Fiestas Patrias

This weekend was the big independence day weekend which was hyped up a lot, but I was slightly let down by it all. Friday I went out to Chosica with a bunch of the volunteers and we watched a bit of traditional peruvian music sung by a woman who had the craziest Camel toe I´ve ever seen. I usually don´t use the word Camel toe, I think it´s a bit crude. But here in Peru women wear pants that are so tight it´s hard not to be taken aback by it some times. Really, it´s bad. I don´t even know how they get into them they´re so tight. So after getting home really late on friday night I woke up to a pretty rocky saturday morning. Around 7:30 in the morning I woke up cause I had to go to pee really bad. So I got up and realized I had a pounding head ache from the lack of sleep I had gotten all week combined with the lack of water and the 3 beers I had the night before. Oh well I thought, I´ll just go back to bed and I´ll feel better when I wake up. A half hour later, I woke up with the all too familiar intestinal pain. Back to the bathroom, still have a pounding head ache. I crawled back into bed ready to get at least another hour of undisturbed sleep/recovery. Not in Peru. A half an hour later I got woken up by an earth quake. Seriously? can´t you just let a girl sleep? After I decided that the second story hadn´t fallen down on me and I was still alive, I made one last attempt at sleeping in. Nope. Jake called me and told me if I wanted to go into Lima with them that day, I was gonna have to meet them in 20 minuets. Fine I´m up! So I raced around as fast as I could getting ready, still with a headache.

We got to Lima and found out the big independence day parade was actually on sunday and the natural history museum we wanted to go to was on the other side of Lima. So we wondered around the very trendy Mira Flores part of Lima all day. We really did nothing all. By far the most productive thing I did all day was get a latte at starbucks. Even though we didn´t do anything at all, it was still a really nice day. I was the only girl so it was nice to hang out with just the guys. That night we met up at Danielle´s house to preparty before the big party in yanacoto. Only, I never made it past the preparty. I think most of us went home around midnight and missed the whole reason we had come. But again, it was very fun non the less.

On sunday, I had a barbecue type of get together with my family and jamar and heathers family. It was really great cause my two host brothers were there. I thought one of them had been staying somewhere else for the past month because I hadn´t seen him once, but I guess he had been there the whole time I just never saw him. So I finally felt like I bonded with my host brothers. It could have been a bit more fun but heather was really hung over and jamar seemed like he wanted to be anywhere but there so I had to represent for the gringos. After my brothers had drank a whole bunch of beer, they decided they were going to church and invited me along. I thought it was a bit strange to get waisted and then go to church, but who am I to judge? On the way there, I had the darnedest time trying to explain to my drunk host brother what it meant to believe in god but not have a religion. I asked my 5 times why I didn´t cross myself with holy water and kneel and all that stuff that catholics do. Apparently "I´m not catholic" is not a good enough reason. So them after church, they went to a bar and drank more. I eventually had to leave them cause it seemed like they weren´t leaving for a while and I had to get home to make my sunday phone calls back home. It was a pretty interesting experience. I spent one day with americans and one day with peruvians so I feel the weekend was successful.

Today in training we had a lesson on how to teach english classes. I´ve already taught a few basic english classes in my neighborhood, but to I don´t think I´m qualified to teach classroom formal english. I really don´t know the first thing about gramar. Even in English, it´s so freacking confusing. I learned that the structure of questions are hard for spanish speakers to understand. What DOES she DO? Where DOES he work. I guess the verb to do is an auxiliary verb. I have no idea what this means. How am I supposed to teach it. At least we don´t have the subjunctive!

Back to training

I haven´t written mush about returning to training because I haven´t been inspired really. Training is great, but after FBT it´s been hard to settle back into class room mode again. I´m very ready to get out there and start working for real. Sitting in training 8 hours a day is wearing on me. It´s not all sitting though. I´ve been quite busy with actual work.
On tuesday, some of the mothers in my community asked me if I would teach them english. I don´t think these women have any concept of how hard it is to learn a new language, especially at their age, but of course I agreed. They also invited about 20 kids from the neighborhood. So on Wednesday, I taught an english class for people ranging in age from 4 to 55. You can imagine the challenges involved in this. But it went really well. I taught them basic intorductions ¨hello, my name is....¨ and so on and we learned body parts in english. We ended with a game on our new vocab and sang head, shoulders, knees and toes. I don´t care how old you are, you are never too old for Head, shoulders, knees and toes. The big teachers strike finally ended on monday so we got to go back to our class at the public school and did goals exersize. This went suprisingly well too. Tonight I am teaching my english class again in the neighborhood, so hopefully the good streak will continue.
This weekend is the big Peruvian independence holiday so it´s going to be all party party party. I´m just gonna hang out with my family and take in the cultural expereince and maybe go to Lima with a few friends. And in other news, I met with my boss lady named Kitty. She´s the one who is deciding where I get sent. We all had interviews with her on monday and tuesday, cause we´re finding out our site placements next week. Yikes! Turns out, I´m one of the few people she doesn´t really know where to put. She asked me what my preferences were and I told her I had no idea. She asked me to take the night to think about it and come back to her the next day with some specifics, i.e. mountains or coast, city or pueblo, center based or community based. So I thought about it and stressed out about it all night only to come back to her the next and tell her I still had no idea. I don´t know why I am so indisisive about this, but I geniunely do not know where I want to go. I feel like this is bad, like she´s going to fill all of the good spots and then stick me in the one that´s left over. I´m not too terribly scared though, cause I know of at least a few people who are in the same possition. Plus, I really trully feel that where ever I go will be great. It´s like, I didn´t choose to go to Peru, but I love it. So, I´ll be waiting out the next 7 days as patiently as I can. Shouldn´t be too bad, I´ve already waited 7 weeks, what´s one more.

Hand Washing

Just wanted to add a few more pictures from field based training to emphasize the importance of hand washing. We washed over 100 hands last week, sometimes having to get pretty creative. The picture to the right is us using plastic cups to poor water over the kids hands into buckets cause there was no running water. Just getting the water in the buckets was an obstacle. The Picture below is of me and some kids right after we did a hand washing activity. I´m still dressed in my evil microbio (germ) bandanna from our hand washing skit. I´m such a good actress I´m sure those kids will never forget to wash their hands again!

FBT ain´t got nothin on me

Field based training, where to begin? So far the most efficient use of time at training. I was sent down to Chincha which is 3 hours south of Lima. Chincha was a city of maybe 20,000. In The states 20,000 is considered a small town still but here it has a much more metropolitan feel. We stayed about a block from the central plaza. It felt like a tiny Reno. There was no sense of charm and almost nothing I would call beautiful. Chincha felt like a place that was teetering on the edge of modern but still light years away. The only thing I really warmed up to in Chincha was a little restaurant which I ate basically all my meals at. The PCV’s who had been there for years ate there every day too so the owners new them well and treated us like we were family too. I really love Peruvian food which is cool cause I’d say most Americans I talk do little more than tolerate it. I love what they call “menus” here. A menu is the meal of the day. It is always very cheap and you get a starter, entrée, drink and sometimes desert too. Usually you have options of a few things and it costs about 5 soles ( $2) for a ton of delicious food. I didn’t by any means dislike Chincha, I just have never seen anything else like it before. We left Sunday afternoon and took a really sweet double decker bus there. We followed the cost from Lima 3 hours south. It was gray the whole time, we never saw the sun the entire week. Our hotel wasn’t great but was very nice in comparison to everything else around it.

Monday we had an activity where we went out and explored the city of Chincha. We went to the municipality and the police station. Monday night we had the 5 PCV girls that live in or around Chincha sit on a panel and we talked about life and work as a PCV.

Tuesday we went to a Hogar de ninas which is a girls home which is an orphanage/foster home/juvenile hall. The girls ranged from 3 to 18 and there are 75 girls that live there. The PCV who works there Rachel, organized a whole morning of games with the girls. I was so terrified. I didn’t know who to approach the girls or what to say to them. I ended up sitting back for most of the activities and being a cheerleader. It hit me that these girls weren’t going to go home at the end of the day like I was. Most of these girls don’t have a family like I have. They’ve lived there for years and their concept of life is different from mine I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. The magnitude of their situation really hit me. I was sad and scared when I left and I felt that all my confidence of working with kids was drained out of me. When we met to go over the day with Rachel, she explained how the Hogar worked. It was a state run home and all the girls that were there were sent by the state. Many had been found abandoned in the streets, taken out of their families because of substance abuse/sexual abuse/physical abuse and some of them were sent there for committing crimes. She told us some of the girls were heavily drugged as part of their “help”. There hadn’t been a therapist or psychologist to help the girls emotionally in 2 years. It completely broke my heart.

Wednesday, we went to an environmental volunteers site outside the city. She had a group of kids she taught about the environment and we were in charge of organizing an activity for them. When we got there, Abby, the PCV, went over a lesson she had taught on the how long it takes garbage to break down and the importance of recycling. So Every one in my group was given 2 little kids, a big bag and we were sent out in the roads to pick up stuff that can be recycled. This town didn’t seem to have any kind of garbage collection. Everyone just threw there trash in the street or in the river. I’ve never seen a dirtier town in my life. The two girls I worked with were great and getting more one on one with them helped calm me down. I felt so snobby. I didn’t want to pick up any trash cause it was all disgusting and the girls were clean to start and by the end they were filthy. After the garbage pick up, we did a skit on the importance of washing your hands. We definitely learned on this trip the effectiveness skits. We did a couple different skits through out the week and all the kids responded so well to the older people being really enthusiastic and acting as silly as we wanted to. So them we all washed our hands and ate oranges. After this day I wasn’t feeling so terrified. I felt like the kids really liked us and enjoyed the activity and actually learned something.

Thursday, we went to the cemetery in Chincha. There are about 80 kids who’s families work there. So they are spending their child hood in a cemetery, washing graves, selling water and flowers and playing among the graves. These kids were very poor and had the worst developed social skills of any of the other groups. Spent the morning playing games with them and we did our hand washing skit for them and we washed every ones hands afterwards. These kids were so dirty, like they hadn’t bathed in weeks. When we were washing hands, many of them took the opportunity to wash their whole arms and faces. Going back to me feeling really snobby…There were always kids on me. Usually clinging to my leg or holding my hand or hugging me and resting their head against my stomach or shoulder. At the cemetery, I cringed at these little kids touching me. They were so dirty and when I looked down at them, I could see their head was covered in lice. It was a very humbling experience. At the Hogar I felt lucky to have a family and now at the cemetery I felt lucky to have grown up something as simple as soap and water. So after washing we fed the kids snacks and soda. It was evident the impact we had on the kids that day. I was feeling not only confident but empowered. For the first time since I arrived in Peru I realized why I had joined the Peace Corps. I really feel like I’m doing something great.

Friday, we organized a big party for selected kids from the three groups we had worked with. I was in charge of organizing the girls from the Hogar. These same girls who I initially was so scared of. But I was able to spend a lot more one on one time with them. Well it was really more like two on one, because I always had two girls on each arm at all times. We were walking and they were asking me about my family back home. They asked me if I had my parents still and I said yes. When I returned the same question to the girl who had asked it, she said no, both her parents were dead. As she said it, I watched all the confidence drain out of her and I just hugged her because I had nothing to say. Then a few minutes later I asked another one where she was from and she said she didn’t know because they found her when she was a baby. She also didn’t know how old she was cause she didn’t know her birthday. This is what makes working with these kids so scary. With any of the kids that I worked with back in the states, when you first meet them there is the standard protocol “Hi! What’s your name? How old are you?” greeting you give to break the ice. But when you don’t know what questions you shouldn’t ask, it’s hard. But the party at Friday was a big hit. We took them to this really gorgeous ranch in the hills and they got to ride horses and play games and eat snacks. It was one of those things I’m sure many of them will remember for the rest of their life.

So in short, I was terrified at the beginning of FBT but by the end, I had reaffirmed the reason I joined the Peace Corps. This one week felt had a greater impact on my than any other week I can remember.

Oh honey honey!

Today was an interesting day. We went to the Ag university La Agraria for the third time. Today we learned about raising guinea pigs (considered a delicacy here in Peru) and bees. Growing plants is not that foreign a concept to me, but raising small rodent like animals for consumption purposes is something completely new to me.

These are pictures of us playing with said vermin which will at some point be consumed by a Peruvian. They´re too cute to eat.

Bees on the other hand are pretty scary things. They only had a

few of those bee keeper hats so the rest of us had to tough it out. I definitely had a few bees land on my face and hands and it is so hard to not freak out. Luckily, I didn´t get stung, though one of my instructors did get stung on the Chin. We got to eat fresh honey right out of the comb. It makes me really want to keep bees at my site, but I´m gonna have to by one of those fabulous hats.

After La agraria I went to see the new Harry Potter movie. The order of the Phoenix was my least favorite book but my favorite movie. It was totally sweet and now I can´t wait for the last book. I went to the movie with a handful of small business development kids. They all had to stick around Lima after the university cause they are taking an overnight bus to their field based training tonight so they didn´t have time to go home. I think I´m actually going to miss some people from this group. I have been spending a lot of time with Danielle and we went out for coffee and desert yesterday and talked about how much we wished we were going to the same training. It´s nice to know I am making such good friends here. I leave for FBT tomorrow and I´m looking forward to it. I think I´m too tired to be excited. Hopefully I´ll be able to post while I´m there. If not, I hope everybody has a great week!

You like me, you really like me

I am so touched that so many people are reading my blog. When I first decided to start a blog I figure it would be a great way for my parents to keep track of me. Some how, with out me knowing, my blog site got put on a peace corps website and complete strangers started reading it. I´m surprised that people actually think my life is interesting enough to read about and embarrassed that my spelling and grammar is so bad. Anyways, thanks everyone, for caring about me enough to follow me along in my journey. Keep on commenting, I look forward to reading my comments as much as I do checking my email.
Speaking of email, I got an email from Emily which was very nice and she said how it sounds like I´m doing great and that´s because my blog is so upbeat. It´s true I am doing great and I am very upbeat most of the time. Some days I come home from training and my face actually hurts from smiling so much. But I want to touch on the times that aren´t so great, like for example, this morning when it was so cold I could see my breath in the shower. The air and the water is so cold that the only warmth to be found is that leaving my body. Seriously, steam comes of my body as it heats the frigid water. The past couple days have been gray and cold. I´m missing out on summer back in California. Whenever I talk to my friends or family back home I get so jealous of all the stuff they are doing. I miss the most random stuff. Stuff that I didn´t even do on a regular bases. I miss wondering around supermarkets to get "inspiration" on things I could cook (kristen I know you can relate to that). I miss looking nice. Not that I was a walking mona lisa back home, but I miss little things like blow drying my hair and wearing cute clothes. I´ve lately been in the mood of missing being able to talk to them as regularly as I´d like. Right now, I´m talking to my parents once a week. I´m looking forward to getting my cell phone so my parents can call me more often. So the moral of this paragraph, is keep the communication coming. Anything, a comment on my blog, and email, a real letter. By the way Amanda, I got your card and it was such a wonderful surprise. It was the first piece of mail I got that wasn´t from Danielle´s mom. It sounds so dorky, but getting a letter in the mail is the greatest feeling, I´ve felt like crying I was touched. And also, as much as I would love to send real letters back to you guys, it´s a little out of the question right now. I sent a form off to the states for my student loans and it cost me 10 soles. I only get 8 soles a day so unfortunately sending mail is a luxury I can´t afford. Luckily an hour on the Internet only costs 1 sole and I can post one blog that 15 people can read and it only costs 1 sole.
Today we did some cooking in language class. It was fun but at the same time really annoying. I love to cook, but when I cook I don´t like anyone to be in the kitchen with me. I definitely like to do things my way and I don´t like to have to explain to people how to do things like cut a red pepper. Plus, Danielle´s kitchen is the size of a bathroom and my teacher insisted that everyone participate. There were definitely too many cooks, luckily, we didn´t spoil the soup so to speak. Our Lomo Saltado was very tasty.
Sunday I leave for my field based training. I´m going to the Chincha in the province of Ica which is three hours south of Lima. The 2 other groups have to take over night bus rides which are both 10+. Field based training should be great cause we get to observe volunteers in their community and the work that they´re doing first hand. Plus, we get a week long break from normal training! I think we´ve all hit a slump in training and are feeling a little burned out, FBT should be the ticket to give us motivation again. Most of my really good friends are gong to different site for FBT. I´m really excited that I have Jah in my group. He was a councilor in a boys home for a few years before joining the peace corps. He is one of my favorite people to talk to and he always seems to know what I´m feeling. It´s like it was his job or something. So that´s all. I don´t know what the Internet situation will be like during field based training so I may not post at all next week. But if that´s the case, you can at least look forward to all the great stuff I´ll have to catch you all up on when I get back.

I´ve posted a link to you tube at the bottom of this post. Call me crazy for posting this link in the first place, because it is very embarrasing, but I guess I have no shame. This was clip was posted on you tube so I can´t hide from it forever. Try really hard not to watch me in it. The guy I´m dancing with is Tom. This was at Cass´s house on her 21st birthday on the 4th of July. We had an impromtu 80´s dance party. I had gone to the bathroom and when I came back they said "hey Ali, go dance with Tom". Tom was being a goofball and needed some one to dance with so he could be even more of a goofball. I´m doing the pretty standard Ali dance, which Danielle describes as more of a full body work out than a dance. But whatever, at least I shake my booty. Tom on the other hand is having full body convultions. I like this video cause it sums up how a lot of time is passed with us volunteers. Laughing histarically. Tom is arguably one of the funniest guys in our group. We´re all pretty much shocked when something serious comes out of his mouth. Well I hope you think this link is funny.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QXMekVBAKl0

I have no idea why, but the past couple times I´ve posted the blog site won´t let me creat titles. Aw well.....
A warning about the context of this blog entry. Seeing as several members of my family are avid readers of my blog, I feel it only fair to let you all know ahead of time this is an adult themed entry. But I feel it’s important not to sugar coat any of my experiences here for the weak stomached or sensitive readers. This is my life as a peace corps volunteer and it is crass and uncomfortable at times. These awkward and embarrassing stories are more than just crapping your pants at breakfast (that happened to one of my friends this morning!) or committing mortifying cultural blunders, but also includes afternoons like the one I had today. Plus, these experiences are what make my, and other volunteers adventure, so funny for people to read about back home.
I started sex ed. when I was in the 5th grade. Today, 13 years later, I had to sit through hopefully my last sex ed. class ever. And this was definitely the sex ed to end all sex ed classes. It took every mature bone in my body to sit through this presentation with out screaming and running out of the room. I managed to stay in the tiny, crowded garage for the entirety of the presentation, but not without squealing with disgust, averting my eyes and laughing uncomfortably for the majority of the 4 hour training session.
It all started like any other day. I was walking up the gigantic hill to get the community of Yanocoto, where my languages classes are in Danielle’s house this week. One of the guys who’s married was complaining during this trek. He figured he should be exempt from the responsible sexual behavior lecture we had scheduled for the afternoon, because he was married and didn’t need to be told the correct way to put a condom on. Well, this guy is only 24. We have two retired men in their 50’s and 60’s who have both been married. I said if those guys have to sit through this lecture, then the married folk have to stick it out too.
The first part of the class started with out country director Michael Hirsh (which means it’s a big deal if he’s giving the talk) addressing the dangers of dating a HCN, or host country national. Plainly stated, dating a Peruvian. He talked about all the problems that come from dating a local such as them just seeing us as a green card and meal ticket, to dating someone in you community and having it go so horribly wrong that you have to move out of your site. He told us about some anonymous volunteers in Peru who have had some problems in this area. One nameless person was dating a woman in his community and they broke up, but she announced shortly after that she was pregnant and claimed it was the PCV’s. Testing ended up proving that he was in fact not the father, but the whole drama of the situation is enough to make one’s reputation and work in a community suffer greatly. The moral of the country director’s presentation was, it’s not a bad thing to date a local, but be careful….and don’t get AIDS or pregnant. By the way, our Country Director is marrying a Peruvian woman next weekend. Congratulations Michael.
The doctors followed this lecture with their weekly health presentation. Today’s theme was STD’s . Most of us grew up in the Ryan White era where the prevalence of AIDS and STD’s were pounded into our brains. Condoms are good, check. STD’s are bad, check. What more is there to know? Most of us were feeling like we couldn’t be taught something we hadn’t already learned 5 times over. Wrong wrong wrong! Today, I learned what STD’s actually look like. We had a power point presentation full of pictures of how these bacteria’s and viruses personify themselves on our bodies. There where gasps, shrieks, “oh my gods” and a lot of hands covering eyes. It was gross and down right disturbing. I’m sure the Doctors enjoyed all of our grotesque reactions seeing as they are doctors and have to deal with this stuff on a daily basis. Where as the rest of us like to live our lives pretending that these things don’t actually exist. They warmed us up with the easy stuff first, the bacteria’s, the curable, not so revolting stuff. Stuff like Chlamydia, syphilis and gonorrhea. The stuff that can be cured with a shot or a pill. We were so shocked to see oozing penises and Chlamydia of the eye (yes it’s possible). But then it got worse when we went from the bacteria’s to the viruses. Dr Jorge even took a picture of our reaction when he first put up the pictures or herpes. I’m pretty sure next to AIDS, herpes would be the last thing I’d choose if I were being tortured to death and had to choose one STD to be infected with (by the way, I‘m glad I don’t have to write this in Spanish because that last sentence has like 3 different types of the subjunctive tenses and would be such a pain to conjugate). The only minor comfort came during the slides of genital and anal warts; that is, knowing that with in a few days I would be getting the HPV vaccine.
It was pretty uncomfortable to sit through all those pictures, especially since my stomach had been bothering me before hand anyway. I really did try to act mature through it all, but it was hard. It was relatively enjoyable though just for the reactions of everyone else. The guys had much bigger reactions than the girls, who mostly sat there quietly with either their eyes wide open or completely shut, and the occasional awkward question. I think I was happy with the honesty and bluntness of the presentation. The moral of the story is that STD’s suck and a lot of people have them. Dr Jorge told us that 2 hours before he gave the presentation one of the male PCV’s called him and told him he just found out he had contracted herpes. Sucks. They said that currently out in the field there are Peruvian PCV’s with every STD (minus the HIV).

At the training center posing with Dr Jorge (center holding cake) on his birthday, Friday.

Getting sick in Peru was probably the thing I was most afraid of before leaving. I have such a weak immune system and sensitive stomach that I just imagined myself being in pain from the moment I stepped off the plane. Much to my great surprise, I have been relatively healthy this past month, relatively. I got a sick for half a day the second day with my host family. GI started and I just assumed that wouldn’t stop for the next 6 months. But it did. Since then, I’ve watched everyone around me, fall to some ailment or another. The most common are diarrhea and the flue. Everyday at training, we are missing two or three 3 do to these maladies, and a handful of others that are suffering through them but dragged themselves to training anyways.

One of my observations is that the boys seem to be doing worse than the girls. Just about every guy has missed a session training, where as only a handful of girls have missed classes. And for the first time in my life, the line for the men’s bathroom is longer than the women’s. This leads me to wonder if this is all coincidence or if there is some reason behind it. I wonder if the difference in eating habits between men and women have an effect on it. The amount of food and type of food that people eat in their 20’s seems very different between the sexes. The guys definitely are complaining about more about the food here than the girls. They all salivate at the thought of a steak or even a hamburger. Eating rice, chicken and vegetables everyday, isn’t that big a shock to my body. But I wonder the impact it would have on an American man who is used to eating much larger quantities of protein. Or maybe it’s that the girls here are more careful. There is a huge list of stuff we are supposed to be doing to our food to help insure that it is sterile enough for our developed country immune system. Obviously, all the water we use is supposed to be either bottled or boiled, even when we are brushing our teach. But in addition to the water, we are not supposed to eat the peels of fruit or raw vegetables that haven’t been washed in sterile water with a few drops of bleach. I’ve been pretty good at making sure the food I eat is clean, but I have started eating small salads that I know haven’t been washed in bleach water.

Also, I can’t help but wonder if the guys are just a bit wimpier than the girls. It is a possibility that the girls are equally as sick as the guys but just tough it out and show up to training more. We have an infirmary at the training center and I know a couple of girls have utilized it in the middle of the day to lay down and rest. I know I have forced myself to class on days when it feels like someone is ringing out my stomach like a dish rag. But in the guys defense, some of the guys have been hit hard by illnesses. While it seems like everyone is being hit by diarrhea at least, a few guys have been immobilized by high fevers and constant vomiting…..ah such is the life of a peace corps volunteer. Oh my favorite of all, is Adrianne. She would occasionally complain that she didn’t feel well from the time we got here. Finally after a month, she decided that there was something really wrong with her. She was always tired, she had a hard time getting out of bed in the morning, she didn’t really have an appetite and she had bad headaches. Her mom and my mom tried to tell her she was depressed. She said she wasn’t even said so how could she be depressed, but Peruvian mothers had made their diagnosis and were sticking to it. Even our PC doctor told her she thought it was depression, but Adrianne was convinced she wasn’t “wouldn’t I know if I was depressed!” she said to me. Well after getting a blood test, turns out she has a parasite! Good job Adrianne, I would expect no less from you than to be the first one with a parasite. As scary as having something living inside you sounds, she was pretty relived to be told she wasn’t depressed. I think Adrianne gets my toughest camper award for this first month. She’s had to deal with more crappy stuff than anyone here. But she shrugs most of it off where others would complain miserably or get really down from it all. That’s why you’re my friend Adrianne!

This is the medical kit that was given to us. It pretty much has everything. And if we run out of anything, we just call out doctors and they mail us whatever we need. Talk about the greatest health care ever. I´m even getting the new HPV vaccine for free. With out insurance (and sometimes with) this 3 shot series runs about $150 a shot. I never thought I could be so excited for a shot.

So for all the parents out there that are reading this, it’s a little scary I’m sure. To here that all your kids are suffering from one ailment or another, but try not to worry too much. I know I’ve said if before, but we have the best medical care possible while we’re down here. We have two doctors that look after all 115 volunteers out at our sites. We have their cell phone number and we can call them anytime of day or night. But it’s more than that. Every week we get shots and health presentations from them, so they are in the training center twice a week. They are funny and nice and are really more like friends that take care of us. When they are not around the training center, they are traveling to visit volunteers at their sites. They will get to us as soon as possible if we are sick, but they come visit us when we are healthy too. At least 3 times during our service. They stay with our host families and eat our food. They do what we do, so they can understand our life style to better assess our physical and mental health. This is a picture of our Doctors, don´t they look like the sweetest people ever? I’m not afraid of being sick anymore. I know it will happen, it has happened already. But I feel very safe knowing I have Dr Sunni and Dr Jorge just a phone call away.

I officially left California one month ago. It seems like these past 30 days have flown by. But at the same time, it seems since forever ago I was home. My overall analysis of my Peace Corps experience is so much better than I expected. I was pretty scared to leave, but much to my relief, this has been one of the most exciting months of my life. I definitely miss everyone from home so much, but today it hit me that I have already made so many new and wonderful life long friends. I really hope I get placed in a site by one of my good friends.

This is a list of the highlights of the past month

I’ve eaten alpaca and cow hearts

Played over 100 games of free cell

Played with a little boy with no arms

Flushed my toilet with a bucket

Thrown up into that bucket

Showered with that same bucket

Explained to my host mom what a tampon is

Got my first taste of GI

I haven’t worn a single piece of make up since I left Cali

I’m the only person who got moved down a level in Spanish class

Been given a curfew for the first time in 6 years
Received shots for Rabies, Hep A, HPV, Typhoid Fever (and I sill have way more shots to go)Cried once

Laughed more times than I can count

I came home today and my mom was out front washing the shower curtain by hand. It never ceases to amaze me how clean Peruvians keep their homes. Today is Thursday, which is the day we go into the school to do our youth group activities. The only problem is that there is a big nation wide teachers strike that started today and could possibly go on for weeks. There were no teachers at the schools, which means there kids which means we have no youth group. My technical trainer says this is good practice cause this is what Peru is like. There’s always something going on keeping you from getting your work done. So we talked about what we are going to if the strike goes on for a long time. I hope the teachers get what they want, cause the kids need teachers. But there are so many unions striking right now, there is no way everybody is gonna get what they want. Well, at least I feel like my presence is actually useful in this country. If the strike goes on for weeks, hopefully we can form a youth group so that we can give presentations and plan activities so the kids have something to do. The teachers strike is something familiar I think to teachers around the world. Teachers receive tenure after a few years and then they can’t get fired. But after teachers get tenure, many of them stop putting in the effort required to effectively teach students and simply put, it sucks. So the state wants to take away tenure to “motivate” the teachers to not suck. Oh, and they want more money too.

I ate so much sugar yesterday at all the 4th of july activities I got a tummy ache in the middle of the night. There is a major theme in my life where I feel like I’m a little kid again. Getting a tummy ache in the middle of the night definitely falls under that category, but I didn’t have my mom here to wake up and stay with me till I felt better. I wonder how my moms iron stomach will hold up Peru’s developing country bacteria. Anyways, apart from being sick, everything is really good. I got another letter from Danielle’s mom. Danielle cried when she read it, and then it was passed around the room for others to read. Hopefully it motivated others to update their blogs more so they can get fan mail too. As far as the candy is concerned Robin, I love it. I don’t eat a lot of sugar here, so when I get a little present in the mail, I feel no guilt treating myself. It is such a wonderful feeling to get mail AND a sweat treat.

Just a couple pictures from our 4th of July festivities. Above are our pseudo hamburgers and to the left is the classic water balloon toss.

4th of July

I got a little overwhelmed the day before the 4th. Sometimes I feel like I am the biggest idiot when I come to language, and it´s true to a point. I was in desperate need of the wonderful day I had yesterday.
We didn´t have class or training at all yesterday. We had made teams earlier in the week and spent the whole morning playing games like dodge ball and water balloon toss. Everyone had such a great time, and the sun even came out for most of the day. I have now experienced my first 4th of July in winter. I definitely missed the hot weather and swimming pools, although I hear in Woodland it was over 100 degrees so I´m not sure if I miss that. After lots of games in the morning we had a big potluck and ate hamburgers, which were really processed chicken patties, and PB&J sandwiches.
After Lunch Adrienne and I went to a children's home that houses handicapped and sick children. Most of them are there for post/pre surgery. These kids are extremely lucky to get sent to a place like this, some of them even get sent to the US for surgery. Then me and Adrienne went to tres de octubre to help Jake and Drew with a presentation in spanish. Even though I feel like I am the dumbest person in the world sometimes, it´s weird to think that I am better at spanish than most other volunteers. And for our help, Jake (or his host mom at least) made real brewed coffee. All I drink at my house is instant, so that was a nice treat.
My friend Vishal´s host sister is in cosmetology school, so we met him there and we got our hair cut for free. That night, we went to Chacrasana for Cass´s 21 birthday party. Cass is the youngest person in out group and she´s married too. Her and her husband have such a sweet set up. They have their own little apartment apart from the house. There was a big fire in the backyard, and lots of food and drink. Plus, there was a great impromptu 80´s dance party, where I put on quite a show for the all the peruvians there. Yesterday was one of those days I was so happy to be in Peru and it was definitely one of the most memorable 4th of July´s I´ve ever had!

On a positive note today

This is a picture of a group of us at the heart of jesus festical. It was two weeks ago but I just found it on Alex´s blog and thought it was cute. Always good to start with a picture.
This morning I woke up to the bright sun shine that fills my room on the days I don’t have to wake up before the sun is up. I felt well rested and was relieved to hear that the house outside my room was quite. Sunday is the day the whole family sleeps in. Even Saturdays, my host dad leaves for work at 6 in the morning and Ana gets up with him about 5:40. I usually hear pots and pans clanking in the kitchen cause my mom cooks the meals for the whole day in the morning. But today I woke up to peaceful silence, no alarm, no reason to get out of bed before noon, so I grabbed my book from the night stand and started reading. I eventually made my way to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee. I ate the cereal along in the kitchen (I think this was the first time I’ve ever eaten anything alone in the kitchen) and took the coffee back to my room, jumped back into bed and read for another hour.

I thought about how incredibly lucky I am. People pay thousands of dollars to get the language and skills training I am receiving during training. Not only that, they are paying me to better my Spanish and give me the skills I need! They pay for me to live comfortably in a house and have a host mother cook me three delicious meals a day, wash my laundry by hand and clean my room. My host mother is amazing really. Life is a lot harder as the mother/wife in places where most people don’t have a washing machine, dishwasher, car etc. It takes an entire weekend to hand wash and line dry a family of 6’s clothes, sheets and towels. My host mom has to walk a mile to the market everyday . She is the first one to get up and the last one to go to bed, I think she only gets 5 hours of sleep a night. She cooks full meals for breakfast lunch and dinner and does all the dishes by hand. Nobody ever helps her. We live on dirt roads surrounded by giant dirt mountains, but you wouldn’t no that being inside the house cause she keeps everything spotless. She doesn’t seem to mind either. She feels lucky that she doesn’t have to work. Many women work and do all the cooking and cleaning on top of their job. I was talking to Jamar’s mom, and she was saying how jealous she was that my dad has such a good job that Ana doesn’t have to work. What do people here consider a good job? My host dad works at a factory in Lima that makes soccer balls. He leaves the house at 6 in the morning and doesn’t come back till 8 or 9 at night. He works every Saturday and he’s worked 2 of the 4 Sundays I’ve been here. They both seem happy. They seem to have a very loving relationship and a good set of kids. They’re lucky that Jose (my host dad) has a job in Lima which is only an hour away. A bunch of my friends hosts dads work really far away. Adrian’s host dad works in a mine somewhere far away and is only home one week out of the month. Other host dads have to work in different countries and send money home to their families. Unemployment is very high here.

I thought about all that this morning as I lay in bed, reading my book and drinking coffee. I felt lucky that the only thing I have to do in life right now get out of bed in the morning, go to training and have a very wonderful host family take care of me. Life as an American is something amazing and weird at the same time.

Back to more tangible things. We went to La Agraria yesterday, which is an agricultural University in Lima. It was really sweet. We are learning all about organic gardens. To me, the stuff we are learning is almost common sense, but for the people that have lived their life in a city, it’s all exciting and new. I had a lot of fun getting the soil ready for planting and just working with my hands in general. We all have seeds that we planted in pots that we are going to transplant into the ground when they are ready. I’m growing basil. After our class every one took of for lunch, but I stayed with a group of friends to eat at La Agraria. While everyone else that left ended up paying 25 soles for a burger and 20 soles for a long island ice tea at Chiles, I paid 4 soles for the most delicious chicken Cesar sandwich. All the ingredients were fresh from the farm right there. Next time I’ll get a full on salad. We’re not supposed to be eating salad right now cause are bodies aren’t used to all the bacteria and what not on raw vegetables. But half of my group got salads and no one got sick, so I’m gonna try it next week. We went to Jockey Plaza after lunch where the rest of our group already was. I thought Jockey Plaza was going to be an actual plaza, a square with possibly a statue of a horse in the middle of it. But I was very wrong. Jockey plaza is a great big mall with a Nine West shoes, Radio Shack, Chiles, Tony Roma’s, a Merrels store and more. It was weird, like we stepped back into America. I’m glad I was with a group of people that didn’t like being there either. I don’t like to shop. I don’t miss America all that much that I need to surround myself with American stores. Lucky for me, nobody wanted to spend a lot of time there. I did however get a Starbucks, my guilty pleasure. I always observe the people in Starbucks, because the coffee is so expensive that it’s just not practice for most Peruvians to buy a cup of coffee that costs 11 soles. The people in there are usually younger and appear to middle/upper class. In Jockey Plaza there was a group of Peruvian 30something year old women draped in Burberry and Louis Vouton. There was another rich Asian-Peruvian women with her small children. And then there were the tourists. I feel comfortable that Starbucks is my one American guilty pleasure. A lot of people in our group spend the whole day at the mall, soaking in crowded ambiance. I was relieved to get home. Back to the simplicity of non-American Peru.

I went over to 3 de Octubre last night to watch a movie. Something so simple as that is such a big deal in my house. I can’t go anywhere along, ever. The other three people in my neighborhood didn’t want to come which made things difficult. My host mom said she didn’t want me to go. I said, but I want to go and I am an adult and I make my own decisions. Then Heathers mom came over and they started telling all the stories about all the people they knew who knew people that were robbed or murdered. I get it. It’s definetly not like being back home, it’s more dangerous especially since I stick out like a sore, white, tall, gringo, thumb. But every other American goes out alone at night except for me, and there hasn’t been a single issue yet. So my mom took me all they way to 3 de octubre went to three of my friends houses with me and made two of the guys promise they’d take me home. Such a commotion over something so simple as going to a friends house to watch a movie. My host mom told me that I need to stay in more, that I should only leave the house once a week at most. This week I left 3 times. I told her back in the states, I left my house pretty much every single night. She asked how my mom felt about that and I told her that I lived on my own since I was 17 and I didn’t have to ask permission to leave my house. And when I moved back home after I graduated that my parents didn’t care if I went out at night. Back home, parents don’t tell their 23 years that they have to be home by 11. My friends say I need to put my foot down with my host mother, but it’s just not that easy. I don’t want to disrespect her, and I think she is genuinely worried about my safety. This is the backyard of the training center. It doesn´t exactly scream Peace does it? So at least I get to escape from the dirt roads and half constructed brick houses of huascaran for a little blue and green tranquility.