WELCOME TO THE PEACE CORP!

What a trip!!! That is all I have to say...and I got my first taste of what this whole peace corp thing is all about...and WOW my life is about to change drastically. We went to Piura to continue some field based training and then to visit our sites. The first part of our trip was in the mountains of Piura...aka Piura Alta. We went to a small mountain town where two volunteers lived, called Sicchez. It was about 6 hours or so from the capital of Piura...Piura. I liked these mountains better then Ancash because they were lush and tropical and the weather was beautiful. We stayed in a hostal that we also called...the orphanage. It was a room, with creeky wood floors, and beds with hard lumpy straw mattresses...and that was it. However, the hostal did have a luke warm shower and a toliet. In Sicchez we visited the Health center and made mobiles with the moms for their babies, we worked in a garden, built a water filter, and trained some health promoters. It was a good trip. We were there for about 3 days. On the final day, we were really excited to get back to Piura to stay in a nice hostal, eat a good dinner, and take hot showers.



Well...while our drivers were waiting for us, they decided to go get wasted. So our staff member who was with us determined this was incredibly unsafe. We were in the mountains and to get down you travel down windy dirt/gravel roads on cliffs. We were sitting in the van when we got the news and one of the drivers with his red, glazed over eyes, and slurred words, got in the car to tell us he was fine. RIGHT! So after awhile, the drivers finally agreed to let our staff member drive us down the mountain, so we were able to get to Piura.

Once we got to Piura, we stayed in the "Peace Corp" designated hostal, which has an awesome library of books that previous volunteers have collected...so now i´m not so worried about running out of books, they also have collected an awesome DVD collection too. We had a day to explore Piura. I really like this city, it reminds me of a mini Lima, I can get just about all the essentials there, and I am allowed to visit it twice a month. We had another great pizza dinner, and there was a really good hamburger place too. It´s a cute city...as far as cities go in Peru.

Let me preface the next part with letting you know, that it turns out I had been given the wrong folder of information regarding my new city and family. On the first days of our trip, me and another volunteer came to find out that our family and community information was switched. I was actually being sent to a larger community of 1500 people and to a different family then what I had orginally recieved. This was surprising, but since I hadn't met the family or seen the community yet it really didn't matter.







On Tuesday, we had a day to meet our socios..which are our community partners. From my community the doctor and a health promoter came, they were great. But it was an akward day, because not knowing a ton of spanish made it difficult to communicate, but it was good to get to start placing these people in my new community. Wednesday morning we hopped on a bus to come to my new town. There are four of us who live here. We are about 3 hours from Piura, but live really close to Las Lomas, which is a good city with a lot of amentities. I live in a valley. Although my town is dusty, I am surrounded by lush mountains and beautiful beautiful fields of crops. It´s gorgeous!




When I got to my new town I was hustled to the school where they had a "Bienvenidos" party for me. The kids had made american flags and they had signs welcoming me to their school. It was adorable. The community leaders came and there were lots of speeches, and the kids performed a few traditional dances...but the little ones danced to a song from Grease...it was ADORABLE! Then, I had to make a speech...which was interesting....


Afterward, we went back to my new host families house for a lunch with all the community leaders. I kinda got to check out my house a little more which was nice. I have a small room with a dirt floor, and a window that looks out into a common area of the house. I have a latrine...yes...a hole in the ground where I use the bathroom....and a shower which consists of a giant trashcan with canal water and a container to pour it over my head. And this is all outside with the chickens, turkeys, pigs, and donkeys. Literally I have to shoo the turkeys out of my way when I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, which at night is covered in cochroaches. I am going to have to get some RAID! I also found out that in order to do my laundry, I will have to go to the canal and wash my clothes there. This is an adventure! I did however, leave money for the family to put in a cement floor in my room, because the peace corp does recommend it for health reasons, so when I return I should have a cement floor, and then I plan on painting the walls. So it will be very exciting to make it all my own. I have also asked my parents to send me a solar shower, which will making taking a shower much easier.







So during my visit, Lindsey, the volunteer I will be replacing took me all over the town to meet all kinds of people that I will be working with. We visited the Health Post, the Muncipality buidling, we went to several stores so I could see where to buy things. We also attended a meeting for a mother's club that I will be working with. We walked all over the place, it is so beautiful. The pictures I post here DO NOT do it justice, because I didn't get any pictures of the green valley, the town is rough looking but everything surrounding it is gorgeous.

So let me tell you all about my family...my new parents (Santos and Paola) are the same age as my real parents. But I have 6 siblings that live near me, but 9 in total. The 6 include 2 brothers and 4 sisters.
I think the oldest brother is around 30, the second is 28 then a sister who is 27 Betty, 25 Liliana, 21 Mirta, and 12 Milena. All the older siblings are married with kids, and the 27 and 25 year old sister live next door, and both have the cutest babies in the world. One of the babies, Janella, is 10 months, and she is beautiful, her middle name is also Beyonce...and yes it's after the singer. Betty has a 2 month year old son I believe is named Ictor...but the names are really hard for me. There are many more kids...but I can't remember their names. Ictor had a baptism while I visited. Apparently there are two parts of a baptism. The first part takes place in the house, and that is when the godparents bless the baby by washing water over the babies head with a leaf and saying the hail mary and our father prayers. Then, afterward they have a GIGANTIC dinner, which consists of literally a CASSEROLE dish of food for each godparent. This dinner was the TRIFECTA of peruvian carbs...rice...pasta..potatoes...and of course chicken. I ended up VERY sick after this dinner. And I went with my host sister to get the chicken, we chased it around her friends yard until they caught it, then carried the live chicken home, which they later killed and we ate for dinner.


So after the baptism and dinner, the drinking begins. Drinking in Peru is different then in the states. Basically, you buy 40's and have one glass. You pour yourself a glass, drink it, throw the last sip on the floor, and then pass the bottle and the glass to the next person. Thenthey do the same thing. So you share the same glass with everyone there. Well, I saw that my host family had 3 beers, so stupid me assumed the party was over after those 3 beers, but no...when it came time to finish the third one, one of the husbands came in with a crate of 12 more forties. I personally have decided that I am not going to be drinking while I am here, at least not in any settings in my community. My host family was a little weirded out by this, but that is okay, I'm fine with being the weird American. So anyway, I went to bed and didn't participate...I was exhausted.

The following day I spent with Lindsey, learning more about the community and hanging out at her host families house, which are amazing people. I see myself spending a lot of time with them in the beginning because they have dealt with 2 volunteers and have a little better understanding of how hard the adjustment can be, and simply just speaking to me. My host family talks so incredibly fast I can't catch anything, and when I ask them to repeat things, they just say it louder..not slower!

After the 3 days, we went back to Piura, and were reunited with the rest of the group and I got to hear about everyone's adventures with their new host families. There were some funny stories, one of the guys woke up to a goat in their room, another friend of mine who is black found that on the beginning of the trip people were fascinated by her, at one point we were in the street and a woman came up to her and told her how beautiful she was and asked to touch her hand. At that time we just thought it was a wonderful compliment, however, after her site visit, she found out that they believe black people are good luck, so they just want to touch her all the time. (Peruvians in certain areas are not exposed to many different races if any at all).

After all of this, we made the 15 hour bus trip home to Lima, I was glad to be back with this host family, they were so excited to have me back too. I have 2 weeks until graduation and then I'll return to my site permanently.



I really thought that this site visit would make me so much more nervous about starting my service. There are so many things I am not used too, like the latrine, washing my clothes in the canal, almost no internet and phone service. But surprisingly, the visit made me really excited. I think some of the adjustments will be difficult, but when I look at overall how this experience is going to change me life, I only see the postive. I have a lot of faith in the community I am going to be working with. I am the third volunteer there, and the previous two have had a lot of success and the community really seems to embrace them. So wish me luck!


For anyone who doesn't have facebook here are the links for my pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2148516&id=38005919&l=fe5b6e684e