Week 7:

So, upon my return, my host family was sooo excited to see me. A week is the longest that I had been away from home. By this point my family and I have gotten pretty close. My host mom is the coolest mom in the neighborhood. Everyone wants to hang out at my house despite the fact that there is Internet at other houses. Rebecca always makes us a snack and interacts with us. Always a ton of laughs, usually because none of us can speak Spanish, except Dylan, but it is so incredibly great to have some laughs after the trying days of training. Anywho, we decided to go to the zoo after lunch. (Please don’t be mad at me, but I forgot my camera.) So, Rebeca (mom), Gianelia (little sister), Trinidad (Gma), Yerlina (aunt), Valentina (baby cousin), Dylan (uncle and fellow trainee), and myself climbed on a combi. It is only about 45 minutes, but on a combi, it can feel like a couple of hours when you are standing up, getting an arm workout from the constant stopping and going. I must take this opportunity to mention one awesome thing about this country. Everywhere you go, there are “preferencias” (direct translation – “preferences”). These are check-outs (in grocery stores) or seats (in combis) that are (supposed to be) strictly for the elderly, pregnant women, parents with small children, and the disabled. So, Trinidad and Yerlina and the baby got to sit down for the entire ride, and as people exited the combi, Rebecca and Gianelia got to sit, but Dylan and I stood the whole way. It’s cool. It’s the most workout that I’m getting in this country so far.

This is a holiday weekend. It is “Fiestas Patrias” (directly, “Homeland Party,” indirectly, Independence Day). They celebrate for a much longer time than we celebrate our Fourth. The kiddos are out of school for at least two weeks. There have been vendors setting up their tents in the main park in Chaclacayo for over a couple of weeks now, and they will stay for about a month. So, with everybody on holiday, the zoo was cram-packed. Since I have no pics, I’ll try to describe it. It's a zoo - It has animals in cages. Good enough? Baaahahaha. Seriously though, it was really extremely similar to American zoos. It was expensive to get in (it was about $4 admission, but remember that that is S/. 12, over a day’s pay to yours truly (Uncle Sam, if you are reading this, I know you will appreciate my frugality J)), it was expensive to eat there, and it was expensive to see the most popular and fancy exhibits. Apparently the zoo that we went to is much smaller that the one in Lima, but I thought it was decent. Of course my favorite were the monkeys. We got there just in time for feeding. There was a huge birdhouse and an area devoted to the “selva,” or rainforest, which was really cool. Also, there was a section with sea life. Penguins are so cute in any country. The big animals (bear, lions, pumas, panthers) were a little disappointing. They did not look healthy – “muy flaca” (very thin). They did, however, have two white Bengal tigers that happened to be playing in their water hole for about five minutes when we walked by. This was the highlight of my trip – not only because I tower over Peruvians, so for the first time in my life, I feel tall and could actually see what was happening from the back of the crowd, but also because the tigers were cool.

This week at training was dominated by receiving our site locations. I felt so incredibly bad for the two “Volunteers of the Week” that we had this week. (Can’t remember if I have mentioned it – we have one Volunteer from each program (Youth Development and Community Economic Development) stay a full week with us to answer questions and just hang out). A lot of trainees were bombarding these guys (who were super cool BTW – Mandy from Piura and Brad from Cajamarca) with questions about where they were going to be placed, even though they said that they had no idea. On Monday we had chats with our project leaders to sort of finalize our desire for a specific region because everyone went to a place in their region (coast or sierra) for Field Based Training. Some people tried to decipher their site location based on the really vague hints that were given during these chats, but I personally didn’t think that I had enough knowledge of Peru or the Peace Corps to try and do that. I was so incredibly chill about the whole thing. It really didn’t matter to me. I was happy that I got coast and that was that. Buuuut, in the very back of my mind, I thought, “I kinda hope that I don’t get Lambayeque.” I had already visited there on FBT, I didn’t feel any kind of strong connection to the other Volunteers there (as a matter of fact, one guy had been kinda rude to me), and I had classically conditioned myself to dislike it because of the emotional break-down that I had in that department. Yeah, I just ruined the story cuz now you know what’s coming…

Thursday, July 25^th, site assignment day, a day to make you or break you, day of reckoning, judgment day. We are going to discover our sites by popping a balloon hanging from a clothesline with a picture of my face plastered on it and a note inside with my department on it.

The Balloon line of disappointment and despair

First-person view of my position in line

I was about 2/3 of the way down the line. My turn finally came, and of course it is Lambayeque! Of course! Everyone automatically received a folder with more info about their specific towns and mine was right next door to the Volunteer who was a little rude to me on FBT. Super! That is even more awesome! “Don’t cry, D.D. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Focus on something else. Good. Good. Watch the other people being excited about their departments. Frick! Nope. Not helping. Making it worse. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.” I look over at my buddy Caroline who is also going to be in Lambayeque, and she really wanted Ica. She’s bawling, and I lose it.

Caroline faking excitement about our site. 

Mind you, people had been talking all week about how someone always cries on site assignment day. There is always at least one person who is entirely displeased. I was totally that person, but I sure didn’t want to show it. There are cameras going off ninety-to-nothing and people there from all departments and headquarters, and I didn’t want to go down in Peru 21 history as the one who cried on site assignment day, but it happened, and then I couldn’t stop it.

Everyone going to Lambayeque trying to
pinpoint their sites while I'm feigning excitement
trying to hide the tears behind my camara

I was beginning to think that I should have been a little more worried like everyone else, and then maybe I wouldn’t be in this predicament. We had little meetings on and off all day, and I had probably 15 different people, who were only trying to help, ask me what the was wrong and give me little tokens of advice, but being left alone to actually read the information in my packet instead of being shuffled from meeting to meeting without knowing much about my actual site and having oh so many people in my face saying, “What’s the matter? Not what you wanted? It’s going to be OK. Blah, Blah, Blah.” I know that people were being super nice, but it was making it so much more difficult to turn off the waterworks. That was my day…all day.

When I finally got home, I read my packet thoroughly and found out that I had many colleagues, much more than most people had, so that was encouraging. And that my site is only about 2800 people, and I wanted a small site. Also, there is Internet in my house, which is a mighty fine luxury to have. I am usually always able to see the bright side of things, but I am so used to having time to myself to think that I was completely overwhelmed. I may go down in Peru 21 history as being the crybaby of site assignment day, but I was looking back and laughing in one day.

That Friday we had a celebration at the training center for Fiestas Patrias that was pretty fun.

Pablo demonstrating a traditional dance in which pieces of
cloth are attached to the dancers' hind-ends and then set on fire.
No language instructors were harmed during the demonstration
of this dance.

Yup. That's hot. LOL

Each language class had been assigned a different department in Peru to present the various traditions, foods, dances, fiestas, geography, etc. specific to that region. One guy and one girl from that class also got to dress in traditional costumes, so I totally volunteered. Super fun. Ain’t I adorable? My class’s region was Piura, way up in Northern Peru. It was very fun. We later ate cake and the dishes from each region.

Oh! This was the week that the 3DO people cooked tacos for my family. I had been talking with Rebeca about cooking chicken fried steak for the family before I left, but there is no such thing as cube steak in this country. I read online that you can make it out of round steak, but I hated to waste a good cut of beef chicken-frying it, and it just wouldn’t be traditional. So, there is a taco place in Chosica (the town about 20 minutes away). I had ate there once, and quite few of the trainees had made it a habit to go there about once a week, but during week five (I think) about 50% of the 20 people that ate there got food poisoning, so that place’s popularity fell by the wayside. Anyway, my older sister, Yerlin, had heard of tacos, but had never tried one and really wanted to, so I decided to make tacos. Here if you say “tacos,” you are talking about a pair of stiletto high heels. Weird! I was so glad that Rebecca (trainee, not mom), Dylan, and Caroline offered to help me out for a small fee of helping us eat, of course. We made everything from scratch with the refried beans being the most difficult thing, because we took turns mashing enough beans for 13 people to eat with a big spoon. (Trinidad didn’t have a masher-thingy). Caroline finely chopped up practically all the veggies and two blocks of sandwich slices of cheddar because I have yet to encounter shredded cheese in this country. Rebecca spent most of her time smushing beans (probably the most tedious job of all). Dylan seasoned and cooked the ground beef and made pico de gallo, and I made guacamole, warmed the tortillas, and supervised. If you say “tortilla” here, you are talking about an omelet. Weird again! They came out fantastic.

Official Chef pic

Me, host mom, and sis. So friggin cute! Luv them to death!

Everyone loved them, and all the Americans waaaay overindulged. It was really nice doing something for all the people that had done so very much for me. In Peru, it is traditional for the mother to serve up the plates for the rest of the family, so as to control everyone’s portions (or so I think this is the main reason), but tonight, I got to serve the rest of the family. It was awesome. I loved being the cause of their smiles…and full bellies!

A lot of ups and downs this week, but I am looking forward to the future even more now than ever. I cannot wait to get started at my own site!