Dos Mil Nueve

Happy New Year from Ancash, Peru! I survived Christmas at my site and decided to celebrate my birthday and the new year in Huaraz. After 2 plus weeks at site, it was time for a little descanso. I’m heading back to Huarimayo tomorrow, but I want to put up a few photos and write a couple quick stories to keep my loyal readers updated on my life.

mi familia on Christmas morningChristmas stockings!

Christmas. At 6 on Christmas morning, Emerson, the six year old in my family, woke me up for some hot chocolate and paneton. There was way too much paneton (paneton=icky fruit cake). I bought one, and my family had gotten two others from the church and the municipality. For lunch, we had another Peruvian tasty tradition. My family killed two cuyes and we had a Christmas dinner of guinea pig, potatoes, and mote. I think cuy might be growing on me and I actually find myself craving potatoes. Very weird.

I tried to share a little bit of my traditions with my family, so I had them all hang up socks and I put some cookies, pens and pencils, gum, fruit, and toys inside. They really liked it which made me super happy. They invited me to go with them to Chavin to see the baile de los negritos, a traditional Peruvian dance, but I had made plans to go spend Christmas afternoon and night with the two other volunteers in Conchucos, Claudia and Tyler and the same dance was taking place in San Marcos. We got a hostel room together in San Marcos so we could give ourselves the gift of a hot shower and comfy bed. We watched movies and chatted on the phone most of the day and night and Tyler filmed some footage for one of his new videos. Tyler has a video blog that all of you should check out- he’s made some great videos of our Peace Corps life so far. His website is tylerspeaceofperu.wordpress.com.

My birthday and New Year’s Eve were wonderful. The two missionary girls in Chavin had told me about a spa-like place in Huaraz, so I started my day off with an hour long hot bubble bath, followed by an hour long massage (all for US$15, thanks Grandma!). For a minute I forgot I was in Peru. But then I looked at all my pulga (flea) bites and I remembered I live in the Andes. Nevertheless, my spa experience was AMAZING. Tyler and Callie went with me too, and we were all just glowing when we left. I had a lovely lunch at our favorite café that has wireless, did some shopping (for exciting things like nails and a table cloth), and then got all dazzled up for my birthday dinner (I put makeup on for the first time since swearing in!). We went to a place called Chilli Heaven that is run by a British guy and his Peruvian wife. After devouring our plates of thai curry, burritos, and fajitas and finishing off our imported British beers and ciders, we went out to our favorite gringo bar 13 Buhos. The owner of the bar even made me a chocolate cake! Even though we rang in the new year at midnight, we kept on dancing and celebrating well past that.

Now I’m heading back to site, so no internet/phone for the next two weeks. But I’m stocked up on chocolates (thank you everyone from home, you all know my chocoholic self too well) and movies and letters and crossword puzzles and magazines! Thank you SO much for the packages, it really felt like Christmas when I arrived and had letters and boxes to open! And muchas gracias for the phone calls! My bus leaves in less than an hour so here are a few anecdotes/updates from the last two weeks:

I finally made a trip up to Tyler’s site two weeks ago. The day I went to visit happened to be the graduation ceremony for the students at the elementary school. On the way up to his site, a woman in the combi asked if I’d be a madrina, which is a godmother. I said sure, why not, I’d never been a godmother before, thinking she was asking me to be the godmother of the ceremony. They also asked Tyler to be the padrino, so we were all excited to be the godparents. But then all the mothers started pulling us aside and asking us to be the godparents of their kids. Turns out, Tyler and I had each signed ourselves up to be the godparent of one of the children. To this day neither of us even knows the names of our godchildren. We had to take part in the ceremony, which lasted probably 3 or 4 hours. The night before I had had the worst diarrhea of my life, so it was a bit of a struggle to get through the ceremony, which consisted of awkward huaino dancing (look it up on Youtube. Try Sonia Morales, she’s famous), an enormous plate of cuy, and lots of photo taking with my digital camera (once they saw I had a camera, everyone wanted an individual picture or three). Tyler and I finally escaped the ceremony, telling them I was mal de estomago. We were supposed to get a ride down the mountain from Tyler’s host dad who drives a combi, but he wasn’t making any more trips down to San Marcos so we had to walk an hour and a half. It was an interesting day to say the least.

the happy godparents

picante de cuy

Sadly I don’t have time to write any more anecdotes but here’s a few quick updates and counts:

Letrine update: No news to report. Still using the squatting in the chacra technique.

Room update: Spent 5 hours painting my walls sky blue on Sunday. Still need to buy some roofing materials. Have yet to unpack my suitcases.

Work update: Finishing the previous volunteer’s cocinas mejoradas project and hanging out with lots of cool Quechua women.

Cuy count: Have eaten cuy 3 times in the last 2 weeks. So 4 times total in Peru.

Potatoes eaten: 19475894749827548752487875

Ok gotta run! Look for another blog update in the next two weeks. Muchos besos y abrazos!

AnCash B'Gosh

A chacra in Rancas

Thanks Pat for the title of this blog entry. I feel like it suits the craziness of my life right now and the ridiculousness of some of the past weeks’ events. Currently, I’m in Huaraz for a regional meeting with the Ancash volunteers. I’m doing very well- I’ve already taken two hot showers, put some quality food in my stomach, and spent several hours on the internet. It’s good to be back in the company of the other volunteers, especially since our cell phone network stopped working this week and I didn’t talk to virtually anyone from Saturday until Thursday. It was really hard not being able to call people to tell them all the strange, terrible, wonderful things that happened during the week, or to ask for advice on what to do in certain situations, but I’m proud to say I made it through the two weeks without any tears whatsoever.

Where to begin! I guess I’ll start with a quick anecdote about my arrival at my new home. To get to San Marcos from Huaraz, you have to take a coach bus (which is more like a Chinatown bus- those of you who have ridden them from Boston to New York or New York to D.C. know what I’m talking about). My house, literally the door to my room, is on the main road that the bus takes, so I asked the driver to let me off to see if my family was home before I unloaded all my luggage and new mattress. I didn’t want to be waiting outside with all my stuff if my new family wouldn’t be coming home from the chacra for a few hours. As I got off the bus, I noticed the door to my room was open and there was a big pick up truck outside my door. When I looked into my room, there were four men sitting around a table drinking beer. The bed that had been there during site visit was gone and there was nothing else in the room. I was in so much shock that all I managed to say was “Hola” and ran back to the bus to get one of the other volunteers to help me. He came over to my room and said something to the men about Cuerpo de Paz, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of my host family, and the bus was beeping at us, so we had to get back on and go the rest of the way to San Marcos. I ended up spending the night at the health post on my mattress with Claudia, Tyler, and Mike, because I didn’t know what to do, and Claudia and Tyler didn’t have any transportation up to their sites anyways. I went back to my house the next day and the men were gone- all that remained was the table and empty box of beer bottles. Turns out the mayor of one of the nearby towns was having a “meeting” in my room. I have no idea how this came about- of all the rooms in all the houses in all the communities that the mayor is in charge of, he picked my room to have his “meeting.” Go figure.

the aftermath

In other news, I am still without a latrine. The man in charge of water and sanitation at the health post, who I wanted to talk to about constructing a latrine, has been on vacation for the last two weeks. As a result, I have bought myself a bucket for my room for emergencies, and the chacra behind my house is dotted with a few mounds of toilet paper, which I’m sure is not environmentally friendly. No one in my community seems to have latrines. Everyone just seems to go in the open air. I try to hold out and use the bathroom at the health post or somewhere else in San Marcos. At least I know I have a project idea!

Speaking of construction, my room is undergoing some changes, which leads me to a second anecdote that’s a little bit longer. I talked to my host family about fixing the walls and the roof in my room and explained that I would pay for the changes instead of paying for the first couple months rent. They agreed to the deal, but actually figuring out what needed to be done to the walls was a huge challenge. I thought that I could just buy some bags of yeso (white plaster) to put on the walls, maybe around 8 bags or so for my whole room. But when I asked my host mom how we’d fill in some of the window-sized holes in the wall, she said that we’d have to put some obra negra (adobe mud stuff) on the walls first then yeso. So I said sure, let’s do that. Then she asked the neighborhood wall builder guy to come over to check out my room and he said it would take a month for the obra negra to dry and to just use 40 bags of yeso in layers instead. This sounded a little dubious to me so later on I had a conversation with my host mom and dad and tried to explain that I wanted the obra negra stuff. I wasn’t really sure what was decided after the conversation because they spoke to each other in Quechua for the most part.

The next morning, there were 20 bags of yeso outside of my door. I assumed they had decided on yeso without me, so I went on about my daily business in San Marcos. When I got home in the afternoon with a new bed frame I had asked a town carpenter to make me, my host dad and the wall builder guy were covered head to toe in obra negra, and the obra negra mud was all over the room. Most of my things had been taken out of my room or were on top of my bed covered by a plastic tarp. I wasn’t really sure what to do at this point since I clearly was not going to be able to sleep or cook dinner in my room that night. In panic mode, I called two American girls I had met the week before who are working as Baptist missionaries in a nearby town. I asked them if I could crash on their sofa or floor or whatever they had and thankfully they said yes. It ended up being a great decision.

Courtney and Lyndsey are 23 and 25 and have been living in a hostal in Chavin for the last year. Staying at their place was like a little oasis. I showed up wearing the same clothes I’d been wearing for 2 days, my new sombrero, and the backpack I carry around with my notebooks, toilet paper, and pocket knife (the essentials). I hadn’t showered in about a week either to make things better. They took me in, gave me PJs and a coach to sleep on, fed me pizza and pancakes (they have an oven, a refrigerator, and a microwave), let me take a hot shower and watch My Best Friend’s Wedding, and sent me home with a brand new jar of Peter Pan peanut butter. And they gave me a ride home in their truck. They are so nice, and more than having any of those amenities, I really appreciated their company. Sadly, they’ll both be away for Christmas so I won’t see them again until January. But they’ll be here for another year and I’ll have some people nearby to get together with.

As of Thursday, my walls were still drying but it looks like we’ll be putting yeso on this week. I bought some light blue paint this weekend to put on later. It’s going to take a long time to be comfortable in my room, but I’m looking at it as a blank canvas and another side project to keep me occupied. It would be boring if my room was already perfect when I moved in! I’m trying to tape my own version of extreme home makeover with my digital camera.

I’ve met a lot of interesting people already, mostly just by walking around town. Since my work hasn’t really started I just spend most of the day in San Marcos talking to people. I’ve found that you can never find people when you’re actually looking for them. For example, I’m supposed to drop off Peace Corps letters to different leaders around town but they never seem to be in their offices or always seem to be “on vacation.” I just have to be in the right place at the right time to meet the people I’m looking for. Last Sunday I was in the market and ended up talking to a guy who was the mayor of Chavin. He invited me to go see the ruins the next day. I ended up getting a private tour of the ruins and treated to lunch. We also talked about potential projects I can work on in the communities. The previous volunteer Amanda had done some gardening projects. I really like the town of Chavin a lot- it’s bigger than San Marcos (big enough to be in the Peru Lonely Plant Guide) and since I’ve walked around San Marcos probably a thousand times, it will be fun to explore somewhere new.

some of the ruins in Chavin

My counterpart at the health post doesn’t help me out too much, so it’s good that I’ve been going out on my own, meeting people, and forming relationships. Everyone I’ve met has been friendly and easy to talk to. I frequent many of the same tiendas and restaurants so people are starting to realize that I’m not just a tourist or a lost gringa. A PC volunteer introduced me to a family that owns a restaurant in town and I love going there for lunch because they chat with me and I don’t have to eat alone (and sometimes they give me special food that’s not on the “menu” that day, like fried trout. A “menu” is kind of like a combo meal- you usually get soup, a plate of rice, potatoes or veggies, and meat, a juice or chicha morada, and maybe jello. And it all cost 5 soles=$1.60). I can’t really go home for lunch because it’s a half hour walk back or I have to pay for a taxi, so I spend the whole day in San Marcos for the most part. That will change when I start working in the communities. I make breakfast and dinner on my little gas stove in my room and try to converse a little bit with my host family and maybe learn a new Quechua word or two. I usually am in bed by 8 after I watch a couple episodes of Arrested Development. I didn’t have electricity for the first couple days at sight so I walked around my little room with my head lamp on. Hopefully I’ll have electricity on a fairly regular basis so I can charge my computer and cell phone batteries and read at night.

I’m really excited to get going on my projects. Right now it seems like I’m just trying to fill my days with things to do. If I have one meeting or one event to do a day, I feel like I’ve accomplished something. This past Wednesday, I went out to visit a community called Rancas where Amanda did her cocinas mejoradas project. I just decided to walk out there and see if I could find some of the women in her project. I ended up finding the woman she appointed president of the project and I spent the afternoon talking with her and cooking with her over her new adobe cocina. She was so humble and yet so motivated. She talked to me about all the things she’d love to see her community have- vegetable gardens, better teachers, etc. That afternoon was probably the highlight of my first two weeks at sight. It gave me such a renewed enthusiasm and a verification that this will all be worth it.

one of the women in Amanda's cocinas project

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do for the first three months while I’m working on my community diagnostic- the evaluation Peace Corps has us do on the community we want to work in. The school children are about to go on summer vacation but they still have activities and classes at the schools. I’m thinking about doing some kind of art classes. I also really want to get involved in the artisan’s and women’s groups in San Marcos. I don’t think I want to teach English. I think learning Spanish and Quechua might take up all my patience. I would maybe like to organize kids to go on hikes as well- my area is absolutely gorgeous and I’d love to see more of it. I really am in love with my sight and glad that I got assigned to Ancash.

I’m pretty optimistic and positive about everything so far, except about spending Christmas at my site. Whenever I ask how people in my Conchucos valley celebrate, they say with “chocolatada,” which is the tradition of eating a type of fruit cake called Paneton and drinking hot chocolate. But that’s about it. Someone told me that for the people in the campo, Christmas is really just another day. I bought some hot chocolate and Paneton for my family anyways. There are a few decorations up around San Marcos but not around my community. I heard that there might be some kind of dance performance in town and that the children are doing a Nativity play. Worst come to worst, a volunteer gave me Love Actually so I can watch that to get in the Christmas spirit. I’ll be back into Huaraz for New Year’s/my birthday so don’t worry too much about me! And, with luck, I will have cell service and electricity so you can all call me on Christmas J I love you all! Again, thanks for sending me letters and care packages, they mean the world to me. Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año!

Ojo!

I just got my new address in Ancash:

PCV Shannon Doran
Casilla Postal No. 277
Serpost Huaraz
Ancash, Peru
South America

Looking forward to hearing from you all :)

Yo Ando en Ancash

Ancash 9

Nov. 6th I found out that my new home for the next two years will be in Ancash! Turns out that I will be living in the same department where I had my field based training. Maybe it was a test to see if I could survive in the Andes. There are 9 of us going to Ancash- three from the health program and 6 from the environment program. The 3 health volunteers are going the farthest away from the department capital of Huaraz- to the other side of the Cordillera Blanca (one of the major mountain ranges in Ancash) in the Conchucos valley. I’m only about 2 ½ hours from the capital, but the roads are in really bad shape from the giant mining trucks that travel back and forth from Conchucos to the capital and Lima. I haven’t gone to Claudia or Tyler’s sites yet, but they’re about 2 hours walking distance from me. I’m so glad to have other volunteers near me! Here’s a little bit more about my site:

Caserio (community): Huarimayo
District (town): Chavin de Huantar
Province: Huari
Department: Ancash
Population of Huarimayo: approximately 450 people
Nearest town: San Marcos, 30 minutes walking or 15ish by car
Altitude above sea level: 3000 m, or about 10,000 ft.

Plaza de San Marcos

And now comes the fun part- my host family and house. I spent the last week visiting my new site and meeting the people I’m going to work with. I have a host mom and dad (who are really like host brother and sister because they are 27 and 28), a host grandfather, and a 2 year old girl, Andrea, and 6 year old boy, Emerson. My host family has a farm and all of the animals that come with it. We also have cats, dogs, chickens, bunnies, and guinea pigs that run all around the house. My house is mostly just open to the air, except for the bedrooms. We don’t have a bathroom or even a latrine for that matter. Well, when I asked where the latrine was, my grandfather pointed towards the farm. So my bathroom was the farm all week. My first project will definitely be helping them to build a latrine. My mom cooks over a wood fire and all the smoke just fills the house and it’s hard to breathe or see. Second project=cocina mejorada. We have electricity, but we don’t have working light bulbs. The first night we ate dinner in pitch black so the only food item I could actually make out was spaghetti. Oh and potatoes, but that’s just a given because a meal is not complete without potatoes. There was something crunchy in the spaghetti, it could have been cuy I’m not sure. Speaking of cuy, my third project will be building cages for them so they aren’t running around and peeing in the kitchen area. We don’t have an area for bathing either. We have a pipe that pumps in water so I suppose I’ll fill up buckets of water, heat up the water, and bucket bath in my room. Needless to say, I didn’t even attempt to bathe at my new site. I waited until I got back to the hostel in Huaraz.

My community Huarimayo

My kitchen. Note the guinea pigs under the right chair.

My room. Fortunately my room is separate from the rest of the house. It’s tiny, but so am I so I really don’t need that much space. I have a cement-ish floor, in contrast to the rest of the house which is dirt/mud when it rains. My walls are adobe, my roof straw and tile, and my door only locks from the outside so I had to use a giant stick to “lock” it at night. I have a bed but I’ll probably buy a new mattress and frame with the moving-in allowance the PC gives us. I’m mostly afraid of any kind of bed bugs or fleas that might be living in my bed and blankets. Currently, my waist, ankles, and hands are covered in some kind of bites. When I arrived, there was a giant white bunny hanging out on my bed but I kicked him out. I have a lightbulb that hangs from a string over my bed. When I tried to turn it off the first night I electrocuted myself. I have A LOT to do to make my room a healthy living space but I’m really really excited about it. My room is going to be so cool when I’m done with it! I can get basically everything I need in Huaraz or San Marcos- the only problem is going to be transporting everything out to my site. I have no clue how we are going to get mattresses, furniture, etc. over and through the mountains to my little pueblo. I’ll let you know in two weeks when I move in.

My room

The volunteer I’m replacing, Amanda, picked my host family and town for me. She actually lived in San Marcos, but I live outside of it. I’ll be working there and in Chavin with the health centers and different NGOs. All of the volunteers have counterparts that the PC designates to work with them- nurses, mayors, etc. My counterpart is a social worker at the health center. She was supposed to show me around and introduce me to important people in the town but that didn’t really happen. She was always “too busy.” To be honest, I did not get a very good impression of her and am not really looking forward to working with her. I ended up walking around San Marcos by myself just knocking on doors and introducing myself, explaining Peace Corps and that I would be living in Huarimayo for 2 years. I introduced myself to the governor, the radio station, a couple different NGOs, the orphanage, the owners of the tiendas (I went to a bunch to find out which ones have the best selection of chocolate haha). Amanda gave me the impression that she didn’t really work with our counterpart that much. She found other leaders in the community to work with, which is probably what I’ll have to do. It was a really difficult couple of days and most of the time I just felt lost or out of place, but the times when I came across a really friendly person (a tienda lady who offered to teach me Quechua, a little old man who chatted with me one day and on my last day gave me a giant hug, and the radio station DJ who was super excited to work with me) I felt infinitely happier and at ease. From what I hear, it’s a lot of ups and downs in the Peace Corps.

Despite everything, I’m pretty sure I live in one of the most beautiful areas of the world. I can hear the river Mosna from my room and when I wake up and look outside I’m surrounded by gorgeous mountains. It’s really cold at night and in the morning, but by noon it’s sunny and hot. The rainy season is approaching in January which scares me a bit, but I’ll just have to strap on my boots, put on my raincoat and brave it the best I can.

I’m going to have a new mailing address soon. The volunteers have a PO box in Huaraz where you can send me care packages and letters and presents (Christmas and my birthday are coming up!). I’ll probably go to Huaraz once or twice a month to check my box and from experience, it seems that packages can take anywhere from 2 weeks to a month to get here. If you would like to send me some lovin, send it through the postal service (not DHL or UPS) and make sure it’s small (I think they recommend under 1.1 pounds or it will get stuck in customs). I’d love to get some stickers or art supplies of any kind- kids loooove stickers and balloons. Also chocolate chips for baking, I can’t find them anywhere! Oh and magazines and books. Cosmo, Newsweek, People, Runner’s World, anything to keep me updated on the latest fashion, gossip, and music.

I miss everyone MUCHO and love getting your letters and emails. I hang them up in my room! And thanks for reading my blog! I hope it’s keeping everyone entertained. More adventures and awkward stories to come.

Con carino,
Shannon

P.S. There is internet in San Marcos! Unfortunately, it is incredibly slow. I couldn’t even open gmail. Unless some miracle happens, I won’t be checking my email that often (once or twice a month when I go to Huaraz). However, emails and snail mail are still amazing so don’t hesitate in writing- I will get back to you! I will also have a cell phone at the end of the month.

ANCA$H

It’s about time for an update! Sorry to keep you all in suspense. Up until last week, I didn’t have too much to report- training just continued on as usual. But before I talk about last week, which was Field Based Training, I’ll just give a brief update on some of my other activities.

Although we’re at the training center from about 8-5, I manage to squeeze in some time to run in the afternoons with some volunteers, have some cookie and movie nights (I made the perfect oatmeal cookies for our Mama Mia movie night), bust out some dance moves at the local discoteca, and have a rather intense rock paper scissors tournament with the whole group, amongst other things. Turns out birthdays are also really huge deals here so I’ve been to several birthday parties. I went to my neighbor’s dad’s birthday party where they had a Peruvian-style BBQ called Pachamanca. Basically they dig a hole and fill it with hot rocks, top the rocks with various types of meat, then potatoes, then beans and tamales, and then cover the whole thing in com husks, straw, and finally dirt. They let the whole thing cook all day and it’s absolutely amazing. Last week, my family had a party for the father of my host niece (I’m not really sure what title to give him because my sister isn’t really dating him and isn’t married to him). They cooked all day, hired a band to play at the house, and invited a whole bunch of guests. Parties, like baptisms and quinceneras, usually go to like 7 in the morning. Fortunately, I was leaving for Field Based Training the next day so I had an excuse to go to bed early.

Field Based Training has been my favorite experience in the Peace Corps thus far. For FBT, all the volunteers head out to different departments (essentially states like in the US) and get some real experience working with volunteers who are already at the their sites. I went to Ancash with three other volunteers, our program director, and one of the Spanish professors. Huaraz, the capital of Ancash, is about 7-8 hours by bus from Lima and the volunteers in the department live anywhere from 30 min to 5 hours from Huaraz. Ancash is known for its beautiful mountains- especially Huascaran which I believe is the highest mountain in Peru. A lot of backpackers, mountain climbers, and mountain bikers come to Huaraz so it’s a fairly touristy city. It has lots of hostels, restaurants, and markets, and you can definitely feel a French/Swiss/Canadian/American influence. We only stayed there the first and last nights of the trip but it is definitely a place I would go back to (if only to pay for another hot shower at the hostel haha).

From Huaraz, we went to visit a married couple in a community called Mato. It’s in a valley in between two mountain ranges, the Cordillera Negra and the Cordillera Blanca, so you can bet the views are spectacular. The two of them are health volunteers and we had the opportunity to help them on their projects. We gave charlas (chats) to the community about cocinas mejoradas (I’ll probably talk about these in detail later), worked with youth health promoters by giving talks at the school on sexually transmitted diseases, did surveys and house visits, filmed a commercial about anemia, made candles with the youth group, and gave charlas about trash and recycling. Our program director certainly kept us busy but it was completely worth it. I learned more in the one week in FBT than I’ve learned the whole time I’ve been here. We got real hands on experience which is what I’ve been craving. It made me so excited to get to my site and start working. The other volunteers have told us that the last few weeks of training are painful because once you find out your site placement, all you want to do is get there.

After we left Mato on Wednesday, we went to visit another volunteer in a community called Musho. He was a little higher up in the mountains so it was a bit colder. However, it was generally pretty hot during the day and then got cold in the afternoon and night when it rained. We helped him with some surveys to monitor a cocinas mejoradas project. This meant that we went house to house interviewing families and inspecting their kitchens/stoves. In Musho, the houses are really spread out so we spent the entire day walking up and down the mountain side. I enjoyed every minute of it. We walked through streams, ate berries off the trees, got chased by pigs, and trekked through corn fields. The truly tough part was visiting the people’s homes. It is hard to believe that such generally kind, hardworking people can live in such a state of poverty. The majority of the homes I visited didn’t have a latrine, didn’t have clean water to drink, had dirt floors with tin roofs, etc. And yet they still offered us bananas or rice and potatoes from the little supply they had. A lot of the families also spoke Quechua. The older generations tend to speak Quechua and very little Spanish but the younger generations seem to speak more Spanish. I tried to pick up a little bit of Quechua on our trip. I’m not sure that I’ll be at a site where it’s spoken, but it is possible.

Our last day, we returned to Huaraz. We walked around the streets to the markets, sat in on the 9 Ancash volunteers’ regional meeting, went to see a business volunteer’s site (he works with artisan pottery-making groups), treated ourselves to some ice cream and Chinese food, and headed home exhausted but satisfied. The week was hard but it flew by. The volunteer’s were fantastic hosts and if I have the opportunity to be a volunteer in Ancash, I know I’ll have a great support system. If I don’t end up spending my next two years in Ancash, I at least have to go back to see Huascaran- we spent a whole week in Ancash but couldn’t see the mountain because it was too cloudy! It will definitely be an excuse to go back.
Some side notes:

I almost forgot to mention that this week I had three traditional Peruvian dishes for the first time! I had ceviche (raw fish in a sort of lime juice), picante de cuy (guinea pig), and pollo a la brasa (I think it’s cooked like rotisserie chicken). It may be hard to believe but all of those dishes were incredible! I also ate a lot of potatoes. And rice. But what would a meal be here without rice and potatoes?

Tomorrow is a big day for the US! You can bet that we will be finding a TV to watch the election results. And yes, I did get to vote by absentee ballot. Go OBAMA!

THANK YOU ALL for the letters and emails. It is such an amazing feeling to get mail. Please keep them coming!

The No "No" Rule

Another volunteer passed on a little piece of wisdom from a friend of hers who is also a PCV. It’s called “The No ‘No’ Rule.” She told me about this rule after she had been out until 4 a.m. at a baptism party with her host family (Yes, a baptism party. Here baptism parties are more like wedding receptions). Basically the rule is that you never say no to an invitation. If someone invites you to eat cow hearts from the street vendor, you do it. If you get invited to go to a discoteca on a Sunday night, you do it. If your host mom asks you to help kill a chicken for tonight’s chicken noodle soup, you do it (well, taking pictures of her doing it can also count). I think this is a really useful philosophy for my next two years and two months here in Peru. If you never say no, think of all the great adventures and stories you’ll have!

On Friday, I will officially have been in Peru for a month. The last two weeks have flown by. My typical schedule consists of 4 hours of Spanish class and either 4 hours of community health training or training in things like first aid, diversity, and sexual health. I wake up around 5 a.m. to the sound of roosters and chickens (sometimes around 3 to the one rooster who’s internal clock must be off) but try to go back to sleep for another hour. If I’m feeling brave, or really dirty, I take a 5 minute cold shower. Then I get dressed and have breakfast with my host mom. She figured out that I love coffee so now I get coffee every morning. Unfortunately, instant coffee is all they really drink here. I don’t really understand this, since coffee is a major export for Peru. Where are they hiding all the good coffee? At about 7:30 I walk with the other volunteers in my neighborhood to the bottom of our long hill to wait for the bus or combi. The combi probably was made to be a 15 passenger van but I’d say they can hold about 40 people. I would put up a picture but I haven’t figured out how to hold my camera in one hand while clinging desperately for my life to the railing with my other hand. I am one of the fortunate volunteers that gets to make this trek at least twice a day- to the training center and home from the training center. We get out of training around 5 so I’ve been trying to run as much as possible with other volunteers before I go home. There’s a marathon/half marathon/10k/5k in July that a PCV started at his site and I’d really like to run in it (probably the half or the 10k). Sometimes the walk up the hill to my house at the end of the day is enough exercise.

On Saturdays, we go to an agricultural university near Lima to learn how to garden. It’s been one of my favorite activities so far. The first day we learned some basics on planting (the names of certain plants in Spanish, which ones take a long time to grow, which ones need more light, etc.). The second week we learned how to make compost. Gardening is one of the projects we can do at our sights not only to help the community increase their production of vegetables and plants, but also to have more of these nutritious foods available for ourselves. I’ve really enjoyed it so far, perhaps because it’s one of the more constructive things we’ve done. We’ve had a lot of interesting lectures, classes, and activities, but we haven’t gotten a chance to get our hands dirty. That’s all coming in the next couple weeks.

After we finish at the Agraria on Saturdays, we have the afternoon free to go explore Lima, go shopping at a big commercial plaza (where they have such great American delicacies as the Whopper, the Big Mac, and the personal pan pizza), or just return home. Last week, a couple friends and I decided to have a picnic in Miraflores, which is one of the more upscale/prettier areas of Lima. It sits high up on a cliff and you can see the Pacific Ocean. I made hummus the night before (which was a whole other adventure, involving my host mom boiling garbanzo beans for 7 hours over a wood fire and then me burning out the blender) and we all ate lunch in Parque Kennedy. Then we walked toward the water and toward a place called Parque del Amor. After exploring Miraflores for awhile, we decided to get some ice cream and head back home. Getting home from Lima is the tricky part. You have to take a couple of combis to get back and only if you are super lucky do you get a seat. I was not so lucky and stood for a little over an hour to get home.

If you’ve made it this far in this blog entry, thanks for reading! Today we have the day off from PC (minus Spanish interviews to reevaluate our class level) because it’s a holiday. I’m writing this blog on my laptop and then hopefully going to an internet place to post it. Free time and personal space are two things we don’t get a lot of so I’m thinking that today will be a good day to do some reading, write in my journal, maybe make the effort to heat up water on the stove for a loofa shower, who knows. I’ve learned quickly that your plans can change in an instant. That personal time you thought you had might be interrupted by a visit from an uncle that lives in the jungle or an unexpected trip to neighboring Chosica for a parade. Sometimes I wonder how much is lost in translation and how often things are just left unannounced. I tried to explain the phrase “like a deer in headlights” to my host mom the other day. Fortunately, I think she got it.

Snail mail not so sluggish

Since I don´t have a ton of access to email, I´d love to get some snail mail. I might even get your letter before I get a chance to check my email next. The address is on the right side of my blog. Give me updates on what´s going on back home! :)