I am 50 cents

Interesting Peruvian Fact #1: They call 50 cents coins ¨chinas,¨ which also means a Chinese female.

I cannot believe it´s been only 3 days since I arrived here in Santa Eulalia, which is about 45 minutes east of Lima. We are surrounded by massive mountains on all sides, which are a constant reminder of the fact that we are in the desert; the mountains are devoid of trees. They are brown and very dry. My first reaction was ¨what happens when it rains!¨ I am so used to tropical climates that I forget there are no torrential downpours or even the slightest drizzle most of the time. It is my first time in the desert.

So I am in Peace Corps. A time in your life when you give up luxury and the comforts of a modern life. In the Dominican Republic, my homestay had little ants crawling around my bedside table and mosquitoes waiting patiently for me on my mosquito net every morning. The water would not always run. In Belize I had ants, cockroaches, a rat and a completely dysfunctional toilet. And I was cool with all that. So I think I´m very ready for something worse. Never did I imagine that my home here is not only nicer than my previous homestays, but it´s nicer than the places I lived during college!

Every morning I wake up, open the curtains and admire the beautiful contrasts the sun creates with the mountains. I have a newly re-tiled kitchen and bathroom, spotlessly clean. I have only seen harmless gnats inside the house and 1 large spider, which I have at home in Jersey. There is always water running although it is always cold water, which is the only ¨hardship¨ I have at home. I live only with my host mom. She never got married and so it´s just the two of us. Her name is Consuelo and she is super sweet. She giggles rather than laughs and always smiles. She is a high school teacher although she does more administrative stuff than teaching. She wears a bright blue velvet shirt every day and likes to dance. Yesterday at dinner, she laughed with joy because ¨we like the same food.¨ We both eat fish and chicken (yes, I eat chicken now that it´s not full of antibiotics and hormones), love veggies and fruit and a whole bunch of other stuff. It´s pretty good food, too!! We eat a lot of white rice as well as grilled chicken, vegetables and fruit. She uses soy sauce, ginger and garlic, yay to being kind of like Chinese food. She makes a wonderful apple, peach and oatmeal shake. She kept on asking me if I liked ¨Kwakuhr¨ and for a while I thought she was saying ¨cracker¨ like someone with a lisp. Apparently, that´s ¨Quaker¨ as in ¨Quaker oatmeal.¨ She makes her own soymilk from real soybeans, a skill I will have to learn from her!!! There are additives and artificial chemicals in powdered soymilk, so she doesn´t like it. Plus, I supplemented my diet today with Oreo cookies, so life is as it should be.

As for actual training, it´s going pretty well. I have been very positive and feeling pretty confident. Today we learned about our Spanish class placements. I thought I would be intermediate high but apparenty I am advanced middle. OK, I think they placed me a little too high but I really like my class so I´m happy about it now although still a little nervous. I think I should improve pretty quickly and am trying really hard to talk Spanish a lot. As for the other parts of training, it has mostly been orientation, leadership or reflective stuff such as ¨what is the difference between a manager and a leader?¨ or ¨what kind of an experiential learner are you?¨ Most of the time, I´m into it, surprisingly.

Oh, and some of you may have heard of the earthquake that occurred here two days ago. My first earthquake, how exciting! It started in the northeastern part of the Peruvian Amazon and according to which source you believe, 3, 5 or 30 people died. We only get 3 TV channels -- news, telenovelas and soccer. The news channel is the government-owned one, so I take everything I learn from them with a big grain of salt. There is an election next April, so the political tension over here is already apparent. We´ll be learning about the candidates and doing a debate in class, so I´m excited for that. It´s part of cultural integration, by the way.

Well hopefully I´ll be able to find which internet cafe around here has Skype and then I can make free calls! Ciao...