June 21st, 2006- Let the games begin!

“If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed, races won, or lasting happiness achieved.”
--Maurice Chevalier


The summer of 2006 has officially begun, along with my Peace Corps career. The above quote was shared with us today during training, and it happens to perfectly capture how I am presently feeling about moving to Peru. My nerves have gotten the best of me, my imagination has become my worst enemy, and backing out of my commitment has seemed so very tempting over the last couple of weeks. It has been a struggle to convince myself that there is no better time than now, and that my time in South America will be well worth the risk of possibly encountering an unsafe situation while I am down there. While Peru is probably one of the safer Peace Corps placements, the ambiguity of my living arrangement and project have left room for me to envision things as much worse than they will most likely be. I am anxious to get down to Peru to see what it is actually all about. Right now, I feel as though I have a lingering and stifling case of stage fright. I have often suffered from performance anxiety, but typically, the performance lasts no longer than an hour, which comforts me because the end is always in sight. What am I to do when this particular performance of mine is going to span an entire 2 years? The end is nowhere near in sight. This is merely the beginning. It makes me sleepy just thinking about it!


My mom drove me to D.C. today for my first day of training. We thought that we would have a surplus of time to mosey to my hotel, have a leisurely lunch, and share a drawn-out emotional goodbye. Oh, how unrealistic those assumptions were! What actually happened was that Mapquest once again deceived us, and we basically made it to D.C. one minute (literally) before my training began. Lunch consisted of me feeding my mom sushi and seaweed salad in the car with chopsticks, all the while navigating downtown streets and contemplating why Mapquest was consistently such an evil beast to us. Then, after getting to the hotel, our goodbye was so rushed that I barely remember it. Maybe quick goodbyes are the best kind, though.


At training, I was greeted by 36 other Peace Corps Peru volunteers: 1/2 assigned to youth development and the rest to business development. While all of the volunteers seem like very good people, 35 of them seem significantly different from me, leaving one (who is thankfully my roommate during training) who is alarmingly similar to me. Reannon, my roommate, is from Madison, WI, and seems to be even less prepared for this whole journey than I am. She unknowingly strolled into training with none of the necessary paperwork filled out, was publicly ridiculed by Peace Corps administration for her outfit being too informal for training (business casual attire is more important than we initially assessed), and managed to misplace our room key four times in the first hour. I love her already. Unlike our counterparts, neither of us conducted extensive research about all of the insect types that inhabit Peru’s earth. Does this make us unprepared, or normal? I guess only time will tell.

Training was not as tedious or repetitive as I thought it would be. I learned many interesting tidbits about the Peace Corps and Peru, some of which are outlined below. I am typing all of these things from memory, so they are probably all wrong (joking…kind of).

1. As part of his presidential campaign, JFK first publicly introduced his idea for the Peace Corps to 10,000 college students in the courtyard of the University of Michigan. Their enthusiastic response to living in underdeveloped countries in order to spread skills and promote peace fueled the solidification of his Peace Corps proposal. Can you even imagine if a president/presidential candidate today would invent such an inspiring idea?
2. The Peace Corps currently has 7800 volunteers placed in 70 countries across the world, and the applicant pool continues to increase. Since its founding in 1961, the Peace Corps has had 182,000 returned volunteers who have served over 138 countries. Isn’t that a powerful thing?
3. Belching is considered insulting in Peru, while relieving yourself in public (male or female) is acceptable. I have already rehearsed hiking up my skirt as to avoid any accidents.
4. Peru contains of 87 of the 118 known ecological zones.
5. We will be in Peru for a presidential change, so some tension could easily be present. Sadly, the only thing I know about the new president is that he wants quechua to be taught in Peru’s schools, because a divide exists between those who speak castellano and those who speak quechua.
6. In honor of my short stint in Southern CA, I suppose I should mention that Peru is considered a surfers paradise, and has the longest lefthander in the world. I don’t know what a lefthander is. Peru is also 3 times the size of California.
7. My entire group is part of Peru 7, the 7th group of volunteers since the Peace Corps reentry into the country in 2001, after 26 years of being removed from the country because of political and economic instability.
8. My project (youth development) is only in its 3rd year. Only 3% of the 7,800 Peace Corps volunteers serve in this sector. The sites that we will be placed in are brand new, as opposed to already up and running as are those that other Peace Corps volunteers encounter. This means that the people in our communities have most likely never interacted at all, or for an extended period of time, with anyone from the United States. Youth development is especially important in Peru since 60% of Peru’s population is under 24 years of age. The target group of my project will be people who are between 12 and 24 years old.
9. It costs tax payers $40,000 per year to support one Peace Corps Volunteer in another country. I would feel badly about this if I were actually making any money down here.