Friday, October 24, 2008

Week 6 of Peace Corps training

Time is flying very fast. It´s hard to believe that I´m halfway through training and that very soon, I´ll be moving to my work site for 2 years. Tomorrow evening at 7PM, I get on a bus for a LONG ride to Piura City followed by another long ride to the pueblo of Sicches in Piura. I´ll be there for a week of field based training with other volunteers. We´re scheduled to learn latine building, teach some short classes in schools and meet with volunteers who are working in the community. We´ll be sleeping on floors (and the bus, did I say this is a LONG bus ride?) and getting a sense of the life in rural communities.

I´m pretty excited about seeing the mountains as it looks like we´ll be at about 9000 feet part of the time. I think we´re all excited about seeing the hands on work and seeing more of the countryside. The area we are in is truly desert, I´ve never seen terrain as dry. I read (while doing homework) that this coastal desert is 50 times more dry than Death Valley in California. I believe it as there is no vegetation on the hills, my family only has a roof over some of the rooms and there´s not been one drop of rain in my time here.

So now, I´m headed off to a neighboring town to find a large sun hat and generous supply of mosquito dope. Then home to pack the necessities for travel. Tomorrow I´ll be going with my host family to my host mom´s high school reunion before heading to the bus station. Every day is full and busy so I sleep like a rock with ear plugs in because I need to block out the chorus of dogs that sings through the night.

Now that I´m over the high of advancing two levels in Spanish, I realize how much I have to learn and want to take my language teacher with me when I leave the training center. My skills are so basic for living on my own!

So, google Sicches in Piura, Peru and you´ll see where I´m spending next week. I expect to be out of touch until I return on 11/2. My vote went in by absentee ballot and I´m anxiously watching to see the election returns.

Cheers
Sara

Monday, October 20, 2008

Quinceañeros in Peru!

What a time of ups and downs this is for me. I woke Saturday morning with so much back pain I almost panicked. Couldn´t imagine how I´d do field based training in a week with a 17 hour bus ride and carrying my backpack. But my trusty yoga routine for back pain re-aligned my back and by 1AM in the middle of the fiesta, I was dancing.

So I´ve now been in the middle of a quinceñeros in my house in Peru. What a blast. I really enjoyed the day spend helping cook and prepare in the kitchen with my host mom, her niece, and the first Peace Corps volunteer to have lived in their home, Vishel (originally from Chicago). Vishel came to be the official excort for my host sister and dance the first dance with her. I enjoyed talking (and lots of laughing) with him throughout this whole thing.

The fiesta started at midnight (yep,you read that right!) with Vishel escorting Milagros down the walk to the house and through an arch of balloons. I don´t want to remember how many balloons we blew up that day. The house had been repainted (much of it that day) and extensively decorated. Then Milagros walked through her court of friends blowing out candles. Then followed formal presentations by her mom, dad, Vishel, godmother and I´m not sure who all else. Words from someone hired to MC the program. Then a formal waltz with all the important men in the room. A toast of some delicious cocktail made from orange syrup and pisco.

And then the party began. Lots of young people lining the room eyeing each other like at high school dances. My host mom wanted the dancing to start so she chased all the gringos out on the dance floor and yes, yours truly can dance to cumbia. Several volunteers from my group had come to share this celebration. Well then the young people came out on the dance floor along with the cervesa. Dancing went on and on. Lots of delicious appetizers made earlier in the day. About 2AM, dinner was served, ahi de gallina which is a Peruvian version of creamed chicken on rice and potatoes. By that time, the young people were getting fried so my host mom served them huge portions of food after which they began to stagger home. The family including the elders about my age had more staying power than the kids!

At 4 am, I went to my room, put in ear plugs and dozed off and on. I heard balloons popping and "Feliz cumpleaños" hollered at about 630AM after which the cake was cut. I heard the party officially ended around 730. Needless to say the house and family were wiped the next day. I slept some, did homework and am back in class today.

I wouldn´t have missed it for the world! Yawn. I took lots of photos which I can´t seem to post online because the upload is so painfully slow. And I have too much homework to wait for an upload to occur. Someday I´ll have time for this!

Cheers
Sarita

Friday, October 17, 2008

Some days are diamonds and some days are stones

At the end of week 5, this is one tired woman. And I woke this morning with my back in pain so I´m slow moving today. I was attributing my fatigue to my 65 years when I talked with two volunteers in their early 20´s at lunch and learned that we´re all pretty beat. This is intense training and adjustment, lots of folks with diarrhea and lots of homework. So I took a break from classes and slept 2 hours on the cot in the little infimary. Ah, sleep mends a lot! When I get home, the yoga mat comes out!

I learned yesterday where I will be going for a week of field based training starting a week from Sunday. With 3 other volunteers and one of our trainers, I´ll be going to the way north of the state of Piura, close to the border of Equador. We´ll be in the mountains at about 3000 meters which translates to about 9000 feet. I´m pretty excited even with a 17 hour bus ride to get there. I´ll not be on the internet that week! Probably be helping build latrines, sleeping on the floor of a host family and eating more entirely new food. One of the volunteers who´s been here a year said something I keep in mind, ¨The way to their heart is through my stomach¨. My host mom has learned not to put a mountain of rice on my plate but in a new setting, it´s eat, eat, eat. I´ve lost weight here though because I really walk a lot.

Tomorrow night at midnight begins the quinceneros celebration of my host sister. My house is really busy with preparations. I got out my 1 good dress to wear for this all night affair. My family wants to see me dancing even though I´ve told them my dancing is worse than my Spanish. I´m helping with some of the cooking and will try to get to a neighoring market town to find an appropriate gift. I´m also taking the photos for this and they´ll be able to send them to a grandmother in Argentina online.

I love reading your comments, thanks for the cheering section!

Sarita

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Somewhere Dad is laughing

Every Saturday we go to the University of Agriculture in Lima for classes at La Huerta (The Garden). This is a favorite class for almost all of us since it is very hands on for most of the morning. The teachers are great, I generally understand the much of the Spanish and our language teachers are with us when we need assistance. We´ve dug up small plots, turned in green manure, planted seeds, started seedlings, learned how to make compost for a kitchen garden and generally enjoyed being outdoors with our hands in the dirt. Every time I am there I think of Dad, in part because many of the methods we see and learn are similar to what was done on the farm when I was a kid in the 1950´s.

I often think I hear Dad laughing as I learn about farming all over again from a new perspective. This week we had lessons in raising cuy (guinea pigs) which are a regular food here that I have not yet tried but inevitably will. Then we had lessons in bee keeping and extracting honey. A week ago, we had a totally fascinating lecture on agriculture in Peru including tiny plots, the increase in organic farming and then on to agribusiness which is just as ugly and important to the economy here as at home in the states.

I expect to have a garden wherever I am so I appreciate learning how it is done here with minimal technology. Every Saturday, I think I´ve come full circle back to my childhood and as I listen to the chickens in the chicken barn, I think I hear Dad´s voice saying, "you´ve come a long way kid!"

Friday, October 10, 2008

Life is good!

Yep, yours truly advanced 2 Spanish levels this month. We got our exam results today and I kept looking at mine over and over in disbelief. I´m now at mid intermediate which is the level needed for a field placement. I certainly have a hell of a lot to learn but today I´m on Cloud 9!!!!!!!!!!

And my host dad sent hamburger and VEGETABLES in my lunch with no rice or potatoes. Now if we just had water in the house so I could take a shower... I´m going to get gifts of food for my host family tomorrow because they are such a big part of my language learning. My host mom had told me I´d advanced 2 levels but I didn´t believer her and told her she was nuts.

I just finished an hour yoga class on the very dirty floor of the training center and looked around amazed that I´m really in Peru, learning Spanish, making new friends and beginning to look forward to field placement. We have 2 more weeks in the training center and then go to observe other volunteers in their sites for a week. Time is flying by. We´re beginining to plan a party for our host families for Thanksgiving day. Shortly after that we get sworn in and leave for our sites.

My family is having a quinceneros celebration for Milagros next weekend. They´ve warned me that it will be a big all night bash. I have a cooking assignment which is basically some kind of finger sandwiches for about 200 people. I got out of baking the cake by telling them about the disasterous cake I baked for Kirsten and Ron´s wedding that went into a landslide and landed on the floor in the reception hall.

Cheers from Peru!

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Never a dull day

First, I want to say how much I appreciate the comments you leave on my blog. I feel like I have a cheering section out there across the wires.

What a week and tomorrow is Thursday. I had a bad day on Monday, melted down crying in language tutorial at the first correction. When I came home, yelled at the kids in my house and went into my room to do homework with earplugs in. So the windows start to rattle and the floor is shaking. I went outside where my 8 year old host brother, Nicholas looked at me calmly and said, "tremblor" which roughly translates to earthshake. The couple across the road were necking in front of their house so I figured I wasn´t going to die.

Then yesterday evening I went to a birthday party for one of the other volunteers. Drinking and dancing with with my companions in this adventure. It was a t-shirt graffiti party and I´ll leave the rest to your imagination.

Today in the combi on the way to the training center for a language evaluation, an old drunk man sat beside me patting my arm and a little more, calling me mamita and mamacita. I managed to put up a barrier between his arm and my boob until I got to my stop.

The language interview went well from my perspective. I hope I´ll advance a level. Then this evening another volunteer and I went to a nearby town to eat dinner and go to a Hari Krishna temple (the only one in Peru) which was very beautiful. So I actually chanted Kirtan here in Peru. And the teacher gave a talk in Spanish which I mostly understood. Afterward, one of the men there invited us to sit with him and talk awhile. Gave us an excellent lesson in pronunciation. And then in the smallest of small worlds, I found out he is from Puna at the south of Peru and knows the classmate of my friend Don Shmaus who has worked in Puna for many years.

So here I am in an internet cafe, wearing a lei from the temple and catching up with my friends. Had a good cup of coffee today, got to wash my underwear in a bucket and had a nap. Doesn´t get any better than that.

Cheers
Sarita

Friday, October 3, 2008

At the end of week 3

I must say time is flying. The first week hear seemed like a month and this week went from Monday to Friday in a blur. I consider it a huge accomplishment that I am no longer afraid of the combi's, ride them home at night and yell at the driver if he looks like he´s going to miss my stop. I´ve lost weight from walking a lot. Today I took a moto taxi downhill because I had linger talking with my host mom at breakfast. Never again. About halfway down the hill when the driver hit maximum velocity, I closed my eyes and said, "Jesus, just let me live to the bottom of the hill!" And of course I did!

I understand most of what is said in classes that are all in Spanish. Sometimes I can talk pretty well and sometimes I open my mouth to watch a stream of unrelated words pour out in no particular order. I give my host family a lot of laughs. Like the time when I said that I have a man instead of I am hungry. Now I always remember the difference between hambre and hombre. One little vowel...

This week our language teachers took us to a large open market and turned us loose with the assigment of buying as much as we could for 2 soles (about 75 cents). We had to practice bartering, learn prices, interact with the shopkeepers in a warren of tiny stalls. It was actually a lot of fun followed by great ice cream. My partner and I bought a bag of onions, a bag of potatoes, a bag of peeled garlic cloves, 14 buttons and some ginger. He gets the credit for the bartering as he´s a tall handsome fellow with blue, blue eyes. Turned his charm on the shopkeepers and prices went down.

I am constantly amazed at the landscape. I´ve never seen anything so dry. The hills all around are stark naked bare of vegetation. Dust swirls frequently and the kids in my family are sick with respiratory illness. There are surprising and totally unknown bird songs, I only recognize the dove calls.

I´m pretty content and very curious now about what my work site will be like. Next week I´m doing a presentation for my health program group on breastfeeding. We´re learning a lot about methods of nonformal education. I wish I´d had this training years ago because I´d have used it over and over again. Today we had a whole morning of demonstrations on nonformal education complete with puppet shows, baking banana bread in an improvised oven over a fire and making rehydration fluids. Very practical, very hands on.

Cheers from Peru!