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