excited about. I'm working with the health center doctors and nurses to decide in which of the 66 or so communities around Tacabamba I will be working. We are trying to target the high-risk communities, areas where latrines don't exist and there is little or no education about nutrition, hygiene, and proper garbage disposal. The problem is that the communities closer to population centers such as tacabamba are naturally going to be better educated because of their proximity to the larger town. Because of this I will most likely have to work in some communities that are quite far away. I've heard of some being 8 hours away by foot, I think I'll try to shy away from those, but I may have to walk 2 or more hours one way to get there. So....I might be looking into getting a horse to use to get out to the further communities....but maybe that's just the dream of a silly Texan. I've also volunteered to teach an english class to some secondaria (equivalent of high school) kids during their summer vacations. English teaching is a pretty daunting task that some volunteers shy away from, first because it is very very difficult to arrange a group of kids and get a space to teach in and the resources to teach, and secondly, teaching english is hard. In my situation I only have to deal with the second obstacle because a group was already arranged and they are just inserting me as the "professor of english". Beyond that I'm thinking about hosting swim lessons and doing some kind of video exchange project with the spanish club at my brothers high school, but those are further on the horizon.
So pretty much things are going pretty well here, don't have too many complaints at all.....here are a few pictures for your viewing enjoyment....take care everyone!!!

nice scenery picture, we had to hike up from the bottom of this where the waterfall was at....keep scrolling for waterfall pics...

Paco and Paul, our peruvian tour guides to the water fall...

Bunch of gringos in front of el condac, a waterfall that is famous around the area...

Slightly out of order, but this is me and the host siblings on christmas morning....and I´ve got my christmas morning bed head going....

This is a better picture of just el condac, usually the water is clearer, but it has the appearance of chocolate milk becase of a recent rainstorm....didn´t taste too much like chocolate milk though....not sure why this is a hyperlink....or where it goes but click away....

The host brother a few minutes after midnight christmas morning, choosing to play with my gift over the fancy plastic one....haha...point for Ryan

Host brother in front of the nativity scene in the house

The creative wrapping paper I used for the host siblings gifts, thank you to the grandparents for the newspapers...and yes...I enjoyed reading them first

Lil girl with pretty eyes and I at about 6 o´clock in the morning after an all night quincienera party...

The quicienera birthday girl...

A couple wild days of integration...

2008-12-13T16:21:00.000-08:00

So it's been kinda a crazy couple of days of "integrating" with my community. During my last 3 days I have held kids down while they had teeth pulled, won money off of kids during a soccer game (unintentionally), and ate guinea pig for 3 of my last 5 meals. Keep reading to find out more...

Alright, so during our first few weeks in site us new volunteers should be working to make connections with community leaders and try to find your place in the community. Eventually we will be working on our community diagnostics, which involve 100+ interviews with rural families to diagnose both the needs of the community and with which communities we would likely have the most success with (some communities are more motivated than others. But because of the christmas season, everything has been pushed back a bit. It's tough to get big stuff going like trips to communities (some are several hours away), so it's better to wait until January. This doesn't mean that we're not busy though.

On Wednesday I worked with the health center and went with a group of nurses and a doctor to the same community we had done the vaccination campaign in. We were going to set up a make-shift health post in the school for a couple hours so that the people that couldn't make the trip to town (about two hours by foot) could still get access to a doctor. We were taking vitals on kids, checking height and weight. The doctor was checking out kids with respiratory problems, ear infections, normal kid stuff, and we had a small pharmacy set up to hand out what the doctor prescribed. An obstetrician was answering questions about girlie stuff as well as giving anti-contraceptive shots. But by far, the most popular person was the dentist, who was there to take a look at teeth and pull out the trouble ones. They used lidocaine as an analgesic but these kids were getting teeth pulled out in their school desks, to their credit the majority of these kids were amazingly tough. The girls even more so than the fellas, I know if it were me I'd be crying like a baby, numbing shot or not. After a couple hours of that we headed home, but it was good to see they have programs like that to help the people of the communities that can't make the trip into town, but with more than 60 similar communities in the area, it's pretty tough to maintain all of them. The following day I went with my host dad to the school he works at. It's the equivalent of an elementary and they are winding down the school year here (remember the seasons are backwards here), so he just had to administer a final or two and then play soccer. The kind of stuff that a gringo could easily tag along with. After being told to be ready for a car to the school at 6:50 in the morning, my host dad comes strolling into the kitchen around 7:20 and sits down for breakfast....excuse the tangent but down here they work on the hora peruana (peruvian time), which means if someone says a certain time...say 6:50 am...and you show up then, you will be the only person there for at least 25 minutes. It's something I'm still adjusting to here in site. The only things that run on time are scheduled buses, and soccer games....but we were able to catch another car that took us about half way. Then we walked about a mile up hill to get to the school. There was a religion test and a music test. The religion test was 5 questions and didn't take too long, afterwards the kids had to come to the front of the room and sing a song by themselves. After hearing 30 or so kids sing I felt like I was obligated to try to do something of my own, the only song I could really remember the words to without the music was Pat Green's "Carry On" a Texas country song. I didn't know at the time, but after singing once, I was obligating myself to sing to these kids for the rest of the day, after a couple more renditions I faked a coughing spell to get out of singing more. Luckily the soccer game served as a distraction as well. Around here each player chips in a lil' bit of money, an impuesta, and the winning team takes all, at least that's how it is when the big kids play. These kids are about 5th graders, and they're peruvian which makes them even smaller. My host dad sets the teams and we're both on the same team versus a team comprised completely of kids, then he asks for the impuesta, I thought it was a lil' strange but I didn't say anything. We play a long game and end up winning, I think out of our 5 goals, 1 was scored by my host dad and 3 others were assists from one of us, just to show that the teams weren't evenly matched. After the game wraps up we start our hour and a half walk back because rain clouds were threatening, I didn't receive my share of the winnings and was happy because I thought it was just between the kids. After the long hike downhill on bad knees we arrive in site and stop at a store to grab a soda, it was here that my host dad remembered to give me my winnings, 50 centivos (about 16 cents, worth a bit more to poor peruvian kids). So....UNINTENTIONALLY.....I guess I might have gambled with kids, I'll make it up to them by throwing the game next time, won't be too hard to fake that I'm playing soccer poorly.

Yesterday morning my host parents woke me up at 6 to help with preparations for my host sisters graduation from pre-school. Around here they celebrate everything, and this is just another excuse to have a party. A party that requires a full day of preparations. My host grandmother had been cooking cakes all week, 12 in total and I spent the first couple hours yesterday sweeping an auditorium and putting decorations on walls (because I'm tall they loved having me around, opened up all kinds of new decoration schemes for them). The actual ceremony began at 2:00 pm with a service in the church and then we headed to the auditorium. There were 20 graduates, and each had a partner (boy/girl couples). At the auditorium there were a couple hours of speeches, certificates and gifts were given out before dinner (40 kids and families sitting down to eat guinea pigs, complete with head and all), dancing, and beverages, sodas and beer for the kids and adults respectively. Around midnight I had to head to bed, but the party was still going until around two o'clock in the morning. My host sister beat me, even my host brother of one and a half years, but he just fell asleep during the party so I'm not sure if that really counts. For some reason, Peruvians don't even have the need to sleep. I woke up tired this morning, and found waiting for me a plate of reheated leftovers for breakfast.

During the upcoming week I have to make a trip to the department capital to collect a box of books I've got waiting for me and run a couple errands that I can't do out here in the small towns. It's unfortunate that it's a trip of 10 hours one way and costs about 28 soles (about $9, but we receive about 35 soles daily). Also get to pick up a bike in the capital city, it will be very nice to have that to get around, as long as it doesn't rain too much on these dirt roads and trails. That's it for now, hope everything is going well with people back in the states and wherever you may find yourself. I can't believe that Christmas is less than two weeks off, doesn't feel like the holidays here quite yet but I hope everyone is having a very happy holiday season so far.

A couple pictures, but I apologize, they are in no order what so ever.

The spiral staircase leading up to my room on the second floor, haven´t yet fallen on the stairs but I know that day is coming.

The kitchen of the house, very very nice in comparison to other volunteers that place pots on rocks to make a stove.

The courtyard of my house...

Entry room of my house...

Picture of my room pt. 1...

Room pt. 2...

Picture of the house from the street with host sister and friends playing on the balcony upstairs.

Picture of room pt 3....and yes, I did clean the room before I took these pictures.

Pre-school graduates sitting down to dine on guinea pigs...

Pre-school grads and their partners dancing to american rap music in front of their families...

The host family, graduate angie, her partner, usher girls in orange and god parents...

My host brother is a lil´ lady killer when he´s dressed to the nines...

Angie and partner in the church before the service.

Me with the kids of the school...before the soccer game...

Gettin' into the Real Peace Corps Stuff...

2008-12-05T12:40:00.000-08:00

So I haven't posted anything in awhile but that's because we've been super busy, and things have actually changed quite a bit since my last post. Our sites were announced, we spent a week visiting our sites, returned for a couple more weeks for training before my group, Peru group 12 swore in as real peace corps volunteers and shipped off to our respective sites. That's the short version, the long one is a lil' bit more fun. Around early November the Peace Corps staff announced our site assignments, there was a ceremony with most of the higher ups in peace corps peru in attendance. The magic of the ceremony was lessened somewhat because 1/3 of the trainees already knew where they were going to be working. The members of environmental promotion found out their sites long before those in health promotion and water and sanitation. For the most part everyone was extremely excited with their site placements. My site was to be Tacabamba, Cajamarca, besides being fun to say it looked like a great community according to the paperwork they gave each of us. But I was going to have to wait until site visits to actually find out what ol' tacabamba was all about. Following the site announcement ceremony we had a talent show, all in spanish of course. Each language class had to present a skit. They were quite varied and actually quite impressive, there were skits poking fun at professors, the public transit system we use every day, a dating show, and jam poetry sessions. Our group did literal translations of pop songs into spanish, such as rhiannas umbrella, don't worry be happy, and brown eyed girl. So there I was in front of the group singing along..."Oye, donde fuimos?/en los dias lluviosos/bajo en the hallow jugando un juego nuevo" some of the words didn't make the translation jump but you get the idea. After that we only had two days left to wait before heading off to our sites. The following saturday we caught an 18-hour night bus to Cajamarca city as we made our way to sites. Our group of seven trainees slowly trudges off the bus after a night of fitful sleep, especially for those tall folk who can't really fit in the bus seats all that well (peru has been made by short people for short people). In the confusion of getting our checked bags from under the bus someone was able to sneak in and steal a couple of our carry-ons (the bags that we carry on to the bus that have all the expensive stuff that we don't trust to leave in our checked bags). Between three guys, we lost three cameras, three ipods, a passport, phone, some cash, books, notes, couple pairs of prescription glasses, and other assorted items. It was quite a bummer but we learned from it...more on that in a bit. After the 18 bus ride to the department (state) capital, I've got about another 8-10 hours of travel to make it to my site. As of right now I'm actually the most remote volunteer in my department. In my site there was a small ceremony at the health center which involved introductions from the 30 or so employees that work there, a wine toast, dancing with some nurses, a dance by an 8 year old who is staring me in the eyes the whole time (somewhat awkward), and of course, a small speech given by me in poor spanish. After that I got to meet my host family in their amazing house, I feel like I've won the peace corps lottery with this family. They've got a kitchen that seems like something out of the states, I was able to choose between three different rooms, and I've got a hot shower and flushing toilet (high ticket items around here, especially when some volunteers don't even have latrines, and must use a field instead). I spent two full days in site making the rounds of introductions while being sick with a fever and what not. After site visits the last two weeks of class dragged by very slowly, after learning about our sites and what we'd actually be doing for the next two years, it was hard to get excited about seemingly silly stuff for class. Slowly we got through it and before we knew it we were celebrating thanksgiving the best we could and getting our bags packed to leave for our sites. For ol' turkey day we were actually able to get our large group together to have turkey sandwiches and be merry. The day after thanksgiving we had our swearing in ceremony, which involved our group gathered under a large patriotic tent of red white and blue listening to speeches from a representative from the US embassy, our host families, our country director, and a great speech by one of our fellow volunteers (the guy was pretty tough because he was also very sic, right after....and before his speech he was in the bathroom throwing up). The peace corps put us up for a night in lima and we were able to go out to some nice restaurants and bars in miraflores (the upper class part of lima) and celebrate our completion of training. The next day we were on the hunt for mexican food in miraflores (turns out to be the food I miss most from home), weren't able to find it but settled for a cold swim in the water of the pacific on the coast of miraflores. Later that day we hopped that long bus to cajamarca again, for some reason it took 20 hours this time. But as we got off the bus we had learned from our last trip there and were much more careful with our bags. It helped that there was a group of about 10 current volunteers already working in Cajamarca there to meet and look after us. Our friends in other groups weren't so lucky, with our new cell phones we were able to here stories of stolen laptops, money, wallets and other things, seems like we got ours out of the way early. We had a couple meetings in cajamarca city and had some time to get to know the volunteers that have been working here for a bit, and of course drill them with questions about what the heck we're supposed to be doing with our first few days in site. Again I made the long journey from Cajamarca to Tacabamba with my obscene amount of luggage. Somehow in the last three months I have accumulated more things, and had three large bags to lug around. I finally arrived at the house of my new host family this last tuesday, making this my 3rd full day in site. My host family is amazing, I've got a grandmother that can cook amazingly well, her professora daughter, who is also married to a professor, and their children, cesar (1.5) and anghie (6)....oh....how can I forget our wonderful dog bon-bon. They have this kind of dog here, it's tiny, always has an under-bite, and an annoying bark, this dog is all those things. He loves to bark and whine late at night, and he's also only got one eye because he got in a fight, with a bigger dog I'm guessing, so you gotta be careful not to sneak up on him. Especially if you're me, who he doesn't like already, he has been snapping at me and trying to pee on my things. Since I've been here I've killed the electricity in the whole house while taking a hot shower, wandered through the campo (countryside) trying to find children to give hepatitis B shots, missed viewing a childbirth by 5 minutes, and received countless strange stares and looks (especially while I was on a run today). All in all things are going very well so far, I'm extremely excited about my site, the people that I will be working with here, and it doesn't seem like there's going to be any lack of work. The difficult part at the moment is finding the work, for the moment I will be working to make connections and network in the community so that when I actually find out what the problems are in the community I'll have a broad network of people to draw on for assistance....at least it's supposed to go something like that. I hope everyone stateside is doing well, I can't believe it is December already. I was told time would fly, but I didn't think it would go this fast this soon. I will try to get posts up more frequently so that I don't have to rehash a full month in one long boring post, until then, I hope the best for everyone back home.

And as a special treat....finally....a few pics of Tacabamba!!!!

So there´s a statue of jesus up above the town, I was up chillin´with him and shot this panaromic view of tacabamba. Que bonito el pasiaje!!!!

A view from the communidad naranjo outside of tacabamba, this is where we were hunting down kids to give them shots. You can imagine that we weren´t a real popular group with the kiddies.

A view from naranjo again.

On the walk back to Tacabamba from Naranjo.

My cute lil´host sister Anghie.

My favorite mountain around the town....can´t remember the name of it though....we´ll call it Ryan´s Hill.

Franca beer welcomes you to Tacabamba.

My homies from session quinto b from the local colegio.

I was hiking along and snapped this pic, can´t see it but Ryan´s Hill is to the right...see...it´s catching on already...

Gettin' to See the Real Peru!!!

2008-11-02T13:54:00.000-08:00

So we just got back earlier today from our Field Based Training in Cajamarca. I was in a group with three other volunteers, our tour guides were a 3rd year volunteer Devina, and our language instructor Pablo. We traveled up to Cajamarca, a department in the north of Peru in the area called the sierra, it's pretty high in the andes, I think we topped out at higher than 3,000 meters while driving between towns. It's the rainy season up there so we got to see rain for the first time in our time here in Peru.....actually there might have been a lil' too much rain. Us future volunteers weren't all that well prepared and were wandering around fields of mud wearing our running shoes and chacos. Would have been more fun if I had a pair of rubber boots that everyone around there were wearing, but I just got laughed at when I asked if they had size 48 (they use the funky european sizing down here). During our week long adventure we build a latrine, a wood burning kitchen, helped turn a field of grass into a garden, and gave classes to children about self esteem and STD's. The second was quite awkward because it was...a talk about STD's with 14-15 year old kids....and it was in spanish. Wasn't able to field the questions quite as well as the other people in the group but I think we the job done pretty well. Saw some beautiful scenery, rode some wild buses on muddy roads along side some big cliffs, and most importantly got to see what life is like for the actual volunteers that are already working here in Peru. We were able to visit the sites of three different volunteers and were actually able to spend the night with two of them. It was also great to get outside of the training center near lima and have a break from the grind of classes.

After all the fun stuff out and about in the field....most of us still don't know where we'll be working for the next two years. We will find out this thursday and I hope I'll be able to work up in cajamarca in the area that we just got back from visiting. The week after next we will be traveling again, this time individually to our actual sites. This'll probably be pretty awkward, to the peruvians of my future community I'll be this funny looking, abnormally tall gringo that can't speak well but is coming to live with them. During my visit to my site there's not too much to do beyond meet the family I'll be living with for the next two years and meet people in the community that will be important to know to get projects off the ground and what not, just an exercise in making connections.

That's pretty much it for now, we're all getting quite excited about getting out into the field and doing some actual work, and this next week of class in going to be awfully boring compared to our travels in Peru, slowly but surely we're getting down with this training stuff.

Climbing Hills and Eating Raw Fish...

2008-10-19T17:37:00.001-07:00

So today is one of our precious few off days, and I wanted to take advantage of it by sleeping in. There was a quincinera last night, but it didn't kick off until midnight, and it was also a b-day party for a 15 year old girl, so I passed on that. Got to bed relatively early and tried to sleep in but that was foiled by the synergy of the chapel bells next door and Mario, my 8 year old brother, banging stuff outside my door. Had breakfast of onions, tuna, and bread for breakfast (not as bad as it sounds), and was going to tidy up my room when my host mother came in and told me to head downstairs and watch her dad make cerviche. Peru has what many consider a national drink and a national dish. The drink is called a pisco sour, it tastes somewhat like a margarita with too much ?????, but is quite delicious. The dish is called cerviche, it's raw fish and shrimp with lemon juice served on a bed of onions with seaweed on top. It's actually pretty good, my only complaint is that the seaweed is supposed to be rinsed thoroughly, I don't think it was, and at times it tasted a lil' too much like the sea. A lil' too quickly after downing a large plate of raw fish, we left on a trip to climb the hill behind our neighborhood. The group consisted of myself, another volunteer named Brad, and the family of the neighboorhood party animal Chi-chi. This is a fella that the PC has warned us about hanging out with and is personally responsible for the current number of volunteers in the barrio being 5, it used to be 12 but there were too many parties and what not at this guys house that the PC was worried about the bad influence. In my opinion he's a friendly guy that likes to have gringo friends, but he was a great tour guide and we hiked for just over an hour to get to the top of the hill near our neighborhood. Within 5 minutes of being on the trail we already found many ceramic pieces that were once part of incan pottery over 1,000 years ago. There were stones stacked to form walls and it was very obvious where rooms once stood. The way of living has somewhat changed since then. At the top of the hill we were able to see into the exclusive club that is situated just above our barrio, where almost every house has a pool and I believe I was able to see 5-6 red clay courts. So I'm gonna have to see if I can find a way to sweet talk my way in there to play....after I find some shoes....racquets...and someone else to play with, should be easy.

Things have been going well since the last post. Got bumped up in my language level to "intermediate medium", which is the minimum level that a trainee must achieve before being allowed to exit training. So that's good and all but tricks on them....I still don't know spanish well, so I'll see what I can scramble and pick up in the 6 weeks of training we have left. We just passed the 5 week mark and the time has been flying by already, I can't believe it is half way through october already.

Oooh....big news I almost forgot about. We've got this thing called Field Based Training (FBT), where we split off into smaller groups and go out into the Field and do some...Training. We'll be shadowing some volunteers at their sites, giving informational sessions, building latrines and stoves. I'm in a group with 3 other trainees and we're heading the Cajamarca, it's a department in the sierra (the region of the country in the Andes). So that should be a great change of pace and a chance to see in person what we're doing all this training for. I promise to have my camera going and should have some pictures that are a bit more exciting than the ones I have up at the moment.

Alright, I'm off to learn me some spanish, hope everyone is doing well back in the states.

Still Truckin'

2008-10-09T17:12:00.000-07:00

So we've almost made it four weeks through training and got about 7 left. We were treated to a holiday yesterday. It was a federal holiday to commemorate the battle of angamos. I thought the peruvians had won the battle, but they actually lost it. It was a naval battle and one peruvian ironclad had held of the Chilean navy for five months, this heroic ship was finally defeated. It made much more sense to celebrate it after I found out the back story.

Things are going quite well here, we're actually getting into the meat of our health program education. Learning about the extreme prevalence of anemia in not only pregnant mothers but children as well. The importance of well rounded nutrition to avoid stunting and irreversible impediments in cognitive development of children. It's actually really cool stuff, I've been finding out that this public health education stuff might be pretty fun. If anyone wants a fun book to read on the topic check out "Mountains beyond Mountains." It's about a doctor named Paul Farmer who did a lot of work for public health in Haiti, Russia, and even Peru. I think it's gonna be awhile before someone is bored enough to write a book about my life.

Spanish is coming along well, we had another round of language interviews today to gauge our progress and possibly move up (hopefully) or down (hopefully not) depending on how the interview goes. It was a pretty relaxed interview and the interviewer poses pretty open ended questions, I think we started with describing my host family and eventually the conversation got around to me attempting to describe my worst EMS call, which I sure don't have the vocabulary for. I spent my free day reviewing the vocab for how to tell about my daily routine (shower, eat, walk to class, etc.) So I should have known to stick to my topics and only mention things that I could speak well on.

We've got another weekend coming up and I think I'm gonna use it to catch up on some sleep and do some reading, I've been doing pretty well not getting sick as of yet and I want to try to keep it that way if possible. Of course I say this now, knowing full well that there is a concert saturday night that I will most likely be attending. I'm off to read harry potter in spanish...took me about 20 minutes to get through the first 2-3 pages yesterday, I'm gonna see if I can once more break the land speed record for reading spanish. Hope everyone is doing well where ever you're at.

Public Speaking 101...en español...

2008-10-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

So things are going pretty well down here in the southern hemisphere. Staying busy, but having a great time. Last night there was a fiesta in my neighborhood to commemorate the 36th anniversary of the barrio. The soccer tournament that we were involved in was a prequel to the fiesta last night. Our team performed quite well, I believe we had 3 wins, 3 loses, 4 ties and a forfeit mixed in there somewhere (due to a combination of miscommunication and schedule conflict with the presidential debate...yes, we have TV down here). Though we performed well we were definitely not the best team in the tournament, but some representatives from the neighborhood chose to give us an award for sportsmanship. And for this they gave us some sharp looking jerseys with the name of the barrio written on them. A great gift, they were given to us during the fiesta last night, and for this they expected someone from the team to speak. This someone happened to be the captain....who happened to be me. At this point I have been studying spanish in university for one year, and have lived in a spanish speaking country for all of three weeks, this surely has not prepared me for speaking in front of 100+ people. After some encouragement and teasing from my friends, mixed with a bit of liquid courage I was ready to take the stage, grab the mic, and butcher the three or four sentences that I had planned out. It probably wasn't all that bad but it was an unexpected surprise. This was followed by fireworks, drinking, and dancing For some reason the dancing area was comprised almost entirely of gringos (many were wearing the recently gifted jerseys). The way people drink here is a bit different than in the states, the men will gather together in a small circle of 4-6 people and pass a large bottle and glass around the circle. They don't have personal size bottles and it's taboo to drink directly from the bottle, though I believe we smashed a couple cultural boundaries last night. After receiving the cup in the circle you fill it about one third full, drink it, shake it out and pass it to the next person. This allows for everyone involved to share both conversation and germs (sorry grandma :) ). There are often many of these circles that will form at a fiesta, and each would like nothing more than to pull in a gringo, especially to tease him about the public display of poor spanish (the people are actually very understanding and patient with us as we struggle to learn spanish). So of course as I'm trying to walk across the fiesta area I will get pulled into three or four different drinking circles and a 35 yard walk will take 40 minutes. It's not a bad thing, just a little different. At about three in the morning I called it quits and went to bed, my host parents were somewhat surprised that I went to bed so early. I need to thank the volunteer that lived with them before me, he drank much more than me, more frequently, and I went to bed much later than I. Because of this I've got a little bit more wiggle room than I was expecting, which is nice.

It's not all fiestas down here, that's just the break that we have been looking forward to after three long weeks of classes about first aid, agriculture, composting, safety, health, spanish (of course), with a bunch of vaccinations mixed in as well. We will find out our site assignments November 6th, though a few people already know where they will be stationed for the next two years, the rest of us are excited to know where we'll be. That's when the real peace corps stuff starts, we've been told by many current volunteers that training is a necessary evil and the actual service is much more fun. But honestly this has felt like summer camp up to this point, new friends, new places, and for the most part every part of your day is dictated by someone else and we don't really have all that much responsibility yet. Aside from showing up on time (which means 20 minutes late is ok) and a little bit of spanish homework. It's nice to have a gradual increase in the expectations of us rather than throwing us in over our heads. At times it feels quite slow but it's probably for the best.

I will now try to get a few more pictures up that I promised last time. Hope everyone back hope is doing great with school, jobs, looking for jobs, and everything else. Oh...and don't forget to register to vote.

Peruvians listen to some bad American music...

2008-10-01T18:03:00.000-07:00

So I woke up this morning to the sounds of some really bad '80's american music. Peruvians don't know the words to these songs but they must love the sound of them because they are played all the time. It must be somewhat similar to us (in the states) listening to bad reggaeton or other music from these countries, but they love boy george, and many others much worse than that. I'm not able to pick out exactly who the bands are, but I can tell it's in english and it's gotta be from the 80's....music around here is more like.... http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=eVZHsc34icQ ....if that doesn't work youtube grupo cinco te vas, it's the first hit.

But Peru has much more to offer than their music, this country is amazing. The people are extremely friendly, seem to be quite understanding of my bad spanish, and the scenery is amazing. I'll be trying to get some more pics up soon. We are living in a neighborhood near the training center, they split our group of 47 into 4 different barrios. Ours is quite active, we have a soccer game involved in a tournament with a game tonight...in 20 minutes actually. Luckily everything starts late around here. This barrio is quite accustomed to a couple gringos wandering around because the peace corps often uses it to house volunteers. This first struck me when my host mother after knowing me for less than an hour left her 8 year old son with me to go on a walk with some other gringos while she headed back home. The level of trust they have for others is amazing.

Ahora my spanish ain't all that great, but I really think this is the best way to learn, as hard as it is at times. We had 4 hours of spanish class this morning, followed by lunch, and a couple hours of lectures for our health positions, then followed by an hour of spanish tutoring and whatever other spanish I speak with my family, at the soccer game, on the way home, chatting with kids, etc. It's slow going, but poco a poco I think it's all falling together.

I'm gonna wrap this up, got some e-mails to check and gonna try to put some pictures up as well, they can be found at http://gallery.me.com/rjohara/100020 ...at this time it's easier to post there than facebook...I'll get to that later...

Livin' it up in Peru

2008-09-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

My name is Ryan O'Hara, and this is my blog. I am currently undergoing training in Chaclacayo, Peru to be a Rural Community Health Promotion Volunteer for the Peace Corps. Nearly everyone has heard of the peace corps but many aren't exactly sure what it is. It's a government agency, not ministry work (...not that there's anything wrong with that), that puts Americans with college level education into communities in developing countries that request assistance developing health programs, environmental protection, or water and sanitation programs, just to give a few examples. I will be serving in Peru for 27 months, which is broken down into 3 months of training at my current location followed by 2 years of service in a site that will be announced to us in a few weeks. At this time my plan after the completion of my peace corps service is to find a spot at a medical school, hopefully in the states somewhere.

So I've safely made it to Peru and have been here for two weeks now. This should show that the Peace Corps is doing a great job of keeping us busy during training. We've got a good mix of ~4 hours of spanish each day, 4-5 hours of safety/security, health, or training specific classes, hanging out with a host family, and trying to compete in a soccer tournament. During the entire duration of service in peru volunteers live with host families and I am currently living with a great family in the barrio of 3 de octobre. My 'hood has been declared the "beverly hills" of the area. This only means that we have toilets that flush and warm water showers brought to us by electricity. This is a weird thing because each time before taking a shower I must flip a pretty serious looking switch clearly labeled "600 Volts"...which to me means it really wants to kill me. This allows me to shower in water that is not cold...but is surely not warm either. In my family I have two parents, susanna, and cesar, and three brothers, mario 8, cesar 13, and gabriel 14. At times it's good to have kids around because they are often more patient with my bad spanish, much less likely to laugh, give up and walk away while muttering something about stupid gringo under their breath.

Para mi, a normal day consists of waking up around 6:30, saying goodbye to the oldest host brothers who are usually on the way out the door to their school which is about 30 minutes away. I eat a breakfast of coffee and bread with butter and chat with my host mom before leaving the house around 730. I meet up with the 4 other volunteers that live in my neighborhood for the 30 minute walk to class. Class lasts from 8:00 - 5:00 with an hour for lunch, and sometimes if I'm lucky I've got an hour of spanish tutorials afterwards because I'm just that awesome at speaking spanish. During the last week we have got ourselves involved in a soccer tournament and had a game every night last week, we took friday off to catch the debate at a friends house.

Last night was a neighborhood party which involved traditional dances, a group of 12-14 saxophonists playing music, fireworks, and a lot of drunk peruvians who just loved to pull a couple gringos into their drinking circle to speak incomprehensible spanish to. We had a strong showing for awhile, probably pushing almost 20 people, but spent most of our time hanging out at a house in the neighborhood, we finally got to the party in the town center once every one was ready for dancing. Unfortunately our group just dissolved into a search for street food. Because the volunteers live in several different barrios some had to head back to their respective areas before it got too late. This was probably one in the morning by now and I spot my host mom. I tried to have a conversation with her father, but due to the combination of my bad spanish and the loud music I was unable to comprehend what he was saying, and he gave me the typical older adult response of shaking his head and muttering something about "no me entiendes (you don't understand me)" or stupid gringo. My one goal for last night was to stay out later than my host mother, but by three in the morning after some dancing and several conversations, with people I couldn't hear much less understand, I had to call it quits. I woke up this morning at 9 to the sound of what I thought was saxophones tuning in the street outside my window. I don't think they were tuning because they continued this for a few hours, they were just playing the same three notes in succession with each other. A nice little peruvian alarm clock for me.

So far the experience here has been amazing and it feels like I have been here for months rather than only two weeks. My group is Peru group 12 which consists of 47 amazing people from all over the country. Some have studied abroad or lived abroad, many in peru, and for a couple this trip to peru was their first time out of the country. After talking with other people it seems like everyone has their moments when they look around and are suddenly reminded that we are in peru and this is now our home, for one girl it was when she could sit in the bathroom of her house and see the moon through a hole in the ceiling. For me it was after a run yesterday when I was sitting and cooling down in the park, I was watching some guys set up the stage for the concert and when I look back to the kids in the park there was a single black and white sheep chasing the kids around the monkey bars and swings. Can't wait to see what the rest of today and the rest of service will bring...