July 27: Michael Westin may have just come to my training class…….

Wednesday we had class with the Small Business group at the Chaclacayo Center. It’s a nice building and it was fun to see their training site. In the morning we had an intercambio session were the two different program taught some of our work themes to each other. Frequently there is overlap between programs with the activities we will do at site, so it’s good to learn some from other groups. The rest of the morning was cultural activities in honor of Peruvian Independence Day. The language facilitators performed some of the traditional dances from around Peru and we all tried to sing the Peruvian National Anthem. We also had an hora loca; which is apparently all the rage right now at parties. Basically everyone just gets balloons and dances like crazy for a little while. At ours Carl, one of the staff members, put on a giant cuy suit and ran around throwing confetti at us. Carl is a rockstar by the way. He’s one of the Peruvian staff members that help out with driving, tech support, getting our mail and….apparently….dressing like a giant cuy. His exact job title is still a mystery to most of us :-P but we’d pretty much be lost without him.
For lunch we went out exploring the restaurants of Chaclacayo. Our training center only has one little tienda by it, so it was fun to walk around a town during the break. Britt, Ali and I decided to get Chifa; which is Peruvian Chinese food. After lunch we had a security meeting with a staff member from the US Embassy. It turns out he is actually a federal agent of some sort. Sadly I think we were all more amused with speculating about him and his career than we were with his talk. In our defense he was a large man, wearing a black suit that started his “security briefing” by telling us he might “double tap” some security issues we’ve heard about before. Oh and he also talked about some “hilo” landings he been involved in. When he asked for questions at the end I don’t think a single one of us had a relevant question in mind ha ha. Next we had a rotation of sessions on popular activities that most PVCs use, like World Map, granola and some craft projects. I got a lot of cool ideas that I can’t wait to use. We ended our day in a Q&A with a Peruvian historian. The guy was very knowledgeable and it was interesting so see what sort of Peru questions we all had floating around in our heads.