September 27, 2006- Living the tranquila vida

If there is one thing that has repetitively been discussed amongst my friends and I here in Peru, it is the idea that nothing fazes us anymore. Peru has already made us numb to life’s little surprises, an idea that is reinforced, rather unnoticed, every single day. I like to think about this concept every day before I go to bed though, because I don’t like thinking that I am blind to something that used to captivate me so. A general rule of thumb I like to follow in attempting to predict or plan my days here is that those things I expect, will never come to be, and those I never expect will either happen later on today, or tomorrow. Of course, I can’t really think of especially illustrative examples of this personal theory, so instead, I will just relay the details of the day I had today, and hopefully you will be able to extract some major differences between routine happenings in Jesus, and those that occur in the U.S.

My main counterpart, an obstetrician, was really slow to warm up to me. While everyone else in my town greeted me with open arms, she, who was the only person I cared about accepting me, greeted me with reluctance and sideways glances that I interpreted as evil. You can imagine how frightened this made me to come to work, initially. Yesterday, an astonishing turn of events took place, though. I worked side by side with her in her office, like usual, but she actually started asking me questions about my personal life! And then, mid-day, she told me that she wanted to take me up the street to try dulce de higo, a dessert that is typical to this region (figs boiled with cinnamon and sugar, and served with a caramel sauce). I made her repeat herself four times, because having dessert with her was the last thing I envisioned us doing a couple of weeks ago, when she had this strange inclination towards giving me dagger-like stares. So we climbed up the mountain a bit to this woman’s house, who is famous for the dulce de higo she makes. Instead of serving us though, she told us and showed us (for 20 minutes) a painful (to look at) hernia on her belly that she said made it impossible to cook. She suggested that we visit her neighbor’s house, who also on occasion cooks dulce de higo. We later found ourselves in the middle of a barren, dirt-floored living area, waiting for two plates of dulce de higo. It wasn’t a store, nor was it a restaurant. It was a stranger’s house, and we were about to heartily partake in dessert consumption from someone we didn’t even know. Does anyone realize how madcap this scenario is? Let me put it into perspective. You are visiting a friend in an unfamiliar neighborhood in the U.S. You park your car far away from his/her house, because we all know what a hassle parking is in the states. It’s summer time, and while navigating the neighborhood you get a little tickle in your throat. Wouldn’t some icecream, or jello, or even a cold Coca Cola be nice? So you stop at the first house you see, stroll into the living room of this unknown family, and order from them whatever it is you desire. They offer you their couch, and bring you (with a smile) whatever your palate is craving, as though they were born to serve you. Oh wait, this would NEVER happen in the states. Only in Peru, I tell ya, only in Peru. I wonder if it is even worth mentioning how delectable the dulce de higo was. Its flavor made me completely disregard the risk of being poisoned by a stranger.

There are definitely some personal and universal boundaries in the states that just don’t exist here. I have noticed this not only in Peru, but also while I was studying abroad in Argentina. In many restaurants in Argentina (or on the streets, if I was eating and walking), people (I am not talking homeless people, I am talking well-dressed business people), would oftentimes interrupt my meal to ask me if they could try a bite of my pasta, or cake, or whatever delicious entity I might be shoveling into my mouth at that moment. This caught me of guard for a number of reasons. First, I am very territorial over my food. I’ll give you some of mine, but only if you give me some of yours, a tit for tat sort of philosopher I am. Second, do I even know you? Third, I didn’t get to taste my food before ordering it, so isn’t that sort of unfair? The more I thought about it though, the more I liked the idea. With how indecisive I am with sorting through restaurant menus, it would be really helpful for me if I could mingle amidst the tables, tasting what everyone else chose off of the expansive menu. I think it would accelerate my selection process by leaps and bounds. Maybe we should really reevaluate how private and cautious we are in the U.S. There are definitely some pretty awesome things that we are missing out on. I was never really great at establishing boundaries for myself in the states, so maybe I have found my niche here in Peru!

September 17, 2006- A superb weekend with a superbly painful ending

This weekend, a bunch of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers and chums (including one of my two closest friends here) were in my city for a conference about this adolescent camp we are having in a few months. This meant that in between meeting about our business, we had plenty of time to explore the city, eat the most delicious yogurt (in the world, probably), and break my foot. Only two of the mentioned three activities was planned, of course. The other was an unforeseen exasperation, a rather regrettable way to end a wonderful weekend.

Let us never focus on the negative, though. Instead, I should use this space to relive the pleasurable couple of days I have had. My good friend Kristen lives 4 hours away from me in a city called Bambamarca. Her distance from me makes it so we will probably only be able to see each other every 4-5 weeks when she comes into my city to check her mail. Our unsolicited separation from one another makes each of our visits reason to celebrate, which is precisely what we did this weekend, maybe even excessively. We justified our unearned jamboree (*we have only been in our sites for two weeks) by claiming that we were celebrating Kristen’s birthday, which occurred at the start of this month. In her honor, we paid a visit to one of the nicer spas I have ever visited, set on a beautiful green farmland and outfitted with roaming horses and llamas, thermal baths, two fancy restaurants, and a small travel agency catering to local destinations. Here, along with taking in the picturesque setting, we purchased two neck, head, and back massages. While we thought such a treat would be outside of our budgets, they offered us a Peace Corps discount (probably not realizing that we have barely begun our tasks here) which made our visit pleasantly affordable. Our masseuse asked us in Spanish (obviously, as I am in Peru) as she led us back to the spa whether we wanted it soft or very hard, and I responded that I would like it hard and deep, to work out all of the knots that the week and a half of my Peace Corps stint had caused me. Little did I know, she had actually asked us if we wanted to go in the warm steam room or the sweltering hot death room, and by replying that I wanted it “bien fuerte,” I had given her permission to lead us to our deaths. Immediately (and I mean immediately) upon our arrival in the death room, all fluids were sucked out of our bodies, my glasses fogged up so that I couldn’t lead myself to safety (forget about Kristen at that point, as my life was clearly in grave danger), and two seconds later, thanks to Kristen’s quick and selfless thinking in telling me to remove my glasses, we found ourselves gasping for air and life outside next to a laughing masseuse. Very funny, where again is that warm and more manageable, existence-supporting steam room? Having never visited a steam room, I was a little confused initially about why anyone would subject themselves to a needless bout of heavy perspiration coming from body parts that I didn’t even know contained sweat glands. Much to my amazement, it ended up being really refreshing, and was followed by one of the best massages I have ever had.

Kristen accompanied me back to my site for a short visit, during which she completed a critique of my current living environment. My family made us what they considered a nice dinner (loads of spaghetti with a fleck of chicken), and when we asked for some more meat since we were both craving protein, my host mom gave us each another heaping plate of pasta. Same difference, to them apparently. For about an hour following dinner, we rummaged around my town for food to satisfy our lingering cravings, and in our search, we ended up exploring parts of my town that I didn’t know existed. I wouldn’t go as far to say that Jesus is a limitless locale, but I was definitely surprised by how many new tiendas and new people I was introduced to with Kristen’s assistance. Did I mention previously that my entire town can be covered on foot in ten minutes? I really do love it though, despite its petite nature. It’s actually quite quaint.

The majority of Kristen’s friendly criticisms were aimed towards my bedroom, which she said had potential that I was wasting by using my sleeping bag as my sole decoration. I love decorating and color coordinating, don’t get me wrong, but I really thought that if I did too much with my room past making my bed in the morning, that I would never want to leave it to get my work done. This logic didn’t fly with her, and she gave me a challenge of transforming my room into a chic and heavenly haven by the next time she visits. As she was verbalizing this challenge, I felt myself getting dangerously excited, knowing fully that once I started this task, that I would become obsessive about it. The next day, we spent about 5 hours in the sweltering sun of Cajamarca city in search of the perfect furniture and accessories to adorn my room with. I picked up a table, a couple of chairs, a comforter, a shelving unit, some quintessentially Peruvian tapestries, and some pillows, all the while forgetting to consider how I would get all these things back to my site. It was quite the comedy, because I picked up the shelving unit at the start of our shopping spree, realizing afterwards that I would have to carry the bulky larger-than-life thing through the crowded city streets while we looked for other necessities. I sort of felt Kristen and I were the modern day Laurel and Hardy, knocking people over with my shelving unit as I turned to talk to her. Everything is so much more complicated here. Each store specializes in one item, such as lamps, so there is no such thing as a one stop shop. I wanted about 20 things, so we had to pay a visit to twenty stores, carrying around large pieces of furniture with us. Of course the stores weren’t in the same neighborhood, either. If I had been with anyone aside from Kristen, I think I may have had a nervous breakdown. Also, simple things that we take for granted in the states, like pillow cases, cant be bought separately here, so you have to have them specially made. I won’t tell you what a hassle that was, because while they measured my pillows from every which direction during my first visit, they managed to make the cases too big, and then too small, and then I just settled because a fourth visit to the fabric store didn’t appeal to me. Dad, you would appreciate this next thought of mine. While I was busy being pushed around on the street by some people, and knocking out others with all of the stuff I was holding, I really developed a fondness for malls in the U.S. While they used to be the last place you would find me in the states, I think I will do all of my shopping there when I return. What an exceptional idea malls are, when you think about it. Everything you could possibly want in one place, organized in an ordered and eye-catching fashion. Brilliant, I tell you, simply brilliant! As we were headed back to Kristen´s hotel before catching a taxi back to my site, I realized that I forgot to purchase a laundry basket. I asked our taxi driver if he could stop by an outdoor market, and that I would just be a second as I knew exactly where to find the laundry baskets. He agreed, and I left Kristen in the car to guard all of our newly purchased furniture. I ran into the market, pointed at the basket I wanted, and expected a quick transaction to transpire. Instead, the vendor decided he wanted to overcharge me for the crappy piece of plastic I was trying to buy, and he refused to budge on his price. I was, of course, 40 centimos (10 cents) short, and he was not in a giving mood apparently. He told me that a few blocks down there was a cheaper store, but geez, I had a cab waiting! Didn’t he understand??! So, in jogging to the other store (and partaking in my first real exercise since moving to Peru), I rolled my ankle, fell in front of the entire market, and could barely move my foot afterwards. OUCH!

Getting a taxi back to my site with all of my shit was a hoot. The taxi driver tried to tell me I might have to pay for a couple of taxis (not such a cheap expenditure) to cart all of my belongings back to Jesus, but even I, the least spatially talented person I know, could tell that we could somehow fit everything into one. After much experimentation and the threat of an impending rain storm, the taxi driver, half of Cajamarca’s furniture offerings, and myself were squeezed miserably into his taxi and battling to conquer the bumpy ride back to my site. Of course, when I got home to organize my findings, I was disheartened to realize that I had forgotten to pick up five things, and there were another five that I needed that I wasn’t previously aware of. Four days and four trips to the city later, my room looks nice. And not full of clutter, as I am infamous for. Not too shabby of a set-up, if I do say so myself.

September 10th, 2006- Whooooeeee, it´s raining cats and dogs in Cajamarca!

That is the one downside of living in this region- the rainy season. I asked my host dad just how bad the rainy season is here, and he said it just rains a tiny bit each day for a few months. Today’s rain makes me think he may have been telling me fibs though, because it’s not even rainy season yet, and I would file this rainfall under T for Torrential. I thought I would use this rainy day to address some cultural differences I have noticed here, because I don’t think that any of my entries have really focused on that gem of a topic. Let’s establish ahead of time that I am generalizing, because I have still only been here for a short time. This entry is going to jump around a bit because I have a few subject matters to discuss, so please forgive its disjointed nature.

Let’s first discuss things that are fairly obvious, such as dress. In the cities, people dress as they do in the United States, or maybe a little less formal than in most U.S. cities. Sneakers are not very common here, though. Men wear loafers, dress shoes, or boots, and women wear sandals or dressy boots. It seems that women in the cities prefer wearing dress slacks over skirts. Shirts adorned with English words seem fairly popular and fashionable, but something funny is that the phrases on the shirts don’t usually make sense, and sometimes, they make the person look downright ridiculous. For instance, today, I saw a girl wearing a shirt that said “Fat Birthmark” on it. Personally, I love birthmarks, but prefer when they are small, rather than fat. And doesn’t something have to be three dimensional to be classified as fat, anyway? Weird. Regardless, my clothing doesn’t make me stand out too much in the city, but in the campo, it’s a different story. The majority of the women in my site wear muted neon layered skirts, with different colored neon sweaters. They wear forest green or maroon wool socks pulled up to right under their knees, and typically wear dark laced shoes that resemble orthopedic nursing shoes. They are seriously like little walking Technicolor rainbows, and I might start dressing like them soon. I figure how can I even think about missing home when my clothes are so distracting to me? Color coordination is apparently not practiced here. I wonder if each color they wear is symbolic of something, because there are some interesting color schemes going on here, and I can only think that they must be representative of something.

Communication style. Peruvians love to talk, and interrupt, but one good thing about them is that they don’t mind being interrupted mid-thought, so they are in no way hypocritical. They seem a bit repetitive, almost as if they focus endlessly on small daily details to avoid discussing anything meatier. They have good senses of humors, and are not nearly as conservative in conversation topic as I was expecting them to be. For example, my first night with my host family (a family from the campo, where people are traditionally more reserved and conventional), my host mom spent the evening showing me pictures of she and my host dad making cakes in the shape of penises. What a fabulous ice-breaker that was for us! Generally, I think that Peruvians are not very expressive about their emotions. This bothers me because I feel as though they don’t trust me with certain information, even though I know it is just part of the culture. It took forever (3 weeks) for my host family in training to tell me that their father was really ill and needed surgery. If they had told me sooner, I could have helped them earlier.

Customer service, or lack thereof, has been bothersome to the majority of us (Peace Corps Volunteers). My best piece of advice, restaurant-wise, is to never enter an eatery in a parched state, because it usually takes longer for your drinks to come out than your food. In my favorite eatery in Cajamarca this makes no sense, because the table I frequent is right next to the glass case where the drinks are stored. This means I can see my drink, and imagine how nice it might feel on my desiccated throat, but I can’t have it until my waiter decides that he wants to serve it to me. Also, most restaurants don´t serve a full menu during the week. Instead, they have a different 3-4 course meal chosen for each day, and if you don´t want to eat what the special is for that day, you have to find another restaurant to eat at. Even more confusing is service in stores, pharmacies, or bakeries. While the concept of a line exists, the concept of first come first served does not. Literally, in a line of ten people (the first person obviously deserving service first, since he/she has been waiting the longest), the salesperson very well might help the tenth person. Why? I don’t know. Ask Peru. Onto pharmacies and bakeries. Don’t even get me started on how needlessly complicated buying things in these two places is. Let’s say I want a piece of cake, which I often do. I go to the glass case, point out the cake I want, and the person helping me takes it out of the case. At this point I am usually salivating. But no, I can’t get my cake now. I have to wait for him to fill out a little paper specifying what type of cake I want, and then wait some more as he fumbles around to find some really important stamp. Then, with my official bakery paper, I have to walk to a little box at the front of the bakery, where there’s ALWAYS a huge line. Here, I have to get another stamp on my paper, and take it back to the initial guy that helped me so I can finally retrieve my cake. Usually, by this point, I don’t even want it anymore. Screw Weight Watchers, come to Peru and try to eat junk food! It’s almost too difficult to bear, and much easier to buy fruits and veggies elsewhere. Pharmacies follow the same procedure, so I wouldn’t suggest going there in an emergency.

Peruvians seem to have very different belief systems than us about small things (that can make BIG differences), like refrigeration. Many people here (such as my family, and the families of many other volunteers) think that refrigeration is evil, because to them, cold things make people sick. In hypothetical terms, if my family witnessed me eating a piece of noticeably rancid meat paired with a cold beverage, they would blame my subsequent trip to the toilet on my cold beverage. It’s not worth arguing with them because this, to them, might as well be empirically proven. “Do they at least put eggs, mayonnaise, or milk products in the fridge?,” you ask. No, no, and no. Am I still a little hesitant to eat these products in their unrefrigerated state? Well, I was, up until yesterday that is. I mentioned before that the closest city to me (Cajamarca, which is 45 minutes away) is famous for its dairy products. Knowing this, yet having access to none of these delicacies in my town, is making me crave them like pigs crave truffles. Of course, my cravings nag me most when I am not going into the city, and by some stroke of fate, I stumbled upon some yogurt yesterday in a nearby store. I bought it, and immediately felt that while it was stored in a refrigerated case, the case had not been plugged in. I couldn’t control my hunger, though. I wanted it so bad that I figured I would just give it a try. It was definitely curdled, it had definitely lost its vanilla flavoring, and it definitely didn’t aid in my adopting of the Peruvian philosophy that refrigerators are malevolent. Disregarding all of these things, I definitely ate it. I feel pretty good today, so does this mean that refrigerators are a money making hoax? I am still not entirely convinced. One last food difference that I can remember is that people here have a fear of mixing avocado and dairy, which means that all of you CA fans of chicken, cheese, and avocado sandwiches should be dead by now. Beware!

One heavier cultural theme that seems to permeate all of society here is this subtle (or sometimes not) racism, or classism, as some people refer to it as. I guess if I were to choose an –ism term for it, I would call it colorism, because the people being discriminated against aren’t really a different race, nor are they a minority. Whenever I would invite my host family in training to Lima with me, my host dad would tell me that he doesn’t go into Lima very often, because he is ostracized nearly every time he visits. Oftentimes in stores, store owners react negatively to his darker skin (which isn’t even what I would classify as dark), and won’t serve him because they think he is a thief. Many times they even call him this and force him to leave. He lives about 45 minutes outside of the city, and he has to deal with this every time he goes in for supplies that he needs for his house or job. Lighter skin is glorified here, and this concept is definitely mirrored in mass media. In all advertisements and commercials, the models are Caucasian-looking, even though the majority of Peru’s population has a more indigenous look. In my first week of Spanish class, my teacher told me that one of Peru’s most serious problems is its lack of unity amongst the people. I guess that segregation based on skin color is where this disunity is most marked. It seems as though skin color often coincides with socioeconomic class, because people in the campo with less money typically have darker skin, whereas many of the wealthier people in the cities have whiter skin, and look Northern American or European not just because of their skin, but also their body type. Many people in the campo are tiny and look as though they didn’t receive proper nourishment when they were younger. I have heard that this topic of classism/colorism is being extensively researched here in Peru, and I am curious to know what ideas exist for contending with something that is so engrained in society.

I don´t know what category this next observation should go under, but many people I have driven with here don´t use their seatbelts. Instead, they just drape the seatbelt over them in case a police officer passes (because buckling up is the law). If you are going to go through the trouble of making it look like your seatbelt is on, why not just buckle it?

I suppose that is enough for now…

September 7, 2006- Lunch is served and I want nothing to do with it.

I almost succeeded in avoiding it for 3 months, but today, much to my chagrin, fried guinea pig (cuy frito) showed up on my plate for lunch. Poor little passive guinea pig- I am sure you did nothing to deserve this! Its smell is what struck me first. It was a bit swampy and amphibian-like in its stench (man, I love when my food reeks of marsh matter!), and to be honest, eating it reminded me of dissecting frogs in junior high. There wasn’t much meat on the bone, which I was grateful for, because it wasn’t too obvious that I only ate a morsel. Every time I peeled its thick skin back to reach the meat, it would come flinging back at me, and I found myself wishing I had little pushpins, such as the ones we were provided in science class, to hold the skin down. The final straw for me was when I picked it up by its foot to start gnawing on its leg, and a toenail fell off into my rice. This is what I have to look forward to every Thursday, because it is our regional dish, and the people of Jesus (minus me) count down the days until their next serving of cuy frito. I consider myself the least finicky eater of all of my friends, and maybe of anyone I know, but something has got to give here. My town does not eat fruit, dairy products, or vegetables, and I don’t want to offend my family by bringing these things back from the city each time I visit. Am I going to have to start a clandestine cornucopia of vitamin-enriched foods in my bedroom? One thing is for sure. I can’t eat chicken noodle soup, rice, and dry white potatoes for the next two years. WHAAAAAAAAA! (I’m crying).

Perhaps you want to hear about how my work is coming along. It’s at a standstill, because I am a coward around my counterpart, Dr. Cesar. I believe I may have mentioned him before in all of his striking beauty. When I finally gain enough courage to go to the Centro de Salud to talk to him, my courage never stretches to cover obstacles (like him being on a home visit), so when I am told by the nurse that he will be back in 20 minutes, my nervously neurotic nature won’t allow for me to wait for him. I scribble an illegible note on a napkin for him, and run out of the office like the socially awkward maniac I am. We have since been communication through writing notes to one another and sliding them under each other’s doors. I hear this is a really effective mode of communication, especially since the majority of his notes to me slid down our basement stairs, only for me to find a stack of them today, all of which were awaiting prompt responses from me. Our official reunion with him and the rest of the Centro de Salud crew is set for Monday. If only we could do it over the phone! If only my town had phones!

On to more exciting topics. The Peace Corps provided us all with some pretty nice cell phones. From what I have heard from past volunteers, we will probably all be robbed of these. I thought that I would only be able to use mine when I went into the city two times a week, but in all of my explorations, I found one pea-sized spot on my roof where I get some mottled reception (yes, this means that my family is the only family in my whole town that gets cell phone reception- a tiny bit). The interesting thing about this spot is that I can’t stand upright in it if I want to have an uninterrupted conversation with someone. What I have to do is bend over 45 degrees, face to the west, straddle this electrical structure we have up there on the roof, and tilt my head rather uncomfortably to the right. Someday soon, I am going to have someone take a picture of me in that exact position so you all can appreciate the lengths I go through to make a phone call.

From 10pm to 2am my first night here, I helped my dad and his posse paint his name and political sign on houses and buildings in our town in anticipation of the November elections, when he is running for mayor. During that time, I acquired a stalker. He is this really jittery fellow, around my age, who is always talking really loudly and laughing when not provoked. Quite a catch, eh? When my dad told him I was from Pennsylvania, you would have thought the guy was in the audience at a stand-up comedy show. For the next hour or so, he repeated “Pennsylvania” innumerable times, and cackled like a hyena about it. What’s so funny? As I was telling another Peace Corps volunteer that I painted like it was my job that night, he reminded me that the Peace Corps told us it was dangerous to express a political affiliation in our towns. In how therapeutic painting is for me, that detail slipped my mind. I think if the townspeople choose to hate me for helping my host dad paint his symbol, they probably aren’t going to like me living with him either, so I guess I shouldn’t worry too much about it. Regarding my stalker though, here is the conversation that ensued yesterday between my host dad and I about him.

Manuel (host dad): “Lindsay, you probably shouldn’t hang out with him that much, he is a little bit outside of reality, and doesn’t have a good reputation in the town.”
Lindsay: “Why is his reputation bad?”
M: “Because he is insane.”
L: “Oh, what is his name?”
M: “Insane.”
L: “No, his name.”
M: “Oh, I see. His name is crazy.”
L: “No, seriously, what is his birthname?”
M: “His name is psycho.”
L: “One more time. What name did his mother give him after he exited her birth canal?”
M: “Ohhhhh….Tito. Tito is his name.”

Isn’t it lovely how mental illness is treated in my little mountain town?

Signing off in Cajamarca for the day. More later.

September 5, 2006: Here at last!

(Happy Birthday, Ms. Kristen Cummings! I can’t wait to see your sweet self again to celebrate. Throw me a date, and I’ll meet you at Banos del Inca for massages. Let’s live like non-Peace Corps volunteers for a day!)

I reached my permanent site in Jesus, Cajamarca this morning after a 14 hour overnight busride from Lima. I wasn’t nervous during the busride, but I was anxious once I arrived in Cajamarca city about how I would feel pulling up to my actual site. Both of my bags weighed a ton, and I was a bit preoccupied for safety reasons about maneuvering all of my belongings into a taxi to get to Jesus. The transition was smooth, though, and here I sit in my bedroom on the plaza in Jesus. My first minor disappointment occurred as my host dad helped me carry my belongings in. When we reached the top of the stairs, I noticed that he passed by the bedroom (phenomenal master suite) that I had stayed in during my visit here a couple of weeks ago. Instead of a mountain view, I now have a brick wall view. This, to me, means that if ever I feel I am hitting a brick wall with my work here, I can’t even open my window to put myself at ease, because it too is hitting a brick wall. Instead of a cloudlike queen bed, I now have a rockhard twin. On top of these negligible things that I love to bitch about, my room (unlike the other room) has no furniture outside of a bed, and I am laughing just thinking about trying to buy a bureau and desk from the city to transport back here. I can barely handle my luggage, for crying out loud.

Saying goodbye to my family in Santa Eulalia was as sad as I expected it to be. It was way too drawn out, with many farewell dinners, gift exchanges, tearshedding sessions, etc. The prolonged nature of it made it a relief to finally leave, and I definitely sought solace in knowing that I would probably see my family every time I come into Lima. On Friday, we were officially sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers, had a small reception, and then said goodbye to our families one last time. I was really sad to leave my friends’ families as well, all of which made me promise to bring my family and friends from the states to meet them whenever I have visitors. After the swearing in ceremony, we were piled into luggage-packed buses, and taken to Lima for our last evening before heading to our sites. The hotel that the Peace Corps set us up in was really nice, and in the dining/lobby area, visitors are allowed to graffiti the walls, so it was neat not only to leave our mark as Peru 7, but also to see the marks that Peru 1-6 left the night before they went to their sites. I was looking forward to spending time with the whole group one last time, but that is difficult to do with 36 people, so we ended up splitting off and doing our own things. Four of my friends and I attempted to find a good sushi restaurant, but to no avail, so we ended up stumbling upon a Whole Foods type of store that made us as happy as clams after the food that we have been living on for two months. We picked up some whole grain bread, brie, fruit, chocolate, YUM! It’s making me happy just to reminisce! Then, while other people in our group were living it up at bars and discos, we were the nerdy ones in our pajamas by 10pm, watching American movies. The next day, a friend and I explored Lima a bit together, and then the evening was spent giving hugs and seeing people off to their sites. While I didn’t have close friendships with many people in my group, I was truly sad to see them go, and I can’t wait to hear about the incredible things I know they will all do in their towns.

And now, I am here!

Setting small goals for myself has already proven so important. It’s so enticing to lock myself in my bedroom to hide from this environment that is so different than any I may encounter for the rest of my life. It’s easy to convince myself that I don’t have to do anything today, since I have two years here. If anything gets me sad here, I think it’s going to be the avoidant voice in the back of my head, discouraging me from making any progress here. That sounded schizophrenic, I am sure, but it’s the truth. The Peace Corps brings scary things to light, and any qualities a person has can be easily overshadowed by his/her fears of plunging into an untried environment. My first three months is meant to be spent integrating into my town, and if I give into the above urges, I set myself back greatly. Right now, the most stressful obstacle of mine is discussing finances and living arrangements with my host family. In Santa Eulalia during training, the Peace Corps staff pampered us by handling our family business for us. Now, we are left to decide whether we want to prepare our own meals, how much we should pay for rent, and how we should address any other incidentals that may cost us. I think I have decided to prepare breakfast and dinner for myself, and let them prepare lunch for me, which is the largest and most social meal here in Peru. In terms of rent, I have no clue what it should cost to live in the countryside of northern Peru, so I am afraid I might offend them if they ask me to name my own price. We will see how that little chat goes.

Tomorrow, I need to force myself to go to the Centro de Salud, my counterpart, to discuss what my schedule is going to look like. I have about ten townspeople who think they are in charge of planning my days, but in reality, I am in charge of this since I am a community-based volunteer. Warding them off and explaining to them that I am not free labor should be interestingly uncomfortable. I also need to go into the city to buy items like pillows and an alarm clock and food, too. I know it is probably boring for you to read over my laundry list of things I need to do, but I am expecting for at least one of you to hold me accountable for accomplishing these things, instead of hiding under my bed like I sort of want to do. I’ll check back in a few days and let you know what I have actually been doing with my time. I am sure the suspense will kill you!