Peace Corps Lite

A quick apology. I wrote this very quickly without taking time to correct mistakes and I don´t have time ABC check, sorry!

The other group at staging in Philadelphia was going to Cameroon, and they refered o us volunteers going to Peru as Peace Corps lite. Right they were. I can only imagine what type of situation they are in over there. The first place I stayed in Peru was kind of a hotel compound thing. We shared little bungalos and in this gated area that had a park, pool, discoteca, restaurat and horses. Clearly I knew this was just orientation and I was a little afraid of my future home, but it was better than I had pictured in my head. We met all the training staff and they went over basic introductions of people and the programs. It was all very exciting. I know, I´ve used that word a lot. It´s already kind of a blur and it was only 3 days ago, but a lot has happened in those 3 days. I was curios what peru looked like outside the walls of the compound. I soon found out on sunday morning as we took a bus to the training center in Chaclacayo. I had seen pictures of it on the internet and it looked nice, but they moved the training center and we are the first group to use it. It is better than nice. It´s amazing. It´s an beautiful gated house that belonged to some old rich lady. The house is giant and the lot is giant too. It has a pool. A pool in the peace corps? As far as I was concerend this wasn´t peace corps lite, it was peace corps luxery. We had more introductory meetings and then divided up into groups based on the language tests we had at the compound. I got placed in what seemed to be the advanced group, but I feel so far from advanced. We ate lunch with our groups under several different canapies in the back yard. Oh, and the backyard is so beautiful. It´s like 70 degrees year round so all the plants are tropical and flourish year round. It´s hard to believe it´s winter here.
Anways, at lunch we sat with an instuctor who told us about our families. Since the training center is in a new town, all the families are new to having PCVs. During lunch, our instuctor told us our families had arrived and we had to hurry and finish. It seemed o happen without warning, that we were leaving the sanctity of Americans and the Peace Corps staff. Some People were really scarred. I saw a few cry. I was really excited thougt (I need to look up excited in the glossary so my posts don´t seem so redundant). Once again, I was suprised and happy about my excitement. Since I arrived in Peru I wasn´t ever sad, scarred or really missing home. I met the my host brother and my middle child David, 21 and we rode to our house. We rode out of the beautiful gated houses and paved road part of the city, and turned onto dirt roads where the houses were made or bricks and cement and most of them seemed to be started but not finished.
My hosue ended up being quite nice, considering what I was expecting . It was two stories with tiled floors and painted walls. It has electricity and running water. It even has cable television with a ton of american channels not dubbed in spanish. I don´t think I will have much time to watch tv, it´s just nice to know that when I am sick and have to spend the day lying down, I can do it on the couch in front of american tv. The only non modern thing about the house is that it has not hot water and the toilet doesn´t flush . There is a big cylander of water next to the tiolet and you have to use a bucket to put water in the tiolet so it automatically flushes. I´m glad I didn´t figure that out in too embarasing a way. Yesterdy I spent most of the afternoon watching the Animal Planet (dubbed in español) with different members of my family. Edgar is 23 and speaks english. When I have a hard time understanding him and I ask him to repreat it a few times, he just tells me very impaciently in english. The accent here is very different than what I´m used to and the words are significantly different too. Yesterday I struggled to understand a lot, but already today my brain is warming up to it and I am feeling a little better. Nataly is 13 and said nothing to me all day even though she watched tv with me all day and sat at the dinner table with me. But after dinner she asked me if I wanted help unpacking and I said or course and she came in my room and just started talking and didn´t stop. It was great though, I like it. She really likes hindi music so she brought a CD in my room and we listened to it on my lap top. She is going to be my biggest helper in peruvian spanish I think. She´s so patient and she doesn´t mind helping me sound things out. She´s already taught me some great sland.
I also went to church last night with my family. They had a very hard time understanding the fact that I didn´t have a religion. But I think they really liked that I went with them. There are a lot of dogs here. Just on my way to the internet cafe I saw the biggest dogfight I´ve ever seen. There were like 10 dogs just going at it. Anyways, at church, when everone was kneeling, a stray dog that had wandered into the church, jumped up on the benches and was a walking around during prayer. At some point this big dog came and sat right on my legs.
Today at the training center we got to talk about all out different living situations. Some people are so lucky. They have Hot water, Internet, a washing machine, some people even have their own living rooms. But at the other end of the scale there are those who don´t have running water or have to live with 12 little girls or don´t have a toilet indoors or have a tin roof that sit´s a foot above the walls so all the bugs can come in. I think I´m pretty lucky. Most people live in an area with a whole bunch of other PCVs, but I live in an area with only two other girls. One of them is heather, my roomate from Philadelphia who a like a lot, she lives just 3 houses up the street from me. She´s not doing very well. Her spanish is not great and she´s really freaked out by the whole situation. Shoot, I have so much more to say but it will have to wait because my time is up. I will try to write more tomorrow. Miss you all!