Monday, Training begins …..

Monday morning Sr. Julio woke me up a 7:00 to get ready to leave for the training center. It takes about a half hour to walk there, so I ate a quick breakfast and we left at 7:30. Before I went to sleep on Sunday Sr. Julio told me that there were two other volunteers that lived nearby, pointing off in some random direction as he said it. When we walked out the door I realized that he had actually been pointing to the house across the street and our direct neighbor to the right. So Jon and Kelsey walked with us to the center. I am SO happy that I have friends so close. It’s nice to see smiling, English speaking faces each morning. We had more orientation meetings all day. One assumes that we eventually get actual information, but at this point we’re still learning how things are going to work. I have training from 8 to 5 every week day, with an hour for lunch at 12. Our families make lunches for all of us, so we actually turn up with lunch boxes. In addition, most of the parents walked their volunteers to the training center that first day, so it was like kindergarten for 24-year-olds :-P I didn’t have a lunch box because Sr. Julio decided to bring my lunch to me at the center. There was a small mix up though and, the best we can tell, I ended up eating the guard’s lunch. In my defense the guard did hand the bag to me, so I don’t really know what happened. I was thrilled to see a whole avocado over some lettuce with tomato slices and cut carrots, all dressed with lime. Delicious right? That was until I went to the health lesson that afternoon where they told us we weren’t supposed to eat raw vegetables for the first few weeks because they might makes us sick. I thought I was done for, but luckily I didn’t get sick ☺ That afternoon also brought the first of many informational sessions on diarrhea. Yeah, you read that right. Diarrhea gets its own info session in the Peace Corps . Some of the PCTs discussed an option for a new PC slogan; “join the Peace Corps and get comfortable talking about your poo.” I also feel that in the interest of honesty I should confess that this blog entry was almost named after the info session, “oh the places you’ll go”. Look closely, you’ll enjoy the pun. And yes, part of the presentation was in Suess-ian rhyme. Welcome to the humor of the Peace Corps and our PCMO Jorge.

Kelsey, Jon and I got a little lost on our way home, but it didn’t take us long to sort it out. I expect the walk home to generally be a silly event. We all sort of dawdle together while wandering down the roads. It’s a break between Spanish classes and Spanish houses. I ate a quick dinner and then Sr. Julio took me to the market in Chosica so I could buy an alarm clock. We also walked around the town center for a while. It’s an interesting little town and I will enjoy exploring for myself sometime soon. We sat in the central park and talked for about an hour. Sr. Julio takes very seriously my need to learn Spanish. So he sits me down for at least an hour every night and just talks about whatever comes to mind. I imagine that at some point I’ll look back and find this very amusing, but right now it’s actually a challenge for me every day. Once I got home I braved the shower, read a little bit and went to bed. Two things I’ve learned: 1- If you want people to take shorter showers (talking sub-3 minutes here) turn off the hot water. 2- living life in two languages is exhausting. I expect I’ll be ready to go to sleep by about 9 every night for a while :-P

Red meat, Yahtzee and my Host Family OR “wash the parts that mold”

Saturday morning is when Kim and I discovered that there was no hot water to be had in our room. Apparently some other volunteers had more luck than we did, but I’ll probably be taking cold showers for the next two years so I guess Saturday was as good a time to start as any. On our way to breakfast we got another surprise…..it was so dark when we arrived the night before that no one realized we were in a little valley between two huge mountains. As breakfast progressed the fog receded and the mountains just went higher and higher. Amazing! (There will be pictures eventually, but I’m still trying to sort that one out.) Saturday was all meetings and when I think about it in my head it seems like more than one day. We met all of our training staff and we had our introduction to Peace Corps Peru. We broke into our program groups to discuss more of those specifics. We also met with our Peace Corps Medical Officers (PCMOs), the language facilitators, the safety and security officer and a lady named Anna Maria, who is fondly known as the “money lady.” The best part is that we all managed to laugh and goof off as well; we made full use of our breaks. Add that to the fact that we’d behaved the same way through out Thursday and Friday, and you might’ve thought we had known each other for years by the end of the day on Saturday :-P

Saturday at lunch gave me my first opportunity to confront my fear of Peruvian food. I am happy to report that I ate some of every meal put in front of me….Mom, are you listening? I ate a steak. Well actually there was some discussion on this. We know it was beef, but it was closer to jerky than anything else really, so we use the term “steak” loosely. But I ate it none the less! And that night I ate rice and some meat that we couldn’t conclusively identify (consensus said pork). What’s more? I actually liked most of it and didn’t mind the rest of it! Progress? I think so.

Saturday night I was able to spend some time on the computer. There was one building in the Villa that had wireless, so we all congregated with our laptops to skype home. I also took the time to add a few books to my Kindle; you never know when you’ll have WiFi around here. After some time on the computer I played a game of Yahtzee with Kat, Hallie, Zach, Sabrina and Nicole. I don’t even remember the last time I played Yahtzee. Which might explain why I had a little beginners luck…I won by a landslide :-P One game of Yahtzee was enough for me though, and I went to bed soon after. Apparently a week straight of very little sleep catches up with you in a serious way. I fell so soundly asleep that my little camp bed could have been a 5-star hotel for all I knew that night.

Sunday morning we woke up for breakfast and a few more meetings. I also braved the ice cold water for a shower. I hear it gets easier. We had a meeting about living with our host families and there was a Q&A with a panel of PCVs. After numerous questions relating to how to stay clean during PC service if we always have cold water, one volunteer advised that we should just simply wash the parts that might mold and get used to the rest. Not sure how I feel about that yet :-P After our meetings we repacked our bags and piled into the buses once again. The small business development kids went to their center in Chaclacayo and the youth development kids went to our center In Santa Eulalia. The bus drivers had music playing so there was a lot of singing, dancing and general shenanigans. You could tell everyone was feeling the excitement and nerves of leaving out little orientation compound to live with our host families. Super sad to leave the small business group though; we don’t train together.

We got to the training center around lunch time and all the different host families were waiting to meet us. Mine showed up just a little late, so there were a few of us that got an early tour of the training center. I don’t think there is anything quite like leaving a group of English speaking friends to get into a car with and entire family of Spanish speaking Peruvians. It is honestly one of the more terrifying things I think I’ve ever done :-P It was fine though. The familia Guzman Doria is very nice and they are super understanding of the language barrier. I’m something like the tenth PCT they’ve had in their house, so they pretty much know the drill. I live in a barrio named Russell Bayard and I have my own little room with a window that looks out over a river. My host Mom and Dad are Julio and Isabel. I have two host brothers, Julio Cesear and Luis, and a host sister Yesenia. My host sister is married to a guy named Ramiro and they have a three year old son named Piero. I sat in the living room with Julio Cesear and Piero for a while that night. We discussed American music and cars and tried to put together a puzzle of the United States that I bought in the airport. It’s going to be an interesting adventure.

And so it begins...

So clearly this won’t be a day by day thing…..but I am going to do my best to keep up to date with the madness that is life in the Peace Corps. And yes I realize I’ve only been here a few days, but believe me when I say its nuts J so let’s dive right in……

>Atlanta, DC, and our arrival in Lima OR “I’m so glad I didn’t have to eat the soap”

                  

I actually left Athens on June 8 to stay in a hotel in Atlanta the night before my flight. I believe that my mother intended it to be relaxing afternoon by the pool before I left the country, but it turned into a frantic game of tetris to fit everything into my suitcases. We brought along the bathroom scale from home to make sure everything was the right weight. My packing got a little out of hand. I can admit at this point that I might have done a fairly bad job of it :-P my bags were stuffed FULL and yet I still don’t have things I should.

That night our whole family went to dinner at Uncle Julio’s with my friend Katy and her family. She is another volunteer in the Peace Corps Peru 17 group with me. We met on facebook and decided we should meet in person before we left the country. Dinner was great and our parents now have someone else to commiserate with. Or in my mom’s case….instead of commiserating, she bought a car. (Kidding mom, it’s about time you ditched the mini-van.)  I had a 7:15 flight out of Atlanta on Thursday; which meant two things: (1) I had to get up earlier than I wanted too and (2) Katy almost missed the flight. Yikes! It all worked out though and we actually met another Peace Corps Trainee (PCT, as we’re called) on our flight. His name is Kyle and the three of us gabbed the ENTIRE way to DC.  Our flight landed a little early, all of our luggage made it there with us and the shuttle got us to the hotel in time to eat lunch before our meetings started. Excellent!

We were in meetings all day. There were a few ice breaker games, some group skits and few info sessions that would’ve scared most sensible people…..but we’re not sensible, we’re Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVS). Heads up, lots of acronyms with the Peace Corps; it is the government after all. There are 51 of us total. We’re split between two programs, youth development and small business development. And oddly enough, thanks to an ice breaker, we now know that there isn’t a single “only-child” among us. Who knew? Thursday night I went to dinner with Ellie, Lee and Lee’s girlfriend Britton. We went to this great little tavern in Georgetown called Billy Martin’s. It was my last dinner in the states so we made it a good one.  Thanks guys!

Friday morning we had to be out of our rooms by 8 am to catch our bus to the airport. I volunteered to be a group leader, so I chased around 9 other PCTs to make sure we all got out of the hotel and to the airport with our PC passports. Apparently no one told the American Airlines desk at Regan that 51 sleep deprived PCTs and ALL of their luggage would be showing up at the same time that morning, so they were a little shocked. Things went smoothly though and we all hung around the airport for a few hours before our flight. The flight to Miami was fine; I sat with a girl named Kim. She’s great. We landed 40 minutes before our flight to Lima was supposed to leave, but apparently 51 people are enough cause to hold a flight. We all ran through the airport with our phones stuck to our ears (had to get those last few calls in) and invaded the plane bound for Lima. I sat with Nicole and Zach and once we realized sleep wasn’t going to happen we just talked the whole way. Most of us got up to walk around the plane to visit with people in the group. People aren’t usually that social on airplanes, so it didn’t take long before the rest of the passengers on the plan started asking questions. Ha! The flight was only about 5 ½ hours but it made for a long day. We landed in Lima where Sanjay, our country director, was able to meet us at the immigration line. We all went through passport control, baggage claim, and customs before loading onto buses for a 1 ½ hour bus ride…..the day just kept getting longer :-P We arrived at Villa de Paz around midnight and paired off into our little rooms. I roomed with Kim. Anecdote: There was a small colorful packet laying on each of our beds, which many of us first thought to be food. Sadly it turned out to be soap; which did nothing for that fact that we were all hungry. 1:00 in the morning found us all standing out on the porch discussing the rumor of sandwiches that was floating around. Kim and I were about to give up when one of the trainers turned up with a stack of cheese sandwiches.  What a relief! Because as Kim said “that soap was starting to look tasty.” Lesson: always pack snacks :-P