ferria de culturas

This week at the training center, we put on a culture fair. All of the language classes were assigned a department (region) in Peru to research. My group researched La Libertad, (a department famous for La Marinera Norteña (a dance), and winning Peru’s liberty). The fair was an opportunity for all of the trainees to learn about the country, as well as practice planning ways to teach about a theme with non-formal education.

A group of us were also asked to participate in a dance. Those of you who know me know I was all about that! After many hours of practice last week, we performed an Afro-Peruvian dance from the department of Ica. We had a drummer and a guitarist accompany us. It was a lot of fun! Definitely one of my favorite parts of training so far.

picnic

This past Sunday, all of the host families and trainees in our community got together for a picnic. It was organized by our madres. There was parilla (bbq), swimming, games, etc. It was really nice to have the families all come together. Our families, especially our mothers, don’t often get a chance to get out of the house and have some fun. So, it was a big to-do. All of the host mothers had a 3 hour meeting last week to plan the menu, the games (like tug-of-war Gringos vs. Peruvians), it was really cute! All of the gringos and families have really bonded with each other. It´s definitely going to be hard to leave these families when we go off to our sites.

aniversario en vitarte

I am beginning to realize that Peruvians love to celebrate. The first fiesta I went to was a big deal for me, but now I understand that I am going to get the opportunity to go to a lot of these parties (After only a month, I’ve been to five anniversary parties with music and traditional dance)! After a long night celebrating and watching musical performances in Chosica, my family and I went to Vitarte (another neighboring town where my family has more family) to celebrate another anniversary. Diosabel’s brother’s family lives in Vitarte and his son’s school was putting on an anniversary show. There were dozens of little kids dressed up in traditional clothes doing folkloric dances from all over Peru. It was amazing. I’ll let the pictures and video express it for themselves....

¡un mes!

I can’t believe that I’ve been in Perú for a whole month! Part of me feels like the time has flown by and I just got here… while another part of me feels like I’ve been here forever. I certainly miss friends and family from home. But I’m enjoying myself and looking forward to getting to know the country and its people and culture even more.

I’m getting more and more comfortable living in my community of Huascaran. Our training group is also getting pretty close. We are all getting used to being called Gringos everywhere we go, as well as standing out as the whitest and tallest people in our communities. Even though we will all disperse to our various sites in Perú, I think we will all stay in touch and serve as a support system for each other. Once we get to our individual sites in the provinces, we could be 1 hour to 5 hours away from the closest volunteer. Here are some random pictures of my community and the other volunteers.

aniversario de chosica

Chosica is one of the larger towns outside of Lima. It is about 20 minutes from my town of Huascaran. This past weekend Chosica celebrated its anniversary. Thousands of people, including my family and I, went to Chosica to join in the festivities. There were many famous musical groups performing. My favorite was actually a Cuban salsa group (check out the video below).

The festivities lasted well into the morning. I have friends who didn’t get home till 8 in the morning! I was with my familia, and my 11 year old sister was falling asleep, so we got back “early” at 1 am. Here are some pics of Chosica and the concert.

¡fiesta de graffiti!

One of our fellow PC trainees had a birthday on Tuesday. He had all of us over to his family’s house for a birthday party. We were instructed to wear blank white t-shirts and bring markers. At this graffiti birthday party, we all drew on each other while enjoying cumbia and salsa music, a piñata, and cerveza. It was a good time!

terremoto…

On Monday, I experienced my first earthquake. We were eating dinner when all of a sudden everything started shaking. We jumped up and ran outside. On the street, all of the families also stood outside of their houses waiting for the shaking to pass. It lasted for less than a minute. It wasn’t really that scary, my family stayed pretty calm. They told me that they have been worse in the past. I’m glad I now know the protocol for this new natural disaster.

The earthquake’s epicenter was in Southeast Lima with a 4 Richter scale.

encerrado…

I experienced one of my first moments of stupidity/fear this past week. The other morning, my family left the house before I did, so I was in charge of locking up the house when I left. They carefully explained to me how I could go about doing this. Little did I know, I would not be able to figure out how to get myself out of the house before I had to lock it.

When I tried to unlock the gate in order to leave, the key would not turn. My friend Giorgi, who was waiting outside the gate for me, tried to help, but to no avail. After ten minutes of trying to unlock the gate, I started to worry. I had already closed the front door (to which I didn’t have a key), so I was locked out of the house… but locked inside the gate. Would I have to wait locked inside the patio for 7 hours until my family came home? While I nervously laughed about this, I tried to devise another plan. I tried to climb the gate, but I only kept falling or getting my foot stuck. While Giorgi encouraged me to keep trying these impossible gymnastic feats, I gave up.
I decided to try the key one more time. I thought that maybe with enough force, the key would unlock. But I was wrong. With enough force, the key would break! I literally broke the key in half! Now I was really stuck. I was also really late for my class.

A little old man walked by us on the street. Giorgi signaled him over and asked him if he had any suggestions. Without saying a word, he looked at the gate door for a second and pushed this switch (which Giorgi and I had neglected to notice) and immediately opened the gate. We felt like idiots. The key had not been the problem (the key, which was now broken, had been perfectly functional). Apparently a lot of gates here have these extra security locks. To my defense, the switch was hard to notice, and my family had never told me about it.

That day I ran to class very late with a completely broken key and very dirty hands and body from gate climbing. Here are some silly pictures Giorgi took while we laughed/cried/worried about if and how I would get out of my gate…

la pólitica

Shout out to Obama for mentioning the Peace Corps in the debates this past week! Some of the host families get CNN, so we have been all getting together to watch the presidential and vice presidential debates. Watching the debates are really the only time I’ve had a chance to pay attention to the current campaign. It’s pretty weird to be so separate from it all.

I’m sending my absentee ballot in this week. Although we do a few McCain supporters, most of my fellow Peace Corps trainees are avid Barack supporters. Fingers crossed!

Peruvians are pretty interested in US politics and like to ask us questions about what we think. There are often pictures of Bush in the papers here. The biggest US news that has been coming to Peru pertains to the economic crisis. The crisis certainly is affecting the whole world, including Chaclacayo, Peru. For example, my madre even talks about how prices of fruits and vegetables in the market are so much more expensive for her than they were last year.

Speaking of politics, I’m not sure if this has made the news yet in the US, but according to Peruvian newspapers, George W. Bush will be coming to Perú next month. On November 20 he is coming to Lima for the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Conference ). Dozens of world leaders will be here. It should be pretty interesting…

http://www.pbec.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=145&Itemid=75

¡galletas!

Last week, I received a package in the mail from my wonderful parents, Marcia and Steve. It was great to get some love from the US! In the package, my mom sent a recipe for chocolate chip cookies and all of the ingredients (except eggs and butter) in little plastic bags. What a creative mother I have! Anita and I made the chocolate chip cookies and our family ate them all up within less than 24 hours. They were delicious! My family hadn’t ever had chocolate chip cookies, and they loved them. Carlitos, my brother, particularly liked them (he probably ate half the batch!). Chocolate chips, especially, are hard to find here, so it was quite a delicacy to have Ghiradelli choco chips. Thanks Mom!

fiesta en 3 de octubre

In the town of 3 de Octubre (or what we call “tres de”), the community’s anniversary was celebrate last week. All of the PC volunteers were invited to celebrate in the anniversary festivities. There was singing, dancing (amazing dancing!), and crazy fireworks. These weren’t your average fireworks. A man dressed up like an animal (maybe a horse? a dragon? I couldn’t tell…) literally wore the fireworks in his costume. He would go around chasing us with the huge sparklers going off. Then, fireworks would shoot into the air from the big costume he was wearing. If this whole event wasn’t a fire hazard, I don’t know what is. But it was quite the cultural experience. 3 de Octubre loves its fireworks! Fireworks were going off till 7 in the morning.

The dancing was definitely my favorite part. Several groups of teenagers performed folkloric dances. I couldn’t help thinking that teenagers in the US would never do this sort of thing. These teenage guys and girls who listen to hip hop music, constantly send text messages, and wear the latest trends, got dressed up in traditional Peruvian dance garb to honor their own heritage. The choreography was complicated and amazing. I’m looking forward to seeing and learning more about folkloric Peruvian dances!

At one point during the celebration, the MC announced that the Peace Corps volunteers were there (as if the group of 40 tall, white, and awkward people wasn’t obvious to the rest of the community). But everyone cheered for us, it was cute. The PC soccer team was also recognized and the town leader gave them all shirts for participating in the town’s soccer tournament. Although they didn’t win the tournament, they got the team congeniality prize.

entretenimiento

I realize that I have briefly mentioned training, but haven’t really explained what I’ve been doing day-to-day in my training sessions. We spend 9 hours Monday-Friday training in our communities or at the training center (plus Saturdays training at the University of La Agraria). Although it has been very energy and time-consuming, training has been worthwhile so far, and I feel like I have been learning a lot. All of the Peace Corps staff who train us have master’s degrees and are certainly qualified. In only 3 weeks, I have learned an abundance of Spanish, technical, and cultural knowledge.

My Spanish classes are about 4 hours, 4 times a week in either my home, or in a fellow classmate’s host-family’s house. I am in the intermediate-advanced Spanish class with two other girls, Meg and Sara. All of the Spanish teachers call us Charlie’s Angel’s because we are the only group with 3 girls. Our teacher, Isabel, is Charlie. Isabel works with us on conversation, culture, a little bit of grammar, and overall suggestions on integrating into the community. We often have homework which requires us to interview our families about an aspect of their family our culture. I know that I still have a lot to learn, but I think (hope) that my language skills are improving!

Depending on the day, I eat lunch at home, or my madre gives me lunch in a “tuper” (what they call tuperware) to bring to the training center. After lunch, we usually break up into group sessions with Salud, Agua, or Medioambiente (Health, Water, or Environment). In my health group, I meet with the 15 other health volunteers and my two trainers, Jorge, a psychologist from Cuzco, and Javier, a nutritionist from Lima. Jorge and Javier facilitate sessions on topics such as non-formal education, early childhood development, community analysis, health infrastructure in Peru, Peru’s Ministry of Health, etc.. In less than 3 weeks, I feel like I have learned more than I could ever know about the health conditions in Peru and how to support the health and healthy environment of a Peruvian community. And I still have 2 months left!

One of the aspects I like most about our technical training is that the trainees help co-facilitate the sessions. For example, one of our fellow health trainees has a degree in nutrition, so he helped facilitate the session on early childhood nutrition. Next week, because of my background, I am going to help facilitate a session on leadership and communication.

In addition to technical and language training, we also have participated in various sessions which will help us better integrate into the community. We have had debates on approaches to development, sessions on gender analysis and development, information gathering and analysis, medical and security safety in Peru, etc.

¡lima!

Although our training is pretty rigorous, even on Saturdays, we’ll usually have free time in Lima on Saturday afternoons. The past two Saturdays we have had a chance to start exploring Lima. Last week, we visited Miraflores, which is on the coast, and one of the wealthier districts of Lima. We also visited the Center, where we saw government buildings and colonial cathedrals. Lots of really cool architecture (see pics)!

Because the community of Huascaran is so small and developing, it’s quite a culture shock to visit in Lima. I couldn’t help comparing the bustling streets of Lima (with busy Limeños on every corner, honking taxis and huge buildings) to Huascaran (where there are no paved roads and everyone recognizes you).

This past Saturday we went to Jockey Plaza, a huge American-style mall. I felt like I could have been in any fancy mall in America. It was crazy to me that I saw Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and an Apple Store, etc while I was only an hour away from my home-sweet-home Huascaran where there is no toilet seat, hot water, or even a real floor in my house. It was shocking to observe how severe the socioeconomic disparities are in Peru.

Although Lima was nice (and, I admit, I did hit up Starbucks out of desperation for real coffee), in a way it was comforting to come back to my dusty home in Huascaran. It’s weird that after only 2 weeks, I already consider my town to be comforting and where I belong. Compared to Lima, where I passed by many wealthy and European-looking Peruvians, I feel much more comfortable walking the dusty roads of Huascaran greeting Angelica, the tienda owner, or Melisa and Stefanie, the two sisters always playing in the park.

I’m glad I’ll get a chance to explore Lima more. For example, next weekend I plan on going to the big art museum in the city. It’s also nice to have access to real stores where I can buy necessities like shampoo, toothpaste, or clothes. However, I’m also glad that I live in Huascaran and ok with the fact that I’ll be hundreds of miles from Lima in a couple of months.

el huerto

This past weekend, we all went to La Universidad La Agraria en La Molina, a university right outside of Lima. All three groups, water and sanitation, health education, and environmental education will get training in organic farming at La Molina. At the university, we met with university students in Ecology, Biology, Agriculture, and Conservation who talked to us about the benefits of organic farming and creating sustainable gardens in our small communities. Once we start our service in a couple of months, we are encouraged to help our communities to create gardens to alleviate the lack of a sustainable food source and malnutrition.

The university has extensive gardens and greenhouses on their campus, it was all very impressive. Last week, we got an introduction to the work they do at La Agraria, a tour of the gardens (huertos) and greenhouses, and an opportunity to start working in the gardens. I planted some albhaca (basil). This week we heard a lecture by one of the professors about Peru´s farming conditions. We will be going to the university almost every Saturday for the next couple of months. I’m looking forward to learning all about organic farming, not just for my community in the next two years, but for life!