The last week or so has been much less productive than I’d like. I can’t advance with my world map project (for now) because all of the teachers used my paint during the school’s anniversary, so I have to wait for more to be delivered. I got more bags and we planted 400 trees at the school and X more in the community tree nursery – which sounds like a lot, but really isn’t very time consuming. Since the kids missed so much of regular class during the week of the anniversary, the teachers have been more hesitant to let me into the classrooms during class time (since what I teach is technically off-subject). So I’ve been doing a lot of yoga again. I guess I’ve lost 8-10lbs in the last few months. Which is exciting, except that I am still currently 25lbs heavier than I was when I got to Peru. What. The. Hell.
Halloween was not very eventful – Brad, Jared, and I walked to a site we’ve been developing for the new volunteer that is going to arrive in a few weeks to find him a host family. It went really well. Then we made s’mores at Brad’s hobo house and watched the Dark Night. No costumes. On a scale of 1 to 10 I give it a 6. At least we were together 
Dia de los Muertos was interesting to see here. Last year, this time I was still in training in Chaclacayo (weird – it’s been a really long year). Like the celebration I saw last year, there was a massive event at the cemetery – everyone brought flowers for their relatives and then got really drunk. But later that night, the town gathered in a central location to watch what they call “cortamontes”. This involves cutting down 4 eucalyptus trees that are about a year old – relatively tall (eucalyptus grows fast). Then they “plant” these trees in a row, using 2×4s… not even shovels… they pack them into holes in the ground with dirt around them. Everyone is mostly wasted by this point, so the really really drunk people and the children dance around these trees, which have been “decorated” with balloons. Several hours later, the men cut the trees down again. In the dark. Drunk.
I didn’t stay long because the sheer number of drunk men who finally worked up the courage to talk to me was unbelievable. I would be standing there minding my own business, when suddenly I would feel someone really really close to me behind me – definitely in my personal space. I look around and a creepy drunk man would say “oh! I’m so sorry! I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable! Gringa! Gringa! Dance with me, gringa!”. No. I’ve been here long enough to know that I don’t even have to do that anymore. Or. “gringa! I told everyone we would end up together! You’re going to have my babies, gringa!” No. No I am not.
Weird things a brewin.
One of the things I love most about my host family is that they are always buying baby animals. We have so many babies running around: 3 kittens, 2 puppies, a lamb, and 2 piglets – all under 6 months old. It’s freaking awesome. The kittens are like a month old. It kills me.
Lastly – Proyecto Huascaran has come to my town. What does this mean? It means that we are experimenting with having internet. It isn’t quite set up yet, but at the very least, when we have electricity, I should be able to go to the computer room and use the internet. They’re saying they’re going to install an antenna so that people can have wireless throughout the whole town, but I’ll believe it when I see it. At any rate, please don’t expect me to be any more accessible than I currently am, but the possibility exists that I will be able to have internet more frequently than once every 2 weeks.
That’s all folks!
Till next time.
mother nature’s quite a lady, but you’re the one i need. November 8, 2009
there’s a time and a place for everything and it’s called college. November 7, 2009
This month we had our regional meeting in a different city, which was a nice change of pace – we even made it out to spend some time at the beach, which is awesome because rainy season has started in the mountains and the one thing I’m already most starved for is THE SUN. We were celebrating a few birthdays and we decided to get one of the guys a stripper for his birthday. Normally, this is a good idea. However, we’re all operating on volunteers’ salaries and paying for a stripper to come out to the hotel is expensive… not to mention sketchy. So we decided to just take him to a strip club. This was by far the cleanest and fanciest strip club I have ever been in… it still had a pretty funky smell to it, but all things considered… even the girls weren’t too ugly. I guess we were the first girls to ever enter the building and they didn’t know what to think. The bouncer tried to explain to us what kind of establishment they were and was surprised when we told him we completely understood what was happening. When we walked inside, we scared off most of the dancers, which put a damper on our plans. We ordered a pitcher of beer and waited for them to come back out. After about an hour, our buddy finds one that he like and I approach her to see how much a lap dance would be. She tells me to ask the bartender. I ask him and he tells me they don’t do that here. What kind of establishment is this?! What kind of strip club doesn’t offer lap dances? I sent Sara up to go talk to her, maybe she could talk her into something. We watched her gesticulate wildly for quite some time and when she comes back she tells us that he just has to buy her a drink and then they can go into the “private dance booth”. We give him some money and he goes over there to buy her a drink. She tells him that he needs to buy 2 shots for 60 soles a piece and then the dance is going to cost 60 soles more. We love our friend… but not enough to pay 60 dollars for a lap dance. So we leave, dejected.
When we get back to the hotel, we find that there is a wedding in full swing. The stage is just on the opposite side of the wall of our room. They will be celebrating until 5am.
The next morning, I get on a bus to Lima and about halfway there I look out of the window to see seven men carrying a corpse out of a ditch. Then I realized that this whole series of events doesn’t even phase me anymore. This is my life here. Oh Peru.
the mystery of iniquity November 7, 2009
This week marks the anniversary of the school. The town is bustling with activity to prepare: dance practice, band practice, sports, cleaning the classrooms, painting the school, finishing projects. There’s a lot of excitement, but not a lot of time to work with me, so I haven’t been as busy as usual.
I think we may have hit the limit of what people are willing to donate to the museum project. The next step is to figure out who has moved into the cities and send them notifications to see if they’ll be willing to donate something they’ve taken with them.
Since my first day in my new site I have been trying to get the attention of the community president to organize a tree planting session. He has been less than forthcoming. Finally, after about 4 months I got him to agree to a meeting at least and he couldn’t even bother to show up for that. He says that they are super busy taking care of the trout farm project – they have to feed the trout 3 times a day to fatten them up and they’re a pretty far walk from the center of the community. So instead, he pawned me off on CORENA, the committee for natural resources, made up of 6 women. These women and I planted 600 trees in 2 days. More than I have accomplished in 4 months trying to work with the men. Interesting.
I still have a ton of seeds left over, so I just need to pick up some more bags when I go to Lima.
That’s all there really is to write about this time around. Oh! I almost forgot… the whole communist flag saga…
Well, the security officer came up to my site with an investigator to check it out and the consensus is that some drunk A-hole was trying to scare the authorities because he disagrees with their politics. Elaborate and not funny. But not terrorists. They’ve narrowed down the list of suspects to 4 or 5 people and asked for the help of the provincial police in identifying who it was. But the police never came. Apparently, it’s too far of a drive and they just don’t care enough to do it. So… everyone has moved on and it is basically just like it never happened.
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop. July 16, 2009
It’s been a really weird month. I left my site to go to my first regional meeting for the new region and was able to make it through less than a day before the pain in my ear got so severe that I had to go to Lima. A shot of morphine and a bunch of pills later and I was good to go to set up in a hostel until further notice. The ear infection turned into a blood infection, which caused reactive arthritis. How do you enjoy Lima on a volunteer’s salary and when it hurts to walk? Not easily, my friends. The pain is mostly gone these days except for the intense, persistent stabbing in my left knee, ankle, and foot. 13 blood tests and an ecocardiogram later and I know all of the things I don’t have. That’s what fancy doctors are for, though… and mine’s Dr. House without the bad attitude. There’s the chance I can go back to site this Saturday… we’ll see.
Lima is a fuzzy antibiotic-induced blur of creativity-sapping consumption. I’ve been useless. Completely incapable of productivity. This past week has been much better though. The painkillers still make me fuzzy, but I’m down to a few pills a day, so the fog is starting to clear.
I’ve learned that public transportation strikes lead to inflated cab prices. Annoying and unfair.
It’s also been interesting to be in Lima to see all the political tension lately. Not that it really affects my day to day, but if I were at site, there would be no access to the outside world and I would be missing out on news. I’m trying to find positives here.
And it’s hard to tell if it’s from being on all the meds or if I’ve fallen through the rabbit hole a few times since I’ve been here, but I have fuzzy memories of finding this unmarked bar, that’s really just a big house where what appear to be Peruvian hipsters go for fun. People draw on the walls and they play good music… it’s like I’m not in Peru anymore. And then there was meeting that weird British kid who got robbed as soon as he stepped out of the airport and was staying in the hostel with us. Soccer hooligan. It feels like it almost didn’t really happen.
On the upside, since I’ve been in Lima, I’ve gotten to see a lot of people I otherwise wouldn’t have had the chance to see – like some of my favorite Peru 9ers for their COS med-checks, Geoff and Tyler before they quit and went back home, Carol, and PC volunteers I hadn’t previously known. Also, I got to see Harry Potter and I get to do very un-PC things like go to starbucks and watch the ocean.
Downside – I don’t really feel like a volunteer since I haven’t accomplished anything in the last month except for writing a few lesson plans. I’m bored and unfocused and restless. I want to go back to site!!!!! There are too many stimuli in Lima. I miss having nothing but my books and my music to pass the time. Too much internet access, too many cell phones, too much to spend money on, too much to choose from. I am not a city girl. Oh and also, I only packed for 3 days when I left site, and I’m getting kind of sick of wearing the same things over and over again.
But I’m adaptable. And so I will enjoy my remaining time in Lima to the max. And when I get back to site, I’m going to have somewhere to put my clothes (I bought a dresser), a bike to use, and lesson plans ready for me to go. This really gives me a chance to hit the ground running and that’s pretty exciting
So until I get back to site I probably won’t update again, because, well… living in a hostel just isn’t interesting enough to write about. Fun fact about my hostel: the lightswitch to my room is outside of the actual room, in the common area outside of the bathrooms… and it’s not well marked, so people turn it on and off accidentally at least 3 times a day. Fascinating, I know.
Case in point.
Also, you should all know that Lima makes me homesick and I miss all of you a billion times more than usual. Including you, America.
Love love love,
Alex/sasha
Site change. June 21, 2009
So as many of you may already know, I got a site change… for a myriad of reasons. And I’ve been busy moving and starting over. And it’s HARD. Leaving my beloved Santo Domingo was hard. Coming to the new site – even harder. It’s beautiful, but man.. it’s going to be a long year and half.
Well, to start with, I was a bit sick when I got to the new site (I see a pattern) – but this time instead of the bacterial infection, it was some crazy skin fungus, plus what was originally thought to be a viral sinus infection, but now seems more like a cold, and some sort of dysentery. I still think giardia, even if the stool sample disagrees. We’ll see. So that made everything seem even harder than it already is.
The food is cooked on a wood-burning stove, which makes everything taste the same – like smoke.
It’s COLD. I’m at 3600m (about 12,000ft+). The mountain casts a MEAN shadow. At night, I sleep in my 2 degree (C – 35degrees F) sleeping bag, in 2 shirts and a sweatshirt, fleece pants, wool socks, gloves, in a scarf and a hat and under 4 wool blankets and I still sometimes wake up in the middle of the night from the cold. During the days, the sun is STRONG. Even the Peruvians get sunburns here. It’s too hot to stand directly in the sun for more than 10 minutes and too cold to stand in the shade for as long, so you have to alternate throughout the day. Also, my family is really poor. When I first got here, they didn’t use toilet paper – used notebook paper instead. And we only eat meat once a week if someone brings alpaca meat down the mountain. If not, we have trout. Other than that, it’s half a plate of rice, half a plate of potatoes, with the occasional bean/vegetable combo thrown in. It’s not easy. And sound carries in this house, so I am always listening to the music the teenagers are listening to directly above me… and my ceiling is made of moldy newspaper, which means it probably leaks in the rainy season. *sigh*
On the upside… I live on a natural reserve in Peru. And that’s pretty sweet. We’re so high up, that on a clear night, you can see the entire milky way. The waterfalls and lagoons are breathtakingly gorgeous. I see condors and flocks of green parrots. My host family is adorable. My host dad, Antonino works in construction and is the “Judge of Peace” in the town… which means nothing. My host mom, Sulma, is a houswife. I have three host siblings living with us in the house. The youngest, Aldair, is 6. And he’s a SMART kid. I had him adding in English after 2 days. And he’s a sweetheart. But we need to work on boundaries still. The next oldest is Eliana, 14. She’s awesome – plays volleyball, is really welcoming and outgoing and not so self-conscious that she’s awkward yet. And the oldest, (get this, mom and dad), BLADIMIR, is 16. And he’s super awkward. I’ve actually made a game of it to have entire conversations with him without him saying a word because he will not talk to me. He barely talks to people in his family, definitely not the weird gringa who lives downstairs. It’ll go something like this me – “did you have a good day at school, Bladi?”
me – “why, yes, thank you for asking, alex, and how was your day?”
me – “my day was great too, thanks”
and he just stares at me until I walk away. I’ll break him yet.
Ah yes… that reminds me. I go by Alex now. No more Sasha for me. Because, well, as it turns out, in Quechua (and this site speaks even more quechua than sto. domingo did), Sasha means incompetent. When they told me it meant “difficult” in training, they were trying to be nice. In Spanish, the V and the B both make a B sound, so my last name sounds a lot like “bitches”… and that’s a word everyone knows in English… so the long and the short of it is that my name means incompetent bitch. I figured if I have to start all over anyway, I may as well not be a joke this time around. So I’m Alex. And I like it.
It looks like I’ll be teaching at the secondary school every thursday – something about the environment… and aside from that maybe sitting in on a few english classes and helping out with the “tourism class” – they’re making a video next month and I’ll be helping out with it.
It’s kind of a slow start here – I lost a few days to sleep. The altitude makes it really hard to breathe, and I was sick. I still need some furniture, but things are starting to look up here.
Oh, and there’s no cell phone or internet here. There’s a community phone which is solar powered and there’s a computer with internet, but it’s also solar powered, so you can’t use it before 4pm, there is always a line, and it is slow and expensive… so I’m just going to say there is no internet. But that leaves me a lot more time to write out blog entries ahead of time and post them when I go into the city every two weeks or so.
Life is divided up into phases. Each one is very different from the others, and you have to be able to recognize what is expected of you in each phase. That’s the secret of successful living. A new phase begins now…
Here’s to new beginnings,
Alex.
It rained on the coast of Peru…I rejoiced November 4, 2008
Monday went by surprisingly well! It was really nice to be able to see everyone together again in the training center – turns out that a week apart is exactly what the doctor ordered. We started the day off by presenting to the other groups about our Field Based Training experiences. I ended up pretty jealous by the end of the presentations, especially when I heard about the group that got to visit the cloud forest! What the hell? I watched a dog eat a dead dolphin on the beach while overheating! aaahhh.. I’m definitely more of a mountain kind of gal as it turns out.
After presentations, we got to meet with our APCDs (bosses), and I got to talk to him a little bit more about my site. It’s basically all set – and I absolutely cannot wait for site visit to check out where I will be spending the next two years of my life!
I met a current volunteer today who took the time to take me aside and show me on the map exactly what the difference between alto-piura, sierra-piura, and other reagions is. He showed me how the watershed works and how deforestation has been affecting the riverflow down to the coast. It was amazing! And I’m definitely grateful to know what my site is since there was no way that I would have been able to utilize him as a resource if I was twiddling my thumbs waiting to find out where I am going.
After lunch we had a presentation by the Youth Development and Small Business APCDs… which was really helpful and informative and also made me question my merits as an environmental volunteer in Latin America – it all seems so arbitrary. I hardly spoke any Spanish when I got here, I have no experience with environment, but I speak fluent Russian and have 6 years of experience working with children, not to mention that I have a bachelors in Social Relations and Policy with an emphasis in sociology. It just doesn’t make much sense to me. But I’m grateful to be here and excited that I’ve had the opportunity to learn as much as I have so far.
This is going to be a pretty big week for me – Tuesday is Obama day. I’m so excited I may vomit. All of the volunteers are going to the regular pub to drink and watch the outcome together and they agreed to keep the bar open until midnight for us.
Wednesday I’m doing a presentation about water purification to two groups of 40 young adults (about my age) who take the night class at the local school.
Thursday everybody else finds out their site, which means I get to find out who my sitemate is going to be! Finally!
So yeah… big stuff.
In other news, my little sister was nice to me the day I got back, which was weird; we have a volunteer halloween costume party on Sunday which was pretty cute – someone even rented a Barney costume; my host father is out of town for the next 20 days, so it’s just us ladies, which is surprisingly tranquil; and lastly – and I almost don’t believe it myself…. IT RAINED TODAY. It was insane. There was thunder, there was lightning, people looked confused. I just stood outside in disbelief… amazed, ecstatic! Rainy season is upon us. This also means the mangos are bigger and cheaper. Score!
Thank you to everyone who sent me packages over the last few weeks! I got the socks…. amazing! Thank you! Apparently socks don’t last very long here, but I should be fine for a while with these… and they’re cute too!!! I got the lotion and the candy and the halloween card and the 110 letters from the little kids through the world wise exchange program… adorable… I also got the pants and shirt, which I will be wearing tomorrow… have I mentioned thank you? thank you! Also… if at all possible… if anyone can write me letters in Russian…. I would appreciate it. I really don’t want to lose it while I’m here and want to hear about what’s happening back in the US. So that should be all for today. I’ll check back in in a few days.
All we are saying, is give peace a chance….
Sasha
In memory, everything seems to happen to music October 12, 2008
Well it’s official – I’ve lived in Chaclacayo for a month now and it already feels like home. My Spanish gets better by the day, I can get around the greater Chosica area with minimal problems, I don’t let people give me crap for being white and “rich” and am always finding something around town to do.
Let me start with some quick general observations that have been made about me, to my face, since I’ve been here – apparently, I don’t dance: I float, which is just fine with me. I also bob my head in an aggressive angry large black woman way when I get angry and look like I’m bisexual (all the time). There are more, but these were the ones I either got most frequently or thought were the most hilarious.
I also had a little problem last week when I realized that I’m close to the only volunteer that doesn’t call her host mother “mama”… I just call her Silvia – she’s only 36 and I don’t feel comfortable calling anyone but my actual mother “mama”. I gave it a lot of thought and eventually one of the Bolivian volunteers recommended that I just call her Mamita – it’s endearing and it’s not mama, so I decided this was what I was going to do, because the woman really does a lot for me and I know for a fact that the previous volunteer that lived here called her mama, so it’s a fair compromise.
Moving on to training – thursday was pretty intense. After all morning of language class, we had all afternoon of technical training in Spanish too. It was really interesting, we had professionals from INRENA and another governmental environmental agency come in, but it was difficult to keep up with the Spanish technical terms, since we were talking about different types of soils and how to prevent soil erosion and protected areas… but apparently we’ll get all of the information on powerpoint at the end of training, so I’ll have time to look over it again when I have downtime at site.
Friday was an absolutely freaking amazing day! In the morning, we grouped all the novice level spanish classes together and watched the Motorcycle Diaries in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. Then, we got the results of our language placement interviews. I got placed into Intermediate Medium, which is the level you need to be at in order to be sworn in as a volunteer, so that’s a relief. This also means that I don’t have to have tutoring after class anymore. So basically I’ve moved up four spanish levels (from novice low to intermediate medium) and six spanish teacher levels in four weeks. My spanish teacher told me that I’ve earned a nickname among the Spanish teachers at the center – they call me “the sponge”, which I think is pretty freaking cute. When we were finding out our language levels, our teacher gave us the incredibly beautiful gift of her book of poetry (in Spanish). She is a poet and won some sort of award for this book last year, so she signed our copies and gave them to us as a parting gift. Then she started to cry and told me that I was the best gift Betty (my first teacher) has ever given her, which made me cry. Freaking emotions. We bought her a cake – it was basically just cute city.
After this lovely lunch, we got the “rape talk” from our PCMOs – what to do in case we DO get raped. It was just more reminding us to be reasonable adults and let Suni give us the rape kit even if we’re not sure we want to press charges – same as in the States… but some of the girls got really riled up over the video we had to watch, because it basically reiterated that you can’t ever trust anyone a hundred percent, not even your fellow volunteers. But again, this is no different that in the United States, so hopefully everyone just calms down a little bit and uses good judgement and nothing bad will happen (I’m not naïve, just realistic – which is why I was surprised to find that I was the only girl in the group that brought pepper spray with me…) but that’s another issue.
After the rape chat, I did some yoga, which was necessary and everyone went out for friday night beers before we went to Chacrasana for delicious burgers at Mateo’s house. I ate two burgers, which made me stop and think – when I left DC a month ago, I couldn’t even finish a burger to myself and now I eat SO MUCH FOOD. Friday, for example, I had a bowl of cereal and an omelette for breakfast, an eclair and an orange for midmorning snack, a huge plate of rice, chicken, and potatoes for lunch, then another orange, some candy and a piece of cake, some of other people’s lunch, then two hamburgers and some dried bananas. And this is how I eat here every day. And I’ve lost weight. And I haven’t had diarrhea like others, so I’m going to just say that the yoga, walking endlessly and just being healthier all around is what’s doing it, but damn.. I need to buy new pants.
Anyway, these burgers were damn delicious and afterwards, we all gathered at Brian’s house to watch this movie called “Volunteers”. It’s from 1985, with Tom Hanks, it’s a spoof about the Peace Corps and none of us had ever seen it, which made it an even funnier watching experience. I highly recommend it to everyone. Volunteers.
Saturday we went back to the agricultural university, which I love, and learned about cuy (guinea pig) raising and how to properly take care of them so they end up being good for eating. We also learned about how to work with bees and turn it into a profitable secondary project, perhaps. After La Molina, a group of us went to a polleria to watch the Peru – Bolivia futbol game. Which was predictably embarrassing for Peru. The six of us split two and a half full chickens, two large salads, and two heaping plates of fries, with six liters of beer and three liters of inca cola. Have I mentioned that I’ve been eating a lot? Well, at about halftime I had to use the bathroom – which was occupied. For a very very long time. When the woman finally left, I walked in only to find that the toilet didn’t flush and she should probably see a doctor about what I saw in there. So I tried the men’s – which wasn’t much better. And so I went upstairs to try the other bathroom up there. The men kept telling me it was cool to use it, even though it’s the employee bathroom and the women employees were pissed that I was using it. I used it anyway. And then I found out how the dishes were washed at the restaurant: in the sink of the employee bathroom without soap. I literally stood and watched a waitress rinse out a cup and rinse off a plate and bring it back downstairs to put food on. I wanted to pour hand sanitizer in my mouth, but the damage had already been done. So we bought some overpriced soft-serve ice cream at KFC and made our way home.
I got home and my host mom told me that we were going out for dinner in Chosica tonight – to a polleria. I almost threw up in my mouth. Saturday was a grand fiesta in Chosica, to celebrate it’s 114th birthday. There was a big concert in the main park and my family just wanted to make sure that I was going to find my friends alright in the crowd. I found them and my host family took off. We stood around and tried to dance for a little while, but the crowd quickly got thicker and more drunk and people started calling out the gringos in our group for being so tall, so the majority of my friends left around midnight because we didn’t want to test our luck.
Sunday I went back to Hare Krishna to show some other friends how beautiful the temple is and whatnot. So two of the tallest men in our group (six foot four) and I show up and clearly stick out like a sore thumb. Almost immediately, what appeared to be a harmless old man came up and started asking my friend Brian where he is from, the usual question… and when Matt and I walked up, this old man started going on about how he used to belong to this institution, but now all the works on is self-realization and how the entire world is a big matrix. He asked us what the most transcendental moment was for the United States of America. When we couldn’t answer, he started going on about some PhD who wrote a book and was surprised that we hadn’t heard of him. We told him there were a lot of people with PhDs and he refuted, saying no – you have to be superhuman to earn one. Then he told us there was a hundred and fifty years of technology that “they” were hiding from us and that it was our quest to find where this technology was. He said we were all androids and we were trapped in this matrix and the only path to true self-realization was escape from the matrix of society. Then he told us he hoped that he hadn’t offended our egos and rode off on his bicycle. After this, at the Hare Krishna service, the preacher? kept talking about how there wasn’t a written record of anything in the past because people used to be smarter and have a higher capacity for memorization and that technology was proof of our increasing mental incapability. It was delightful. I’m going to need a few weeks away from the temple, I think…
I went back to Chacrasana with Brian and had lunch with his host family – where we talked at length about how marriage isn’t the solution to pregnancy, which was a fun topic.
We walked over to Matoe’s house, where his whole family was hanging out, and his uncle was passed out drunk at 4pm on a sunday. I love Peru.
A group of people from Chacrasana got together and we went into Chaclacayo for a beer and some ice cream. When I got home, my parents surprised me with a…. NEW MATRESS… it’s the best present they could have ever gotten me ever. The old one had a dent in the middle, which made it hard to sit on and I woke up several times every night, sometimes with back pain. I never complained because I didn’t want to be a prissy American, but I’m glad to know that it was bad, even by their standards… So I can’t wait now to go to bed!
I’m going to stop typing now because I’m sure that my blog entries are frustratingly long to read, but I send my infinite love!
Sasha
Yom Kippur in Peru October 8, 2008
I cannot believe this week is halfway over already! I’ve had really long days every day. Monday was one of the easiest days of training so far. For language class in the morning, we learned about cooking vocabulary – by cooking. For breakfast, we taught our teacher how to make blueberry pancakes – some of which were delicious.. except for the ones I tried to make, of course, which were burned and awful and embarrassing. For lunch we made Chifa, a mix of Peruvian and Chinese food which was basically a kilo of rice mixed with green onions, soy sauce, chicken, hot dogs, fried eggs, and hot peppers. Twas delicious and best of all, we got to listen to Ozomatli and Manu Chao the entire morning. Moreover, there were adorable clean one month old puppies in the house that I got to play with. Suffice it to say, the morning was incredible.
After we got back to the center, the country director had a little chat with us about responsible sexual behavior, which was a little awkward and a lot hilarious. In the middle of our laughter, he started a movie about HIV positive PC volunteers and their stories, so that brought us all down a couple of notches into depression. We talked about the stigma of getting tested, about relationships with Peruvians and the dangers of those relationships ending poorly. It was all basically about being a responsible adult and realizing that you’re a representative of the PC wherever you go and how there’s never an excuse not to protect yourself. Nothing we didn’t all know already, but a good reminder nonetheless.
There was a panel of current volunteers – an African American volunteer, a Jewish volunteer, a Hispanic American homosexual volunteer, an Asian American volunteer, and an older lesbian volunteer as well. They all got to tell stories about their experiences in the PC and techniques for coping with discrimination as well as express their current concerns. After the panel, we did the activity that I had planned last week with Kathleen, which I think went rather well (I hope at least) and then broke up into smaller groups to discuss further.
Then came my hour of tutorial, which involved walking to the pastry shop where my teacher bought me an eclair and a glass of hot milk – which was delicious and now makes me feel so spoiled!
And so there you have it – easiest day of training so far.
When I got home, my parents told me that there was going to be a protest in Lima on tuesday – to raise wages because the cost of living had gone up and that I shouldn’t use public transportation during the day because things could get sketchy. Luckily, I live walking distance to the training center, so that wasn’t a problem.
Then I experienced my first earthquake. Nothing major, but definitely a nice tremor. Everything is definitely fine – just a moment of excitement! Also, apparently the structure of the houses is not very secure here, so we’re not supposed to stand in the doorway, we’re supposed to run out into the middle of the street far away from the house. Lesson learned. I think October is considered tremor month, so this isn’t an unusual occurrence.
Tuesday was a pretty long day – it was really warm out so it was difficult to focus. We had some volunteers come in and talk to us about the education system in Peru, composting, and eco-tourism and their projects, which was much more informative than any of the technical training we’ve been getting from our trainers. Then, Amy and I went to talk to our technical trainer about issues we’re having with our community based project – basically, we wanted to write a solicitud to the Municipality and ask them to put in raised wooden blocks for people to put their trash bags in on trash collection days, because as it stands right now, the dogs get to the trash before it gets picked up and it makes a mess. We talked to our families and found out there is a lot of beef between the community and the municipality because the municipality hasn’t been doing it’s job (keeping Huascaran clean, putting in parks, etc) and the people of Huascaran are talking about withholding tax money. Also, we found out that in other parts of Chaclacayo people pay for these wooden bins out of pocket and that it’s just logistically not a very good idea. We have two weeks to complete this project and we feel really rude imposing our American ideas on a community we’ve lived in for about a month that has been nothing but hospitable to us. And when we voiced our concern about making the PC look bad or making ourselves look insensitive to the people that have been kindest to us, we were told that the point of this project is for us to fail. They want us to fail while we’re in training surrounded by friends instead of when we are at site alone. I think this is ridiculous and hate being specifically set up for failure, especially since it’s completely unnecessary but also I think it’s a slap in the face to our communities. We’ll see what happens next with this whole ordeal.
Tuesday night was another volunteer’s birthday party. We all wore white shirt and brought markers and wrote all over each other. There was a pinata and jello shots and crates upon crates of beer. I had an amazing time all night. And then – at the end of the night…. somebody’s host brother followed me to the bathroom. Waited for me to come out, got in my personal space and asked me how to say I like Sasha in English… Nothing happened, but it was after one in the morning, alcohol was involved, it was outside and dark and I was alone. Sketch City. I basically ran back inside and got everyone that lives in my community together and we left immediately. Lesson learned – always go to the bathroom in pairs.
Today was my language interview, which went much much more smoothly than the first one. Would have probably been better if I wasn’t hung over, but such is life.
After the interview, Kate and I caught a ride into Lima to go to the PC office there and meet up with the country director for Yom Kippur Services. We are the first trainees to have seen the office – all the other groups have had to wait until after swearing in… so that’s fun. The place is incredible! They have hot water and it’s a mansion! I got to spend some time in the infamous PC office library and there was a lounging room. We spent a few hours there waiting and got to read some old Newsweeks and a National Geographic from the 60s. It was grand. Then the country director came by to drive us to the temple.
The temple was in Miraflores, which is the very posh part of Lima. There was a lot of security at the temple and they had really strict rules about being on time. We sat up top and got to meet another American. She is a volunteer living in Lima for 2 months while working for the Cultural Exchange Service, an American-based company. Her Spanish seemed even worse than ours, and there was nobody there holding her hand the way the PC holds our hand, so we felt really grateful for all of the training we’ve been getting. The service was pretty comparable to a US service, except for the sermon in Spanish, but it was beautiful seeing all of these Peruvian jews coming together in the same way as we do in the US. The country director dropped us off at the combi stop and Kate and I ate some of the most delicious street vendor food I’ve had yet and hopped a combi home. So here I am – but it’s late so this is all of the catching up I can do.
Shana Tova
Sasha
