Ascope Day 1

Day 1

22. Agosto. 2011

Monday

>Arrived in Ascope from Trujillo at around 1:30ish. Matt from Peru 14 accompañared me. He is my nearest neighbor and is almost done with his service here. In December he will move to Lima for a third year with Peace Corps. I was thankful for his help today. He introduced me to cocitas that were sold on the bus on the way here. They were 50 centimos and delicious. Toasted little coconut mounds. Tasted like no bake cookies without the pb and chocolate. A treat I am happy to know.

>Ate lunch with Maggie and Matt. Didn't talk as much as I should have. Good meal, good conversation. Gave a tiny speech at Matt's suggestion. It was effective. Maggie teared up a little bit talking about having me there and being happy to have me. It was nice. Matt managed to get us out of desert... I need to learn how to politely refuse food like that. You can tell he's been here for awhile :)

>Arranged my room a bit.

>Walked around town. Chatted with as many random people as I could. Bought a Sublime con galleta for the road at a snack stand. Snack stand guy is named Segundo, a good thing to know.

>Returned home and chatted with Maggie's friends. They are moms in Pierre's class as well, and they were all working on a diorama to present tomorrow at an event for the anniversary of the school. Had coffee with them, which included bread and avocado. Tasty treats. Chatted. They invited me to play volleyball tomorrow on their team because one of them is pregnant and they need someone to take her place. I gladly accepted my first official invite for something other than food. Maggie said I could spend the whole day with them tomorrow at the school. Win!

>Peeled potatoes with the peeler I brought for the fam. They let me help! Alright! I even taught Pierre how to use it and let him peel as much as he wanted, which was a half of a potato. He did great! I like being a big sister :)

>Dinner with fam. My Spanish was shaky with nerves. They are so nice to me.

>One last thing, I might be killing a duck tomorrow... not quite sure. Vamos a ver...

Day 1: Success. I feel good. I am happy here.

Basics on My New Life

I live with the following people-

Maggie- Host mom. 42. Awesome.

Henry- Host dad. Farmer. Drives a moto taxi. Quiet, also awesome.

Farid- Host bro #1. Age 14. He is real nice about sharing his computer with me until I get my internet figured out.

Piere- Host bro #2. My favorite Peruvian so far. Age 5 (until Oct. 2nd... birthday buddies!) My number 1 English student. We're pals.

The following people live 'with me', but in a different house, across the yard in the same gated in area.

Grandma Betty

Grandpa Hernando (I think that's his name... they just call him the old guy... I should probably figure this out)

Aunt Julie

Gringo, Donna, and Aaron- Pitbulls who live in the company of rabbits, geese, ducks, chickens, guinea pigs, etc.

So, for the first three months of my service, I am working on my community diagnostic and getting to know the area and the people here. Basically this means that I spend my time right now networking and weaseling my way into as many community events as I can so that I can meet people and figure out what is what in these parts. This is fun and so far I have had success in getting to know people. I think I owe a lot to the volunteer who preceded me. People understand my purpose here and are willing to talk to me because they are familiar with Peace Corps due to the last volunteer.

The entries that follow are snippets from a daily journal sort of thing that I have been keeping. I currently don't have my own internet and have been borrowing my host brother's computer. This is why I have had heavy facebook activity, but no blog posts. It's possible to check email/ facebook, but spending time on blog posts or uploading pictures hasn't been feasible yet. I'm using my flash drive to put all of this on the blog right now, so that's why you're getting a massive update all at once. Sorry about that. Also, because the following posts are snippets, let me know if I left out any key details.

 Sidenote- Pictures are taking years to upload, so I will add them later. Sorry again.

Last Week of Training

After seeing site and meeting my new host family, I was headed back to Lima to finish up training, swear in as an official volunteer, say good bye to my new Peace Corps family, and pack up to move to La Libertad. The only word that can describe that week is emotional. I think I had about 4 meals every day that week to celebrate and say goodbye. The last meal my host fam made me was fried bananas and an egg over rice, my fave, with a bowl of Ramen as a special surprise. I almost cried in my delicious noodle soup. Ha, as if a bowl of Ramen needed anymore sodium. lol

Training itself was a mix of stressful and relaxing, with final language assessments, checks for learning, and other random stuff to wrap up, along with parties, piñatas, and a lot of food. The week ended with a party for our host families on Thursday, followed by swearing in on Friday with the U.S. ambassador there to officially swear us in and our host families there to celebrate with us.

After such a long application process and literally years of waiting for that moment that I could call myself a volunteer with the United States Peace Corps, swearing in was a great feeling of relief and accomplishment for me. I certainly was not alone there and was so happy to be sharing this with 50 of the coolest people I have ever met.

But saying goodbye to those same 50 people the very next day was not as much fun. It's strange to bond with a group so much in 10 weeks, but especially for the youth volunteers that I spent that time with, it was hard to see them go. I know they will all do awesome things and be great volunteers all in their own marvelous ways. One of the few drawbacks of being in Peru is that it is a large country and I know that I will only see most of my fellow Peru 17ers a handful of times of the next two years. Bummer.

We spent our last night celebrating together and then headed off to Lima the next day to go our separate ways. Saying goodbye to my host family and leaving Yanacoto wasn't easy either, but it was all past me before I could even really think about it.

Whirlwind of a week. Commence 2 years of awesomeness now :)

Last day with my language class. 

Celebrating with my Yanacoto friends and fam at the host family party. 

My first taste of ceviche on swear-in day. 

                                                     Host mom and sister after swearing in. 

Site Visit

Site visit: a week billed as the most awkward in the entirety of the Peace Corps venture. It lived up to its reputation. It went better than I had hoped, because I will be living with an amazing family, but the first few days of this kind of situation are always a little awkward.

The week started with the 5 people from our group, Peru 17, leaving Lima together for Trujillo, the capital of La Libertad. We spent a day in Trujillo lying low, then the following day we had a day to meet with our community partners before heading off to our respective new homes. Socio day, as this was referred to, was a day for our community partners to meet us and get a presentation on what Peace Corps is all about. All went well and before I knew it I was off to Ascope for the first time. I went on a bus with Karla, a kind 27 year old lady who works at the municipality and came to socio day with her colleague Carlos, who is in charge of sports, culture, and education at the municipality. Honestly, as nice as site visit was, I think the bus ride there was my favorite part. As we rode through the sugar fields, the sun was setting in the best of ways- burning bright red over a desert blue sky. It was so pretty. Bonus: that particular week was harvest week for a lot of the sugar fields, which meant there was a deliciously sweet scent in the air. I was really excited to know that this would be my home for the next two years.

The rest of that week kind of slipped by in a blur. I was confused and getting oriented the whole week but managed to stay busy by meeting the people who work for the municipality, the high school director, the doctor, people from the school district, and more. I also met the four new puppies who were born the day before I arrived. Adorable.

The majority of my time was spent with my host family. We picked avocados from their trees, ran errands, met people, toured the town a little bit, etc. I particularly enjoyed spending time with Piere, my new 5 year old host brother. He is very excited about learning English, and he's at a good age for it. He picks it up really quickly and has better pronunciation than adults or older children. He can make English sounds way better than anyone in his family. After the excitement of someone new wore off for him, he dove right into the "How do you say...?" game. After several numbers, colors, and animals I got a little bored. So when he asked me how to say 'oso,' I replied by making paws and growling out "beeeaaarrrrrrr" as if I were one myself. To this day he can't say the word bear in a regular tone. We've tamed it down quite a bit, but there's still some aggression behind it. lol.

It was a little overwhelming, being the new person. I kind of felt like a puppy. Everything I did or said was repeated and talked about right in front of me, which got to be a little trying on my patience and at one point inspired what Joe calls my 'Nigon glare.' Piere was being especially little brother-like one day and received a less than pleasant glance. He was so scared at first that he ran out of the kitchen and didn't come back. Now this is something we joke about and he gives the glare to me when I'm being annoying to him :)

I felt a little bad about the glare slipping out right away, but I think it was also an indicator of how comfortable I was right away. By the end of the week, my host family took me back to Trujillo and set me up with a cab with a better fare than I would have gotten without their help. During my cab ride back to the hostel, the driver asked me if I was married to a Peruvian. When I said no, he asked how it was possible then for me to have a Peruvian family. Precious.

All in all, site visit was a good way for me to see that I was about to get an awesome host family and a community ready to accept me. I went back to Lima so happy, so overwhelmed, and so ready to get this thing started.

Picking avocados with Piere and abuela Betty. 

Plaza de Armas, Ascope

Piere and who would later be named Ruby

Desert Sunset

Back By Popular Demand

So, I don't even know where to begin. First of all, a million apologies for not updating. Thank you for keeping up with the blog and I'm so sorry for the communication lapse. I will try to not let it happen again. Now, in case you were wondering, I will get to the posts that I haven't written, or have written, but haven't had internet to post. We'll start with site visit, which happened in early August...

Ascope

Hi friends! Sorry I haven't updated for awhile. It's been a busy time, visiting the new host fam last week and wrapping up training back in Lima this week. My new home is beautiful and you will hear loads more about it within the coming months. I'm still doing great and will update next week once I am settled into Ascope.

Spider Cat

Spider Cat 

Editor's Note: This post is dedicated to Eva Igler, Sal Verhagen, Joe Kotlowski, and anyone else who has ever loved Spider Pig and/ or the Simpsons. 

As I have mentioned, my 9 year old host brother is obsessed w/ the Simpsons, or Los Simpson as they say here. So it was no surprise that when The Simpson Movie was on TV last weekend, he was camped out waiting for it hours before it began. Like most Simpson productions, the movie did not disappoint Efraín. Loved it. 

Even though he saw it a week ago, he's still talking about it. Friday night, however, he took it one step further. While sitting in my room, clacking away at the ol' laptop, I was startled by Efra bursting into my room with Tito the kitten wearing a cape made from my host mom's handkerchief. Before I knew it, Tito was hoisted up onto the wall while Efra sang, "Spider Cat, Spider Cat, does whatever a Spider Cat does..." For those of you who speak Spanish, you may be amused to know that the translation for Spider Pig is Puerco Araña. That means that Tito was Puerco Gato, or Puerco Tito. While this was a riot, the fun was not over. My entertainment vanished, only to return without the cape and wielding a stick.... or a wand if you use your imagination. Within moments, Tito was 'standing' on my bed while Efra sang "Tito Potter, Tito Potter." Yes, 'Harry Plopper' was 'Puerco Potter' and Efra loved it. Tito was a very tolerant cat and let me snap some photos. Here you have a peak into the life of a Yanacoto resident :)