This is from yesterday

Still no health problems! It seems to be a nice miracle because people who are getting sick look like they´re having a terrible time. Some people are expelling nasties from the mouth, others from the other end. My friend got pretty sick and then frustrated with everything because her host mom is super overprotective. Somehow she decided that the best way to confront her frustration was to dress in a short (for Peru) poofy jean skirt and tank top. I think the canon of whistles directed at us as we crossed a busy highway brought her back to reality, thank goodness. Another girl also decided to wear a poofy black skirt today, above knee-length. I think she liked the attention though. Not good.

I am learning a LOT of new words in Spanish each day but still feel like I am bumbling like an idiot when I speak. It´s worse because I´ve been soooo exhausted every day. We have a rough schedule and I´m ready to sleep before dinner although I last until about 10 at night and wake up without an alarm clock at 6:20 AMish!! If you know me, that is NOT my normal schedule. I´d feel fine except for the fact that they placed me too high in language. Now the staff think I´m near fluent in Spanish, which I´m not but I don´t want to disappoint them. I had the beginning of an interview today with the guy in charge of the environment program and he started off by expressing how happy he is at my level of Spanish...understandable because there are only 2 of us in the advanced levels and we have some trainees that only have high school Spanish ability. Boy, I need to work really hard...

Many people are feeling overwhelmed these days. They told us yesterday that we´re going to have 2 projects coming up, one is individual and the other is with a group. The individual project is basically to shadow a professional related to the environment and get to know them and what they do better. The point is to practice meeting new people and approach them with an idea as well as to practice Spanish. It might culminate in a one or two-hour project. The group project culminates with a project of some sort. I´m pretty excited to speak Spanish to different people. It might be pretty cool.

Yesterday we had a mission in which we had to work with a partner. I was paired with a girl who is at the ¨novice low¨ level of Spanish and we were an awesome team. We went to Chosica, which is a cute town nearby, and had to go to the biggest supermarket there and learn about their products. The supermarket is about the size of two convenience stores in the US combined. According to the manager, virtually all of their products are Peruvian, including all of their produce, water and detergent. Of course, there is Coke, cookies and other American products, but they are surprisingly few. They also sell store-made chocolate cakes. Score! Then we had to learn about the potable water system. First, we had to figure out where to go to find the answers and then find a person who could answer our questions. It was certainly rewarding to be able to accomplish that in a place that was foreign to us. I had a great conversation with a water engineer about how the town, Chosica, gathers their water from 6 wells (probably large water pumps) although 1 dried up because this is the desert. We talked about how there are no water conservation education inititatives even though it´s very needed. He doesn´t know when the wells will dry up, but it doesn´t seem to be an unlikely situation because 1 already dried up. Some other office has that information but it´s kept confidential! That was a great day of learning interesting things and my partner and I both left feeling more confident about our Spanish and resourcefulness.

It´s time for dinner so I better leave!

chao...

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...

Hi mom and dad!!!

Right now we are at an in-country retreat/orientation at a nice and clean resort. I was worried about the cold but it is like Spring here! It is very sunny with a nice, gentle breeze. There were bright green parakeets (I think they were parakeets) with red heads flying around the trees as we ate our breakfast of bread and butter. The staff here are soooooooo friendly and eager to have us here. Most of them met us at the airport, from the language teachers to the country director. They videotaped us and took pictures of us and held ¨Bienvenidos a Peru¨signs and wore huge smiles. I feel very safe and at times I feel like I¨m in high school at summer camp because of the energy and they kind of held our hands as we landed in Lima from luggage check onto the bus and to our bungalow rooms. I´m sure the high school/college feel will fade, especially on-site, thankfully. In half an hour I will have my Spanish interview. I am feeling confident about my Spanish. They speak fast but very clearly here. I think I´ll be placed in a high to middle level class. There are some people here with only high school experience with Spanish but there are also people who have spent a year in Spain or a semester in Chile. Then I will get vaccinated and have interviews with people who will place me with a host family and the environmental program staff. The environmental program staff gave a picture presentation...Even though we won´t be in the Amazon, I am not feeling too disappointed now. This country is so beautiful and has such a diverse, rich ecology. OK, there is a line so hasta luego!

Done with the first step

We just finished up "staging," which is an orientation sesssion in Washington, D.C. The internet here is super expensive, but I did want to write how happy I am with my group. I was a little worried that I would be stuck with some immature, narrow-minded kids (the oldest person here is 25 I think, but we have 1 married couple). I was wrong. Everyone here has done amazing things and many people are so well-travelled and interesting. I have so much respect for them...some have done amazing things like studying women seaweed farmers in Zanzibar or has been a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan and so many amazing things. We did this opening activity where we had a list of one cool thing each person in the group (34 total, half health and half enviro) has done. My thing was that I have logged over 50 dives, so now people start conversations with me like: "Hey, you're the scuba diver, right?" There are actually quite a few people in my group who dive! One girl even brought a full set of snorkeling equipment. Many people want to go to Galapagos...we'll see about that but that's my main vacation goal. Anyhow, thanks to orientation, I will be flying into Lima tomorrow with high expectations for a great experience!

The worst thing I have found out is that nobody will be going to the Amazon :o( So now it's down to the arid desert coast or the snowy mountains. Despite that disappointment, I am still positive! I am just excited to start speaking Spanish again, learn more about my group and meet everyone in Peru!