Dude, PC rocks

Hey everyone! Hope all of you are once again able to button the top of your trousers after the glutony we call Turkey Day. Cass and I are doing well (despite the fact that both of us our feeling fairly sh##ty healthwise), and excited to be back to site after our week long trip to the beach for reconnect. There are no long term ramifications of this trip as compared to our last excursion on the beach in Costa Rica just over two years ago, however it was an adventure to be back with the close friends we made during training. In the midst of this adventure an underground newsletter was created, albeit only with pirate voices (seemed appropriate on the beach), a few chilly chuelas were captured as a result, only to have some sailors lose them to seasickness (over-indulgance), and Cass and I managed to speak with each other for a total of 30 minutes during the week. Okay, that was an over exxageration, but we spend every hour together here in site pretty much, so when we got together with our friends Cass was lounging by the pool with the girls, and I was off to the beach with the boys. Somewhere in the midst of all that we actually had Peace Corps meetings with the superiors out of Lima; only to wake them up in the middle of the night with naked blow-up dolls in front of their doors--they are really uptight. :)

Now, we are back in sight and getting into the work routine now that the 3 months of hand tied observing are over (unfortunately I misplaced my hand tie over my eyes and happened to observe nothing, but I will figure it out) and slowly plotting out what people want us to do, and out of that what we want to do. I´m out to recover our laundry from the rain (we are the opposite of the Beverly Hillbilies here), and off to the gym. Hope the Christmas shopping season treats all of you well, and know one kills a fellow parent over a toy; in your lives, and in the broader spectrum.

Peace and Love!

We´re still here

Even though we haven´t updated for a while, we are still here and doing well. We have spent our first three months at site getting to know our community and there is still so much more to learn. Our little town is beautiful and we are glad to be here, we went to Trujillo this last week for PC meetings and are happy to be back to the calm and quiet.

What are we doing here? you may want to know. Right now we are researching the possibility of renovating a home to make it into a children´s home of some sort, but we are still just looking at the opportunities and necesities. The local municipality is interested, but we have to write a formal work plan before anything can move forward.

Will post again, sooner or later.

Finally Here!

What started in April of ´06 has finally come to fruition; Cass and I are officially Peace Corps volunteers. We were two of 31 new volunteers, the other 29 are some of the greatest people I have ever met. The eleven weeks we spent together was an experience to enrich a lifetime; not to forget the amazing facilitators of Spanish and youth development, they are truly wonderful at their jobs.
Settling into to our new home here in Perú is similar to moving in the States; currently occupying one room (which we are not going to live in) while we are painting and furnishing another, still living out of our suitcases. However, we have no complaints, our family is bien amable, and we have already finished painting our room; cream and blue. We are so Peruvian! Yesterday, I completely lived up to the stereotype that Americans cannot do anything with their own hands; I ¨helped¨my host dad install electricity in our our room. After several hours of his booming voice yelling words at me in Spanish, that I don´t understand in English, i.e. current tester, all I could do was laugh; hell, everyone else was. The final product, one outlet. I am now a better person, for having endured that. I am certain it was the first in a long line of stories similar to this, to come.
So, we are here, we are happy, and we are same. Hope all is the same for all of you. Well, if you got nothing else, at least you got the here part.

We will try and post some pictures on our next blog, we are still figuring this guy out.

Peace and Love!

We´re safe

We´re fine, we didn´t feel the brunt of it here in Lima, and luckily all of the PC volunteers in Chincha were out of town for one reason or another. Love you all.

Celendin, Cajamarca

That´s where we will be living for two years. We are visiting right now and I am dreading going back to Lima for two weeks before moving here. Celendin is a great little town of 15 to 20 thousand people. It is caught somewhere between modernity and tradition, It has electricity, running water and paved streets. Along side cows in the school yard, and burros grazing on the side of the street. On the street we pass women who could be dropped into anywhere United States and not stick out because of their appearance, and in the next breath see women in traditional skirts, straw hats, no shoes and a baby strapped to thier back with a colorful blanket. We will be working with local secondary schools, the psychologist at the health center, and a number of other institutions doing youth development projects. What is youth development? Any number of things that influence youth in the community. This is the greatest part of our job, we create it within a very loose framework set forth by Peace Corps Peru.

A couple of notable things.... At our meeting with our counterparts a couple of days ago in the capital city, our director was explaining that all volunteers are prohibited from drinking coca tea (yep, the leaves that are used to make cocaine are rutinely made into a tea to help with altitude sickness or just to drink) and the expressions on the faces of our counterparts were wonderful, you would have thought she had just said we were all prohibited from eating potatoes. An explanation and a few nods later they all understood that we can´t drink it even if they don´t understand why. I´m sure it was a topic of discussion later (those crazy americans and their weird rules). Also, last night at dinner we met the first woman in the whole district of Celendin to drive a car, interesting tidbit.

Life is wonderful, love to all.

Check out this site about Celendin if you wish http://shilicos.com/ all in spanish, but pretty pictures

Apologies for not posting sooner

It is all so strange, but not in the way you think. What strikes me most is how normal it all feels. I no longer think twice about sitting down on a toilet bowl without a seat, even if it is a toilet that I have payed to use (extra for tp). I then throw the purchased and used tp in the trash can, never in the toilet. If I don´t recieve both rice and potatoes on my plate at once, I wonder why. When a mean looking dog gets too close I pick up a rock off of the dirt road and know that I will throw it if need be (usually they run when you pick one up, they´ve been hit on other occasions). Spanish comes out of my mouth sometimes when I try to speak English, and other times I look right at someone who I know speaks only Spanish and I ask them a question in English, expecting them to respond. I now know that the capacity of a car or bus has absolutely nothing to do with how many seats or belts there are. I have ridden in a car built for 5 with 10 other people. As I careen down the road in a bus with standing room only (not much at that) I wonder if I should feel better, or worse, that the driver is crossing himself. I also speak freely with other volunteers about where our latest poop should be classified, (we have a 1-5 chart that the PC uses. Wes and I actually have a great bathroom with a flush toilet and a seat, so whenever other volunteers come to our house they use the opportunity to poop, which naturally leads to the conversation of what kind it was, whether it smells like sulfur (which means Giardia), or if it had blood or mucus (this is also a reason to call the PC docs, I think it means you have a bacteria). I have gotten very good at explaining in Spanish what the Peace Corps is, why I am here, and why my eyes are green (the 5 year old in our house is still trying to figure this one out).

For those of you who are also wondering what we are doing here in Peru. We go to class from 8-5 Monday through Friday, split between Spanish, technical, and medical training. Beginning today, we go to Lima every Saturday to a University called la Agraria which is pretty much a self sustained farm. We are learning organic gardening, we will also have a session on how to raise Guinea Pig (that´s right to eat), and a session on beekeeping. Today we planted a little area, and we will work on it every Saturday until we leave. On thursday afternoons we are doing healthy lifestyle classes at the local primary school, and today we had our first ¨English Club¨ which is another project we are doing to fulfill a PC training requirement.

We are having a great time, I love reading your e-mails and blog comments, more about what we are doing to come soon.

Counting Down!!

5 DAYS TO DEPARTURE:

Hey everyone! You will have to forgive Cass and I's early mistakes on here, simply because this is our very first attempt at a blog, myspace, facebook or anyother tool which willingly lends ourselves to big brother. We have 5 days left until our departure from Billings and we are both wishing we could simply leave tomorrow; the suspense of the last year is coming to head, the torturous days are only getting longer, and nearly every moment becomes bittersweet.

Not much else to say for now, next post will be from Peru!

Adios!