PIURA PIURA PIURA

So I got my site assignment today after months of anticipation, excitement and nerves, and I am going to the department of Peru, this is one of the most northern departments of Peru, it's a coastal department and much of it borders Equador. I will be living in the district of Las Lomas in a small rural town of only about 500 people called Pampa Elera Alta. I actually got a little profile on my new host family today. Weirdest part is that I am older then my new host Mom, she is only 24, the husband is 33 and there are two sons one is 6 and the other is 2, so that is going to be so much fun. Now here is where I have suddenly gotten nervous, we don't have running water, we will be using the water from a nearby canal for cooking, bathing, and washing clothes. Fortunately I've been trained on how to treat the water so it's safe for drinking, but it makes me realize how lucky I am in my current host family situation. Also, no bathroom, I will be using a Latrine and continuing to take bucket baths. Great news.....I live within a few mile radius of 3 other volunteers, so I'm really excited about that too, I was worried about being isolated in a rural area. Also, great news, there is an international airport only 2 1/2 hours away...so start planning trips, the beaches in my region are amazing!!!!

So tomorrow I leave for the next 10 days to train in my new site, I'm a replacement volunteer, so there has already been a volunteer in my town working, so I'm excited about that too to see what she has done and get her advice.

We just got back from a trip to Ancash, which is a region in the Andes mountains. That was a really interesting trip. It was about an 8 hour bus ride to the capital city Huaraz, and we didn't spend much time there at first, we traveled about another 3 hours to a small town in the mountains called Chavin. Now transportation in Peru is a scary situation as I've mentioned before. Just imagine those crazy buses now traveling on dirt/rock/gravel roads at high altitudes on the edges of mountains. I was gripping my seat the entire time, I never once felt comfortable during out travel time, it was horrible! I felt many times that my life was going to end in a Peruvian bus that drove off the cliff...it was scary and I have a tremendous fear of heights on top of it.

Once we got to Chavin, we stayed in a hostal with HOT showers and TV....with one english channel. It was great! Another thing I need to mention is that altitude sickness is no joke, we were given pills ahead of time to take and I did. But once we got into the mountains I started having this weird tingling in my feet and hands that came and went the entire trip, and for the first few days I just had general malaise, but once I ran out of pills it got worse. I missed two days of activities due to some of the symtoms related to altitude sickness that I won't mention here.

The point of this trip was to do field based training, which is learning some of the stuff we will need to do in our new sites. So the first day we went and learned about health promotes and forming a youth group. So we went to a school and worked with kids and painted a mural. The following day, we went to build latrines for families who needed them...I missed this day because I was really sick. Then saturday we went to a town and interviewd women who had recieved these improved cooking stoves called "cocinas mejoradas"...they are an adobe brick built raised cooking stove that has a chimney that moves the smoke outdoors, because before the women would cook over an open flame on the floor of their kitchens. The smoke was hurting their lungs as well as their backs, and the same for the rest of the families. So after attending 8-10 information sessions put on by the volunteer these households were provided with materials from a peace corp grant to build these improved cooking stoves. So we went to interview these mothers about information pertaining to health as well as see if they were using their new stoves.

Now to preface how these interviews went, I have to tell you about the people who live in the mountains. They are very very traditional and conservative, their way of life as well as their clothing is different then other parts of Peru. Many of them do not speak spanish, they speak another language known as Quechua. So the women we interviewed were very timid. Unfortunately the women couldn't tell us much information in regards to health, for example they were unsure about balanced diets and hygiene. I actually felt uncomfortable asking them many of the questions because they were so shy, I felt like I was intruding and that it must be very intimidating for them. However, this was all apart of their agreement for recieving the "cocina mejorada".

After the interviews, we went and actually built a cocina mejorada. The family is usually required to build the first part, and then we come in and build the level where the stove is going to be. To do this, we use adobe bricks and this weird mud mix that contains: horse and donkey feces, salt, sugar, cactus water and broken glass. So after we put all that together we finished it up with the stove top, and after a fews days of drying the family can add the chimney and use it. The mother of the house came and saw it when we were finished and seemed really excited which was great!!

After we left Chavin, we returned to Huarez for our last night in Ancash, we all ended up finding this little pizza place. It was a really cute hole in the wall kinda place that was decorated with international flags and played american 80's music and classic rock. It was so much fun. There was a guy in there who asked me to take a picture of his table, so once I did he realized I was American and he was as well, he was from Lousiana, so that was kinda cool!

For our very last day in Ancash we traveled up another mountain to go to a team-building retreat scariest mountain of them all was so freaked out the entire time. It just doesn't seems safe or natural to be driving around on those cliffs. Unfortunately I ended up really sick the night before and was so dizzy and lethargic I couldn't participate and slept through the entire thing. I heard it was fun, they did some treking through mud and some interesting stuff. The location was beautiful so I was sad I didn't get to really be a part of it. However, after it was all over, one of the tech trainers pointed out the giant trantula that was hanging out on the bed I was sleeping in all day. I didn't realize there were trantulas here roaming around like that!!!

So that is the short version of everything....I am in week 7, so I have only 3 weeks left of training and the weekend after thanksgiving I'll be moving to my new site for the next 2 years. Its a very crazy and busy time right now, and I find myself getting emotional now that I am leaving the comforts of my current home and host family, whom I love and will cry when it's time for me to go. I'm excited and nervous to start the real part of this adventure.

Onto week 6! This means I have only 4 weeks left of training! I can't say this was the best week I've had yet, it started off kind of rough, Monday we got the results of our Spanish interviews and I wasn't so happy about where I was placed, but it's okay. After a rough Monday, I came home and promised my host Mom I would go to church with them, so we went to the Catholic church in the Chosica. That really helped turned my not-so-good day into a much better day. Mass here is IDENTICAL to mass in the U.S. Everything was the exact same, the only part that I liked better was that the music had that nice salsa sound to it. So when we sang "Hosana in the Highest" I felt like dancing. The other difference is that latin culture celebrates the saints much more than we do in the states. For example this was the month of the saint who represents dead mothers, which was the reason for us going. After mass my host family approached a bright shining picture of the saint and touched it then blessed themselves. I think that this experience made me very proud to be a Catholic, because there is something special about sharing such a sacred set of traditions in a different place in the world.

This week we went to a local health center. This place is smaller then a hospital but provides many different services. They are funded by the Ministry of Health, so they are government organizations. Thursday, we went to do house visits with the nurses, because apparently for families who are too busy to make it to the center the center will go to their homes to do check up for the children. Unfortunately most people weren't home but we were able to meet up with 2 families, and that was intersting. We also went to check out the facilities that are similar to "soup kitchens" however, people pay to pick up their lunches there for their families. It is really cheap, and it provides food for those families who cannot afford much. They were little kitchens who were run by volunteer mothers and they cook lunch 5 days a week. Along our lovely walk through the town, we came across a "camal" this is the place where they slaughter cows, it smelt lovely, and attracted tons of flies, and this seemed like it caused problems for the entire neighborhood, at one point we were looking into the river near by and we found were the blood from the camal is drained into the river, it was disgusting and disturbing!!!!

Friday we went back to the health center and sat in on exams for babies. The babies here seem gigantic, overweight for their age, and behind in their development in comparison to the babies in the US. This will be a topic we work with at our new sites. One child did come in that the nurses said she was underweight and she had dirt under her nails and looked unkept, one of the nurses just kept yelling at the mother repeatedly while 3 of us sat there, it was sort of akward.

Later that afternoon I did a presentation with 2 other volunteers to 15 students in the school about STD's. I was really surprised how much they didn't know, they couldn't even tell us what it stood for. I keep thinking back to when I was 15 or 16 and I may not have known about all types but I could probably tell you what STD stood for. We put together a few activites to define it as well as identify types of STD's and methods of prevention. It was really fun, even with my novice spanish I enjoyed it and the kids were helpful when I got stuck. It was fun! I can't wait to start doing some of that stuff at my site.

I finished up my week with a trip to Panchacamac yesterday, which is a small town about 2 hours away from where I live. We went there to learn about small animal husbandry. We visited a few different homes who were raising chickens, pigs, ducks and guinea pigs. All the families also had organic farms. It was cool to see, and was a town probably similar to our sites. The scary part was that we took those crazy buses called combis, and we went on a lot of unpaved roads that bordered mountains and cliffs, it was really really sketchy!!! Afterward, we were dropped off at the mall, and went to the nicest pizza hut I've ever seen in my life and ate pizza!!! It was great!!!

And today, being the awesome volunteers that we are, we met at the house of another volunteer with the kids from our host families to practice some of the diagnostic techniques we will be using at our sites. We had them draw community maps and make calendars, and these are ways for us to identify certain aspects about their cultures that could help us when it comes to diagnosing our new sites. Afterwards, we had a cookout and actually sat outside and ate at my house, I really miss cookouts.

ONE MONTH DOWN...26 more to go!! I'm about to start week #5 of training tomorrow and it's an amazing and scary feeling to know that I'm halfway through training. Exciting because on Novemeber 2nd I will get my site, so at that point I'll know where in Peru I'll be spending my next two years, and believe me..I've got my preferences! Scary...because it means I'm leaving the comfort of this little life I'm becoming used too, and separating from many of the other volunteers and friends I've made. So it means another "adjusting" phases and many new challenges.

Yesterday I saw the most beautiful part of Peru that I have yet to see. Let me preface this first by saying that I have lived my whole life near the ocean or bay, and it wasn't until this month of living between dry mountains when I realized how much I've taken that for granted. So yesterday after our trip to Agraria University to study chicken, turkey and duck growth and development, we went back to Miraflores. I took this opportunity to find the ocean...and I found it! I feel like once I got there I took the biggest deep breath ever because there is nothing like being by the ocean, I loved it. It was also my first time seeing the Pacific Ocean in my whole life, I was the happiest I've been since I got here. It was beautiful. Seeing this wonderful part of Peru made me so excited for the many places I have yet to visit.

So lately my host mom is getting slick, the other day in my lunch I noticed the meat looked a little different even thoughtit was chopped really small, I tried it, texture was different so I struggled with that and ate around it. Later that night she told me it was "bofa" or cows lungs. She thought it was so funny. Well today she asked me what I wanted for lunch and I told her I didn't care, just no weird meet. Well today for lunch we had pesto pasta, and some meat. Directly I could tell the meat was different, but since I am on a mission to try stuff I went for a small piece. I started to eye the kids and see if they were eating it, and then finally Camilla asked my host Mom what it was, and she got all mad, because they were supposed to keep it a secret from me. So I told her that I was sorry and didn't like it, they laughed and thought it was really funny!! It was cow stomach. I think I just know too much about anatomy and have too much of an understanding of what the textures of some of these She made me some chicken instead. I told her she was getting sneaky! She loves it. Apparently, before we come they are told when and what foods to introduce us to, because both of those meals are very traditional here. So she is really enjoying it. And I do appreciate all the effort she puts in to helping me adjust and learn about this stuff. Because it may all be more difficult once I get to my site.

Chocolate Blood Brownies?!?!?!

So Friday, we had a set of volunteers come to talk to us about educating families on nutrition in our sites, we were taught ways to rehydrate babies and techniques of preparing food for babies. Well, we were also taught about how to prevent or help anemia. This including a lesson on cooking liver and BLOOD. Yeah...I didn't know you could cook blood, but apparently if you put a little in a frying pan with some onions and other veggies, you are able to cook blood, and it looks like little pieces of meat. After the lesson, we were encouraged to try some of the blood! I decided to stay close to one of the vegetarians and when they came around offering, I declined. I give myself a lot of credit, I'm trying tons of new foods here, but as for blood....it's NOT happening.

That wasn't the best part....the volunteer said that she decided to experiment one day and kept the blood in liquid form and mixed it in pancake batter and added a little chocolate. Which pretty much turned out to be chocolate blood brownies!!! I passed on these as well! I get that this may be things I will have to deal with at my site, but for now, I am just going to wait and deal with it at my site!

Saturday, we went to a University in Lima to study organic farming, I thought we'd be more in a classroom, but I guess if that is one thing I'm learning about the Peace Corp...everything is hands on. We rotated through 7 stations of learning to transplate, grow, make mulch, try fruits and veggies, mix up the dirt, and all kinds of stuff. We got dirty! It was interesting, well as much as I could understand, the students that were teaching us spoke very fast so it was difficult for me to pick up on everything. At our sites we will be expected to start gardens so this is all training for that, we are going back 4 more times to watch the progess of our gardens at the university and to study other topics.

After the lesson at the University, we went to the mall! The mall was identical to a U.S. mall (except the Salisbury Mall...sorry guys that mall SUCKS!)...I felt like I was in mini America, it had the north face, calvin klein, united colors of benetton, kennith cole, lots of good stuff. However, I'm realizing that now that I'm living off of a peace corp budget, much of what is sold there is out of my price range!!! The main reason we went though, was for the food court!!! I never wanted to be one of those Americans who only ate american when I traveled out of the country, but the truth is...when your here and your eating rice and potatoes and chicken most days...a pizza hut or burger king looks like heaven. So that is exactly what I did, I went and got a tiny little pizza from pizza hut and it was wonderful. There were 14 of us who ate lunch together and the table was covered in pizza hut, kfc, and burger king. We also discovered a few restaurants at the mall, they had TGI Fridays, Tony Romas, Benihana, and chilis!

This is a big week, today I am going to the Peace Corp headquartes in Lima for a few interviews regarding my site and my progress here so far. Then Friday I have another interview for my spanish, and to see if I am progressing and able to move up a level. So in preparation, my Spanish teacher decided that we are going to have 4 hours of strictly conversation in class this morning. This is going to be exhausting! But I'm sure it will prepare me well for Friday. Wish me luck!!

I FOUND Starbucks!

So went went to Lima monday afternoon for language class. We visited a part of Lima called Miraflores, which I think may be the Manhattan of Lima. It was nice, and clean and beautiful. We were there do to interviews to practice our spanish, so first we had to haggle with a Taxi driver. Apparently a taxi to our neighborhood from Lima should be about 30 soles, whenever we asked a taxi driver how much, they would tell us anywhere between 70-100, were stupid Americans, they think they can rip us off. Then we had to go to the Indian Market and interview people there, and they just had all kinds of touristy junk, and I got sucked into buying something! We also just had to ask random questions to people about where things were and how things worked, just that kind of stuff. The interesting part of Lima is how so much of everything is in english, we saw many "gringos" and people kept trying to talk to us in english. There were a mcdonalds, burger king, pizza hut, kfc and STARBUCKS everywhere! My partner and I actually cheated on a few of our last questions because while we were in starbucks a peruvian women behind us overheard us talking and asked what we were doing. Once we told her, she directed us to her husband, turns out her husband is also peruvian but speaks PERFECT english, so he answered a few questions for us!

After our interviews our teacher told us about a few options to get home, the one we were most comfortable with was just taking a taxi. So she helped us get an affordable taxi. The taxi back to my neighborhood was about an hour drive, and within that hour I seriously saw my life flash before my eyes over and over again. Basically there are no traffic laws in Peru, and the drivers do as they please, and if they feel like making a lane in between two lanes then they do. If they feel like making a right turn across 3 lanes of moving traffic, then they do. All goes on the roads in Peru! The only good part was the the taxi driver had american oldies on the radio, so we sang a lot of the way home.

Tuesday night I went to the movies with a few friends. Turns out most of the movies they were playing at the theater are all in English with Spanish subtitles, so we went and saw Going the Distance. I don't even like going to the movies, but to be able to get out and not worry about speaking spanish for an hour or so was fantastic. The movie was GREAT and the theater was really nice, I felt like I was at home. Except at the end when I kept thinking I would go get in my car and drive home to my nice warm bed and go to sleep, reality set in when I got up and was hustled onto a combi with a million people hanging on to the bars with both hands and walked about a mile back to my house. Then I remembered that I am in Peru and life is VERY different!

The rest of this week has been quiet, I usally have 4 hours of language class a day and they added an extra 45minutes of only conversation to that at the end of the day because our interviews are coming up next week and hopefully we will all move up a level. Tonight I was speaking with my host parents and they told me how much better my conversation skills are coming, and we can actually talk and laugh, as compared to the first week when I just looked at them after they spoke to me. She laughs because the first week she asked me if I like avocados and I said no, yet we ate guacomole for breakfast on saturday and I ate it and told her I really liked it. I told her that I just didn't understand spanish that first week, which was partially true. But really I thought I didn't like avocados, yet it turns out that I do. I'm just learning to eat so many more foods here that I would have never attempted in the U.S. and I REALLY like a lot of what I'm trying, which is GREAT!

Saturday I'm going back to Lima to study organic farming at a local college, and then we get to spend the rest of the day exploring! I can't wait!

Where is Starbucks????

So, no Starbucks in Chaclacayo, but we have discovered a local coffee shop. The whole idea of coffee is very different here then in the states. In the US, I would go into a coffee shop and get to choose from a million different flavors and types and sizes and milks and whatever else and get it in my to go cup and move along with the rest of my day. Here....coffee comes two ways...black or with milk. I've also noticed that coffee is more of a social thing here, we order our coffee, and it usually takes 15-20 min to prepare and we get it in a nice little mug on a saucer and drink it at a table in the restaurant. There isn't any quick on the go coffee cups! But it's actually really nice to sit down and chat with friends over a cup of coffee, I really enjoy it! But I do miss having a coffee in the morning, the coffee shop doesn't open until lunch time.

Friday for language class I had to go to Chosica and preform more interviews. These were a little more interesting, but a little more difficult. Basically I had to go around town and ask random people when they wash their hands, and what methods of contraceptives they use. So it was a little intimidating to ask complete strangers in my very broken Spanish if they prefer the "rhythm method" of contraception. This is all in preparation for when I go to my site, I do understand that because those questions will be much more uncomfortable, so it's learning, it's just funny!


Today, after spending a few hours around the breakfast table with my host family talking. Which was great, I'm getting excited how much better I am getting at my conversational skills, they decided that today was the day that we would go and try ceviche. Ceviche is a dish traditional to Peru, it is raw fished that is cooked only in a lemon juice. Since I don't like fish or sushi, I was concerned about this. We also talk about ceviche almost every day in training and were warned that is may be a difficult on our stomachs. However in my host families training they were told they could give it to us in Week 3, so today being the first day of week 3, we went for ceviche.

Surprisingly, it was really good. I actually really liked it! I am surprised almost everyday at all the foods I'm trying and really enjoying. I wish I would have known that I liked more of this stuff before!!

So tonight I went back to Chosica with some friends to shop around and hang out, we found a great little pizza place, although the pizza is REALLY different, it was pretty good! It was just nice to have a meal that didn't involve ANY rice!!! When I got back, I played cards with my host brother and sister. The taught me some really fun card games, and at first I sucked and they made fun of me, but towards the end I was doing much better. I think Cesar cheats so I gotta stay on that kid!

Tomorrow we are going to climb this mountain in the neighborhood and at the top there is a cross in sort of a little hut. I am really excited, look forward to some awesome pictures!

Colegio!

Today, was an exciting day. In language class this morning we went to some local markets, and at the first one I had to interview someone using a survey we were given. I was nervous, because so far in my experience, people in the community are much harder for me to understand then those I have been speaking with daily. The lady that agreed to answer my questions was incredibly nice, and I understood every word she said and was able to stray away from my list of questions just a little bit. After that, we went to another market and had to find someone who would identify some of the fruits and vegetables we had on a list, we ended up finding two women who were incredibly helpful and showed us all kinds of stuff. They were wonderful. Later on, we had to go to a store around the park and interview someone and ask them about their daily routine. The other questions were easier, this assignment we just felt kind of dumb doing. Fortunately, my partner and I went to the store known as the "peace corp" store, because during training volunteers frequent the store and they have earned the reputation of being incredibly nice to us and helpful, and the women was that!

In the afternoon, for our technical training, we went to a local highschool and had to work with the students on a few of our training techniques we will be doing once we are in site. We actually arrived during their recess, and the kids went crazy! I was approached by a group of boys with their english homework, so I did it for them! Probably not what I should have done as a peace corp volunteer, but I definitely earned some points among the kids for doing their homework. Some of the kids were extremely affection, giving us hugs over and over, they all loved to have their pictures taken. It was funny, because we joked about how illegal it is to walk into a school in the states and start snapping pictures of children, but here it doesn't really matter. The other day we also saw a white, windowless van with the word for school on the front, and one of the guys commented on how someone in the US driving and unmarked van with no windows and school written on the front would definitely be taken away to jail!!!

The school itself was very bare, the classrooms were very colorless and there wasn't really much of anything in them other then chairs and desks, it would defintely be a boring place to go to school. But the teenages are exactly the same as in the US, taking advantage of chatting and acting up a little because there was someone new in the classroom, they draw all over their desks with white out! And the all hang out in their little cliques, and when the cute girl and class went up to the board, all the boys started whistling.

Part of our project was to see the differences between what the boys and the girls do, the girls said in their spare time they put on makeup, look up fashion, shop and help around the house. The boys said they get to know the girls and sleep a lot! It was funny!!!

Later, on my way home, I stopped and talked to my host grandpa in the street, he knew about my cold, word travels fast around here. Once I got into the house, my family was outside my room doing laundry, I sat and talked to them for awhile and I really feel like i'm finally getting somewhere with my language. Although I did keep my dictionary close to me while is sat there for words that I get stuck on. Since we don't have a living room, I am starting to find these opportunites to spend time with them and talk and get to know them better, so tonight was great! They ask me all the time if I am doing better because last week was so tough for me. I told them that I feel like a new person and I'm lucky to have them as my host family. They are so good to me! They also like to gossip, my host mom informed me that the married couple across the street (they are volunteers) are also very sick! I had no idea, so tonight a few of the other volunteers stopped by the house to see if I wanted to go walk around and two of them were the married couple and I informed them that I found out they were sick. Turns out that they are!

So no Lima until Monday now, with the elections this weekend they have told us that Lima is to dangerous for us to go to tomorrow or Saturday. Too many people, bad traffic. So I guess I'll just have to wait. I hope everyone has a great weekend!!