The Good Kind of Stress

I haven´t updated in over a week. There have been several interesting events since my last blog, but I have been pretty busy and everytime I find myself at a compter with internet, I´ve had to take care of more pressing matters. So, what´s new?

Well, I was feeling really icky at the begining of this month, especially after my talk with the head nun. I was feeling so unblievebly stressed out and there were nights when I felt like the worst peace coprs volunteer in all of Peru. So I decided to take action. Since things felt like I had hit a momentary dead end at the orphanage, I turned my attention and energy to the home for sexually abused girls. I figured there was no better time to start my workshop on sexuality. This is a hard subject to touch with any teenagers, but teaching a group of girls who have all been sexually abused....I felt a bit out of my league. Since the closest thing I have to expereince in this field is hours listening to Dr. Drew on loveline, I started working very hard to prepare myself. I have spent a lot of time with my counterpart from the home, the psychologist. She is young, smart and down to earth. It was such a refreshing change from the old nun. I have successfuly completed 4 classes, and I think they are going well. But it´t hard, you can see the shame in their faces when we start to take about the really serious stuff.

So I still have quite a bit of stress in my life right now, but it´s the good kind, I think. Yesterday I had my site visit with my youth development program director. I was originally nervous abouth is visit, but the time it rolled around, I had bigger things to be nervous about. We sat down with the head nun, and my program director defended my situation and we talked a lot of stuff out. I hope things will impove. But at our little meeting, the head nun announced she was stepping down and her replacement nun will arrive in 2 weeks. So we´ll see if this works in my favor or not.

The new big stress in my life is February 4. My country director informed me that that was the day he and Deputy Director for all of Peace Corps was going to be visitng Peru, and specifically my site. So he asked me to prepare a few hours that day to entertian the deputy Director. As if that isn´t stressful enough, I had already planned a vacation (my first real vacation at that) for the weekend before the visit. I am arriving from my Carnival vacation the mornign all the big wigs are showing up. So I started a theater club with the girls so we can put on a show for a ll my bosses. The only problem is that the deputy director doesn´t speak any spanish, so the girls are all going to memorize their scripts in english. So we have been working over time. We just finished writing the script and now we have to start rehersals. I think it will all work out and the important people will be impressed.

In between all this work I have been up to my old antics. I have some pretty good stories and observations from the past 10 days, but once the moment passes I loose the inspiration to relive the expereince in my blog. Who knows, maybe I´ll find my voice some night in my room and write it all out in my lap top and bring it to the internet the next day. Only one way to find out, stay posted.....