Climbing Hills and Eating Raw Fish...

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'

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...

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...

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

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...