On the Move

Bondage

2012-02-14T15:49:00.007-05:00

Everything is going well down here in Brazil, except for that time is going by really quickly. Portuguese is a little tougher than I had thought it would be, mostly because it is so similar to Spanish. Portuguese and Spanish share a lot of words that are spelled exactly the same, or are one or two letters off. Couple that with entirely different pronunciation, and it makes for a frustrating time for someone who speaks Spanish. I kind of wish I could block out Spanish from my head while I'm here, and start over from a blank slate. I know sometimes I accidentally slip into Spanish while I am talking, and am trying to shake this habit. Fortunately, Brazilians are very sympathetic listeners. A lot better than unforgiving Quechua speakers. I've avoided a lot of embarrassing language blunders, although last week I committed a big one. I am learning to box down here, and needed bandages for my hands. So, I went to the pharmacy and told them I was looking for "bondagem," which means "bondage. I meant to say "bandagem" for bandages. The pharmacy clerk looked out me a little strangely, but then handed me a box of condoms. I realized what I had said, and fought the urge not to turn around and walked out. Instead, I explained what I really needed. We both had a good laugh and I'm never going back to that pharmacy.

Portuguese classes take up most of my time right now. We start at 9am every morning, break for an hour and a half lunch, and finish at 4:30. I eat a quick lunch everyday and go to a boxing gym that is a short walk from my school. I took a few days of boxing in Peru, but basically am starting from scratch here. I knew as soon as walked into this gym that it was awesome. Second story hole in the wall, dirty, and with a not so clean cut group of people in there. The work-out is intense and getting yelled at in Portuguese on my lunch break is a good way to practice the language. I am definitely picking up some vocabulary that I would not get by sitting a classroom. I get to spar with people every once in a while, but I'm nowhere near ready to have a real fight. The goal is to get in the ring by the end of April, and hopefully not make a fool of myself. After an hour of boxing I grab a shower and go back for the second part of class.

I live in a city called Curitiba. This city is known throughout Brazil for being the most organized and well-planned, and it shows. Compared to the other Latin American cities I have seen, Curitiba has shown some real foresight in its urban planning and economic development. There are nice parks everywhere, and an efficient and comprehensive bus system that serves the entire city. The urban sprawl that affects other Brazilian cities is not such an issue here, and Curitiba is relatively clean and orderly. Like most big cities, it does have its problems, like a quickly growing murder rate and increased drug usage. Curitiba actually just made the list of one of the most 50 dangerous cities in the world. But, as long as you stick to safe areas and looking for trouble, you'll be fine. I feel safer her than I did living in Columbia, South Carolina or walking the streets of Lima.

The United States and Brazil have a lot in common. Large territories, abundant natural resources, lots of coast and a diverse population. I am still struck by how heterogenous the people are here physically. If I was dropped off in Curitiba and couldn't hear the Portuguese, I would probably guess that I was in the United States or Europe. After sticking out like a giant white sore thumb in Peru, it is nice not to be stared at all of the time. People do not realize I am foreign until I start to speak, and most everyone is more than happy to talk and help with the Portuguese. I've made some good Brazilian friends and all my classmates down here are fun as well. I have been going to the nearby beaches almost every weekend here to relax a little. I'm normally not a big beach person, but figure if I'm living in Brazil I should take advantage of this opportunity. Next week, I'm headed off to the mountains to the east of Rio de Janeiro to do a three day trek. I'm excited to see the difference between high altitude mountain trekking and a more jungly adventure.

Portuguese classes wrap up the 26th of April, and then I have four of my best friends coming from the states for a week. We're going to rent a house on Ipanema, and see what Rio has to offer. After that, I will have an internship to complete. Not sure exactly where that will be, but I would prefer to stay in Brazil. I have something lined up part-time with an NGO, and want to couple that with a more corporate experience. If that doesn't pan out, I have an option back in Peru and another possibility in Tanzania. Hopefully, all of this will be defined soon. All I know is for right now I want to either strengthen my Portuguese, and then learn one more language, while getting some hard business experience. I always used to be afraid of the real world, but now I just think the real world is where you are right now and what you do to make your future. So, when graduation roles around in May or December of 2013, I'm going to keep things interesting. I really don't know what that may be quite yet, and I like it that way.

Brazil

2012-01-10T13:18:00.011-05:00

It's been a while since I updated this, and I am now in the south of Brazil after finishing up the first part of business school. After living in Peru for four years, I decided to go back to school and learn Portuguese. I am enrolled in the Darla Moore School of Business, pursuing an international MBA with concentrations in global management and economic development. The Moore School of Business is located in Columbia, South Carolina, but offers language training in seven other languages. The opportunity to get exposed to Portuguese for a while is what drew me to the program. So, after an eight month stint back in the states, I packed up my suitcases again and made the move to Curitiba, Brazil. Peace Corps was supposed to kill the adventure bug in me, but I think it just made it worse. I love the United States, and miss family and friends back home a lot, but don't see the point in staying in one place as long as I am doing something worthwhile and learning. I have under a year and a half until I graduate, and plan to see as much of the world as I can before that.

Moving back home after Peru was a challenge. I don't like to sit around a lot, so gave myself a few weeks to relax before starting business school. I majored in genetic biology at Purdue, and was not even sure what business was before taking 29 credit hours in my first semester at Moore. Aside from the fact that classes were challenging, the hardest part was adjusting from the total freedom I had in the Peace Corps to the extreme structure and lack of free time that comes with grad school. I went from basically being able to spend a week at a time hiking in the Andes for work, to spending my weekends buried in a finance or accounting book. I can't say that I didn't think about buying a one-way ticket back to Lima and going rogue in the jungle, but I fought the urge and got through the toughest part of my program. The reward now is Brazil; 4 months of language training followed by an internship either in Brazil or a Spanish-speaking country. The view in Curitiba is nice, but I still want to strap on my backpack, put ACDC on my IPOD and go tear up the cordillera blanca whenever I have free time.

Before getting to Brazil, I did make a quick stop in Peru. When I was in the Peace Corps, I thought about home every single day. When I got home, Peru dominated my thoughts when I was not in the library at school. Living in Peru stimulated me emotionally, physically and mentally for every second I was there. Coming home was like going cold-turkey, and the re-adjustment was harder than I imagined. I think I am going to spend the rest of my life chasing the feeling of fulfillment I got there, and am pretty optimistic I'll get it back. The visit to Peru was great; I went to Iquitos in the jungle, and then went back to Ancash to visit some people and do some hiking. After I quick week and a half, I boarded a plane for Brasil.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into down here regarding living arrangements and language-wise. The landing has been so much smoother than the arrival to my Quechua speaking community in the Peace Corps. Instead of being greeted by rock-throwing villagers and food laced with parasites, I got picked up from the airport by my roommate, Renato. My living arrangements are pretty awesome, its a nicer apartment than the one I had in South Carolina, and I have a pretty nice view of the city and the hills that surround it. Portuguese is not as easy as I thought it would be. Renato is an awesome guy, and I lucked out by getting him as a roommate. Right now, I can understand about 80% of what is said to me, but still can't communicate very well. Language was not an issue for me in Peru, and I forgot how frustrating it can be to have to start the learning process over. But, between my 6 hours of class everyday and living with Brazilians, it will come quick enough.

For right now, I'm just focused on getting Portuguese under my belt, narrowing down the internship and job search, and seeing some of this beautiful country. Brazil is almost the size of the continental United States, and has a ton of places to see. I'm relatively close to a beach called Floranapolis, and some waterfalls called Iguazu. I am planning on getting out there and seeing as much as I can. Hopefully I'll start to rack up some good stories again, but not quite as dangerous as the one's from Peru. Brazil does strike me as a more organized and orderly place than Peru, and at least there are no mountain roads here. So keep posted, I'll be updating once every few weeks as well as posting new pictures. Click on the images on the right side of the screen to see the newest ones.

Well that was fun

2011-03-31T15:34:00.014-05:00

Well its finally over, after 1293 days I have officially ended my Peace Corps stint. I stayed a little longer than I originally signed up for, and the last part was the best part. I would have had no problem staying for another year, but change is good and business school starts in June. I do not want to turn into one of those weird expatriates that are all over the place down here. I thought about home every single one of those 1293 days. The first eight months was by far the worst experience of my life, and the last part was the best. For the last year and a half I have been constantly on the move all over the Andes, and had some good steady projects in Huaraz. My last month flew by, and I felt like I was in a haze for most of it. Some of the stuff that happened to me here I never would have imagined, and March really topped it off. I'm in Lima right now, my heads still spinning a little and I really don't know what to think, but here's how it all came to an end.

It was a sunny day in late February when we started off in the Peace Corps SUV to go out to visit some volunteers, and the weather was good. This was the eleventh time I had made this trip, either by foot, bus or private car. It is a pretty scary road; one lane, lots of hairpin turns, drop-offs, landslides and up to ten hours to ponder my own mortality. I always used to look with indifference at the crosses and memorials that scatter the route; better to keep that in the way back of your head. There are two particularly scary parts, and we made it past one of them no problem. I let my guard down after that, and we kept going. All of a sudden, we hit a muddy patch and started to swerve uncontrollably toward the cliff. The driver had to slam the SUV in to a rock cliff to keep us from going over, and this impact pushed us backwards even closer towards the edge, and we luckily stopped about 6 inches away from death. I had actually been practicing undoing my seatbelt and jumping out the window for occasions like this, but it happened so fast I wouldn't have made it. We were both fine, but more than a little spooked. We were literally about a tire width away from a 1000 foot plunge into the river. We made it to our destination and I didn't get too much sleep that night.

The next day we started out early. I was going to stay out there for three days, but due a bus ticket shortage I was forced to get on a bus that same night. I was not to happy about this, but was due in Lima for Peace Corps 50th anniversary celebration. I got on the bus, smashed up against dirty and wet campesinos that smelled like moist earth and farm. That is a smell I will never forget and am glad to get away from. It will always remind me of uncomfortable, crowded and long trips on public transportation. I know by heart the places on the road that are the most dangerous, and it started to rain as soon as it got dark. You can hear the mud sucking at the tires as they futilely spin and inch through the mud and the whine of the hydraulics of the bus as it pushes through. We passed both of the spots without incident and I got a few hours sleep. The bus stops at 2am in a podunk town so the drivers can eat. I get out and watch the stars fade in and out in between the clouds over the mountains that I have traveled so much in. Four hours later the torturous mountain road spits us out on to a slightly better pot-hole riddled highway. We arrive in Huaraz a little bit later, around 5 in the morning. I get out close to the bar I always go to, and see familiar silhouettes in the second floor. I think about stopping for a beer, but keep going to my place and crash hard.

I got up midday the same day and get ready to celebrate Peace Corps 50th anniversary in Huaraz. It was a nice ceremony, well organized and with a good turn out. After that I get on another bus to Lima to celebrate our 50th anniversary. This bus ride goes a lot better, I luck out and get two seats and sleep the whole way. Peace Corps did a promotional video for the anniversary, and I was one of the volunteers featured in it. This also meant that I got a lot of attention in Lima, an interview with the presidential press corps and another on live TV. Right before I was set to go on, my boss mentions that 4 million Peruvians are watching. It went by really fast and I don't think I messed up too much. That same night we had a party at the ambassadors house, with all the important Peruvians there. I got to meet the first lady and it turned out my biggest project, improved cooking stoves, is her national initiative. After that I had to duck out early to catch my next bus. I boarded still wearing my suit and woke up in Huaraz in the cold and altitude for the last time early the next morning.

Then I just wanted to focus on getting my work wrapped up and good-byes said. I went up to Musho for a few days to visit the projects I did, and with the help of another Peace Corps volunteer we visited every single one. The projects, after over a year are still working well. The stoves are clean, the bathrooms haven't filled up with water and people have made additional changes to their living conditions as a result of the projects. In one of the houses where I started this year, the family was literally cooking on the ground outside. They got excited about the new stove and actually built an entire house around it. Needless to say this, and the other house visits were a gratifying way to end my time here. I know some day the stove tops will corrode and rust away and the holes for the latrines will fill up to the top. Some people will rebuild and other won't. You can teach someone how to do something and give them a push to get them there, but it is entirely up to the person to take responsibility once they can and know how. So, I am walking away from the construction projects I did satisfied and pleasantly surprised with the people.

The other work I did this year was work with a group of 20 14-17 year old guys in sexual health. We met every Saturday, and I had classes about all kinds of stuff. I took them on field trips too, a fish farm, the pool, hikes, and three of them went on a week long trip to the north of Peru with me. For their final field trip, I took them to a rock forest. It all went fine, until the ride back. We got stuck behind a car accident on the way back for 5 hours. It happened to be in a spot with no cell phone signal, so I couldn't call their parents. One of the kids brought his dog on the bus and it threw up. We were stopped on a narrow highway, and the kids were literally jumping out of the windows to get away from the smell. So I had to worry about runaway teenagers and angry parents when we finally got back. But I smoothed it all out and the parents weren't upset at all. I took them all out to lunch on my last day and it was a good closing to my favorite project in the Peace Corps.

The last part of my work this year wasn't really work, which was volunteer support. We ended up at 32 volunteers strong this year, compared to 7 when I got to Ancash in November 2007. Peace Corps can be hard, and the friendships are made quickly and stay strong. All my friends sent me off in style, we had a prom dinner and dance followed by a whole weekend of visiting our favorite places. I'm lucky to have spent so much time with such great people. The goodbyes with my Peruvian friends were nice too, I ate a lot of food I didn't want to and probably got giardia on last time. The final goodbye at the bus station was harder than I imagined. But this was a needed change and the future couldn't look better. I have three friends coming down to do a jungle expedition and mountain trekking trip, business school split between South Carolina and south Brazil starting in June, and who knows after that. I joined Peace Corps mostly because of poor planning and a lack of studying for the MCAT. 4 years later medicine doesn't interest me and this experience has set me on a whole different track. I'm still the same person I was when I left, just more centered. There's a bunch of new pictures linked up, a description of the work I actually did if you want to see your tax dollars at work. Thanks for following along if you've kept up with this; I'm signing off and can't wait to get back and see you!

Jail and another adventures

2011-02-26T08:22:00.017-05:00

The last month has been pretty interesting, I've been on the road a lot and have been wrapping up my projects. To start out the month, six volunteers, myself and two park guards started off on a trip to do monitoring of flora and fauna in the national park. We picked a route that I hiked about a year ago, got all the equipment ready and set off on what was to be a four to five day hike. We are in the middle of the rainy season right now, but decided to go for it because we've lived here for a long time and are used to rough conditions. Things didn't go exactly as planned. We were going to hire donkeys to carry our stuff, but when we got to the trail head no one would rent to us because it is potato harvesting season and they were too busy. As a result, I had severely over-packed and ended up tying two backpacks together, which was not too comfortable.
After a late start to the first day, we started out, straight up to the first campsite. There was no rain, just a thick fog that occasionally broke to show us that there was still a lot of uphill. Another volunteer and I stuck behind to look for donkeys, but no luck. We were separated from the group for the day, took and wrong turn and the night crept up on us. We found the rest of our group a little later, and I was never so glad to get into my tent and eat spaghetti. That was the most physically exhausted I had ever felt in my life, but it was because I had only been eating cookies during the day and was carrying too much weight. So the next day I had a good breakfast and distributed some of the weight among the group. We started walking at about nine, a late start, but walked quickly and made it to a lake called cullicocha, which means guinea pig lake in spanish/quechua. There was no jumping in due to the freezing cold weather, and we continued on to our first pass at 15,000 feet. It was cold, misty and beautiful and we kept going to get to the second campsite. We made one more pass that day, and made it to the campsite, set-up tent for the night and went to bed. Then, the rain started. I woke up at 4 a.m. to the sound of rain on my tent and was not to happy. We had a group meeting right there in the rain, and decided to turn back. We were due to make a third pass, the highest at 16,000 feet, which is known for strong wind, strong enough to knock donekys off their feet. A campesino told us it was covered in snow and he thought is was a bad idea. I like my stories and adventures, but this was the right decision. People die in these mountains every year and you shouldn't play around in them.

So, with morale low, we turned around and started the hike back to the city. It snowed all day, which was really pretty, and we made it to a water control station at cullicocha, where we thankfully received by the guard. We spent our last night on the trail indoors, with a kitchen and dry sleeping conditions. We made it back to Huaraz the same day, tired and wet. While the goals of the hike were a failure, it was still a great couple of days. After a day's rest, I got back to work. Sophie and I have been working on HIV/AIDS prevention, and have taught little kids, high schoolers, teachers, and professionals. So we thought the next step would be inmates. We have a contact that arranged an hour class time in the jail here in Huaraz, so we prepared a class and went.

I really wanted to take pictures of this because it is not something that someone gets to do very often, go to a peruvian jail. However, security measures prohibit bringing anything into jail. However, due to the laziness and apathy of the guards, I managed to get my camera in and got to take a bunch of pictures. I just stuck it down my pants and walked right past the security screening. The class actually went really well; the inmates were more respectful and well-behaved than my high-schoolers. As part of an activity on how HIV works in the human body, I printed out a life-size picture of a bikini model for the demonstration. This went over really well and I left the poster in the jail for the inmates. That was probably the last class I will ever teach here and it was a good way to go out.

Now, we are in the middle of Peace Corps 50th anniversary.This is a video that Peace Corps Peru has made of some of the volunteers here, and my work is featured as part of it, as well as Musho, my 2nd site. It was really awkward getting filmed for a day, but I think it came out pretty well. This past week we had a ceremony to honor to PCVs that founded the national park here that I have spent so much time in. They died climbing a mountain 40 years ago and there are still a ton of Peruvians that still remember them. Now, this coming week, I am participating in a few formal events in Lima, at the presidential palace in Lima and the US ambassador's house. I also got picked to be interviewed on Peru's pubic radio, called RPP. I'm kind of nervous about that, but it will be fine. After that, I only have a few weeks left here, and it will be so good to be home. I'm going to update this one more time before I leave, see you all soon!

Day 1238 Almost Home

2011-02-06T11:16:00.009-05:00

Well, I have started the final countdown until I'm done here, and time is flying by. I used to have a calendar on my wall, one sheet per month, with all 24 months all laid out, that I was going to be here. I would get excited to take one more month off my wall as the weeks passed. Flash forward three years, and those 24 months turned into 42, and the feeling of removing the final two months is really weird. I'm something like 98% done with me time here and I can't believe how fast the last year has gone. Anyway, I'm excited to finally get home and I'm going to live up my last days as a Peace Corps Volunteer. The last month has been wild and I'm racking up some good stories to take home with me. I want to leave here exhausted and with no regrets.

About a month ago, I went over the mountains to visit the new volunteers that are way out there. They are all spread out over a span of about 60 miles, which isn't much until you consider these 60 miles are mostly vertical; spread out on the slopes of the second-highest mountain range in the world. There is regular transport on the road, and the bus can take up to 12 hours in the rainy season, and it is not very comfortable. So, I decided to walk. I took off from Huaraz in a combi at four in the morning, and took public transportation to the highest point of the road at 16,000 feet, go out and started to walk. I was greeted by a sunrise over the highest mountain in the country, followed by this avalanche. I saw it from a very safe distance, but being parallel to something that powerful is an interesting experience. Then I crossed over the pass and the mountains and foothills stretched out as far as the eye could see.

I kept going for the next three days, visiting the new volunteers in their sites and staying in three dollar a night hotels. Selection out there is limited and you get what you pay for. It is the rainy season right now, but I got lucky and it did't rain until the night when I was safe and sound in my luxury accommodations. I was literally up in and higher than the clouds for a lot of the walking, with occasional vertigo inducing peeks down on the cliffs I was walking on. I went for hours and hours without seeing another person save a glimpse of a farmer herding livestock from a distance. Life here changes quickly in terms of geography and culture. In a few days I went from my apartment in a city of 100,000 to the middle of nowhere to communities where spanish is not spoken and money is not used. This area of the country is one of the most forgotten due to the length of the trip out there, and as a result is one of the poorest. That's why we have volunteers out there, because whatever they do for their community makes a bigger difference and is more valued.

I finally got to Pomabamba and stayed for two weeks, coordinating some things and visiting more volunteers. There is absolutely nothing to do after 7pm there except eat so it was early to bed early to rise everyday. I contemplated walking back to Huaraz but had to get back quickly so I opted for the bus. After a not so fun 12 hour I got to Huaraz, had a pizza dinner and hibernated for a day. Then I had three days of work in Huaraz and went to Honduras. I was scheduled to fly out at 4 am, so I met up with my host brothers before, had dinner, and left my computer with them. I got to the airport at 2am, and discovered that I could not fly to Honduras because did not have proof of my yellow fever vaccine. I didn't know this but I have two international vaccination cards and had brought the wrong one. So I had to wait I day to get the right one and got the next flight to Tegucigalpa. I spent a week there with my dad and our church, and it was a great time. We did some construction projects and other odds and ends at an orphange. This was the fifth time I had been to Honduras, the first being in high school. It felt like coming full circle; the first time I went I was 17, didn't speak spanish and had no clue how to function in another culture.

After a good week, I flew back to Lima for some meetings. They went well, and on the last night, I went to see my host brother and to pick up my laptop. He is a cop in a not so nice part of the city, but always drives me around in the police pick-up truck. We met up at the police station, and got in the truck to go to my bus station. On the way there, he spotted a thief that had just stolen a lady's purse. So, he stopped the car, jumped out and tackled the guy. He fought back and got handcuffed. My host brother told me to stay in the car, which I did. I didn't know what to do during all of this, so I just made a phone call and hoped for the best. They finally subdued him, briefly put him in the back seat with me, decided this was a bad idea and then hog tied him to the bed of the pick up truck. I got dropped off at the bus station not knowing what to think. So I bought some gummy bears and waited until my bus took off. I don't think anything can shock me anymore. Now I'm back in Huaraz and have a few more things to get done. This week six volunteers and I are doing a monitoring of flora and fauna over a 4 day hike in the mountains. There are bears out there and we're going to find one. Then its the Peace Corps 50th anniversary which we have a lot of planned events for. Then I'm in my last month and things should slow down a little. My travels plans post Peace Corps are still a little hazy, but I'll be home soon enough. 1238 days is too long to be away from home and whatever comes next I'm ready for it.

Chaos

2011-01-03T14:45:00.015-05:00

Usually where I live is a very peaceful and calm part of the country. The people here are known for being passive, and while that does make life a little slower-paced and boring, it is nice to know that I can walk around without worrying about my personal safety. That changed for nine days in December due to a huge protest. A foreign mining company got authorization from the Peruvian government to do exploratory work on a huge lake. The lake just happens to be the source of water for three geographical departments here, and the people protested. It started off weak, with a few road blocks, but quickly got worse. I was in the gym when a friend called me and told me to go back to my house, and I didn't really believe her. So I finished up, and started the walk home. Right out the door I could smell burning tires and tear gas. I took the side streets back to my place and ran into a few gangs of people basically breaking anything they could find.

I got back to my house safe and called some friends to see what they had seen and what they thought. We got together and ventured out for a few blocks to see what was going on. The center of the town had been ransacked, all government buildings had their windows broken out, and there was burning tires and trash on every street corner. There was a huge mass of people in the town square, and a lot of police. The community members were throwing rocks at the police, who had shields and tear gas. I don't think this would happen back home, but I saw riot police pick rocks up and throw them back at the protesters. In the middle of all of this their were little old ladies selling fresh-squeezed orange juice and empanandas. We enjoyed what was probably one of the most interesting breakfasts I have ever eaten and went back up to my apartment to be out of all the chaos.

All of this went on for nine days, in varying degrees of intensity. We were literally shut off from the coast from all directions, and by the end there was no fresh food getting in. I went to the market one one of the last days and there was absolutely nothing but noodles and packaged foods left. The protesters were targeting the Peruvian government and the mines, so I wasn't a target. It was scary to see how fast mob mentality can take over a city though; and how quickly order and civility can disintegrate. By the time it was over the city looked like a war-zone and almost a month later most of the windows are still boarded up. The government finally revoked the mine's license and sat down with the communities to negotiate.

After that, things returned to normal, with the holidays. Just like back home, things slow down and people don't work as much. Christmas and New Years are not celebrated the same way here, but the basic concepts are the same. I went back up to Musho for Christmas eve dinner, then came back to Huaraz for Christmas day lunch with Peruvian friends and dinner with another volunteer. It was a good couple of days but I'm really glad it will be the last holidays season I'll be spending out of country. We all got together and celebrated New Year's american style, which was really nice. Now I'm on the final stretch of my time here and things are going well. My official last day is March 29th and that's coming up really fast.

I have extended my time here twice, but this time the date is set. I've accomplished almost everything I wanted to do, and its time to get going. I got into my number one choice for grad school, which is a huge relief. I was picturing myself back home working my high school job if I didn't get accepted. It is an international MBA,top-ranked in the country, with classes in Columbia, South Carolina and then Brazil. I get to learn Portuguese and go back to school. I'm really excited about that. I will move over-seas again but will never leave home for three years at a time again. This has been great, but exhausting as well. I start classes in late June and am looking forward to some normalcy. I plan on finishing up here and traveling for a little bit in South America. There is going to be a 1,500 mile trip down the jungle rivers, a trip to patagonia and mountain climbing. After that I plan on having at least a month back home before school starts. If you're reading this Danielle happy birthday and I'll see you all back home in a few months!

No one Died!

2010-12-03T23:23:00.020-05:00

Sophie and I recently took 6 Peruvian high schoolers on a trip to a department here called Tumbes. We have been working with these kids for almost a year now, training them in teaching techniques for HIV/AIDS prevention. The goal is that they eventually are capable of teaching their peers. We took these guys up north so they could see some work that Peace Corps has done up there, and get them excited to do it back here in Huaraz. The few days before the trip and the trip itself were exhausting, but in retrospect it turned out to be my favorite thing I have done here so far. Just to get permission from the ministry of education took us 10 hours of shuttling back and forth between inefficient government offices, but we finally got a signed document. Then the parents decided against the trip, then changed their mind again. Sometimes I really wonder why I try at all here, because everything always works out at the very last second.

Well, we finally got onto the bus, with all twelve parents, assorted relatives, and one drunk uncle there to see us off. I think the parents were just as excited as their kids. Sophie brought three girls from her high school and I brought three guys from mine. They were all pretty excited, and were very awkward with each other as to be expected. Imagine being 15 years old and never having traveled more than ten miles from where you were born. It was really funny to see how they reacted to everything, because pretty much everything was new to them. The moms tried to send heavy blankets and pillows for the kids, but I assured them we would be in the heat on the coast. One of my students brought a boom-box with him to blast on the bus ride. We took the nice service, which includes a movie, so I had to confiscate his personal entertainment for the night. Other than that it was a comfortable nine hour ride to the coast.

Once in Tumbes we visited a fellow Peace Corps volunteer, Alyse, went to her high schools, worked with her students, and practiced. Coastal people in Peru are a lot more talkative and open-minded than their mountain counterparts, and it was very obvious as we began to work. Little by little our students loosened up once they got comfortable. They ended the week by giving their first class, and they did pretty well. They gave and hour long session of HIV prevention in front of 40 other high schoolers. We mixed the work with some fun and some great food. We got a nice hotel on the beach and ate a lot of sea-food. My guys got up at four in the morning everyday to go crab-hunting, so we ate a lot of those. Between that and my the novelty of cable TV in our room, I got zero sleep for the week. As a reward for behaving themselves and successfully doing their first class, we went on a boat-ride in a mangrove swamp. We saw crocodiles, tons of birds and some fish. It was the first time any of the kids had been on a boat so it was quite the experience for them. Look at the pictures on my links.

We were most worried about safety during the trip, because Tumbes is not very safe. Thankfully nothing happened and the kids behaved like angels. I never had to say anything twice to anyone. No one complained about food, and no one got sick. The worst incident we had was a sprained toe, and this was not a big deal. By the end of the week all the the kids were talking more and we got to know them a lot better. Still, watching out for the safety and security of six teenagers for a week is not exactly relaxing. When I got to Huaraz and dropped the kids off with their parents, I promptly slept for 10 hours, ate dinner and slept for 9 more. I wasn't sure if I was ever going to recover from the trip, but I bounced back quickly Now that a few weeks have gone by since the trip, the guys in my high school are more excited about working and are a lot more comfortable in a group setting.

Now I have less than four months left here, and everything is up in the air in terms of where and when I'll end up back home. I am officially done on March 29th, and there is at least a little travel in my future. I will be sending out my travel plans for anyone who wants to come down and join me. Hopefully I will be starting an MBA soon after that. What I do know is that this is the kind of work I want to do for the rest of my life. Not taking high schoolers on field trips, but rather development work on the management level. Even with a little bit of money used the right way, lives can be improved and changed. With just under $2,000 we were able to do this trip, and hopefully it opened some doors for the kids. Right now time is flying by too fast and I wish I could slow it down a little bit, but I know its time for something new. I have a list of stuff left to accomplish here before I go and am getting it checked off. The 17 new volunteers that I helped get communities ready for are actually here now. Its a good group of people and I'll be traveling to their sites a lot. Between that and wrapping up my projects I know this is going to be over in the blink of an eye.

Don't sell Fredy and other good stories

2010-11-07T09:06:00.010-05:00

I don't have any news so here's some funny stuff that has happened. I have been working with a group of teenagers for the last nine months. I wrote a grant to take three of the hardest workers on a field trip, a week long trip up close to the border of Ecuador to see some other Peace Corps volunteers and their work. The kids are excited because they have never been 10 miles away from where they were born. A couple of weeks ago, I went to one of the kid's house with the permission slip for the parents to sign. The mom was home, and this is what she said, word for word: "Fredy can't go to Tumbes with you because you're going to sell him at the border." She then puts down a half of a guinea pig on top of a mountain of potatoes in front of me and says, "you have to eat this." I sat there and ate it all while the whole family stared at me. I finished and said something about how that was the best food I have ever eaten. The mom liked this, changed her mind, and signed the form. Her parting words to me were "come back next week for more guinea pig," and, "Fredy is not allowed to drink cold water on the trip."

A local restaurant here has a dish called "preso politico" or political prisoner. It consists of two pounds of potatoes, a pound of rice, two eggs, two bananas, salad, a chicken breast, pork, and a steak. the locals usually split it between a group. But if you order it and finish it by yourself, it is free. So one day I went with a group of volunteers. Four of us ordered it and told the owner of our intentions. He agreed and said good luck, because no one ever finishes it. We all finished. Throughout the course of the lunch, I watched the owner get more and more agitated. I flagged him over upon completing and he was furious. Then I asked for dessert, which caused us to be kicked us out of the restaurant. We stood there on the sidewalk while he screamed at us for being thieves, and then he called the police. Before they got there, we agreed to pay for half just to calm him down.

For the last few months I have been helping to get new Peace Corps sites ready for the new group of volunteers. The new sites are about eight hours farther into the mountains from where I live. The scenery is spectacular, and the towns are isolated and really poor. Most of the people in the towns have never seen anyone from another country. After one of the visits I made, I was waiting on the road for a bus. It got dark, and no one else was around. After a while, an older man came up to wait for the bus as well. He said hello and reached out to shake my hand. At the same time, the bus came around the corner, and illuminated my gringo face. The man immediately dropped my hand and took off in a dead sprint. The bus driver saw this cultural exchange and sped up and left me there. Luckily there are a lot of buses that pass by on that road, so I only had to wait a half hour more before the next one came by.

I am friends with a married couple here. They both work in pharmacies, the same chain, one block away from each other. They were also both cheating on each other with other pharmacy employees. On separate occasions, they both came to me to tell me about their infidelity. I suggested that they both stop. So one day they have me over for lunch. About halfway through, the tell me they have some news. I thought it was going to be a divorce. But no, they have decided to stop cheating on each other and are going to try to have a child. And they might name it Michael if it is a boy. I thought they were joking at first but judging from the folic acid on the table I think they were serious. I was pretty dumbfounded so I just finished my lunch and excused myself.

So as you can see there is plenty of stuff here to keep me entertained apart from work. Right now everything is going according to plan; I'm enjoying life and at the same time getting more ready to be done here. It's been a great three years overall but I'm looking forward to some normalcy. I'm going to finish up strong with the trip with my youth group and hopefully getting the 600 new kitchens built. A new crop of 25 volunteers just got in to Ancash, so that will keep me on the road a lot. This also means that a big group of volunteers is also leaving. They had been here throughout my entire service. Thanks to James, Callie and Shannon, it's not the same without you here.

63 dollars

2010-09-29T19:30:00.019-05:00

What can you get with 63 dollars? Maybe a nice dinner, some new clothes or you could fill up the tank of your car. What can a Peace Corps volunteer do with 63 dollars? They can buy something that measures 2.5 feet by .5 feet, weighs 60 pounds, is made of steel and has three holes and a chimney. This is a stove top for an improved cookstove; and is my main project I'm working on right now. Each stove top by itself isn't very impressive; it's heavy, dirty and weird looking. I recently completed a project in a community close to Huaraz and this picture sums up what can be done with 63 dollars and some patience. Before the project, the people in this house literally cooked over three rocks and ate sitting down on the ground. That black streak on the wall is from the smoke. Imagine what that does to the person who cooks or the little kids that sit next to it day after day.

Just giving someone a stove top is not a practical idea. If they do not know how to install it, or do not use it correctly, it is worthless. So they have to be trained. As a part of most Peace Corps projects like this, people are required to come to a series of classes that educate them on health themes and organizational skills. Peace Corps wants the work that we do to be sustainable; the idea is that people learn the skills in order to independently address their needs. After the project participants completed the series of classes, I turned them in their stoves and guided them through the installation. Now hopefully the people of this community would be able to do a project of this sort without someone coming in and helping them.

Each stove top costs 63 dollars, which is a big amount for the people in the community. But each family, in order to get the stove top, had to make a few basic improvements in their kitchens. Most families go above and beyond, and end up spending a lot more than the cost of the stove top. It is interesting to see how a small improvement to someone's kitchen can motivate them more and more to improve their living conditions. In that first picture, the family before ate on the floor, had no windows and ventilation, and had animals in their kitchen. They have now put in windows, painted the walls and bought a table and chairs to sit down and eat together. Not all families put this much work in independently but it is rewarding to see that the majority do.

Multiply that 63 dollars per family by 26 houses and that's still not a lot of money; but makes a big difference in the people's health. And 63 dollars can turn in to into something bigger as well. As a result is these 26 kitchens that we installed, my health center and I got the attention of the local government. With other communities, we wrote a project, presented it and got a grant for S100,000 dollars to install about 600 more stoves like this. This is a project entirely funded with local resources, which is how it should be. I'm going to be in charge of the organization and some trainings. I'm not saying any of this to brag but rather to show the strengths of Peace Corps. 63 dollars is really nothing to a lot of us back home, but used the right way in the right hands it can translate into something big. I'm sticking around down here until I see this project through its completion, until mid march I believe. After that, hopefully I'll be in grad school starting in July for an International MBA. And also eating a lot of pizza and chicken wings. In between Peace Corps and grad schools I'm going to have a couple of months free. I plan on traveling up those 2,500 miles between South America and Indiana by land, and catching up with my family and friends before school starts. I can see the light at the end of the Peace Corps tunnel and its looking like a lot of fun.

Jungle, Wildfire, Kitchens and AIDS

2010-08-29T12:50:00.009-05:00

I don't know when life started moving so fast down here. Looking back two years ago I can remember knowing exactly how many days I had left until I would be back home. If someone would have told me that I was going to stay for a third year and drop my idea of going to medical school for business school, I would have probably quit immediately. Now that I am in the real home stretch, just four months left out of what will be a total of 41, I wish time would go a little slower. I am applying to some schools for an international MBA, wrapping up some projects and enjoying life here. I am also racking up some good bye stories. During the first week of August, four of my best friends came down to see me. We spent a day on the beach, and about a week in a jungle city called Tarapoto. It was the most fun week I have had here, and none of us ended up in Peruvian jail so we'll call the trip a success. I got back to Huaraz after 36 hours on buses and promptly slept for almost a whole day.

I then packed up my stuff to move to the other side of the mountains. We are looking at putting about 15 new volunteers approximately 8 hours further into the mountains from Huaraz, so I will be splitting my time in between Huaraz and the new region. We visited all the new sites, set up more meetings and started back to Huaraz. Right now we are in the dry season, the tail end of it. That means crops aren't growing well and people need the rains to come back. It generally picks back up in September. In order to speed this process up, there is a belief that burning fields will appease the rain gods. So, people set fire to there fields this time of year in the hopes that it will rain. Sometimes, the fires get out of control because it is so dry. Well, one of them did and it happened to be right where and when we were coming back to Huaraz. We were driving along and it started to get smoky. I got out to look around and it got worse very quickly, the wind picked up, it got hot and I could hear the fire roaring toward us. So I ran back to the car and we drove through it. We passed it in less than a minute but it was a little scary not knowing how big it was. This was safer than staying in one spot because we were parked under some trees that could have fallen. Check out my new pictures for an eyewitness account.

Then I came back to Huaraz to work on my projects. I have finished up one kitchen project and the other one is almost there. My other work, with HIV/AIDS prevention is going well. I am working with two small groups of higher schoolers. Because mountain culture here is more conservative and less up to date than the rest of the country, I thought that my work would be met with a lot of resistance. But so far, it has been the opposite. In order to particpate, the kids parents had to sign a paper saying that they knew we were going to talk about AIDS, sex and other sensitive topics. Before one of the first meetings, a big group of parents were waiting for me. I thought that they had come to lynch me, but they actually had come to learn as well. A lot of the people here have lived through the experience of having kids way too early, and it was really refreshing to see they want something better for their own. So until I leave I am meeting with the kids once a week. We do an hour and a half of serious stuff than another hour and a half of fun stuff. Last week we went on a hike to a lake and ended the day playing soccer.

Right now is election season in Ancash. We are now home to the dirtiest political culture in the country. Our regional president was assinated last month, as was his successor quickly thereafter. Ancash is crawling with mine money, hence the political corruptness. Right now, because all of the politicians want to get reelected, they are throwing their money around. If you know how to work the system, which I do, you can get a project funded. I wrote and presented a project for 500 new kitchens and a bunch of other stuff, and it was approved last week. It is worth $150,000 and will benefit 500 houses on the outskirts of Huaraz. I most likely will be back home eating pizza when the project gets started, but it will be left in the hands of my health center to execute, which they will do well. The government has the ulterior motive of getting reelected here but it really doesnt matter to me because theres about to be 500 families living in better conditions.

New Pictures Up

2010-07-28T09:30:00.007-05:00

It’s been another good month since I last wrote. I spent the last week of June and first of July back home for my cousin’s and a friend’s weddings. It was great to be back, especially in the summer. I caught up with my family and friends ate a lot of food that I have missed, and hopped back on the plane to Peru a little sooner than I would have liked. It was good to be home and good to come back to finish up the second half of my third year here. When I first started Peace Corps, I could tell you down to the day long I had left. Now, as I watch the days fly off the calendar, I’m not sure what to think. I have been here for 35 months, and only have about 5 left. The third year was definitely the right decision for me, and I’m trying to soak it up before the real world comes creeping back into my life.

I’m getting ready to make the move about ten hours outside of Huaraz, farther into the mountains, to a district called Pomabamba. In December, 15 new Peace Corps volunteers will be potentially sent there. I will be spending two weeks at a time there and two weeks at a time in Huaraz, continuing with my projects. The two improved cooking stove projects as set to finish this week and my HIV/AIDS prevention projects are going well. My best friend here and former neighbor just moved into Huaraz and will take over one of the high schools, and we will be sharing leadership responsibilities until I leave in December. We are about to grow over 100% in volunteer population by then, so it will be nice to have someone to share the workload with. I will make the move to Pomabamba around the 15th of August. I will be living in a large city, and traveling extensively to get the new sites ready. I am really excited about this; I have an adventure bug in me that I just can’t seem to get rid of.

You want to know what it’s like to be homeless in two cities in South America? It’s a little frustrating. The contract on my apartment in Huaraz expired last week, and I hadn’t had time to find a new place. So I threw all of my stuff into my friend’s house. I had the invitation to stay as long as I like, but contingent on the fact that I drink every night. This was incentive enough to search harder, and I found a new place. It is farther away from the center of the city than my other place, but it is nice. It is a big house that is shared by about seven renters and a family. I actually already knew some of the family and four of the renters. I have my own room and bathroom, and access to a kitchen and a shared living room with TV. The shower is legitimately hot, which makes me extremely happy. Now I just need to figure out where I am going to live in Pomabamba. I have to live with a family there, and don’t know anyone. I’ll figure it out when I get there; it should be a good story, even if it is a little awkward.

This week is the craziest of the year in Huaraz. Sunday was the city’s anniversary, and the rest of the week is Peru’s Independence week. That’s right, a week not just a day. Peruvians definitely know how to have a good time. Every day, there are concerts, parades, and lots of drunks. Peruvians from the coast and other cities come here to vacation, so there is a good mix of people here right now. The population of the city has gotten noticeably taller and better-looking for the holidays. Coastal people here are generally better educated, fed and dress less conservatively. They stick out almost as much as I do when they come up to the mountains. I tried to schedule work for this week, but that was pointless. Everything is shut down, so I am laying low and enjoying the time off to sleep and work on grad school applications.

When Peruvian Independence week is over, I’m going on my last Peace Corps vacation. Four of my college buddies are coming down on Saturday for a trip to the jungle. We’re road tripping it; a 24 bus ride from Lima to a city called Tarapoto. We’ll break it up with a stop on the beach and will definitely be taking the nice service. While I love the mountains and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else here, the culture can be stifling at times and a break anywhere else always does me good. I have been holding off going to the jungle for my entire Peace Corps service, and this seems like the perfect time to do it. I’ve had a good number of friends and family visit me while I’ve been down here, and the visits have been some of the best times I’ve ever had. That’s all the news I have for now. If I come back from the jungle with a monkey, his name will be Mr. Bojangles.

Home T-4 days

2010-06-20T21:11:00.004-05:00

This past month has been a good one; and I have racked up a few more good stories. Nothing too wild though, just funny and/or interesting. But first work is good. All of my projects are advancing nicely. I have two improved kitchen projects and am just waiting on the people to get their materials ready. These should be done by August. But more importantly, the HIV/AIDs prevention is going along well. I actually work within two municipalities, and they both have agreed to support financially and to keep the projects goind when I leave. So that is good news, sustainability, which is what we look for in Peace Corps. Right now I am meeting with my groups of students once a week to get them started. The goal is to train them so eventually they are able to train their peers in the high school. Once we get the cash from the governments they'll be able to get creative and design their own project.

Now for the stories. Last week I had to go over to the other side of the mountains to see some potential new sites. After that, a volunteer and I decided to hike back to Huaraz. Our guide book says the trek is 3 days long, but we don't like being told what to do so we decided to do it in one day. We left town at 6:45 am and started off at a good clip, beating all of the time markers the guide book indicated. The map showed about 27 miles for the whole thing, starting at 10000 feet up to almost 15000. We made the pass at around noon, way ahead of schedule. We kept walking, confident that we would make it back to Huaraz with time to spare. But it turns out we were wrong, and soon it got dark. We were just about to pitch a tent when a guy showed up out of nowhere and guided us to the road. We got into Huaraz at 9:00pm after 14 hours of almost non-stop walking. Dinner never tasted so good.

A few days before that I was in a meeting for something called a participatory budget. It is basically a system in which the public can present and have funded projects that they come up with by the government. I am participating with my youth health promoters, to solicit a youth center and so they can see how they system works. During the meeting, the mayor of Huaraz came to give a speech. He started on a rant about gringos meddling in Peru and how we wouldn't give a dime to project initiated by foreigners. I was the only one of those in the room, and he had actually already given me funding a few weeks ago for my project. I didn't know what to do, so I just looked at the floor and thought about sad things to keep from laughing. The guy rambled for about 15 minutes, took some pictures, and left. It's stuff like this that makes life here more interesting.

I have about six months left here in my third year. Time's flying by and I have a list of stuff I am getting checked off before I check out myself. I'll be home this Friday for about ten days for two weddings, and then it's all downhill here in Peru. I'm going to be moving back over the mountains, about eight hours away from Huaraz, to a city called Pomabamba. My job is going to be helping to get 15 sites ready for a new crop of volunteers that get here in December. I'm excited to travel some more and have a different experience. And I'll still be in Huaraz half of the time, continuing with my HIV work. That's all of the news I have for this post, check at my new pictures on the links and I will see you all in a few days!

2010-05-27T15:16:00.007-05:00

I don't know what to write here anymore; life is good and time is going by too quickly. My HIV/AIDS prevention work is going well; I have taught classes to 1200 high schoolers and am now working with smaller groups to design projects that the students themselves will do. And no, karma did not catch up with me for be a little misbehaved in high school. For some reason the kids pay attention to me and really like to work. My bigger high school has 900 students and it is a lot of fun to go in there,the kids are from a semi-urban area and are really badly-behaved. My other school has 400 students and they come from rural communities, so they are more timid and a little more difficult to work with, but my first two years here prepared me for the closed-off mind set. Now that I have been working with all these kids, and most of their parents, I feel like a celebrity here in the city. I have to remind myself that I am actually not a big deal because I can't walk down the street without hearing my name screamed. But its all over in December and I'll have to settle for being just another gringo in a country where there's a lot of us. For now I am just going to take advantage of my celebrity status to push projects and hopefully get some concrete things done before I go.

At the beginning of the month I was looking for some government support for some HIV/AIDS meetings we were going to have. So I went to the government office of Ancash and ending up taking to the high up governmental leaders. They decided to support us, and ended up taking me on a trip to see a forestation project that they had done. This is a picture of part of it. In the last five years, the people in this district, called Sihuas, have planted 17 million trees where they never used to grow. It was the best project I have seen in all my time in Peru. The people are independently running it, and making money. They plant the trees, let them grow for at least ten years, cut them and sell them. With this money they have to buy more trees and plant them. They are talking about carbon secuestering and selling carbon credits. When I move over the mountains again in July, I am going to be working with this project. I'm not sure how, but it will be interesting.

The other day I was walking back from work, and passed by one of the rougher areas of the city. I was in a hurry and not to happy because I had be stood up at a meeting. I passed a mechanic shop and heard someone say my name. I almost ignored it because I wasn't in the mood for a repetitive conversation or worse a drunk person at 10 in the morning. But I stopped and looked and it turned out to be one of my students from my high school. He was covered in mud and grease, and it was obvious he had been under a car for quite some time. I asked him how long he had been working for and he said since 5am. I then asked how much money he made and he said 10 soles a day, which is about 3 dollars. He does this before school everyday and on weekends too, and does it because his family needs it. This is the reality here and I'm not sure what to think about it, but it definitely makes me first appreciate that I had a childhood, and second that I have the luxury to choose what I want to do with my life.

This is how a lot of people here live. I am working in this community, called Aclla, constructing people new stoves. Huaraz, the city where I live, has a lot of money. But a half hour higher up and there is poverty like this. The mom of this family, the 26 year old in the picture, has 5 kids, no husband and cooks on the floor everyday. Hopefully by August we'll have constructed her a new kitchen. That's what work is like right now, high school HIV/AIDS prevention and two kitchen projects in semi-urban communities where m students live. I also get paid to go out and visit other volunteers, which is great. We have a good group of 17 here right now. For any future Peru 15ers, if you get sent to Ancash you're lucky. In other news I'll be home for a week June 26th - July 5 for some weddings. New pictures are up too, see you all soon!

2010-04-22T17:07:00.009-05:00

It's been another good month since I last updated. I have traveled more in the last month than any other in my time in Peru. To start off the month, I went to a beach called Huanchaco to celebrate my birthday and holy week. It was a good time, and I was accompanied by 10 volunteers from ancash and my host brother from musho. Right after I got back from that, I had a days rest and went to Lima for some work stuff. Due to unforeseen events, I had to go back and forth 4 separate times from Lima to Huaraz that week. The bus ride is comfortable, but after 5 out of six nights in a row on a bus I was ready for a bed. Then I had a two day rest in Lima and started my first vacation of the year. Four of my good college friends, Robyn, Chris, Melissa and Ross came down. We did a lot of stuff: sandboarding, sea-lion watching, ice climbing, hiking, a visit to Musho and finally a trip to the beach to celebrate Robyn's birthday. It was a refreshing week to spend with old friends and we parted ways on the coast, and I headed back to Huaraz. My bus was supposed to take 7 hours to get back but instead took 15. This was not refreshing and I showed up looking like a homeless bum. The reason for the delay was road construction; the lady who sold me the ticket forgot to tell me about the 8 hour delay.

Now that I'm back and have no major travel on the horizon, I have a lot to get done. I'm already a third done with my third year, and time is flying by. After 2 years of wishing for more stuff to do I finally got what I wanted. It is better this way, and a good way to readjust for when I get back home in December. I don't have a fixed schedule everyday, which I like a lot. On a typical day I get up at six, stay in bed until seven, eat breakfast and then go to one of my health centers. The first phase of the HIV/AIDS prevention finishes tomorrow with a training of all the high school teachers. Then I will actually get to work with the students. This will last until July, and then I will pick small groups of students to become health promoters. The goal is to train them so they can train their peers for the rest of the year. At the same time, I am helping to organize a Peace Corps training for all of the mayors of the area, along with 12 volunteers and 36 community partners. The president of Ancash is set to attend, which is a big deal, like getting the governor of a state to attend something. So those are my plans for the year regarding HIV/AIDS prevention.

The first time I trained teachers, we started at 4pm. We we went in the room, the sky was sunny in clear. It clouded up and then started to rain, which steadily got stronger. Then it started to hail, which doesn't happen often here but is normal a few times a year. It got heavier and heavier and then started to snow, but hard. This is not normal. The teachers started to panic. There is a lake above Huaraz called Palcacocha that is supposedly in danger of overflowing its banks in a heavy rain and inundating the city. I have no idea if it's true, but the teachers were terrified. They ran for the door, then decided they couldn't get wet, and came back in. For about 20 seconds I had a room full of 50 teachers running around like guinea pigs before a slaughter. I didn't know what to do, so I just stood there. It passed quickly but that was it for the day in terms of teaching. After the rain passed, they all scattered to check on their families. I honestly have no clue if their fear was justified but this city has been leveled twice since 1940 by earthquakes and there was a little tremor the week before that spooked everyone. So the moral of the story is: I don't know. This is what the main street of Huaraz looked like after the storm.

That's the only notable story I have had for a while. Usually they come in streaks so we'll see what the next month holds. I don't really have any more news. Things are going really well right now, work is good and I have nothing to complain about. Today I needed to find out how much llamas cost to rent, so I rented a bike and spent most of the day biking through the andes to a village where they have a ton of them. Turns out they're pretty cheap too. We are organizing a hike with the national park here in July, and want to take llamas to carry our stuff instead of donkeys. Donkeys do a lot of damage to the trails, and llamas are a lot cooler anyway. This is my favorite part of the job, never knowing what crazy thing comes next and being able to do it all in the mountains. This weekend I'm off to the other side of the mountains to help a volunteer with her stove project, then on Monday I have another meeting for my own. I have posted new pictures on my links from the last month, under April. Also, if you don't hate children please consider looking at and donating to this project. https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=527-017 That was a joke, but seriously we are putting on a weekend activity for young girls here in a few weeks and are a little short on cash. Thanks for reading, until next time...

City Life

2010-03-21T10:34:00.011-05:00

Time is flying down here; I have already been back for almost three months and am about 25% done with my third year. Everything is going along pretty smoothly. I have officially started in my two high schools with the HIV/AIDS work. One of my high schools is all urban and has a student body of about 800. The other school is more rural and about half the size. To start out this project I am first training every classroom in basic self esteem and sexual health. Then the students will have elections and will select peer health promoters. I will train this small groups for a few months, and in turn they will teach their peers. At least this is the plan. I can never be sure that my plans work out the way I want here, but hopefully by Decemeber I'll have something good to report. Of course both of the schools are begging me to teach english classes, but I won't do it. It has been my experience that english classes are a waste of time; every comes the first time but after one class they realize it's hard work and aren't going to get fluent overnight. I am also working in a small rural community a half hour outside of huaraz to do an improved cooking stove project. I needed about 2000 dollars for this project and got it from a few sources. This project should be done in August I think.

The other part of my work this year, the part that I like more than the HIV work, is helping out the other 16 volunteers and finding and developing new sites for the new groups that are coming in August and December. Peace Corps worldwide is slated for significant growth these year and Peru is one of the three that will have the biggest growth, and Ancash is the region of Peru that will grow the most. Currently we are 17 volunteers and by December we will be up to 40. We are going to go to the poorest part, way far out there 8 hours east of the 2nd highest mountain range in the world to a region called Pomabamba. I spent the last week out there and it is spectacular. The farther you get away from the mountains, going to the east, the closer you get to the jungle. So even though these sites are in Ancash and at elevation, they have a more warm feel in terms of climate and people. In August I am going to move to Pomabamba, and spend two weeks at a time there and two in Huaraz to make sure that the news sites are gringo tested and approved.

And on to the topic of city life: I love it. It is awesome to shower, eat what I want and when I want everyday, and have intelligent conversations. The people I am working with actually do what the say they are going to do and like their works, which motivates me even more. But the best part about city life is how funny it is. I picked up quite a food bad mannerisms out there in the boondocks the last two years. For example: I probably used a fork less then ten times in the last two years. Last week I sat down to a nice lunch with peruvian professionals and more than halfway through I looked up and realized I was using a spoon to eat my chicken, even though I had a fork and a knife. Also, I have been talking a Quechua/spanish mix to make people laugh. This mostly applies to animals, body parts and other funny words. This technique does not work with city people. I tried to use the Quechua word for pig in a conversation with a professor the other day. He did not understand, than I forgot for a second how to say it in spanish for a second and looked like an idiot. There are also a lot of phrases and saying that I have picked up that get me a lot of raised eyebrows and blank stares when I say them. But all in all, I am polishing the bad habits out and this year should be good for my eventual reintroduction to the states.

The things I miss most about the states right now are efficiency and basic human rights. Last month my host grandfather from Musho had a stroke. He got to the hospital in Huaraz, and was subjected to poor treatment from the start. The public health care system here is a joke, in a city of 200,000 people, there was no way to see if he was still bleeding and most of his family was denied entrance to the hospital because they are indigenous looking. I, however, walked right up to the security, pretended to be busy with my cell phone, and walked right in. No one ever said anything to me but when the old man's own wife tried to get in she was rejected because of the way she was dressed and the language she spoke. After four days of fighting with the hospital, I helped the family get him out and to a decent hospital on the coast. It took me three days to find a portable oxygen tank and the hospital wouldn't use their ambulance even though the family had health insurance. Luckily we got him to the coast and he will make a slow recovery. This experience made me realize how lucky we are in the states. There is a lot of controversy about the health bill right now, but at least we live in a country where we can debate and get stuff done. Whether you agree with the outcome or not we still live a life of luxury compared to most of the world, and we are lucky to have the choice the change things.

But all in all things are great here and the third year decision was definitely the right one. Work is good, I have Peace Corps and Peruvian friends and get to live in the mountains. I have been in Lima this week for meetings, and next week the big bosses are coming to Huaraz to check up on me. After that I am taking my first vacation to spend my birthday on the beach with my friends for a few days. Then after that my good college friends Robyn, Chris, Melissa and Ross are coming to visit. This is really exciting, I love showing people around down here and having spent quality time with them in over two years. Then later on in the summer another group of four or five friends will be coming down for a visit. so between vacations and work this year should fly by. I also have a more concrete plan for when I get back. I am not going to apply to med school anymore. Instead, I am applying to a joint international MBA/Law program. I know this is a wild change from med school but it is the right one for me. I'll keep you up to date on a later post but for now thats all I have. Check out my new pictures: Life's Good.

Potato

2010-02-13T14:30:00.009-05:00

It has been a really good month since I have last written. I am still battling with the peruvian justice/police system to get my stolen items paid for, but in the mean time have bought myself a poodle of a laptop (it is small) and a new camera. City life is treating me well. After a long wait of five weeks, I finally found myself a place to live. Living in a dorm room of a hostal for that long is not so much fun. All Peace Corps volunteers have to live with a family in order to learn spanish and get to know the city. Because I am sufficient in both of these, I did not want to live in someone's house. But as a Peace Corps Leader, I have to. However, it is hard to find someone in the city to invite a stranger into their house. Finally we found an apartment that is part of someone's house. The house is two block from the center of Huaraz, and walkable from pretty much everywhere i will be this year. So I have independence and a nice family to talk to and eat with when they invite me. I also have a Peruvian roommate, which is good to keep my spanish up and have someone to hang out with. The apartment has two bedrooms, an open kitchen/living room, a bathroom with not so hot water, cable and internet. We have a big rooftop with a perfect view of the mountains for when i wash my clothes. We are still in the process of getting set up but it is awesome to be out of a backpackers hostal and away from dirty, dirty tourists.

Half of my job this year is hanging out with and helping out all of the other volunteers. They were are my friends last year so this part of the job is not so bad. We are like a family here in Ancash and support each other pretty well. Last weekend a group of us went up to a glacier called Llaca and tried our hand at ice climbing. See the above picture. That's not me but I promise I made it to the top and that's what I looked like. It was a lot of fun even though it was snowing and cold. Don't worry, we went with a good guide agency. After a few hours of climbing, we got back to Huaraz and had our first annual prom. We had a nice dinner and went out dancing for the rest of the night. The theme of the prom was trashy latino, that's why I am dressed in all black and wearing sunglasses inside. This is a picture of me and Sophie after dinner.

I finally have another good story for all of you. This past week I went to the other side of the mountains to help a friend move houses. It was an uneventful trip over, about three hours in a shared taxi ride with some friends. We got there, got her moved, and ate lunch. We then found a taxi to get back to Huaraz and were on our way when...landslide! The rainy season here has started and with this comes landslides. This one was pretty small but had blocked the only way back to Huaraz. We got out of the taxi to take a look and were greeted by the biggest display of stupidity I have seen in all my time here. While the bulldozer was fueling up, the police had gone to the top of the hill, and were kicking down rocks for fun "so it didn't happen again." While they were doing this, and causing a bigger landslide, people were running through the falling boulders and laughing. The bulldozer finally got gassed up and started. Then a small boulder fell on it, breaking off an important piece. Apparently the police didn't get the signal to stop the kicking. After two hours of waiting, everything was clear and "safe." We made it back to Huaraz without another incident.

Life here in Huaraz is completley different than life in the country-side. The people act differently, dress differently and speak another language. Hopefully by the end of this year I can polish the hillbilly and other mannerisms I picked up out of my repitoire. It feels so weird to be able to take a decent shower everyday, not shave , brush my teeth and wash my dishes outside. So far my favorite part of city life is the food. Huaraz has a great market and I am a ten minute walk from pretty much any kind of food I want. I am cooking most of my meals for myself, but if I want I am able to eat out for cheap or pay more for tourist food. I am going to the gym when I can and have had no stomach problems so far. I am making some more peruvian friends that like to go mountain biking and climbing, so I am keeping my free time filled up with constructive activities. So instead of being bored or eating potaoes this year in my free time, I am taking advantage of my last year living in the mountains.

With all of the fun I am having, you may want to ask, "Do you do any real work? or tell me to, "get a real job." I actually have a lot of work on my plate. I am working with two health centers and two high schools to start a HIV/AIDS prevention campaign. Classes start the first of March and from there on out I will be extremely busy. I met with the health centers and high schools this week to make the plan. I will be training a little more than a 100 youth health promoters who in turn will train their classmates. I like this method because the youth promoters volunteer to do the work and want to do it. Other things I want to do are a improved cooking stove project and bathrooms in the national park. Both of these are dependent on finding money, but hopefully I can scrape up enough donors here. Something that we have already accomplished is the reorganization of Quechua classes. I found new professors and organized the classes, so hopefully this will help everyone learns better. All in all this is shaping up to be a great year, and the time is already flying by. Check out my new pictures under the links, Vegas, Ice Climbing, Prom and Padrino. padrino means godfather, I am now a godparent!

Home

2010-01-13T16:42:00.017-05:00

It´s been a long time since I have last written, and a lot of stuff has happened. I finished up my time in Musho, went home for five weeks, rang in the the new year with my best friends in las vegas, and now am back in Huaraz, my new Peace Corps site. My last month was was really hard. I finished my bathroom project, so now there are 35 bathrooms, half with showers, that are hopefully benefiting the community. See the picture below. We of course had a big potato and guniea pig lunch to celebrate. After that, I hosted about twenty new volunteers in Musho, and taught them how to build bathrooms. Then came the part I had not been looking forward to, the goodbyes and all the food that came with it. As a good bye gift to every person that participated, I printed out a picture of us in a group meeting, put it on a certificate and signed it. Everyone seemed to appreciate it. I then had three goodbye lunches with the different communities I worked with, and a few individual ones as well. Then I packed up my stuff and had another goodbye lunch with the family that took care of me like one of their own for 15 months. We went down to a restaurant and ate a traditional dish called Pachamanca. I invited then all, and they bought the beer. Peruvians get emotional when the drink and this was no exception. It was a rough afternoon, and I was relieved to get it over with. Even though I am living close to Musho, I won´t go back a lot, to avoid stepping on the toes of my replacement. After two years of eyeing the calendar, counting the days, and dreaming of home, leaving Musho was one of the hardest things I have done. I left a big piece of myself there.

Then I got to do what I had been waiting for so long to do, go home. I got in on thanksgiving eve, greeted by my two wonderful parents. I went to bed and the next day all of my extended family came over. We ate a lot and it was just nice to be around them after two years. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I was worthless. I was invited to dinner by all of my family, got to hang out with my friends and cousins, played pool with my grandma, and ate a lot. I am up about 12 pounds, and probably half of that is from chicken wings and carrot cake. Thanks Aunt Sharon for helping to fatten me up.

After a nice peaceful Christmas and a few days after that, I packed up my stuff and flew to Las Vegas on New Year´s Eve. Including myself, twelve of us came from all over the country to celebrate the new year after two years apart. My friend from grade school, high school and college lives in Las vegas now so we all stayed at his place. We reserved a table at a nightclub in the Luxor (the pyramid shaped building) and had a great time. I stayed for three days and caught up with my fiends. I definitley satisifed my craving for fast food, and am happy to get back to simpler stuff in Peru. Going from the mountains of Peru to cold Indiana to Las Vegas on its wildest weekend was interesting. And after not seeing my friends for a long time, I was a little nervous that things would be diferent. But it felt like it always did, and I flew back to Indianapolis, grabbed my stuff, and then flew Miami to Lima exhausted but content.

All throughout my two years in Peru, it always came up in conversation how things would be different when we got back home. Things were different but in a way I can´t really put my finger on or articulate well. And now that I am back here In Peru, it is even more weird. I feel like I am wearimg glasses that tint everything in a different size, shape and color. I also feel like I am a spectator, looking at everything from the outside. A lot of people want to know how Peruvians act, or what they do wrong. And a lot of Peruvians do the same asking about Americans. I could go on and on about either culture but instead I´ll just say that everyone has their good and bad. Focus on what is good, hold on to your family and friends, and try to do something to help others. If I have gotten one thing out of these two years, it is the realization that I have a rock solid family and group of friends, and I couldn´t be more grateful.

I am extremely excited to be back for one more year. This is Peace Corps without training wheels. My new site, Huaraz, is huge compared to where I was. It is a city of 80,000 people and has hot showers, protein, fruits and vegetables and a huge oppurtunity for work. My job title is Peace Corps Volunteer Leader. Half of my work is supporting the other 17 volunteers here, and the other is starting a program of HIV AIDS prevention. I am working in two high school and two health centers to get this started. I had my first meeting with all the important people today and it went well so that is promising. I still don´t know where I will be living yet, but it will work itself out. For now I am in a Peace Corps paid hotel, with a nice view of the mountains and a complementary breakfast. Big city life is so much easier than small town, and I am loving it. I have showered every day for six weeks, am going to a gym everyday, and am making a ton of contacts. I actually got my stuff robbed out of another hotel room the first day back, but I am not upset. It was just stuff and I am so excited and grateful for this oppurtunity that it´s not getting to me. Plus I got to chase a bus while I was in a minivan so I got a great story out of it. Stayed tuned for more.

Check out this link if you´re feeling generous. It is Sophie, my old site mate´s project to improve her school. She is an awesome volunteer and would appreciate the support. Click on this link: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.donatenow
and enter Peru in Search by Country of Service, look for Sophie Dila, project number 527-015.

New Pictures are up on the left side of the page, Good Bye Musho.

Almost there...

2009-10-11T15:29:00.007-05:00

I have a little more than a month left here in my site before I say goodbye to the people I have been living and working with for the last year. I'm not sure how I feel about this; somedays I want to leave without a second thought but other days it saddens me to think about leaving for good. Even though I will be living pretty close next year, it won't be the same. There will be a replacement volunteer in my site and I don't want to step on his or her toes by coming back. So this will effectively be the last time I see or talk to most of these people. My one good friend I made in site leaves a lot and comes into Huaraz, so we'll run into each other a lot. I have complained about the food, transportation, lack of punctuality and some other stuff, but I know that is not what I am going to remember from this experience. I will most remember how giving the people were, the spectacular scenery and the and the work I got done. Living in a rural site in the mountains of Peru for the last two years has been quite the experience. Some it honestly was not fun, but a lot more was. I have learned, seen and experienced so much it was worth every moment of frustration, puke, or parasite infection. It has been the most interesting period in my life so far and I know that these are the days that I won't ever forget.

That being said, I do have a liitle over a month left and I have a ton of stuff to wrap up. This is a picture of my current project. When completed, it will look a lot nicer, with doors and transparent roofing to let the light in. We started off doing latrines, but the water level in this community is so low that we had to switch models. This freed up some money for more materials and now we are doing bathrooms, complete with toilets and showers. The community has a sewage sysytem, and we have been able to connect about 35 people to the system. In the past, I have had a lot of frustration working with the people here, mostly because they just want to be given everything, but with this group I have been presently surprised. This project has involved lots and lots of time and digging, and the participants have been working furiously to be the coming rains. Everyone just got their tubes connected the the sewage and buried on Friday, so I am really happy. Like always, the project has taken longer than I thought but it will be done by Halloween. After that, I will be hosting 30 volunteers in training in my site for three days so they can learn about latrine/bathroom construction. Straight after that I'm off to Lima for three days for my final medical checks and then two weeks later I'll be getting on the airplane to come home for five weeks. The official dates are November 25 through January 4th.

Tonight I am getting on a night bus to a city called Trujillo. Then tomorrow I will take another bus to a northern city called Tumbes. I will be there until Friday for a training session on HIV/AIDS prevention. This is really interesting to me, but I really don't want to go right now. Tumbes is a hot, dangerous city and I really don't want to be on a bus for two days straight. I really want to spend as much time in my site before I take off. But the good part is I get to meet up and say goodbye to some Peace Coprs friends that otherwise I wouldn't have got to seen. Peace Corps is paying for the trip so I guess it will be worth it in that respect. As I wrote in an earlier blog, half of my work will be working in Huaraz's biggest high school, implementing a prevention program here. HIV/AIDS exists here in ancash, but it is not as bad as other parts of the country. But with more and more movement of people, the numbers are on the rise. So this should be a good opportunity to help make people more aware. I am a little intimidated by working with high schoolers, I remember what I was like back then. But one benefit of being a foreigner here is automatic respect and celebrity status, so I should be alright.

Right now I am so excited to come home I'm not really thinking about it yet. It is going to be really interesting to see if things seem different to me when I get back. Everyone says that the adjustment back home is more jarring than the initial adjustment getting to country, but I don't think it will be that hard. Visiting family and friends during the holiday season sounds pretty good to me. I also can't wait to eat. I hate the food here so much right now, and knowing I am a month away from american deliciousness keeps me up at night. One thing that I know is going to cause some laughs is my speaking abilities. I honestly can't seem to communicate in english anymore. In site I speak a mix of spanish and quechua, and in the city a speak a mixture of english, spanish and quechua with the other volunteers. When I have to speak just english to someone, I sound like an idiot. I also cannot spell to save my life. It has taken me 2 hours to write these four paragraphs. The other day I couldn't figure out how to spell October. I finally figured it out though. But I'm sure after a few days of pure english I'll be back to normal. That's all I can intelligently write for right now, I'm going to update one more time before I leave, so stay tuned. See you all in a month!

87 Days

2009-09-08T08:17:00.006-05:00

It has been a really good month and a half since I last wrote. I finished my latrine project, started another one, and have had a steady stream of visitors from back home and the Peace Corps for over a month now. The latrine project was finally finished, and my site mate Sophie and peace Corps friend Sam came for the inauguration party. The 46 beneficiary families, most of World Vision, some members from the mine, and three of my Peruvian friends also came. We had a little ceremony where I gave a speech, followed by the traditional breaking of a champagne bottle over one latrine. I am now the proud godfather of 46 latrines; that’s definitely going on my resume. I’m not sure what godfather duties include, I’ll have to let you know. After the bottle breaking we all ate guinea pig and an obscene amount of potatoes. I know I have come a long way in my eating abilities when I can put away more pet and potatoes than most Peruvians now. I’m not sure where I am putting this food, because I am definitely not gaining weight. At least my parasites are well fed. I was dreading the after lunch obligatory warm beer drinking and dancing, but I actually got out of it. I used my friend Sam as an excuse, saying he had to get back to Huaraz and didn’t know how to get there. This was true, so I saved face and some of my dignity. This is a picture of me and some of the ladies in the project roasting our lunch.
We went to Huaraz that night and had a good, potato free time. The next day, three more of my Peace Corps friends came from the north of the country. We had been planning to do a big mountain climbing trip for about a year. To make a long story short, we all got really sick from something we ate, and didn’t make summit on the first two mountains. So that was disappointing, but we still had the big mountain, Huascaran, waiting for us. The trailhead to Huascaran begins in my site, so we rested up and got better in my site for a few days. We were still considering going up, but the day before we were set to begin there was an accident on the mountain that made the decision for us. A Japanese tourist, using the same agency we were using, died along with his guide and porter coming back from the summit. The guide agency claims that there was an avalanche, but everyone else says they all fell into a crevasse that had been recently covered by snowfall. This is the story I believe because the weather was really bad the time that the accident happened. Also, where the accident took place is not an avalanche zone. I think the guide agency is covering up their own negligence, but no one will ever know for sure. So this took the wind out of our sails; especially because if we had not gotten sick we would have been going up about the same time as the tourist that passed away. That could have been us, and for the first time in this country I am thankful that I had diarrhea. Now that I am writing this a month after the accident, they have finally found the bodies of both the guide and tourist. The people I rent from are in charge of all the tourism that comes through and the bodies were brought to right where I live. I am going to stick to just hiking and looking at the mountains for now.
Because the guide agency owed us some money, we opted to do a five day trek instead. The goal was to cross the cordillera blanca in five days and see the world’s most beautiful mountain, Alpamayo. The mountain won this title by some vote in a mountaineering association a while ago. This is a picture of it, you be the judge. It was more impressive in person: its glacier is massive and its peak perfect like a diamond. We were still pretty far away from the mountain itself, but the lake in this picture was spectacular in person The trek was a lot of fun. The guide agency hired donkeys to carry our stuff and a guide/cook, so it wasn’t to physically demanding, just long days and a high pass to cross every day. I can also now say that I have crossed the world’s second highest mountain range on foot. We ended up in a town called Pomabamba, relatively close to my old site. After a long bus ride back over the mountains we came back to my site tired but safe. Soon after that two of my friends from college came to visit. I picked them up in Lima and we hung out there for a day, seeing the center of the city. After that I brought them back up to Ancash and showed them around where I live. We hiked to a glacier lake, went to a bullfight, saw a town party and its fireworks show, and hung out in my site for a while. A day after they left one of my other Peace Corps friends came from the south of the country, and has been in my site for a few days. We then went to a party in Lima where we lived during training and then to two mountain provinces called Huancayo and Huancavelica. Huancavelica is the poorest area of Peru and one of the most isolated. It was pretty and interesting, but probably not worth the bus rides.

And speaking of parties, the season has come here in the mountains. The sound of fireworks and huayno music has already started, and this strikes fear into my gringo heart. Because with these sounds comes about a month long party, and lots and lots of drunk people and even more unwanted attention for me. Ask me to do my drunken campesino impression when I get home; then you will understand why I can’t stand to be in site this time of year. I had my first unpleasant encounter just last week. My Peruvian friend and I sat down to eat lunch at 11 a.m. Next to us there were two guys, already passed out at their table. Unfortunately, one of their gringo radars kicked in long enough to wake him out of stupor. He stumbled over, fly unzipped and eyes glazed over and half crossed. The first thing he says to me in English was, gringo f*$k you. I used all of my self control not to say something back. He then asked if I would buy him a beer. Then I started to get angry, but my friend jumped in and got the drunk kicked out of the restaurant. This is how it’s going to be until the beginning of September. I used to feel sorry for the drunks here, thinking that they drank this way because they were poor and didn’t have anything better to do. But people in my site and the cities around aren’t that poor, and there is definitely stuff to do. I am really glad I have saved my vacation days, because I escaped for most of the party season.

But all in all things are going great, and that brings me to some news. I have decided to stay here for another year. I am still going to be a volunteer; with half my time dedicated to health work and the other half as a volunteer leader. I will also be in Huaraz, not my rural site anymore. Huaraz is a city of 100,000 people and the second biggest tourist destination in Peru. So it will be a big, and welcome, lifestyle change from the last 2 years. My new responsibilities will be developing new sites, helping out the volunteers here with problems and training a Peruvian cooridinator that Peace Corps will be hiring. This position involves a lot of travel, so I will get to see more of the mountains here. For the other part of my work, I will be working almost exclusively with HIV/AIDS in one or two high schools in Huaraz. I thought long and hard about this decision, and it is the right one for me right now. The leadership position is a step up and will look good on my resume, as well as the work with HIV/AIDS. That is what I originally wanted to do in the Peace Corps anyway. I also love the mountains here and this will give me one more year to do hikes or climbs. One of the perks of the 3rd year will be a paid trip back to the states. I have saved my vacation days, so I will be back home for about five and a half weeks, for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. The only things I want to do are see friends and family, eat too much and take a lot of hot showers. So, that’s all the news I have for now. See you in less than three months!

June

2009-07-12T09:34:00.011-05:00

My latrine project is done. This picture is old, but now there are 46 latrines like this that are complete with doors, floors, ventilation tubes and even a transparent section for the roof that lets in light, so they can have diarrhea under starlight. All of the latrines are now painted a reddish-orange, so they look pretty nice against the background. Our closing party is Friday the 17th. There will be present 250 community members, 15 people from World Vision, 5 from CARE and hopefully some Peace Corps volunteers. We are hiring a band from a nearby community, and will eat guinea pig and drink warm beer until we run out of potatoes. It feels so good to get this project done; we have been working for eight months and ran into a lot of problems. It was mostly due to the rainy season, but we also had problems with the ground here. Latrines require a big hole, about two meters deep. If it fills with water, it can’t be used. If you dig more than a meter here, there is water. So we had to build a platform to compensate for this. But it’s finally done and the latrines are well made and will last. The people are really happy and it was nice to see everything come together after a long period of time. They are already talking about what project they want to do next, and are eager to meet the new volunteer in Novemeber. I thought that this was going to be my last project here, but I am now going to do an even bigger one in another community. Since Peace Corps and World Vision have seen that the people work well with me in my community, I secured 24,000 soles for the construction of about 60 more latrines. I will manage the project exactly the same, but have to get it done before November.

Two weeks ago, I went on vacation with my parents and aunt and uncle. We had a great time; went to Cuzco and I finally got to see Macchu Picchu. It was definitely worth the wait. I was originally supposed to go to a nearby department called Arequipa after my parents left, but the country was been having a lot of strikes and the road was blocked. As a result, I missed my plane out of Arequipa and had to endure a not so pleasant 22 hour bus ride to Lima, and then another nine back to Huaraz. After a good week and a half out of my site I came back not so well rested and but at leastwell fed. I really have no good stories or news for this entry. My time is winding down here, and things are going really well in site. The group of volunteers that came in three months before I did are on their way out. We just had a good-bye party for the four of them here in Ancash. It will be sad to see them go, and weird to be one of the senior volunteers here in Ancash. There is one new group of volunteers in training, and another coming in September. The group that comes in September will be my group's replacement. Other than my latrine project, I have a lot of fun stuff to fill up my time until November.Next week, I am starting a climbing trip with three friends from the north. Our goal is to summit three mountains: Pisco, Chopicalqui, and the tallest tropical mountain in the world, Huascaran.

And since I have nothing new to write about, I thought I would write a little about Peru and what is going on right now. The first topic is strikes: Every once and a while herre there are strikes for various reasons. I usually don't pay attention to them because they mostly affect other areas or or really small. But recently, the whole country has been in turmoil. Like I said above, I couldn't get to Arequipa becasue of a road block. especially in the jungle and the south, the native people had been protesting and mostly blocking roads all of the place. They were protesting unfair government protection of foreign companies. Basically companies come in, take of land and trash it. I see this in my site everyday. There is a US gold mine that works an hour up the mountain. It contaminates the water and the soil of my site and the surrounding communites. The national government protects it while the community basically gets the shaft. I wish the communites would unite and get rid of it, but there is really nothing they can do. And just last week, there was a general transportation strike, which meant no one worked in my site, or could come or go. Think a snow day for adults plus beer. I was stuck in site too and probably left my room twice becasue of the drunks. I finally escaped once it was over. Now I am sitting in a cafe in Huaraz writing this and I am watching a mototaxi protest. They want more streets apparently. I am sitting here, eating a cheese sandwhich while people are screaming and trying to storm the municipality.

This is a picture of me at sunset with Huascaran behind me. It looks pretty peaceful, but its not. On Monday I saw and heard two avalanches from my site. Last month a football field size chink of the glacier fell off and landed pretty close to base camp. The scariest thing about living at the base of this giant is its history. In 1970, there was a huge earthquake in the region. My capital city Huaraz was 97% destroyed and 70,000 people were killed. Of the 70,000, 25,000 died really close to me in a city called Yungay. If you look at the left peak on the picture, you can make out a big chunk that is missing. This part of the snow and ice was pried loose during the earthquake. This came barreling down the mountain and buried Yungay, killing 25,000 people instantly. You can visit the site where it happened and see the tops of the palm trees that weren't quite buried. Up to 30 feet of mountain buried the entire area. Yungay was rebuilt a few miles down the road in a suppoedly safe are, but who knows. Its just another reminder of my own mortality in this country.

My last topic is the pig flu. It was big news here for a while when it was spreading up north. We were flu free here for a while, but the cases have started to explode. I think there are currently 1,400 cases nation wide. The government is getting more concerned, and have shut down school for the next two weeks. I think this a pretty good idea in theory. All of the town professors are excited; more so than the kids. On the day this was announced, they all ended classes early and started drinking at ten in the morning. The kids however, were sent straight to the fields to do manual labor. Doesn't seem like a fair trade for them. It should be interesting down here when the real flu season starts. There is a lot of movement of people here and a complete lack of hygiene and uniform government policy. I have my peace Corps issued mask and Tamiflu ready to go though. That's all I have for this month; I need to get going. There's a lot of potatoes to eat and only three months left to do it.

And then.....

2009-06-17T19:47:00.007-05:00

It has been a long time since I have written, and a long time since a noteworthy incident has happened to me. So this time I actually have a few good ones to share. They involve guns, glaciers, hiking homicidal bus drivers and worms. I don’t know how to start or transition between these stories, so I am starting each paragraph with and then… to avoid this problem. But first, life is site is going well. My latrines are almost done. Most people are more than halfway done. There are 46 families in total; so about 200 people will be benefitting from this project. Building latrines is actually more difficult than I thought. Luckily, this project is well funded by my grant and an NGO, so I was able to hire an engineer to come out and supervise. He will be here for a month and is supervising the construction of every single latrine. Our celebration party is scheduled for July 7th, and we are already talking about how much I will eat and dance. I think this is more exciting to the people than their latrines. That’s all I have going work wise right now, and it’s enough. I am out in the community supervising for most of the day every day. After this project I am going to do another latrine project in a separate community with 33 families. I am trying to get Peace Corps to approve another grant, but the NGO has already agreed to donate 15,000 soles, so it will get done. And that should keep me busy until I close out my service in November.

And then a worm crawled out of my mouth. That’s no joke. One day I was brushing my teeth and spit out the toothpaste. Something was moving in the spit, so I looked closely and there was a worm. It wasn’t too big but it definitely came out of me. I have always suspected that I have a lot of parasites. In my first site, I saw my host brother’s parasite analysis, and he had three separate infections. Since we ate the same food, I assumed I had the same ones. But my tests have always come back negative. So when the worm made its exit I really wasn’t surprised; I just thought it would come out the other end. I put it on a microscope slide and am delivering it to the Peace Corps doctor. He is going to use it to scare the new volunteers. When I told our doctor what happened, he said that’s probably means that the other parasites are running out of room in my stomach. I have finished my medicine so hopefully they are all gone now. I was feeling lethargic and was dropping more weight, but that has stopped for now. I have been going to the gym and trying to stuff myself everyday to gain it all back. So hopefully there will be no more surprises from here on out.

And then my friend shot a glacier. This was one of my Peruvian friends. He is a policeman in Lima, and had come to visit his family here. I went with him and his brother on a hike to a glacier lake. We started off early in the morning, and we having a great time walking and joking around. My friend kept saying he was going to shoot a duck to take home for dinner, and I assumed he was not serious, because the ducks are a protected species and I didn’t think he had brought his gun from Lima. And we passed by a lot of ducks and he didn’t do it. So after three hours of walking we arrived at the lake. We were the only ones there and it was gorgeous. The lake is dark blue and surrounded by mountains. If you sit there long enough you will see or hear an avalanche. We had a nice breakfast and were just sitting around. I put my jacket over my head and fell half asleep, until my friend shot the glacier. BOOOOMMM!! I knew what had happened without taking the jacket off my head. I was just waiting for the resulting avalanche to come down and smother us. But it didn’t. I told my friend he shouldn’t do that because we were in a national park and plus it’s just stupid. But he told me no he is a cop so it was fine. Sometimes there is no point arguing here, so I helped him find the casing and we left.

And then I went on an incredible five day hike. There is a mountain range here called Huayhuash, which means weasel in Quechua. I don’t know why it is named this, but it was the most beautiful scenery I have seen in my life. Me and four Peace Corps friends went. We decided to not hire a guide or donkeys to carry our stuff, which made the going harder but we saved some money. This is one of the advantages of living here for so long; if you know the languages and how things work doors open up for you that don’t for tourists. Every day we hiked for about eight hours, and had to make passes of almost 15,000 feet. It was exhausting but worth it for the views. The campsites were my favorite part. Every one of them is on or close to a lake. This lake is called Carhuacocha, and above it is the second highest mountain in Peru, called Yerupaja. Each campsite was at 12,000 or 13,000 feet, and it was literally freezing at night. I thought my toes and fingers were going to fall off for half the trip, but they survived. The water in my Nalgene froze in the night, and we woke up to heavy frost and the sound of avalanches in the morning. We also carried our own food and ate really well; beef jerky, soups, pastas, mac and cheese and some tuna and salmon. It was great not to be force fed carbohydrate for a few days. It was one of the best weeks here in the country; being in the pristine wilderness with good friends who know what is like to live and work here.

And then we almost went over a cliff on the way home. This is by far the most scared I have been in the country. We exited the hike in a town called Cajatambo. It was a pretty standard mountain town, but we got a hostal with hot water and good food so no complaints. The next day, we got on a six a.m. bus that goes to Lima every day. We were going to get off as soon as the bus hit the coast and hitchhike back up to Huaraz. In my guide book it says that the road out of Cajatambo is not for the faint of heart for the first three hours, because it clings to the edge of a cliff. But not just a cliff, it was an abyss. And when your bus driver is a moron or drunk (probably both) it’s even worse. At a narrow point in the road we started to scrape against the cliff, so the driver stopped get out and look. We were hitting the cliff and on the other side almost falling off the mountain. I could hear rocks slipping out from under the wheels. So we decided to get off, but the bus driver said no and locked us in. So we were sitting there while half of the Peruvians laughed and the other panicked. I honestly wanted to hit almost everyone in the face; the bus driver for being idiotic, the laughing Peruvians for being too passive and the others for jumping up and down. Eventually, most of us got to the left side of the bus to tilt it the right way. The driver finally got back in and gunned it, and we didn’t die. We made it back to Huaraz safe and it never felt so good to come back here.

New Pictures on Links, Happy Birthday Mom!

2009-05-02T08:35:00.015-05:00

It has been a good couple of weeks since I got back from vacation. The rain seems to have finally ended. This is the best time of the year here in Ancash in terms of scenery; everything has turned green and there is a good mix of sun and clouds. It is perfect hiking weather right now. When I have a slow day in site, I can actually go out and enjoy the landscape instead of staying in my room listening to the rain. I can’t believe I made it through two rainy seasons here. The weather should stay nice until I leave here in November. Until then, I am doing as much hiking as I can. There are so many paths and lakes. A lot of the lakes have trout in them so hopefully I'll be bringing home dinner once and a while after a hike. The higher you get the more beautiful it is and there are more lakes too. A few days ago I went on a 5 hour hike to a fellow volunteer’s site and took all of these pictures. I even came across a group of three deer, but they were too quick to get a picture of. This picture is from the top of a hill that overlooks the valley that my town is in.

This is why I think I have the best Peace Corps site in Peru. Not only do I have a perfect view of the mountains, we now have a town monkey. And it rides on a puppy’s back. The monkey thinks the puppy is its mom, and the puppy protects it with its life. If you try to touch either of them, the puppy snaps and you and the monkey screeches. The people in my village are actually pretty nice to the monkey. They normally mistreat their animals, but I guess this is pretty interesting even for them. Neither of them have names; Peruvians don't usually name their pets. They just call them dog and monkey. I am actually glad I never got a monkey; it doesn’t seem like too much fun. It makes a lot of noise and is really needy. It is a lot better just to look at and not have to take care of. The owner feeds the monkey really well and it has some vaccinations, so at least its well cared for and has a constant companion. This is a picture of the duo in our health post. I’m not sure that it’s very hygienic to have a dog and monkey in the post, but no one seems to care and I’m not going to try to suggest anything. The nurses here rejected my idea of putting soap in the bathrooms so I’m guessing I wouldn’t have too much luck.

Speaking of the health post here, I have hit a wall with the staff. As a health volunteer, they are my official community contacts and the people I should be doing projects with. It all sounds good in theory, but doesn’t work that way. The other day, I went to find a guy that didn’t show up for a water training. He wasn’t there, but his sister was. I found her lying on the floor, in obvious pain. She had fallen the night before, and couldn’t walk to the health post. So I ran back down to grab the nurse. I told her what had happened and said we needed to go back up to help. This was her exact reply: “but I don’t want to walk and they are bringing me my lunch soon and it will get cold.” The hurt woman lives a maximum of ten minutes away if you are a snail. I asked her if a person or chicken was more important, and she actually stopped to think about it. I drug the nurse up to the house and we got the lady to a hospital. She had bone fractures in her shoulder, hip, and leg. She’s going to get better, but this is indicative of their attitude and exactly why I don’t enjoy working with my health post staff.

But the good news is I have other options to keep me busy for the next six months. Latrines are going well. The people are making their bricks and an engineer who will help with the construction for a month is arriving in a few days. If everything goes according to plan, the latrines should be done the first week of June, but i have a feeling it will take a little longer than that. In my garden project, we just distributed the seedlings from our garden in the health post. This way we can replant the field more quickly. That’s what I thought at least. The mothers of the project voted while I was gone to plant potatoes instead. This is pretty frustrating because the whole point was to get their kids eating more vegetables, and potatoes take 5 months to harvest. But at least they have the plants in their house gardens now. I am also in the middle of doing 130 house visits for the stove project. I don’t really like doing the monitoring, but it is important to see the results of the project. I also have going trainings of the people who run the water system and some guinea pig raising stuff.

Apart from work, life is great in site. With the rain gone, people are coming out of their houses and are friendlier. I guess I am too now that the sun is out. Sometimes the rain was so bad there was really nothing to do but sit in my room all day. But it's over now and I couldn't be happier. I also have started to eat dinner and lunch on the weekends with my favorite family here. They always invite me to come, but I hadn’t because I felt bad about eating their food and don’t like it. But we made it official and I am paying for those potatoes. It’s really the company I like; they are an extended family of eleven and are a lot fun. It helps my Quechua too. It’s nice not to have to cook at night and I still have my oven, so I can cook my lunch and breakfast however I want. This is a picture of a little kid named Christian. He is one of my favorites here, and the youngest that can give a high five. All of the kids here love their high fives, and they start young. Christian here gets so excited he falls over trying to give me one, so I have to hold him up while he does it.

This is a picture of some ruins I discovered on a hike. They are about 13,500 feet up, and have a perfect view of the valleys below. The picture in the next paragraph is the view from the highest point in the ruins. I imagine it was some kind of a lookout. It is actually a pretty big complex, and I have named it Michael Picchu. The people in the village it is close to asked me not to tell any tourists about the ruins, because they don’t want a lot of people up there. Its way off the beaten track, so I don’t think anyone other than bored Peace Corps volunteers would find it anyway. I have now completed 75% of my service in the Peace Corps, and now have a vacation or a visitor coming every month through August. My friends from the north of Peru are coming to do a hike in two weeks, and then I have my parents and aunt and uncle in June, more hiking/climbing in July and college friends in August. Between this and work the time should fly and I can’t wait to enjoy what remains of my time here.

This has been a long one, mostly because I have a nasty cold and am in bed for half the day. I will close with some funny quotes and stories I have been writing down for the last few months.

This happened while eating dinner. My friend pulls and his cell phone and says he wants to dedicate a song to me. Green Day’s American Idiot starts to play, and the entire family dies laughing. They had it planned for a while

There was a going away party at the local NGO. They play two songs the entire time, Happy Birthday and ACDC’s You Shook Me All Night Long. Both are in English and no one knows what they mean except for me.

While doing house visits, I ask a lady if she washes her hands before cooking. She looks at me and answers, “sometimes we eat soup, do you want soup?”

I am checking to see if a family has boiled water to store in a bucket they received for this purpose. I walk into the kitchen and the little old lady is frantically emptying dirt out of it. She looks at me and laughs nervously.
A guy asks me if there is marihuana grown in the states. I say yeah, just like you guys have pot fields right over that hill. The guy gets really quiet and excuses himself.

This one was not so funny in the moment, but is a good story anyway. I am walking home at night from the closest village. A lady comes walking up to me from the other direction and says, “they are waiting to cut out your eyes at the bridge.” Then she takes off running. I made it back safe.

I come back to my house to find five people waiting for me. They are all very excited. An old man takes a cloth out of his pocket and unwraps it. There are two Euro coins in it, a one euro and a five. They ask me many thousands of soles this treasure is worth. I say about 22. They look at me like I have insulted the pope, call me a liar and leave.

At dinner, the old man keeps looking at me. He finally says, “Michael are there rocks in the United States?” I say yes. He looks worried and says, “but not as big as here, right?”

Rain, Vacation, Rain

2009-04-13T17:15:00.015-05:00

This time last year, the rains had pretty much stopped in my old site and on the other side of the mountains where I am now. The rains this year started really late, but have made up for it in their duration and intensity. This is a picture of what is left of our town church. All of this fell in one night, and luckily no one was inside. Some houses are starting to crumble too. When I take the car ride down the mountain to the main highway, it looks like an earthquake hit. The rains are heaviest at night, and in the morning, there are always landslides that block the roads. If I go down, I do it in the afternoon after the land has relatively firmed up. And unfortunately with the rain comes cold fleas and big spiders. Even though my ne site is 500 meters lower than the last one, it is a lot colder. I would guess it gets into the forties at night. Not to bad for Indiana standards, but we have heating. And I guess the cold drives fleas and spiders into my room as well. But hopefully it will all be over soon, and no cats have died in my room in eight months, so no complaints. The high season for tourists starts in June, and honestly two months more of rain is nothing after I have been here for twenty.

Luckily in Peace Corps we get a lot of vacation and free days. So, me and a bunch of my friends just met up in a beach town called Punta Mero in the north of the country. We rented out to houses right on the beach and just relaxed for a week. This is a picture of the beach i got off the internet. I didn't bring my camera, because we have been having a lot of security incidents here in the last few months. Where we stayed was safe, but an hour to the south is dangerous, and we stayed clear of there. I actually had a minor incident on the way home, but I am fine. I fell asleep on the bus on the way back to Huaraz, and missed the city for my connecting bus by about 150 mikes to thge south. I had to get out at two in the morning in the most dangerous city in Ancash, but fortunately I got to a hostal quickly. It only charged four dollars a night, and the prostitutes were only a few dollars more. I slept alone in my sleeping bag and was on the first bus out of there. I am now safe and sound in Huaraz.

I had another incident a few weeks ago in the combi, but I actually didn't think much of it. I was seated up front when all of a sudden the windshield shattered. Someone had thrown a fruit called a tuna from a cliff that completely blew out the window. I was wearing sunglasses but no of the glass hit me or the driver. Everyone in the combi was terrified, but for some reason, I didn't even jump. It is really hard to surprise or phase me anymore. I felt bad that the guys combi was damaged, but then I started thinking that it was done with a fruit called a tuna, and then how it would have been funnier if it would have been with a real tuna. I had to put my face in my backpack so no one saw me laughing. I talk to my Peace Corps friends about this; that nothing really shocks us anymore and we are all really good at entertaining ourselves now. I guess these are two qualities that will be useful when I get back home too. And speaking of coming back, I only have about seven months left here; I am now a senior in my Peace Corps experience. I have also now spent more time un my second site than my first one, and the time here has gone my so much more quickly. I feel like the last part of my time will go by even faster, with projects going well and the 34 days of vacation I have to use before September.

Tomorrow I have a lot of work stuff to do in Huaraz before I get back to site. My projects are going well. The only thing holding the latrines back is the rain. The people have to build their own bricks for this project, but the rain is holding us up. As soon as it stops, the latrines should be up and running by the end of May. I also have a big garden with our health post, a cuy raising project, and work with the water system. A local NGO, Wrold Vision, has taken the lead for this project, and we are presenting a plan in the distrcit government to get the system in town completely renovated. If it goes through, it will be a huge success. But I'm not holding out too much hope yet. And even though the people here frustrate me sometimes, there are great. I recently celebrated my birthday in site, and it was really nice. My friend took me out to lunch and then my site mate came over to eat dinner with the family I eat some meals with. Peruvians love to give speaches and get emotional, and I told this family not to do this for my dinner. But I did get a speech. My friend came in and said in really bad english, "Mike happy birthday, you are my brother you sonofbitch." That speech made me smile like nothing had in a long time. I also escaped the cases of beer they had waiting; we're go to go through them slowly until I leave in November.

Giardia 2.0

2009-03-05T09:05:00.006-05:00

Well, another month has passed and things are pretty good here in the mountains. Nothing exciting has happened really. I am pretty sure I have Giardia again, but I am not really sick. The other day I woke up in the middle of the night with a bloated stomach and a lot of gas. But not the kind that you think. One sympton of Giardia is burps that smell like sulphur; which I definitely have. My appetite is also shot. Otherwise I feel good; I started taking antibiotics and parasite medicine yesterday so it should clear up. In site, the rainy season has definitely started, although it is nothing compared to last year. I actually like this climate better becausde the landscape is exploding with all kinds of green and flowers. Plus I don't get a sunburn everyday. Workwise, my latrine project is giving me problems. We have secured about 13,000 dollars for materials, but I feel like the people are getting greedy. It's like if you give a mouse a cookie....he will demand meatal siding instead of bricks. Apparently the previous volunteers would have bought the latrines with their own money, and I am bad. I know the people are just excited, but I just want to close out this project. I think I will be the only Peace Corps volunteer to come back less patient. However, my other work is progressing well; with gardens, guinea pigs, classes and work on the water system. I don't really know what to write anymore, so here's something different; some observations I have made of life here. None of this is intended as Peru bashing, I know I must be weird to the people here.

Alcohol:
There is nothing more exciting than the chance to get really really drunk here. Any occasion will do; Mothers Day? Definitely. “Hey mom stay home and cook while I get hammered for two days straight.” Grade school graduation? You can teach little Timmy about life while he is carrying you home. Tuesday morning? Perfect. Who needs to work when you can drink warm beer out of the same glass as six other people? Town parties and everyone’s birthday are acceptable as well. As my birthday is coming up, the family I eat with asked me wanted I wanted to eat. I said beer. The men of the family got visibly excited. The women look worried and say at least I have to have rice. It was a joke, but my sense of humor does not translate well here. And how do you act when you are drunk? I’ll do my impression when I get home but here are the important parts: Undo your fly. Spit everywhere. If you see anyone, grab both their hands and implore them to join you. If they agree, you have a new best friend. If not, they hate you and are bad. Slur your words and say this: Gringo, where are you from, how much money do you have, beer, how much money do you have, beer, potato.

Public Transportation:
I take a vehicle called a combi to get to my capital city. A combi is a microbus that theoretically seats about fifteen. They come with a driver and a person that collects fairs, a cobrador. The fun starts getting in. The cobrador pulls the door opens and screams “get in get in get in” like there is an emergency. You get in and sit down. There are only two good seats for people my height, shotgun or by the door. But these are usually taken, so I sit wherever. As we make the hour journey, more and more people pile in. The way they pack in, I usually get someone’s legs stuck in between mine. How’s that for cultural integration. After ten minutes, I lose feeling in my legs and am being used as a headrest. The driver meanwhile is navigating the potholes and validating his manhood by passing the other vehicles. Nothing says I am hot stuff like endangering 20 people’s lives to pass another 1980 microbus. Close to the city, we pass a police station, so the driver and two people up front fake put on their seat belts. But only for a second, because the metal part will burn you if you leave it on too long. Almost there so the cobrador begins to collect fairs. This is a cause for panic. You have to have your money in his face, and become very worried if he doesn’t collect from you first. When he gets to you, he might try to charge you too much or alternately you could try to underpay. Arriving at the last stop, you have to be the first person off, or you will die. This means pushing people out of the way while the whole time the cobrador is screaming “get off get off get off.

Repetitive Conversations
Rain, my boots where are you going, how much did that cost and variations, leave a seed: these topics probably take up 75% of my non work time. Here’s how a typical conversation goes; at least ten times a day.
Me: Good morning how are you?
Person: Good morning, lots of rain no. Not like in your country. Can you walk in it?
Me: Yeah lots of rain. When will it end? (I know this answer) I can walk.
Person: It ends in April. Holy Sh*t your boots are huge! What size are they? How much did they cost? Will you buy me some?
Me: Yeah I got big feet, size 13. I don’t know how much they cost, they were a gift. No sorry.
Person: Well how much money do you make? And the plane ticket? That must be expensive.
Me: Well you see, I actually don’t make money. I have money for food and for my place, but that’s it. I don’t know how much plane tickets cost; Peace Corps bought mine to get here and with the economic crisis and everything... I think it depends on what day you fly.
Person: You should leave a seed here. Wanna meet my sixteen year old daughter?
Me: No, where are you going?
Person: Down, and you?
Me: Up
Person: Very good, very good. Lots of rain, no?
Me: Yep, see you later.

Back

2009-02-05T19:29:00.021-05:00

After a busy week and a half, I am back in Peru. Last Wednesday I flew to Miami to take the MCAT. I was worried that I was going to freak out when I got back home, but I handled it fine. I am not sure why I was nervous about efficiency, chicken wings and driving, but I survived. I got into Miami late on Wednesday, drove to Boca Raton on Thursday, took the MCAT on Friday and flew back out on early Saturday morning. I had been dreaming about all of the things I wanted to eat and bring back with me for a long time, but once I got to a restaurant or grocery store, it was kind of anticlimatic. Everything looked good, but I really didn't care that much, except for the chicken wings. I ate two pounds for dinner before the test. My favorite parft of the trip was driving; I hadn't done that in a year and a half and it was a blast. Other than that, I kind of felt like I was still in Peru. Almost of the people in Miami talk Spanish, and this actually kept me a little calmer for the test. As for the MCAT; I think I did pretty well, I get the results back in about a month.

After being back in the states, I flew into El Salvador, where I visited two friends from college, Melissa and Ross. They are a married couple living in a rural village a few hours out of San Salvador. This is a picture of use on their town's water tank while the sun was setting. I hadn't seen them in about a year and a half, but it didn't feel like I had been gone that long, everything seemed normal. I guess that was a lesson learned from this trip; Peace Corps has been a great experience but it hasn't changed me in a huge way. I also learned that I am spoiled as as Peace Corps volunteer, at least in terms of scenery. I live in a postcard. But there are other challenges here; like a third language and the food. All in all, I wouldn't want to be placed in anohter country. Anyway, we had a great time for a few days. I got to see part of San Salvador, go to the beach and see a whale, relaz in Melissa and Ross' site, and watch the superbowl. This is actually the fourth superbowl in a row I have watched in another country.

After living in another culture for a while, it is hard not to make generalizations about the people that you live with, so I was really interested to see how the culture of El Salvador was different from here in Peru. But it was really almost the same. The same things I get mad about here I witnessed there. For example, disorderly line making. It is impossible for the people here to make a straight line, and then to wait their turn. There is a me first attitude that the general public exhibits that drives me crazy. Other bad habits I saw were over the top noise making and littering just for fun. And I also couldn't help but see all of the shameless nose picking. It is an epidemic. I sometimes ask people if they found what they were digging for, but they don't ever get it. It's probably better that way, so I don't get death threats again. I think that instead of Peace Corps voluneers, the government should send kindergarden teachers. But the things I love about the culture here are the sharing of food and how people and not time are the most important things in a day.

Now I am headed back to site with about eight months left in my service. Sometimes this sounds like a lot of time, but I know it will go by quickly. I have some good projects going, although they are progressing slower than I would like. I also have
28 days of vacation left, plus 8 days that we get off for national holidays. I will probably run out of money before vacation days though. And now my thoughts are turning more toward home; what I will do and where I will live. Over the last year and a half home has always been in the back of my mind; something that I missed a lot but was so far away I didn't let it come to the surface. But now that I have been back for a visit, I realize that all of the people and things I miss will be there waiting for me, and the time I have left here won't be something I can always come back too. Chicken wings may taste a lot better than guinea pigs, but rodent eating makes for better stories. So for the next eight months I just want to soak it all in so I don't have any regrets when I leave. Turn your volume up for this video, this is what I get to wake up to every morning.

Day 483

2009-01-12T09:36:00.007-05:00

It’s been a long time since I have posted, so this time I am writing a little more to let you know what I have been up to. I started off the month of December going to Lima for project meetings and medical checks. I checked out parasite, bacteria, and virus free. No skin cancer (the sun is really strong and I’m pretty white) or cavities either. I was weighed for the first time since 2007 and I have dropped 15 pounds in country, so I now tip the scales at 134 pounds of fury. We then had three days of project meetings, which I don’t remember very well but I’m sure something was learned. The best part of the week was being reunited with all of the health volunteers from my training group; it had been a long time since we were all together. I even took an extra day vacation at the end of the week to hang out with a few people in Lima, and visit my first host family, which is always great. I then headed back to site to celebrate Christmas.

Christmas was a lot better this year. I spent Christmas Eve day with my site mate Sophie and her host family. Then I went to mass and had dinner with two other volunteers, and spent Christmas day in site celebrating with my favorite family. Then for New Year’s I went into Huaraz to celebrate with most of the other volunteers in the department. We had a great night; I’ll put pictures up when I get a chance. We recently doubled in since in terms of volunteers, and we have a great group of new people. There are now 18 of us here in Ancash, and most of us are two hours away from each other. So all and all, it was a great improvement over last year’s holiday season, which I spent eating junk food in bed and scratching flea bites.

Coming back to site after New Years was really hard. I had been in the big cities for a while with good friends, good times and food and suddenly it was all taken away again. I don’t know why it got to me this time so badly, I had been out of site for longer time periods, and never felt this mal-adjusted coming back. I think it is the combination of holiday season, the rainy season and previous volunteer comparisons. Sometimes I worry that Peace Corps is turning me bipolar, some days can be so good and others so bad, and I can never be sure there isn’t some nasty surprise waiting for me at the end of a good day. It’s really hard thing to explain, to know leaving here will rip a piece out of me but to sometimes hate it at the same time.

But the most important thing I have learned here is to wait. The longer I stay in site the better I feel, and the more I appreciate the people and how nice they are. Just yesterday I was invited to lunch to eat chicharron, which is basically fried pig everything. While I was sitting there sneaking pig organs into my backpack, I couldn’t help thinking how great these people were, and also hoping they wouldn’t catch me. My point is they killed a pig and cooked it’s intestines for me. Even though they are poor, the people here don’t think twice about opening their doors and kitchens to me. Walking back from the lunch, I could see the rain clouds coming in and by the time I got back to my room I couldn’t see more than five feet in front of me. Even the rainy season is beautiful here.

As of now, I have about ten months of service left, and have my projects planned out. I will finish the sixty latrines by April. We are currently short about 1,500 dollars but we’ll get it somehow. Once the rain stops, I will be working with the national park and an NGO to install a latrine at base camp of Huascaran. Also, I have two big community gardens, one being planted on the 14th and the other and the 29th. These are communal projects, and have about 80 participants. I am also organizing the administrators of the potable water systems, so they can petition to get funding from the government in 2010. After that, I will do a small improved stove project and teach some classes once school starts back up again. Peace Corps does not let us take vacation days in the last three months of service, so this means I have seven months to take 35 vacation days, plus another 8 days we get free for Peruvian holidays.

In three weeks, I will be back in the United States. I am flying back to take the MCAT on the 30th. I am very apprehensive about coming back for the culture shock, I sometimes feel out of place in Lima and even Huaraz after a long stint in site. I know that some of the mannerisms I have taken up here will not be acceptable in Miami. I just have to remember no Quechua, no snot rocketing, whistling to get attention or finger wagging to say no, and I’ll be fine. My goals after doing well on my test are finding chicken wings, a cold beer I don’t have to share, and a hot tub. After the MCAT, I’m going to see some college friends who are doing Peace Corps in El Salvador. I should be from mountains of Peru to Miami and El Salvador and back in nine days.

November was Good

2008-12-03T15:52:00.009-05:00

It was a very good and busy month of November. Work and fun and both going well. I will detail the work later in the post, but since I just got done with a lot of fun, I will talk about that first. To celebrate Thanksgiving, three of my friends came from far to celebrate and cook. The literally came from two of the farthest parts of Peru. We cooked up a feast in my site and chowed down. My contribution to the day was a turkey that I had been raising for the last two months. I chopped its head off and the lady I rent from cooked it. I will tell you that I was not sorry to see the turkey go, it was probably the dumbest animal I ever met. But I did not enjoy killing it. It tasted good so I guess it was worth it. We also had some stuffing, cranberry sauce, cookies and mashed potatoes. It was the first time I have cooked or eaten potatoes willingly since I got here.

Here's me, Martha and Brian in my site on Thanksgiving day. After we ate our feast, we drank some beers and went to bed early. The next day, we went on a hike to another glacier lake that is close to my site. There is a set of two famous lakes called Llanganuco that I posted pictures of on my last blog, but the one we went to is a three hour hike past those and is more difficult to get to due to the altitude. We got up to 4800 meters at the end of the hike. Here in the department of Peru where I am, Ancash, we have a competition to see who can skinny dip in the most glacier lakes. So I couldn't let this opportunity pass me up. I was ready to get in, as you see in the picture below, but it started to snow so I didn't get in. It was a good decision, because the snow got heavier and then it started to hail. Like my mom always says,'never skinny dip at 4800 meters in snow or hail'

The other really cool thing I did this month was hike up to the glaciers on Huascaran. I had a really bad day on a Monday and went to bed planning to spend the next day as a shut in. But when I woke up it occurred to me that maybe glacier water would make me feel better. So I made the four hour hike up past base camp and a building called the refuge. I went all the way up to about 5000 meters right to the glaciers. It was some of the most beautiful scenery I had seen in my life, and the highest up I have ever been in my life. It was also the tiredest I had ever been as well. I am planning a big mountain climbing trip with some friends next July, so I will definitely be making this trip again to get in shape. Check out my link for November 2008 to see all of my pictures from the day.

Now for the work,which is going well. My main focus in my latrine project, which is actually now a bathroom project. I have the technical support and money of two NGOs, as well as a grant form the Peace Corps, and a group of extrememly motivated Peruvians. Hopefully if everything goes well these people will have nice bathrooms in five months. Between me and the two previous volunteers,we will have gotten this particular annex of my community cooking over a stove instead of the floor and using toilets instead of their fields. I am starting to see the whole picture now, and that is this work is hard and takes time, but it's definitely worth it.

My other projects are going well too. I have a guinea pig raising project,a big community garden, and I will be teaching summer school again this January through March. Me and Sophie, who lives in a different community 15 minutes away, are actually doing joint classes between the two towns. This way the kids get different classes. i will be teaching sports and science, and Sophie will teach some theater and life planning. We will share a few sessions on small business activities and a recycling project. And this month I have a lot of stuff going on. In one week I go to Lima for a week to have medical exams and projects. I am guessing they will find at least two different kinds of parasites in me. Hopefully one will be a new species and I can name it. After that I have Christmas with my Lima host family and New Years with my friend in a city called Casma. I am officially in my second year of my service, and things are going the way they should.

Wanna live in a mansion? OK

2008-11-04T11:35:00.009-05:00

Things keep on getting better and better here. Yesterday I was invited to a guinea pig lunch, and then invited to live in a three story house. The new place on the plaza in town, and will serve as a hotel in a few years when it is ready. But for the next year, I will have free reign. I now have the luxury of choosing which bedroom I will sleep in and which toilet I will puke in. I actually will probably designate a toilet for each bodily function. But the best part about the new place is the huge meeting halls, which I have been given permission to use for my meetings. This is a huge deal because there is no town hall and my big project has sixty members. The new house has a huge open roof that I can set up a hammock and grill, and has an incredible view of Huascaran and the cordillera negra. I will have one roommate though, a puppy. While I really want a monkey, it is just too cold here and it would suffer. So instead I opted for a dog. There is a lady in the market that is going to give me it for free tomorrow. I think I am supposed to marry her daughter too, so we’ll see how that goes. This is a picture of a completed stove, with the little guy wearing my hat and showing me how it works. A few months ago, his mom was cooking over three rocks on the ground.

I have now been in country for almost fourteen months. This means my time in Peru is just over half way done. I’m not sure how I feel about this; I guess it just depends on the day. Time is actually starting to move faster now that I have more work to do. We just finished up the stove project two weeks ago, which felt really good. There are now 127 families living in better conditions. But more importantly, we threw a huge party to celebrate, and it was a big success. Think long, drawn out speeches, 150 dead guinea pigs (see picture), warm beer, music and dance, and that’s pretty much what it was. Being the town gringo, I was the main attraction, so I was given the biggest guinea pig to eat, had to dance the most and drank more than enough beer. It was all worth it though because I definitely won over a lot of people with my abilities in these events. I keep patting my self on the back here when I am able to do things like this, but then I realize that bad dancing and rodent eating skills aren’t going to get me very far when I come back home. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

After the party, I hopped on a bus to meet my parents in Lima. I hadn’t seen my Dad in over a year and my mom for six months. It was really good to see them both. We spent one day in Lima to visit my old host family. That’s always a nice pick me up because they treat me like a king. We ate all of my favorite food with the family, and then took an overnight bus to Huaraz. We arrived early, and by late afternoon both of my parents were sick. They stayed in bed for a day or two, and then we were able to see some stuff. We were fortunate enough to go up to my site so they could see it, and then on to a lake called Llanganuco, where this picture was taken. Llanganuco is actually two connected glacier lakes. One is called Chinacocha and the other Oronococha, Quechua for female and male lake. Pictures don’t do them justice; to one side lies the double peaks of Huascaran at 6000 meters and to the other a mountain with four peaks that are each over 5000 meters called Huandoy. The lakes themselves are about 4000 meters high and really cold. After a quick week with my parents I dropped them back at the airport and headed back to the hotel.

It was quite a shock to go from my site to the nicest part of Lima and back again. In Lima, we stayed in a district called Miraflores. As you can see here, it is a pretty touristy place. I got my share of pizza and stuff I think I miss. Hot showers aren’t that exciting for me now that I am relatively clean. I still have fleas, and probably infested my room at the hotel, but who knows. I was a little nervous about getting back to site, because sometimes it is hard to readjust after a week of civilization. But this time I actually was more relaxed. I can’t really say why, but it just felt good to be back. Everyone was really excited to me, even though I had only been gone for a few days. I am working on five main projects right now, and those are all going smoothly too. These are: latrines (60 people), gardens (15 people), improvement of the water system here (15 people), monitoring of the improved stoves (130 people), and guinea pig/loan project (10 people). I don’t know why I signed up for the last one; it pretty much guarantees I will be eating these rats everyday until I leave. This is a direct quote from a lady that served my guinea pig on Sunday; ‘my daughter doesn’t like the intestines because they have shit in them.’ I swallowed them whole and washed it down with wine.

I have now gone two months without some sort of an incident or wild story. This is a good thing, but doesn’t make for as good reading, sorry. I will have to do something crazy soon if nothing happens. But really, it’s better this way. I think the best part about the new site is the people. I have made two good friends my age in town, and their family has taken me in. I have been invited to eat every meal with them. I honestly can’t walk down the street without being pulled into one of the extended family’s houses. It’s hard sometimes to put away all the food, but these people are poor and giving me all they have, so I can’t complain. They are so genuine too, something I hope I can come close to being someday. While I don’t feel like this is home, it’s the closest I’ve felt to it a long time. I actually don’t feel the urge to leave every weekend like I used to, now that I have work and friends. Here’s a picture of me at Llanganuco, but a different visit. It’s only a four hour walk, so I will be going more. Here’s a picture of me before jumping in. The after pictures are not suitable for the internet. We’ll save those for the slide show when I get back.

What Paradise Looks Like

2008-10-03T15:58:00.007-05:00

Well, I have a lot of news since the last update. The first big thing is that my site mates Libby and Ben had to go back to the United States for personal reasons two months early. This leaves me the only gringo in town, and with a lot of work. I have inherited a lot of projects that were scheduled to be completed with Libby and Ben, but now I have to do it. The big project is an improved stove project with 113 beneficiaries. People here traditionally cook with an open flame over three or four stones to hold up a pot. The smoke that results is horrible for the lungs. Anyway, each family is responsible for building a platform, table and cupboard and in return they get a stovetop, bucket for boiled water and a sheet of transparent roofing so they can see those guinea pigs they love to eat. This past week, I had to visit every house to make sure everything was ready. In theory each visit should only be five minutes, but then comes the food. I have never eaten so much in my life. I felt drunk off of food at the end of each day, but I got all of the visits done and didn't get sick, so that's what matters.

The first picture is taken from the town plaza about nine in the morning, and here’s a picture of a storm rolling in a few hours later. There was an avalanche somewhere up there that lasted for about ten seconds. I was standing on my balcony when it started and I thought I was going to die. But nothing fell on us so that’s good. This is the only good story I have from the last post. It feels nice to go almost a month without a mishap. Life in town is really busy right now, and everyone is so nice. I have been invited to eat in someone’s home everyday, which I both love and hate. I love it because people are very friendly, but hate it because I have eaten so many guinea pigs I want to cry. When I say guinea pigs, I mean the whole thing, not just a leg or side. I am served up a half pound rodent complete with teeth, paws and a little bit of hair if I’m lucky. As I listen to people whisper in Quechua “Let’s see if he knows how to eat this” I bite off the head, spit out the teeth and lie through mine that it’s delicious. They nod approvingly and we all have a chuckle.

Aside from the inherited projects, I am progressing with my own project of latrines. I had originally expected a group of fifty, but now have a group of about one hundred. This is a little intimidating, but I can do it. The timeline for this project is five months, and should keep me busy during the rainy season. I am also working with the national park to build a latrine in Huascaran base camp as part of this project. I had a meeting with the head of the park last week to discuss it, and we figured out that we could come up with the money, about 2,000 dollars. My job is to organize the town to help us. My town is actually inside of Huascaran national park, so the people here have an interest in supporting projects like this to increase tourism.

My only negative experience so far was a meeting last Sunday with all 113 of the project members. They have trouble listening, and got very confused when they had to rotate groups. This translated into they weren’t going to get their stoves, and all of a sudden I had 113 angry Quechua women yelling at me. But we got them calmed down and it all worked out. I have made a few friends my age here that are professionals, which is nice to have a break from working with campesinos all day long. After living in Lima and two sites now, I think that the biggest difference among between people is not age, gender, race or nationality. It is education. I am not saying that education makes a person better; just different. I feel like when I step out of my room I am walking back in time, just because of the way people view life and work here. I like it too; I have the best of both worlds. I was left the probably the nicest Peace Corps room in the world that I can escape to. I just posted pictures. I finally have bed that fits me, a table, a stove, a shower and a balcony on Huascaran. They say that stuff can’t make you happy, but sometimes it does. Stuff and wireless internet. I just got wireless in my room, that makes me happy too. Actually, I think it’s a combination of the stuff, good people and work. Definitely worth the wait.

One Year

2008-09-06T11:16:00.007-05:00

I will have been here one year now in a week. I would not say the time is flying by. Some days it crawls, and on others it seems to be going backwards. On the good days, it just passes without notice. The exception has been the last four weeks at my new site; the days have passed quickly. While I am not counting down until I leave, it is hard not to notice the patterns that the days and months have taken. Everyone I have talked to says year two is when all of the big work related things happen and everything starts to come together. I still have a few months until I am actually in year two of service after training, but things are looking good. I have volunteer a ten minute walk form me, which is great. She is really nice, and we have a meeting on Monday with some authorities to make a work plan for the year. Everyone in town is friendly too, which makes a big difference in wanting to do work with or for them. I also have the gym close to me and have joined a basketball league in Huaraz. I’m not going to get in to play very much, but it’s awesome. I joined the Peace Corps in part to get some solitude, but I found out that it’s not that fun. I am a lot happier here now.

Life at the new place is good; I have projects started and some work patterns set. I have my first big meeting for my latrine project in a week; I think there are fifty families that will show up. My other major activity right now is a strategic plan with the leaders of the community, that’s what this is a picture of. We talk about the development of the community over the next five years, and we are developing a plan that prioritizes the needs of the community. This program is a series of five meetings and we have completed one so far. Other things that I have done or am doing is work with the health post to start a healthy schools program, a community garden at the health post with a makeshift greenhouse, English classes, and basketball and microscope class in the school. I still have a lot of free time, which gives me the chance to stare at the mountain. My sink is outside, and I think I have tripled my tooth brushing time just because I can’t stop looking at it. I also have to change my clothes a lot, because I drip toothpaste all over myself. The other day I was brushing my teeth and I heard a bid whoosh sound. I thought it was a truck or the wind, but it was an avalanche. I looked up to see the left peak of Huascaran enveloped in a huge snow cloud. This a little scary, but there’s nothing I can do about it, so I just enjoy the view.

I have two good stories for the last month. I wasn’t go to share them so I didn’t scare the family, but nothing else has happened so I have to tell you about them. The first accident happened on my second day at the new place. I was getting out of a taxi on my way to meet a bunch of workers from an NGO called World Vision. Apparently the driver thought I was all the way out of the taxi so he took off. But it turned out I wasn’t. I actually managed to get my foot and hand run over by the same wheel somehow, but I wasn’t hurt too bad, just sore for the day. Then just last week I was riding shotgun in a combi (this is a little microbus that triples as a deathtrap, horrible music player and personal space violator) and I had fallen asleep. Apparently we needed to break fast in order to avoid an accident, which we did, but I got my face smashed into the radio. I had a bunch of scrapes and a nice fat black eye for the week as a result. One thing Peruvians do without fail is comment about your physical appearance and clothing, so I got a lot of, “what happened to your face, that’s so ugly” this week. I bite my lip about telling people that fanny packs and rat tails aren’t that attractive either. Also, USBs as fashion accessories strike me as dumb, but what do I know. I’m just glad my wounds are fading already. And yes, I was wearing my seatbelt; it just didn’t work very well.

Since I have been here for a year now, I have been thinking about what has happened and realized I have a lot of good statistics and personal records, so here it is, my life by numbers for the last year. Most of this sounds negative, but the positive things I have experienced just aren’t as funny or interesting.

Consecutive days without a shower: 16
Showers in a day: 4
Bucket baths in a latrine: 6
Bathroom trips in a day (not peeing): 14
Days without a bathroom trip (constipation): 6
Pukes in a day: 7
Sites: 2
Rooms lived in: 5
Most flea bites at one time: 56
Death threats: 4
Dead cats in my room: 4
Black eyes: 1
Run over by a taxi: 1

Well, see ya later, and back to Korea

2008-08-22T16:06:00.009-05:00

I have been really busy since the last update. Two weeks ago, I had training in the north of Peru with all the health volunteers in my group. I also got my new site assignment there as well. I will describe it later on. The training was actually very useful and I learned a lot and saw some friends I hadn’t seen in a long time. Right after the training, I bused the twenty hours back to Huaraz, grabbed a taxi to site and started moving. I had already packed my stuff up, so all I had to do was say good-byes, which were quick and painless. The best part of the day was when a man in town asked me if I was going back to Korea. I said yes, yes I am. No one seemed sad or angry that I was going, mostly apathetic. Kind of represents my whole experience in the town, and I’m glad it’s behind me. I was in and out of town with all of my stuff in about three hours.

While I can’t tell you exactly where my new site is, I can try to describe it. Email my parents if you want the name. I am in the major valley of the department of Ancash, only 45 minutes away from Huaraz. My town is smaller than the last one, and more decentralized too. The views are incredible, ten times better than my last site. I am at the base of Huascaran, the highest tropical mountain in the world, topping off at over 22,000 feet. This picture is taken from my balcony, and it doesn’t come close to what it really looks like. I’m even not going to try to describe it. The above picture is a picture of Huascaran from Huaraz. People who come to climb Huascaran pass directly through town on their way to base camp. I can walk to it in five hours form here. To the west of my village is the cordillera negra, or black mountain range. It is named this because its rocks are volcanic and it’s black. Here I am about 1000 feet lower than I was, so the weather is warmer and they grow more than potatos.

Work wise, it seems like I will have a lot to do, but we’ll see. I am replacing a married couple, Ben and Libby. They will be here in town with me until their service is over in late October. These two are the best volunteers I have met in Peru in terms of doing work, and it is a little intimidating to replace two of them. The really good news is that they have groups of people from the community ready to work with me. Just yesterday I committed myself to a latrine project with fifty families. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but it will probably occupy a big chunk of my remaining service. I also have set up English class, basketball camp, microscope class and some other exercise stuff There is also the possibility of doing a loan/guinea pig project with a NGO called CARE. I will help the health post get the program of healthy schools started and mapping of the area as well. This all sounds like a lot, but I have a year and three months and some of it will probably fall through. This is a picture a marine reserve in the south of Peru called Paracas, and the below is my old room where the cats came to die.

I can best describe my feelings as being a mistreated puppy with a new owner. I am still pretty wary and guarded of the situation, but am excited of the chance to start over. So far it’s been all good. There is a lot to be happy about here. The people are so much nicer, I actually got a hug from a little kid on my first day. There is still Quechua, but less. The dialect is a little different but similar enough. Ben and Libby have been great introducing me to the community and making me feel welcome. Right now I am not sure where I am living. The town party is in a week, and every single room has been rented, so I am stuck in a cave of a room for two months. Then I will move into Ben and Libby’s room when they go. But my new favorite part of the living conditions is a warm shower and a toilet. Being able to shower when I want will be awesome. I can also hop on a bus and get to a gym and good food in a half hour a few times a week. Hopefully I can reach my goal of not seeing my ribs or sternum soon. In week, the new volunteers move to site, and I will have one a fifteen minute walk from me. The other ten volunteers are all an hour by public transportation from my site as well. So,everything is looking up. Hopefully I am through the roughest part of my service. I am also fifteen minutes from fast internet, so I should be able to update more and write back quicker.

This is a conversation that happened to me last Monday. I have a lot of really awkward conversations here because I have the chance to mess up in two languages. I know I was speaking perfect Spanish and Quechua, but this lady refused to understand. This happens a lot, a Peruvian sees how white I am and refuses to understand anything. Anyway, this encounter was particularly funny, so I thought I would share.

Me (Spanish): Is there a store I can buy water around here?
Lady (Quechua): What?
Me (Quechua): Where can I buy water?
Lady (Quechua): What?
Me (Spanish, then Quechua) WATER?
Lady (Spanish) Oh, I don’t understand English
Me (Spanish) I know, I am speaking Spanish and Quechua
Lady, after a long pause (Spanish) Do you give away money?

I don't know

2008-08-03T23:59:00.008-05:00

I am officially free of my first Peace Corps site. After four death threats, lots of rock throwing and a third cat incident in my room, I decided it was time to go. I had agreed to stay in site until the middle of September, but last night pushed me over the edge. I won't go into details, but let's just say that I had to use all of my patience not to get into a fight. I am now in Huaraz, and tomorrow will be going to a city called Piura for a week long training. I will also be finding out where my next site will be. I don't have any idea where, but I really don't care. Hopefully somewhere where people like to talk. I am trying to think of positives that came out of my experience, and all I can up with is rock dodging, eating everything with a spoon and learning some Quechua. But it really was the worst eight months of my life. I am grateful for the chance to live in such beauty, but you can't be friends with mountains.

The other thing that I am more grateful for is my friends here. This past weekend was the Peruvian independence day weekend, and I racked up some wild stories and some good times. I will start with the wild stories. On my way from Huaraz to Lima, I was awoken by the bus jolting from side to side violently. It stopped, and everyone got off. I assumed we had a flat tire, but no, we had killed someone walking in the middle of the road. I was shocked, and then dumbfounded by my fellow passengers demanding their money back while standing around the body. The night progressed with an attempted storming of a police office and then a fight over seats when we finally got back on the bus. My other incident was an attempted mugging in Lima. I was walking by an Italian art museum and some moron came up and grabbed me by the arm and neck and told me to give him all my money. I fended him off with my superior upper body strength and he ran away with nothing. I did get some bruises to prove my story though.

What I did over the holiday here was got to a city called Ica, close to where the earthquake hit the hardest last year. I met up with five other friends, and we did some sandboarding and a tour a marine wildlife reserve called Paracas. The sandboarding was awesome, we got an hour long tour in a dune buggy and four or five runs down the dunes. The above two pictures are what we saw. Some of the dunes are supposedly almost 2000 meters tall, and they were pretty impressive. The next day we took a boat tour of the reserve, and that was beautiful. There is a current of cold water that runs parallel to the coast of Peru called the Humboldt, and with that comes a lot of cool wildlife. We saw penguins, sea lions, and a bunch of other birds. The contrast of geography and culture here in Peru never ceases to amaze me as I travel more. This is a picture of me in Ecuador right before climbing the volcano.

I am really excited to get into my new site and do work. I have learned a lot of lessons in the past eight months that will help me be more effective. But I am under no illusion that whatever comes next will be easy, I'm sure it will come with a new set of challenges. When I signed up for the Peace Corps, I wanted something hard and different, and I got it. I wish it wouldn't have been hard in the way that it has, but I guess that's life. Hopefully what I have gone through will make the remainder of my time her easier. My new goals will be improving my spanish, getting fat and getting rid of my fleas. I feel like that Pig Pen in the Peanuts comics right now, even after a shower. I will update again when I find out where I am going. Thanks to my family for all of the support, and someone should send me Cheez Its.

Back

2008-07-15T22:17:00.007-05:00

I got back from my vacation last Thursday, and I had a great time. I got to see one of my best friends from back home, Danielle, and most of my best friends in the Peace Corps. Here is a picture of me and Danielle high above Quito. The journey there was mostly uneventful, except for the border crossing. I had no idea what to expect when I got there, and it was pretty frightening. I had to cross on foot at eleven at night, and I stuck out like a white guy at a South American border crossing. My strategy was to walk fast and look mean, and it worked. I didnt get robbed or ripped off. Other than that, it was just forty hours of buses each direction. It was interesting to see the cultural and language differences between the two countries, even though they are so close geographically. There were a lot of Spanish and Quechua words that were different for me. I was told I have a Peruvian accent, which I think is pretty cool.

This is picture of the tallest volcano in Ecuador, Cotapaxi. Cotapaxi is a Quechua word that means cuello de la luna, or neck of the moon. I am not exaggerating when I say it was the coolest thing I have ever seen. Me and Danielle took a car to about 4000 meters, and hiked to about 5000. The rapid altitude change got to us both pretty quickly. I had never felt so weak in my life; we had to stop and rest every few steps and felt light headed. We didn’t make it to the top, but far enough. I might go back next year to summit it if I can save the money. Other things that we did included a trip to the actual equator, a private tour of the city by car, and a night tour of the colonial part of Quito at night. The week in Quito went by way too fast, but I saw a lot of good stuff and got some much needed rest and showers.

On my way back to site, there was a nation wide general strike. This means that all public transport shut down and I basically got stranded for two days. I had the good luck to be stranded in a city where a bunch of my friends were heaving a meeting, and they were stuck too. It was actually kind of a half strike. Everything was supposed to be shut down, but I still went to the market and the taxis started running at the end of the day. The main highway that runs north to south here was definitely blocked for the whole time though. So I took advantage of the time to relax with friends. We even got to grill out on the roof of their hostal. I hadn’t seen most of these volunteers since March, and it is so nice to be with people who know exactly what you’re going through.

After seeing all of my friends and their sites, I decided to ask Peace Corps for a site change. All of my friends seem a lot happier and busier where they are. I really feel I could do better work if I was in a site where people talked to me. I have a meeting with my program director tonight, so well see how that goes. If I don’t get changed, I will be disappointed, but Im not going to quit. I know that on some level this experience is good for me. Even if I don’t get a lot of work done or make campesino friends, I will be able to come out of this knowing I will be handle whatever I face in the future. Plus as you can tell by the pictures, there is a ton of cool stuff to see in my spare time. I see this lake every time I go to Huaraz. My next trip is to a department called Ica, close to where the earthquake hit last year. Me and some friends are going down there to sand board on some dunes. In other news, I came home to another dead cat in my room. I posted a bunch of new pictures, but not of the cat. Next time I will put up pictures of the aftermath in my room. I still don’t know what I am being punished for, but Im sorry anyway.

Vacation!

2008-06-29T14:42:00.006-05:00

I am officially on vacation, my first one in ten months. Starting tomorrow, I am making my way up north, all the way to Quito Ecuador to see a friend. It feels so good to know I will be out of my site for a long time. I am also stopping off in the northern cities to visit some friends from training. If you want to look on a map, I will be traveling along the coast through Trujillo, Chiclayo, Tumbes, and then Loja and Cuenca in Ecuador. I am excited to see the beach and get out of the altitude for a while. I don't notice how much of my energy it takes until I get out of it. But I am the most excited about seeing my friends from training and most of all a friend from back home. Right now I am sitting in a cafe in Huaraz, there are no clouds in the sky and I have the Cordillera Blanca stretched out in front of me. It's days like today that I realize, even though things suck sometimes, I am glad to be here.

I had a major success with my projects in site. My new doctor and I have been working to start programs to improve health conditions and facilities in the schools and homes in town. We have work plans and committees for both, but lacked funding. For some reason, the local mine decided to give us 20,000 soles, or about 7,000 dollars. This is a really big deal, especially considering that we will only be working with ten families to start out with. I spent the last week narrowing down my list of at risk families, and finished up on Friday with the final list. Hopefully we can do a really good job this group relatively quickly, and then move on to larger groups later on in my service. I can't wait to get started, and it is great feeling knowing I will have something to keep me busy for a long time when I get back from vacation.

Here's my funny story for the last two weeks. I was having a bad day and decided to go running. Sometimes I get mad and really want to act look a typical american tourist, so I put on my sunglasses, IPOD and shorts to go running. Well I ran into the governor of a neighboring town, he was drunk and I was irritable. He started yelling at me and saying I was there to steal money and goats. I didn't even try to use my grown up manners, and then this moron started telling me he was going to kill me and burn my things. He demanded to know my name, but was too drunk to spell it out. I asked him how he could be a mayor if he couldn't even spell or walk straight. I spelled it out phonetically for him, like he was a child. This enraged him further, and he tried to hit me. But luckily he could barely walk and a friend happened to walking by and took him away. I am not worried about the death threats, this is the third separate one, and it's just the booze talking. The moral of this story is, there is a campesino wandering around my valley with a piece of paper looking for a gringo named f!%# you.

Chicken Blood Dead Cat

2008-06-15T15:24:00.009-05:00

My last week started off pretty rough, but ended well. I fell asleep on the bus back to my site and woke up with chicken blood all over my face. Apparently some lady decided to store her freshly killed chickens above me. I don't know why no one couldn't wake me up to tell me chicken blood was spilling on me, maybe they are still afraid I am here to eat their kids. My last month here I am going to walk around with a fork and a knife. Something awful always happens on the bus, but this was the worst. I got off at my usual stop and began the hour walk up the mountain to my room. We do not have water right now, so I rinsed off in the river. I was looking forward to eating my potatoes and going to bed, but when I opened my door to my room, I was greeted by a nasty surprise. A cat had fallen through my ceiling, destroyed my room in panic, and then pooped and died on my bed. I do not know when we will get water back, but until then I can't get any of my bedding washed. It's a good thing I like to be cold when I sleep. I think I am being punished for something I did, but I can't figure out what.

This is a picture of almost all of the volunteers in Ancash visiting some ruins called Chavin. I usually don't care about ruins, but these are actually very impressive. There is a series of underground tunnels behind where we are standing, and a huge statue called a lanzon that is also underground. The Chavin culture is one of the oldest known in Peru, it predates the Incas. These ruins are pretty close to me, they're on my jogging route sometimes. Every time I have a bad day, I always remind my self that I probably got the best site out of my training group in terms of the landscape. Some volunteers live in the desert, and others actually live in big cities. I am starting to take the mountains for granted, but it seems like I am living in a National Geographic article. When I come into Huaraz, I cross over the second highest mountain range in the world. I have been up there to see the sun rise. When I came into Huaraz this weekend, we passed through some snow flurries and I watched the sun set from the taxi. Then I ate a whole chicken and slept for twelve hours.

I did make some progress with my work. I had a meeting with all of the people in my health post, and we are going to be starting two programs, called healthy schools and healthy homes and families. With the school program, we will be training the teachers to be good examples and in the other program we will be teaching families about healthy practices and building improved stoves and gardens. I have learned not to get my hopes up here, but hopefully something good will come out of this. The next two weeks will be dedicated to organizing the sixteen families that have been chosen to participate in the program. Then I'm off to Ecuador for a week, I can't wait to get away for a while and see some friends. Here's a picture of me getting ready to go climbing. I am planning on going once a month while I am here, and hope to be climbing the big mountains this time next year. In other news, I was lent a DVD player last week, so I can finally enjoy the one dollar pirated movies here. I won't be updating for a while now, probably three weeks. I will come back from Ecuador with humorous stories and good pictures, and probably a new gastrointestinal malady. Stay tuned.

Meetings

2008-06-06T13:34:00.007-05:00

I have been everywhere for the last week and a half, and I am exhausted. On Tuesday I was in Huaraz in a meeting with my boss and all of the other health volunteers, and then on Wednesday I was traveling to look at potential sites for new volunteers with my boss. I think in December there will be another volunteer about an hour away from me, which will be nice. There are only two of us on my side of the mountain range, so it gets a little lonely sometimes. Then yesterday, I came back to Huaraz and an hour past it to go to a nutrition meeting in a city called Caraz. I had to leave at six in the morning and ride in a crowded bus for an hour. If you know me, you know this was already two strikes. I hate mornings and I like my space. Then when I got to Caraz, the doctors and nurses were all an hour late, so that was strike three. So I left. Part of Peace Corps is teaching Peruvians about our culture, so I have educated part of the population about the value of punctuality. Then I came back into Huaraz and slept all day and ate a lot of chicken. Today I am in Huaraz, doing some shopping and coordinating. This is a Peruvian term for wasting time. This is a picture is a lake called Churup here in Ancash. We had our regional meeting there last week. Have you ever been skinny dipping at 15,000 feet? I can't run for public office anymore.

Someone stole my sack of potatoes last week. I was pretty happy. Ever since I have been
on my own, people have been very concerned that I wont know how to eat, and they keep giving living me potatoes. So I know I have more than my body weight of potatoes in my room. I honestly dont know what to do. If I give the potatoes away, everyone will know that I am a regifter and become angry. If I throw them away, I will just feel bad. If I eat them, I will become depressed. So when I discovered that some good samaritan had robbed me on the bus back to my site, I was extremely grateful. I actually do like these potatoes above. We grow about six varities in town, and the little purple ones actually taste pretty good in soup. I eat a couple a day just because I get bored.

If I ever snap and go on a rampage here, this video is the reason why. It is called huayno. It is the most horrible form of music ever created. In fact it's not music. It's the sound of goats being sacrificed. They do that a little higher up in the mountains. This music starts at four thirty in the morning, and stops when the kids go to school at eight, or about the time I want to cry. This music is also vital for Peruvians to survive bus rides. What you can see in the video is a little bit of my new place. The big dome is an oven, my new family makes all the bread for the town. Then you can see the ducks I torture, I kicked one in the video for your viewing pleasure. At the end, there is the latrine and the sink where I do my bathing and washing. This is actually a huge step up from my last place in terms of hygiene and nice people. In other news, I have converted from being an Evangelical to a full blooded Catholic again. I had my first beer in site last week, mostly because there was a party outside my door. I don't plan to drink a lot in site, but you really can't turn down things here without looking like a jerk. I will be back and forth form site for the next few months, so hopefully I will be updating more regularly. Next week I have more Quechua classes in Huaraz, and then I am going on a hike to some lakes with a Peruvian friend. I am really excited about that, we're taking horses and going fishing for a few days. Then I'm off to Equador for a week to see Danielle. In July I am taking the foreign service exam and then heading south to see the world's deepest canyon. My work in site is the same, and I don't want to talk about it. I'm just glad there's so good distractions and I'm going to see my friends soon. New pictures are up.

May

2008-05-25T09:17:00.011-05:00

Well, it’s been a while since I last updated, and a lot has happened, most of good, some of it bad. At the beginning of this month, me and another volunteer, Vishal, took a mountain climbing course. It was three days long and pretty intensive. We started by learning how to tie all of the knots necessary, and then progressed to securing hooks in rocks and then on to climbing. I learned a lot in the class, and plan to keep going at least once a month. The class cost a lot, I blew 75% of my living allowance for May, but now we can get out there and practice without a guide. The area we live in definitely is not lacking in mountains and boulders. Back in site, people are still pretty closed off, but I have made a few good friends. I actually found a guy to run and work out with. This surprises me, because most people look at me like I’m crazy when I run. I live uphill from, and about a forty five minute walk from a relatively flat highway. I normally jog down the hill, meet my buddy in the closest town called San Marcos, and we run for a while. As I go down the hill, there are always two old ladies that I say hello to. As I ran past them for the first time, I heard one of them yell out, “This gringo can fly!” I glanced back and she had jumped up and had an astonished look on her face. I make it a point to sprint past her everyday, and now she remains seated, but still puzzled. The term gringo doesn’t really matter to me anymore, as long as the tone is nice. There is another old toothless lady that I say good afternoon to everyday, and she always replies, “buenas da da da, gingo.” She is trying to say, buenas tardes gringo, but has some trouble with her r’s and t’s.

Work wise, it’s about the same, slow. Our new doctor, and my supposed community partner,
seems really motivated and excited to work with me, but her contract is up in July, and she isn’t staying. The pay in my town is horrible for doctors and most of them don’t like the Quechua and mountain culture, so I have a feeling this is how it’s going to be for the next year and a half. I did get permission to start a compost and gardening project at the health post to be a community example, but I have to wait until they build a new post, so I’m not holding my breath. I think most of the big projects I do here will have to be more independent, and not associated with the health post. I have been coordinating with all the NGOs that work here, and we are starting a hygiene campaign tomorrow. Also, one thing I am really excited about is grants. Starting in June, I can apply for small grants from Peace Corps associations. Some of the projects that are needed here require some investment. The amount needed is not a lot, but definitely more than people here can financially handle. I had to wait this long to apply because Peace Corps wants to be sure the volunteer is committed. I am starting to see why Peace Corps volunteers are in their sites for two years. From what I have heard from other volunteers, now and especially the second year is when things get good and projects really get rolling.

I have been in Lima for the last week, for a course in project design management. The idea wash to come with an important member of the community, design a project, and come back to site ready to implement it. I decided to bring the president of our youth club, because he works with a group of teenagers that seem eager to help me. But the week was pretty much a disaster. My partner showed up late to Lima, so the course started late. We had agreed to design a model house for the community, but he changed his mind to water management. Fine. I went with that. But then he wanted to start a tourist restaurant in town. I would stake my life on the fact that I will never see a tourist here, so I convinced him otherwise. We actually came out of the conference with a good water management plan, but it was a rough week. I did all of the work, and my partner hit on a married volunteer and took pictures of her when she wasn’t looking. Then after I sent him off to the bus station (Peace Corps gives our partners money for travel), and a half an hour later he called asking for more money. A loan, he said. I debated giving it to him, but couldn’t leave him stranded in Lima. So I said I would come. Right now, there are forty three heads of state in Lima for an economic forum, and most of the city is on lockdown, and we were told to lay low as foreigners. But of course my partner chose to leave on a cheap bus, in a bad part of town. It took me a while to find a brave taxi driver, but we made it safe. The upside of the week was seeing good friends from training, the best food I have eaten in Peru, and hot showers.

I am actually about to complete six months at site, and nine months in Peru. I also have been a college graduate for a year now. Time somehow seems to move fast and slow here. Mostly the days drag on but the weeks and months are passing by quickly. I often talk with other volunteers about this, and we also wonder how much weird(er) we will be when we come back home. I know at least I have to polish up my table manners when I get return. Between snot rocketing at the dinner table and only using spoons at my old house, and eating on my bed now, I may have some work to do. But I am working and living in a different country with two different languages, so I’ll give myself a pass. One nice aspect of my life here is I definitely have time to think and sort things out. If you’re reading this, congratulations to my cousins Carly and Mary who just graduated high school, and congratulations to Aaron, Trista, Justin, Laura and Tara who are now Purdue alumni. And happy 24^th to Parker, wish I could be in Vegas to celebrate with you.

I have opened the blog back up to pubic commenting, so just don't click on a name or a link that you don't know.

Two Weeks, Rice and Potato Free

2008-04-25T15:56:00.006-05:00

I decided to go cold turkey on potaotos and rice since I moved into the new place. It has been difficult at times, but I think I m through the worst. I had the shakes for a while, but I have started to calm down. Seriously though, it has been really nice to be able to cook my own food, be on my own schedule and eat in the proportions that I want. I was feeling a lot better, until I got sick again. It is not so bad this time, and I have almost finished another round of antibiotics. Overall though, things are better. While I do not have a host family like most of the other volunteers here, I still have a relationship with the family I am renting the room from. It is ideal for me, I can be as independent as I want, and still have people to talk when I feel like it. In the house I am in now there is a family, some construction workers, and a bunch of teachers from the school. Everyone is nice, and they actually know my name and use it. The other day, the mother of the house brought me a sack of potatos and asked me if I knew how to eat them. Yeah lady, I do. Its the thought that counts though.

My new room is above our towns biggest store, so all I have to do is walk downstairs to get my food. I usually eat a couple of eggs for breakfast, cheese and avocado sandwich for lunch, and soup for dinner. I have credit in the store where I live, and pay the first of every month. Food, electricity and rent cost me about 50 dollars a month, whch is a pretty good deal here in Peru. My new place is crawling with animals just like the last place, but the stupid ones (ducks) are caged off. As you can see, we have a lot of cats, or mishikuna in en Quechua. My Quechua learning is going along pretty well. I am starting to talk a lot more in it, and understand sometimes if I care that day. People really get a kick when I speak in my Quechua/Spanish mixture. I am going to be taking more lessons in Huaraz stating in May. It is hard to learn from the people in my community because no one can write it, and their Spanish is pretty bad too. I dont think I will be able to do really good work and gain peoples confidence until I get a lot better, but I ll get there.

My second community partner abruptly quit this week. She left without saying goodbye to anyone. I guess she just had enough of the community. But luckily, we just hired a new doctor. Hopefully, she will be someone good to work with. We have talked a few times, and she seems excited to work with me. I am not going to expect anything though. The pay in my community is horrible and the people are very closed off and speak Quechua, so I have been told that retention rates of medical personnel is bad here. Right now my focus is on two programs called Healthy Schools and Healthy Families and Homes. With the program of Healthy Families and Homes, I will choose ten families to work with closely, giving them demonstrations showing how to improve their higiene and nutricion. The school program involves training teachers and improving the higiene in each room.

I was all set to buy the monkey two weeks ago, but then I had to move, so I put it off for a while. I now have a lot of traveling to do, so I will aim for the middle of May. I want to be able to stay in site for a while with him, and just be settled. Also, hopefully he can pick the fleas off me and my room. The only complaint about the new place is fleas. I counted about sixty bites on me today. I am doing a major fumigation on Sunday. Fleas are very annoying, but compared to what other volunteers in the hot weather have to deal with, its not too bad. Here is my kitchen, which makes me very happy. I have a stove, pots and pans, and a blender. I just stocked up on protein powder too. You can see the sack of potatos I wont eat under the table. Check out my links, I just uploaded a bunch of really good pictures of the mountains and some of my new place.

Finally Moved

2008-04-13T10:04:00.005-05:00

After a long period of uncertainty, I finally made the move to a new place. I think this will be a lot better living situation for me. I actually will be one hundred percent independent now, making my own schedule and eating what I want. I am now renting a room above one of our town stores. The room is a lot nicer, with two windows and a concrete floor. I also have access to a shower and an indoor latrine. So my record for consecutive days without a shower will stand at sixteen. My new shower is still cold, but I don´t care. It will feel nice to be able to bathe whenever I want. I am the most excited about cooking for myself, and eating healthier food in the proportions that I want. Gone are the days of eating french fries at five in the morning and only potatoes for dinner. I will start gaining some wait back too, and hopefully I will stop being sick all the time. The goodbye to my old host family went well; I fought the urge to just leave without saying much. Instead, I used my grown up manners and left on a good note. I am still welcome back at their house to eat in case I feel the need for a carbohydrate overload. Above is a reason why you should come visit, a mountain called Huascaran. It is the world´s highest tropical mountain. I am starting climbing lessons in May, and my goal is to climb it next year.

These last two weeks were the busiest I have had in Peru so far. If you know me well, you know this means I have been happy too. All of the other volunteers here in my department and I put on a play in our communities. This involved a lot of travel, and it was good to see other volunteers in their natural habitats. My community really enjoyed the play, and showing off ten of my white friends gained me some respect and recognition in town, except from the lady who throws rocks. She has not happy to see all of us, and she called my friends garbage and told them to get out. Everyone else in town was nice though. After the play, I got back to site on Thursday and then left again with my youth group to vistit Lima and see guinea pig farm and a pipeline that runs under my community to the coast. My boss was due to visit me on Friday morning, and I had made clear to the youth director that I had to be back Thursday night. He assured me over and over that there would be a bus to get me back to site in time. But, when we got to Lima, there wasn´t one. Lima is an eight hour bus ride to Huaraz, my capital city, and from there it is another three to five to my site. So, I had to take group taxis all the way back. It was absolutley miserable, but I beat my boss back to my site by two hours. The above picture is me, our health trainer and some kids in October in a department called Cajamarca.

Other than being dead tired for my boss´visit, it went very well. She basically just talked to my health post and introduced me to some people in a nearby town that can supervise my post. I also have a new responsibilty now as a water and sanitation volunteer. I am still a community health volunteer, but since I have a science background, I can do this too. I am not sure what I will be doing, but I have a meeting on Tuesday to find out. We also have hired a new doctor and a lab tech for our health post, and they are actually in town and the doctor will start work tomorrow. Our new lab tech has been working for a month and is probably my best friend in town. He is the only one in town my age that doesn´t have kids and doesn´t try to make me drink warm beer at seven in the morning. He also has horses and is teaching me to ride them. So all and all, I am coming off my two best weeks here. I´m still pretty tired, but and have a lot to do. But, I´m young, have lots of energy, and not going to let this opportunity pass me by. From now on, if you try to post comments, they will not show up right away. Because I have been having problems with nerds posting spam as comments, everything is screened through my email before it is posted. Remember, don´t click on anything if you´re not sure who or what it is. My blog is open to the public, which means computer geeks with too much time can mess with you. If you´re reading this Robyn, Happy Birthday!

Monkey, Microscope, Marathon

2008-03-29T12:13:00.000-05:00

These are the three things that are dominating my time and thoughts right now. After a great week in Huaraz with my mom, her best friend, and a bunch of other volunteers, I am ready to get back to work. It was actually nice to get to back to site and back to a slower pace of life. Spending a week with Americans made me realize how little I at least valued my do nothing time back home. While I may spend way too much time here throwing rocks at poultry, at least I don’t get stressed about it. When I am done with the Peace Corps, I plan to travel back home by bus. I have a few reasons for doing this: monkey smuggling should be easier, I want to travel and I have friends in Honduras and El Salvador. To make my travels easier, I sent pretty much all of my stuff home with my mom, both of my suitcases filled to the brim. I had to wheel both of these through town to get to my bus. It was quite an event for the people here, even more so than when I shave. Other white boy watching events are petting a dog, unlocking a door (can he do it?), and watching make emergency bathroom stops at 15,000 feet. Similarly, vital questions to ask a foreigner include, “how much did that cost you?”, ‘when are you taking me to the

United States

?’ and the all important “are you here to leave your seed?” One of my project goals is to start a garden, so technically the answer is yes, and a lot of them. Actually, the correct answers to the above questions are “it was a gift”, “when you learn English and have enough money”, and “we’ll see.”

My mom dad and some good people at Purdue University were responsible for getting a microscope down here to me. I, along with another volunteer close to me, am going to get some science classes started down here with our students. I am sure that most of the kids have never seen a microscope, let alone used one. I am pretty excited about this project, and I hope to get a few kids interested in science. Something else that may get kids interested in science, a monkey! I am picking Mr. Bojangles, a squirrel monkey, up off the street corner in Huaraz on April 13^th. I finally got to move into my new room with a concrete floor and a decent ceiling this week. I am spending the next two weeks getting everything ready; it’s a lot of work. I am walling off the room with fencing, and stringing a bunch of ropes from wall to wall, and have newspapers under the fencing so I can clean up after him. He is going to eat mostly fruits and vegetables, but I have protein and vitamin powder I am going to mix with milk. I am getting him vaccinated for at least rabies, and am doing research to see what else he needs. I don’t know what else to buy right now, but I’m sure there is something missing. I know this will probably be a disaster, but I just gotta do it.

I have signed up for a marathon during the first week of July this summer. I am able to train uphere now, because the rain has stopped and I found a good spot about a half an hour away on a highway. I finally got a good topographical map for the area, thanks dad, and my town is about 12,000 feet, and the highway is a little lower. This should be good to get my appetite up and get me in shape. I eat potatoes everyday until I want to puke, so maybe I’ll be able to increase my carbohydrate intake this way. I don’t think I can really lose any more weight, and I usually gain weight when I train for something hard. If not, I can just get a job as a war camp extra in the movies when I get back. Is that offensive? I don’t know, so go google puppies and kittens if you don’t like it. But it’s not all monkeys and running down here, I am doing work. Right now there is a national campaign for Hepatitis B vaccination for kids between the ages of 2 and 19 for the month of April. My health post is responsible for vaccinating about 1,000 kids here, and there are only three of us. I am also continuing with health surveys in our neighboring communities. I am presenting my diagnostic of these and the other surveys to my community in early May. For the next week, all of the volunteers here in Ancash and I are performing a play to the schools at each of our sites. There are eleven of us in total, so we will be doing a lot of traveling. Plays aren’t really my thing, so I have a small role. What I am really interested in seeing is the projects of volunteers that have been here for a while. That’s all I got for this week, I’ll update next in two weeks or sooner if I can.

Monkey Countdown, Three Weeks

2008-03-17T18:08:00.000-05:00

One thing I have learned so far here in the Peace Corps is that I will be traveling a lot. I just spent at week at site after a trip to a beach called Huanchaco, and tomorrow I will be traveling to Lima to pick up my Mom and her best friend from the airport. We will spend a day in Lima, visit my host family from training and then come back to Huaraz to do some sight-seeing. We have day hikes planned to some glacier lakes called Llaganuco and a glacier at 14,00 feet called Pasoruri. There will be at least eight other volunteers from my training group here plus volunteers from other groups. Holy Week is a big deal in Peru, especially in Huaraz. The city is expected to have 10,00 visitors this week, and it is only a city of 80,000 people. It should be a good time. This is a picture of a ruin called Chan Chan, which is on the northern coast of Peru and is supposedly the largest adobe city ever created. I forget the name of the culture, maybe it´s called Chimu, but it predated the Incas and was eventually conquered by them.

I was on the beach in Huanchaco for an event called Reconnect, where all of the volunteers from my training group got back together to see each other and have meetings with our program directors. I was nice to see everyone after three months, relax on the beach and swap ideas. I definitely came back refreshed and ready for more work. It is amazing how quicky the scenery and climate changes here in Peru. I traveled in seven hours from Huanchaco, where it was hot and sunny, 11,000 feet back to the mountains where it was snowing and freezing cold. Other than getting a little sick from the altitude change, I love this variation. I feel like I am a bus ride away from lots of different countries. I have to say though, I like the mountains the best. The scenery is awesome, and it´s cold enough that I don´t smell that bad after not showering for a week or two.

Life at my site is definitely getting better in every way; work, family life, Quechua and weather. I decided to put on a charm offensive to my host family to see if I could get a good response, and it worked. This past week was the best I have had with them, so I have decided to stay for now. We got the concrete layed in my new room and I am going to buy some paneling for the ceiling. Hopefully we can continue down this path, but I think most of the work is up to me. My work with the health post is better too. We are doing health surveys in the communities and it is my job to hike around and ask the questions. I like this a lot, because it eats up time and the views are awesome. In April, we are doing a Hepatitis B campaign, and I will help by making sure everyone gets their shot. The rainy season here is finally starting to end, which makes everything easier. Everyone is in a better mood, it is warmer and the views of the mountains are incredible. To the west of me I can see the Cordillera Blanca (white mountain range) and to the east I can see the Huincush. I actually live in the foothills of the Huincush, and I never realized that the range is snow covered until this week, when the clouds broke. One of the communities I work in is a two hour hike straight up, and almost in the snow. I am starting to understand Quechua a lot better now. I can get the basic idea of what my host family says. Big suprise, they talk abot rain and potatos a lot. At least I havn´t been missing out on anything important. This picture is me, Dave and Martha at Reconnect. It´s nice to enjoy a cold bear with friends at night. In contrast, I can´t walk anywhere in site without a drunk old man trying to shove warm beer down my face at eight in the morning. I´m still an Evangelical in site, but I convert to full-blooded Catholicism everywhere else.

I have been sick for a while now, to be polite I will diagnose the problem as too many number three´s. I was feeling pretty good today as I got on the bus to Huaraz, as I had already performed my morning quita of latrine trips. About an hour into the ride however, I started feeling sick, but I pretended that it was just the altitude. (we go up to 15000 feet to get to the city) But it was another number three ready to go. The thing about number three´s is when they are very impatient, and must be dealt with immediately if you want to keep your pants and dignity unsoiled. So I grabbed my toilet paper and went running and banged on the bus door to stop. The driver obliged, and I went runnning behind a boulder to take care of business. Walking back to the back of the bus was pretty embarassing. Of course the entire bus had watched the white boy run out of the bus with his toilet paper. Everyone was laughing. At least I brought some happiness into their lives. All of the volunteers I have talked to here have a similar kind of story, in fact my department is famous for pants pooping. I hope this is my only experience like this, but somehow I doubt it.

Spring Break!

2008-02-29T16:37:00.000-05:00

I´m back in the big city today, and headed to the beach on Sunday. I have now been an official volunteer for three months, and have been in Peru for almost six months. This means I am about 20% done with my time here. Time is going by pretty quickly, although some days are longer than others. Definitely more ups than downs so far, and I think things will be improving soon. I am set to move to the new house on March 11th, and have a new community partner to work with. I finished with my summer school classes two weeks ago, and this is the map of the world we made in class. We still need to label everything, but the hard work is over. We´re also putting a giant pengiun on Antarctica, where the chair is. The map is ten feet tall by twenty feet long. It was a lot harder to make than I thought, especially because I was working with little kids and I´m not very good with details. To make the map, you have to draw a grid of 1,568 squares, and then copy segment by segment all the countries, and then you color. It took us about two months to get done. I made the United States disproportionally larger than it should be, just to show them we do things big back home.

I am really excited to get another community partner. She is an obstetrician at the health post, my age and a good person to talk too. This last week we wrote up a work plan to implement a government program for health families and houses. The next step of this program will be to do health interviews with every house and do an inspection. From there, we will identify houses with the most serious health problems and choose fifty or so to work with more closely. I am also going to our neighboring communities to weigh and measure the height of children. This is a view from one of the communities, of my village. I am not allowed to say the name, but my house is in there somewhere.

Something else that is going well is my project of improved stoves. I am writing up a work plan to present to the community. I basically want to build these kitchens, they´re called cocinas mejoradas if you want to look it up, in every house that wants one. The benefits of these stoves are less firewood is used, less injuries of little kids who play by the fire, and less lung and eye problems for the mothers. Almost all the houses here cook with firewood and an open flame. The smoke is awful, and does real damage if you´re exposes to it for a long time. The only drawback to the stoves is they cost a lot, about 150 dollars, and I want to build about 200. To get funding, I´m planning on asking the district government and the mine that´s up the mountain. The above picture is of our cat Tsuy Suy, rejecting her potato soup. My current host family is trying to feed her only potatos, saying that she will just have to get used to it. I sneak her milk and tuna when they´re not around.

After three months of service, Peace Corps pays for all of the volunteers to get together on the beach in Huanchaco, Trujillo. The event is called Reconnect, and I really don´t know what we´re going to do. I have to give a presentation about my community, and probably sit through a bunch of Power Points. But I get to see all of my friends, and be in the warm dry weather. I am taking two vacation days after to sit around and be worthless. In site it has gotten colder and wetter in the last month. I have not been able to wash my clothes for forever, and my feet really stink. I am planning on dropping my clothes off at a laundrymat here in Huaraz and airing my feet out at the beach. This little guy is one of my neighbors. He has three siblings, all one year apart in age. They always make my day with their greeting. When I leave the house at 7:30 every morning, they all scream out the only two English phrases they know, ¨Good evening!,¨and ¨What´s your name?¨ They have know idea what either means, but it always puts a smile on my face. Check out my links, I have most of my pictures up and my Grandpa´s and roommate from school´s blogs. That´s all I got for this week, and going to go shower, eat too much, and use a toilet!

Big News

2008-02-09T18:14:00.000-05:00

I´ve got big news in all aspects of my life. In order of importance, I´m getting a monkey in April, I will be changing host families as soon as I can, and my communty partner and his replacement quit. I´ll detail all of this later on. For the last few weeks, I have been busy with my summer vacation classes. Attendance has tapered off a little bit, because it´s potato harvesting time and some kids have to work in the fields. Next week is the closing of classes for us. We´re going to have a little party with Inca Cola and cookies. We have been working on a map of the world every other day in class. It´s nine by eighteen feet and has been a disaster to make, but an awesome disaster. Mixing little kids, heights and ladders in not a good mix. We haven´t had an injury yet, but a lot of paint spills. To keep order, I line the kids up single file, and let them paint two at a time for two minutes. How do I keep order, you ask? Yelling and cookies, that´s about it. It works very well. I´have enjoyed these classes a a lot but am ready for them to be over. I have been talking to the nurses at my health post and with a NGO or what I will be doing after this. It looks like my work will consist of visiting neighboring communities to do weight and height checks for the kids. I will also be doing house visits to pregnant women and helping with a vaccanation campaign. I also can´t spell anymore. With the NGO, and will be helping build these improved kitchens I have been talking about.

One day while wandering the streets of Huraz, I walked past an old man selling parakeets and turtles. I had seen him before, but never stopped to look. This time I did, and asked him if he could get me a monkey. He said, ¨No, I have one right here.¨ He reached into his bag and pulled out a brown monkey the size of my palm. It is only a few months old, and seemed well behaved. It only costs fifty dollars, so I was sold. I talked to a vet here in the city and he said I can get in vaccinated and get flea medicine for pretty cheap. So right now, I am going to build a good sized cage and get ready. The monkey´s name will be Mr. Bojangles regardless of sex, or BoJo for short. He will dance, clean and occasionally fill in for me when I feel like I need a break. I have a lot of traveling to do until the end of March, but Mr. Bojangles will have a new home pretty soon. The above picture is where we eat pounds of potatos every day.

This week was the last straw with my host family. I have lived with them for almost as long as I lived with my host family in Lima. I am having the exact opposite experience. Instead of feeling more and more happy, I just get more frustrated. The mountain people in Peru are more reserved than people in Lima and the coast, and I know that I am too. But I can also tell when people don´t have a lot to say or just not nice. The two older host brothers are moving out in March, so I would be left to myself with bascially the host mom and her army of animals. The only thing I will miss will be throwing rocks at the ducks. They have to be the dumbest animals on the planet. I will clock one in the face with a (small) rock, it quacks, walks in a circle, and comes back for more. My host dad brought home a kitten this week, and said her name was gringa. This made me feel great, I am bascially given the same status as a kitten. Then, he decided to rename the cat after a volunteer that lives about an hour away whom he has never met. That´s when I decided it was time to go.

My doctor also decided it was time to go. I was walking up to my house one day, and he came cruising by on his motorcycle. I said good morning, and he blew me of and kept going. I learned later that day that he had quit and that was probably his exit from the town for good. My favorite nurse also quit, so that kinda sucks. The doctor was understandably really busy all the time, and didn´t have time for me. The town will be getting a new doctor and nurse in a few months, so hopefully I can get a fresh start with both of them. I am in Huaraz right now, the sickest I have been in Peru. I won´t go into details, but I´ll just say that I setting records in the bathroom visting department. I´m on antibiotics, so hopefully it shoud clean up soon. In site, I am understanding Quechua more everyday, and have another round of classes in one wek, so check back for more soon. If you´re reading this Debbie, thanks for the microscope!

Quechua Classes, Binge Eating

2008-01-20T12:37:00.000-05:00

That´s all I´m going to do this week. Peace Corps is paying to put me up for a week in Huaraz, so I can have some formal Quechua language training. This means a week of hot showers and good food. My host mom has not been trying to hard with the food preparation the last few weeks. It has been potatoes and more potatoes for almost every meal. French fries for breakfast, french fries for lunch, or six or seven potatoes for dinner with soup. I usually buy chicken and eggs for the whole family, but I forgot to bring money back to site with me, so it has been a rough two weeks eating wise. I will never repeat this mistake again. But I´m in the big city for a week now, so I´ll make up for the food I´ve been missing. I start classes tomorrow with four other volunteers. I´m really glad for this oppurtunity, Quechua is an orally transmitted language, so it is difficult to learn because no one in town knows how to write it. I have picked up some basics, but I can´t form sentences or really express myself yet. The Quechua we speak in my town is different from the Quechua that they speak here in Huaraz, but there are enough similarities that the classes will be useful. In the Andean region in Peru, there are two major classes of Quechua, one in Anchash, where I live, and another in the south of Peru and Bolivia and Chile. My region speaks Quechua that is older, but more influenced by Spanish. Sometimes I think I understand what my family is saying, but this is only because they speak a mix of Spanish and Quechua. The other class of Quechua, known as legitimate Quechua, is spoken by a lot more people and is less influenced by Spanish. Even in my region in Ancash, there are different dialects. For example, my family is from a town about five hours away, and they speak differently than the people in our town. Hopefully, by the end of this week, I can get the basics down and build off that once I get back to site. The above picture is a glacier lake that I pass traveling from Huaraz to my site, it´s even more beautiful in person.

My summer school classes are going really well. After the first week, the numbers of students leveled off to about twenty five per class, which is a lot better than the forty five that I had with the grade schoolers. A lot of kids have to miss class because they work in the fields with their families. It´s hard to imagine for us in the United States six and seven year olds missing school to work ten hours a day in the fields, but´s that´s how life is here. Every day before I start class, I do a hand cleanliness inspection. All of the kids hands are rock hard and scratched up from the work that they do, and it´s amazing how hard they have to work to help their families farm. After the inspection, I start class by checking homework. I usually give the kids something to draw, like the difference between a person who brushes their teeth and someone who doesn´t. They all really like to draw, and almost all of them do their homework. I tell my students when all of them do their homework and have clean hands, I´ll bring them a suprise. I doubt this will happen, but we´ll see. My main project with the high schoolers right now is painting a map on the wall in my classroom. It´s going to be nine by eighteen feet when we finish. All that´s left to do now is paint, which should be pretty easy. That hardest part was drawing the grid, and all of the countries with scatterbrained students. With the grade schoolers, I am talking about basic higiene topics and palying little games to keep them interested. The maximun time I can hold their attention is about an hour. During one class this week, everyone was being really quiet and well behaved. This made me really happy, until I looked in the back row, where a little boy had stood up and decided to pee on the floor in the room. As soon as he was done, he sat down and began dilgently copying what I had written on the board. I really didn´t know what to do, so I pretended it didn´t happen. Then on the way back home, I saw an old man on the side of the road, hunched over. He looked like he was in pain or looking for something, but no, he was drunk and pooping. I tried to pretend this didn´t happen either, but he started yelling and wanted to talk. I just kept walking and didn´t look back. Stuff like this happens more often that I would like to see, but it does make for good stories.¨ The chicken up there is my arch nemesis at my house. Like my host my says, ¨chickens make poop.¨

I have also started English classes with the high schoolers who have to work in the day. Right now, we are building a new school, so a lot of the boys are working in the day and don´t have time. We are meeting three times a week for an hour. It´s only about ten students, but they really want to learn and are helping me with Quechua too. The other work I am doing right now is house to house interviews. The questions mainly pertain to women and children, and are focused on nutrition and higiene. The biggest problems that I have seen so far are respiratory infections, diarrea and a basic lack of knowledge for keeping the house clean and safe for children. My host family is a perfect example; my mom washes dishes with her dirty hands and dirty water, we have chickens that poop on the stove, rats on the table. I bring my host mom soap and a scrub brush, so we´re making some progress here. It´s amazing to see what we take for granted back home, what seems like common sense. The good news about this is that there is plenty of oppurtunity for wok. I am really anxious to start a kitchen project in town. Nearly every house could use a improved kitchen that has a chimney to ventilate the smoke outside. Everyone here cooks with wood, inside their house with no ventilation. My house is a little better, because we eat outside. But after sitting at the table, my eyes are stinging from the smoke. This is a picture of the mountains I can see from my house when it´s not raining.

My work with the health post has not been going as well as I would like. My community partner, the town doctor has been really busy. I´m supposed to talk to him almost every day, but he is never there. This week, I passed him on the street, and he blew me off. But I learned later that day that he quit. One of the nurses also quit too. I´m actually glad this happened; it could be a good oppurtunity to be more active when the new doctor an nurse arrive. In our health post, we work in the town, as well as eight other surrounding communities. Some of these communities are close, I can walk in a half hour. Others are really high and far. The furthest is two hours away by car, and really, really high. The views from this community are awesome, I can see the highest mountain range in Peru. I would love to work in these communities more if I get the chance. Especially when I get my horse, it will be a lot easier for my to travel by myself. All I need now to get it is some land. I am investigating buying a field or renting land to keep it.

Family life is still the same; I´m still a gringo and in the same room. But I´m moving tomorrow, of course. I thought my two new host brothers would help my parents learn my name, but the opposite has happened. My host parents taught Etzon and Vincent to call me gringo. I don´t really care anymore. The only time it bothers me is in the morning; I´m not very cheerful when I wake up. I don´t think explaining to my family that I don´t like talking a lot after I wake up would go over too well. Last Wednesday, I was eating with my host sister´s four year old. He is really misbehaved, and was being uncharacteristally good this day. Then he took a big mouthful of food, looked at me, and spit it all in my face. His mom just laughed and said, ¨he is misbehaved.¨ I just nodded my head yes, and kept eating my potatoes. On days like these, it is important to have a good sense of humor. That´s all I got for this post, I have a lot of eating and showering to do. I went thirteen days without bathing since the last post, it was pretty nasty, but I was still one of the cleanest people in my town. If you´re reading this Mel, congratulations on your invitation to El Salvador, I´ll be visiting you sometime!

One Month Down

2008-01-01T13:11:00.001-05:00

Life in my town is getting better, little by little. Everyone has calmed down after the town party and Christmas. My family did not really do anything for Christmas, except for some fruit cake eating, but it was really just for the little kids. My living situation is about the same. I am supposed to be switching rooms any day now, but we will see how that goes. I ask my host dad every day when I can lay the concrete and put up a ceiling, and he always says tomorrow is the day. My host parents still do not know my name, or just prefer to call me the gringo. The good news is that two of my host brothers have moved in for a few months, and they know my name, and are really great to talk to. Their names are Etzon and Yunior, 22 and 23 years old. It seems like we have a lot in common, and hopefully they will help me communicate better with the host parents. My host mom is the biggest challenge, because she does not speak Spanish a lot and is almost deaf. She is a really sweet lady, but I struggle to talk to her. The other day I asked her if she could boil me some water to drink, and she said, The potatos are drying out, I hope it rains soon, and then she walked off, completely satisfied with this answer. That is how most of our conversations go.

On the work front, I am making some progress. So far, I really have not done much work, just walking around and getting to know the community. But tomorrow I am starting to give some clases in the schools. All of the students are on vacation now, so this is a good opportunity to talk with them. I will be teaching four hours a day, doing all different kinds of activities. Monday is a sports camp, Tuesday is English classes, on Wednesdays we are painting a map of the world, Thursdays are for gardens and cages for animals, and Fridays I will talk about health topics. I think all they really care about is the English class, but they have to come to all the sessions if they sign up. Right know, I have about eighty kids, but I am guessing that about half will show up. I am excited to get started and show the people in my town I do more than walk around and ask dumb questions. I have met a lot of people doing this, and it is starting to pay off. This past week, I got the keys to the town hall and to they school, so I am definitely gaining the confidence of important community members.

So far, the most interesting part of this experience has been people watching. The funniest thing the people do in my town is shameless nose picking. I sat through an hour meeting on Saturday, while the president talked and picked her nose the entire time. She was not just picking, she was mining. She would stick her finger up her nose, wiggle it around, and then examine her finding. About half the audience was doing this too. If boogers were gold, this people would be rich. After this habit, another thing we do here is throw our food or water on the ground when we are done eating. I understand that nose picking can be satisfying, but I still have not figured this one out yet. We also sweet the dirt road, and water our wood floors everyday. I have tried to sweep my room, but when my host mom catches me, she gets a bucket of water and throws it in my room. We have tea with every meal, and my family loves to dump loads of sugar in the cup. I do not like sugar in my tea, and my family does not understand this. They tell me I will get sick, and they put oregano in my tea instead, explaining to me that its almost as good as sugar for keeping me healthy. I would argue that keeping the ducks off our table would help this cause, but what do I know. I actually have been healthy, except for a few colds. I am struggling to keep my weight up, but I have protein powder and am eating a lot of eggs. My typical meal usually consists of potatos and boiled wheat. A few nights ago, I had a feast of six whole potatos and oregano tea. Once I get my new room, I will start cooking two meals a day for myself.

This weekend, I was in Huaraz to celebrate New Yeras with the other volunteers in my department. It was a good time, just a typical New Years at a local bar. In Peru, they wear yellow underwear outside of their clothes for good luck, so I did too. Except I wore a suit and tie also. I will get some pictures up of this later, I looked pretty good. I was the tallest, whitest person in the bar, dancing badly with womens panties over my dress pants. I am stuck in Huraz today, because its a holiday and I forgot that there is no bus service. I guess I will be ok with one more night with a hot shower, and a room without fleas and rats. I could take a taxi back tonight, but it costs more and people are telling me its not the best day to be on the roads in Peru anyway, because of the drunks. Safety first, of course. I will be back in Huaraz next weekend for our monthly meeting so I will update again soon. This is a picture of my house, the backyard.

Eat Your Bread Gringo!

2007-12-14T16:59:00.000-05:00

That´s what I hear every morning about five thirty. Life starts early every day here in the mountains, and there is really no way to escape it. There are roosters, dogs, music, and my host mom to get me up, bright and early. I have been living with my new host family for about two weeks now, and they still refuse to use my name. They prefer to call me the gringo. I am trying to train the youngest member of the family, Beckham, to say Mike, and I think he is learning. Hopefully he will be able to influence the rest of the family. I have a big host family, with a mom , dad, four brothers, one sister and her child. After Chrismas, there will only be me, the mom, dad, and two brothers in the house. The first part of last week was pretty rough. I was spoiled rotten in Lima. Here in my new house we have no toilet, shower, kitchen or sink. We eat outside with all of the farm animals. I have only showered four times in the last two weeks, but am able to clean the strategic areas every day. But on the bight side I am developing strong leg muscles from the latrine, will save money on toiletries, and am developing a super-charged immune system. Plus I have a view of the second highest mountain chain in the world from my backyard.

Guess why I have had a cold for the last week and a half? Is it because; I eat my food where chickens, ducks and pigs do their business, the dishes are washed with dirty hands and cold water, or because my room is so dirty my teeth turn brown if my mouth is open? The answer is of course, because I drank a cold soda. Cooled beverages are feared here, my host mom warned me not to drink it. I am such an idiot. One of my first projects in the community is building a stove and cages with my host dad. Hopefully this will cut down on the level of dirtiness in our house, and help me draw up blueprints for future projects. I also will be switching rooms in a few weeks, and I am putting concrete on the floors in the house to stop all of the dirt. This past week was a very busy one in my town, with the annual week long party. I got to meet a lot of people, and see a lot of intersting things. But I mostly saw old drunk men falling over. I have never seen such a collection of absolutely trashed people in my life. I went home from the town party at eight or nine every night to get away from the craziness, but even at eleven in the morning people were still out stumbling around. Beer and an alcohol made from corn called chincha was brought in by the truck-load, and mule-load too.

On Wednesday, the party ended with a bull fight. A matador from Spain came and killed three bulls in front of the whole town. I have never seen a bull fight before, it is very interesting to see but pretty gruesome up close too. I was glad to see the party end, so I can get to start some real work. This coming week I have meeting with the directors of the primary and high schools, the president of the youth club, and will be traveling with my health post to neighboring communities. Vacaciones start after Christmas in the school here, and it is important to get started with some activities before them. I am planning on having English classes, basketball camp and all Peace Corps volunteers in my program have to paint a map of the world in a public place, so I will do that too. After three months, I will start projects based on what I have observed that the community needs. The internet connection that is close to my house sucks, so I have to go all the way to Huaraz for email. So, I will probably be updating this every two weeks at the most. My pictures are updated now, too. Right now, I am in Huaraz to pick up some concrete and some real food. Gringos like more than bread and rice for every meal.

Glad That´s Over

2007-12-01T19:26:00.000-05:00

Well, I just got done with training yesterday, and I am extremely happy to be done. The last eleven weeks have been some of the most boring and frustrating of my life. But mostly, they were just awkward. Imagine bringing a group of fourty people together that don´t know each other and are all a little weird to start out with, stripping away all independence from them, and doing plays about our feelings everyday. Throw in language difficulties and you have a recipe for a lot of uncomfortable moments. To cap off this period of time, yesterday was our swearing in ceremony. The first lady of Peru came to speak to us, she gave a very nice speech. But on the way to the microphone, she tripped and almost fell. Then I started to laugh, but composed myself. Then, when we were swearing in, one of the lines went something like, I will do my duty in Peru¨ One of my friends said quietly, ¨¨I have already done my duty seven times today.¨ She was refering to using the restroom, so I stated to laugh again, but this time it was louder. I almost had to excuse myself. I still have some growing up to do, I know. After the ceremony, we took pictures and drank a lot of soda, and said goodbye to our families. Mine was crying, just like everyone else´s. After that, I we wanted to do was get on the bus and leave. But because everthing here has to be awkward, the Peace Corps decided to rent us a van that wasn´t big enough. We spent an hour loading the van ourselves, while the training staff and the families stood by and watched. Everyone´s family was taking pictures of us struggling to fit in. I have never waved goodbye so many times in my life. I was a little sad to see my family go, but after the 20th goodbye, it just got funny and I couldn´t take anything serously. The above picture is my host family Gloria, Laura Luz, Ana Li, and Armando.

After this spectacle of uncomfortableness, we went to Lima to celebrate. They treated us good here. We ate at a fancy restaurant on the beach, and then to one of the nicest nightclubs I have every been to. It was really nice to let off some steam and celebrate. Although training was pretty much awful, the good part about is was the people I have met. Everyone in the group is different, but are laid back and very easy to get along with. I can honestly say that I like everyone in the group. While I didn´t enjoy the training, I did make some good friends during my time here so far. It was hard to split up from everyone today, but I know have a network of people I can talk to all over the country. In my new site, I am 30 minutes away from two other volunteers, but I have not met them yet. There are ten or eleven volunteers in Ancash, three from my group, including myself. We have monthly meeting, and I think I get to meet everyone tomorrow.

Now I can start doing actual work, what I came here for in the first place. In my first three months, I have to do a community diagnostic, which is basically getting to know my site and figuring out what projects need to be done. I already know there are big problems with malnutrition, respiratory problems from indoor wood burning kitchens, and problems with infant and mother mortality. I´m also going to teach some english classes and start up a basketball or soccer club. I am going to the site right when the rainy and cold season starts, so the first three months will be tough. I will wait until it gets warmer to get the monkey. I am also getting a horse. Peace Corps gives us a bicycle allowance of US 200 dollars, but I can use it for the horse because I am special and really smart. I have never been more ready for anything in my life. My spanish has gotten better, but it still is not where I want it, but that will change once I have no one to speak english to. I will also learn Quechua, and I think this is be challenging but rewarding. The people of my town expect that I am good at spanish, and if I can get good at their first language, I think they will accept me better. In the last eleven weeks, I have learned and seen a lot. I think I am a little more patient and have learned to laugh things off more easily. I have also picked up a little swearing habit. It helps relieve the stress and people don´t understand anyway, so what the heck. My bus leaves at eleven tonight, and I get into Huaraz at seven in the morning tomorrow. I´m not sure what day I´ll get to my new house, but I´ll be there by Wednesday. I have a cell phone now, email me if you want the number. I think I have computer access about every weekend, so I ´ll try to keep updating. I hope everyone back home is doing well, and if you´re reading this Mikey, Happy Birthday!

Peruvian Thansgiving, Getting Ready to Go!

2007-11-25T18:00:00.000-05:00

This time next week, I will be at my new site in Ancash. I could not be happier about this. We have one more week of training left, mostly administrative things. There will also be lots of good-bye parties that different host families will be throwing for everyone. The last ten weeks have gone by really quickly, and I am sure the next one will too. The staff at the training center cooked us a traditional Peruvian dinner for Thankgiving, called Pachamanca. The process in which the food is cooked is interesting. First, a big hole is dug in the ground and firewood is put in. Then turkey, potatoes, apples, pineapples and a bunch of other stuff is added in layers. Next a tarp is placed over all the food and everything is covered with dirt. Wait a few hours, and you have a pretty good meal. It did not taste like a typical American Thanksgiving dinner, but it turned out to be a pretty good day at the training center. They let us out early on Thanksgiving day to do whatever we wanted, which was nice. This is a group of us on our way to a discoteca in a nearby city called Chosica.

Nothing new happened this week, so I do not have a lot to write about. I went into Lima yesterday to pick up some exercise equipment and some other supplies that are not available close to my new home. We have our swearing in ceremony this Friday, spend the night in Lima that night, and take off for our sites Saturday night. I am looking forward to closing out the training this week and being able to spend time outside of the classroom with the other trainees. Not being home for Thanksgiving was kinda weird, but I still have so much to be thankful for. I have a great American and Peruvian family that supports me, awesome friends, and the oppurtunity to be living and having fun in South America. I cannot wait to get started with these next two years. There is so much out there to see. I am still a little nervous about the people in my site who think white people eat their childrem, but I think in time they will get used to me, and I ll adapt to them. If not, I will walk around with a fork, knife and a bib, and wait outside the school. This is a picture of part of the Cordillera Blanca, which I have to cross everytime I travel to my site. Since I cannot name my town, I can say look up Chavin de Huantar, I can walk to these ruins in a day if I want. My pictures are up now, just click on the link on the right side of the page.

UH OH

2007-11-18T15:24:00.000-05:00

First, the good news. My new site has some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen in my life. In the course of five hours, I saw glacier lakes, 20,000 foot tall mountains, and some pretty big rivers. My town is on the east side of the Cordillera Blanca, in the Valley of Conchucos. It has an altitude of about 10,000 feet, so the landscape there is awesome too. In the mornings, the whole place is covered in clouds. There are a bunch of ecalyptus trees everywhere along the rivers, so everything smells good. From now until April, it rains almost everyday, but not all day. When it is not raining, the sun comes out and its gets pretty warm. I´m guessing its about in the seventies most days. I am five hours by bus from the capital city of Huaraz, and forty minutes walking from the next largest city, San Marcos. Huaraz is a city of 80,000 people, and has prety much everything I will need to keep myself sane. I got my second hot shower in since I´ve been here and a pizza too. I will probably be going to here or San Marcos every couple of weekends to get food and supplies. The above picture is me at 17,000 feet.

I really wanted to rough it when I signed up for the Peace Corps, and that´s what I´m going to be doing for the next two years. My house has no bathroom (they use a latrine instead), no shower, and they cook outside. The kitchen is caved out of a hill and animals are running around everywhere. I saw ducks on the kitchen table and there was a pig sitting close to me while I was eating. The food was decent, but they pretty much only eat rice, potatoes and wheat. I also got to eat french fries for three meals in a row. We had electricity for about ten minutes total the whole week. My family is nice, but a little reserved. I have a host mom and dad, and a fifteen year old brother. My host dad said I could have a monkey if I wanted. The entire town prefers to speak Quechua, although they understand Spanish as well. Spanish is really their secondary language. I was just getting used to hearing Spanish all the time, and know I am going to have to switch languages again. I guess I have a long time to learn, I just hope my Spanish doesn´t get worse.

Just like everything in life, this experience has good and bad elements. Right now, I´m pretty nervous about geting settled in, but I am ready to work. Even though I think this is going to get a lot harder real quick, I wouldn´t trade it for a job or more school; I have seen more in the last couple months than I have in my whole life. I am the first volunteer at my site, and probably the first white person a lot of the people have seen. There is a word in Quechua that means ¨the white person is here to steal your soul and eat your babies.¨ I heard this a few times but can´t remember what it is. The whole week, my family referred to me as the gringo, rather than using my name. I guess they will have to be taught correct manners, just like my monkey will be taught how to dance.

Another Road Trip!

2007-11-11T12:33:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I will be traveling to my site in Ancash to get to know it for about a week. First I will go to the capitol of Ancash, Huaraz and from there I travel to my new city. I am not allowed to say the name of the town for safety reaons, but it is about five hours east of Huaraz. The town has about 2000 people in it, all scattered in the surrounding mountains. It´s pretty remote, I can´t find it on any map That´s about all I know so far, but I´ll be getting a lot more information in the next few days. I´m really happy to be able to get out of Yanacoto. Instead of being a super VIP on a bus with a bed, I will be traveling in the official Peace Corps SUV. This suits me a lot better than the bus, I didn´t really care for the pillows that they gave me last time-not fluffy enough.

In my new site, I have the job title of community health promoter. I am paired with a local doctor, and will be helping in the education of everyone. I kind of have to find my own work when I get there, but there is some structure. The good part about being a volunteer is I have some degree of freedom when I chose my projects. I would like to work with children and in the construction of new kitchens the most. A lot of people in the mountains cook with open fires in their homes, which results in respiratory infections, eye problems and poor living conditions. A new stove can be put in a person´s house for about eighty dollars, and it does a lot of good. Each stove can be made in a day. This is picture of a new kitchen in a school that a volunteer, Travis in Cajamarca, was responsible for constructing. It´s not finished here, we had to leave before it was completed.

When I get back from my trip, I only have two weeks left of training. I can´t wait to be done and get sent out on my own, I´m ready to work. It feels like they are just reading the Peace Corps manual to us, page by page, day after day. Sometimes, we get to make beads out of newspaper, and these are the best days ever. (Thats´s a joke, Mom) My spanish is coming along, but its hard to get really good because everyone speaks english when we´re not in class. I think I´ll get a lot better once I am really immersed in my site with no English speakers at all. I am also going to be learning a language called Quechua, so we´ll see how that goes. At my site, the older people, especially the women, speak Quechua, and I think most people will be bilingual. I really want to get good at it, so I can integrate well into my new community. That´s all for this now. In one more week, I will know whether or not my dream of having a monkey is possible. This is a bull, I didn´t kill or eat him.

Site Assignment and Bunny Killing

2007-11-06T19:00:00.000-05:00

If you have a weak stomach, don´t look at the last picture of this post. But more importantly, I received my site assignment today. For the next two years, I will be living in the department of Ancash here in Peru. Ancash is home to the tallest mountains in South America, and has some of the best scenery in the country. I will be living in a city of about two thousand people, and living in a family of three. I am not allowed to say the name of the city, so email me if you want to know. It is southeast of the main city of Huaraz, in the foothills of the Cordillera Blanca, which means the white mountain range. I am happy with the placement, although it is colder than I had expected. The weather should be in the seventies in the day and thirties to forties at night. I think a monkey would survive there, actually he will have to. I am also looking into getting a horse. Me and some friends begin lessons in a few weeks if our sites are good for horses. I travel to the departmental capitol and my city next Monday, and will find out a lot more details then. This is a picture from my trip to Cajamarca, where we visited some catacombs called the little windows.

Training is getting ridiculous. My health team spent three hours on Friday learning how to properly and efficiently sterilize a bottle of water with bleach, it was terrible. We only have three more weeks of training in the center, and one during the site visit. I am ready to get out of here. We are all being treated like children, and it´s not fun. I understand that they have a big responsibility taking care of forty people in a foreign country, but its getting old. It´s hard living with a host family, although they are really nice. People here do not understand the concept of personal space and privacy. When I get to my new site, I will definitely be laying down some ground rules with my new family. It´s hard to balance intergrating into your community and host family while having time to think.

I killed Juanito and Juanita this weekend. Really, I just helped, but I got my hands bloody, but my host mom couldn´t have done it with out me. This is an experience I will never forget, and probably do not want to repeat anytime soon. I have already been asked to kill one of our family´s guniea pigs for my goodbye dinner, so I´ll do that too. I wish I was here for Christmas, when they let the turkeys drink themselves to death. It also makes the meat more rich
Here are the after and more after pictures of Juanito and Juanita, they tasted really good!

Week Seven, Making Progress on the Monkey

2007-10-30T18:11:00.000-05:00

The road trip went really well, I got to see what the life of a real volunteer is like. We were divided into groups of five within our health program, and went to visit different sites. We first went to Chiclayo on the coast, and from there to a desert community called Alita. After Alita, we went to a larger community further inland, Chota. From here we divided in to smaller groups and spent a day and night in communities in the mountains. I stayed in Cuyumalca, where a volunteer is working on kitchens and higiene projects. The traditional way of cooking here is with an open flame, and the smoke fills the entire house. The volunteer here, Shauna, is constructing kitchens so the smoke leaves through a chimney. With this method, there are less respiratory infections and problems with eyes. I would definitely like to work with these kitchens because they can be finished in two weeks and have a huge impact on the people´s lives. Here is one of our helpers for the day.

There were so many things that we did in the last week, and we covered a lot of ground. Some of the highlights for me were climbing a mountain, seeing rain for the first time in Peru, getting to know the other trainees better, and seeing what my life is going to be like in a few weeks. I was getting pretty anxious that I would have to spend two years out there teaching people how to wash their hands. There is a lot of work out there, but I´ll have to find it. I also learned how to use a latrine properly, sleep in a room with hundreds of guinea pigs, and drink the local moonshine. A group of neighborhood watchmen escorted me to my host family for the night, and I had to drink their liquor with them. (It´s a tradition, seriously) The alcohol is made from sugar cane, but tastes like rubbing alcohol and burns like fire. This is my very first latrine!

The bus rides to our sites were hit or miss. Two of the buses were cold and cramped, but the other two were really nice, better than any other transportation I have been on. The ride form Cajamarca to Lima had full meal service and beds. It was a 16 hour ride, but wasn´t bad at all. We got to the city of Cajamarca, and slept in a hotel on the main plaza. I also got my first hot shower since I´ve been here, which was great. In Cajamarca, a friend and I went in search of a monkey in the market. We found a man who sells animals, and after talking around the question for a while, he told me that he can get me one for about 100 dollars. I´ve got his card now, but my host mom thinks she can get me a better deal in Lima, more like thirty dollars. So all that stands between me and a monkey now is my new host family. This is the main church in the city of Cajamarca.

Next week I find out my site for the next two years. I am hoping for either the mountains or the coast, but I really don´t have a choice. Happy Halloween to all of you, send me candy!