Piura City, the department capital of Piura, a fully resourced city of approximately 560,000 people about 1.5 hours from the beach… so yea so much for wearing alpaca sweaters and taking bucket showers haha :) Bienvenidos a Peace Corps Lite - however, it is always hot and sunny, so all of you who were worried about me in South America, mail me some sunscreen pronto ;)
"The city of Piura is such a merry city that its inhabitants talk in singsong tones."- direct quote from Peru travels
No, in all honesty, I am completely thrilled with my site placement. I wanted a city, I wanted to the coast, and I wanted prescribed centers and projects already in development. I have all of that, so I honestly could not ask for more :) I had just assumed when I said in my final placement interview that I liked city life, that would be a nice little city with about 30,000. That was what the other sped volunteers got, I basically got Boston :/ However, after the initial shock of that number wore off, I have started to get so excited about the opportunities that I will have in such a big city. In the Peace Corps, you get a site assignment and within that you have a primary project, a secondary project, and various community members who have agreed to assist you during your service. My primary project is a Special Ed school, primarily with students that have more profound or severe disabilities. That is where the bulk of my time is supposed to go. My secondary project sounds AMAZING! I work with an NGO (non-profit) that works with ludotecas. From what I can gather from the book they gave me in espanol, ludotecas are traveling libraries/kindergartens that work on basic literacy and socialization through games. It sounds so BU School of Ed, I love it!! And I am really excited that I do get to work some with the little guys. I had so much fun working in the preschool in Boston, and I cannot wait to see this program in action. The ludotecas visit the pueblos jovenes outside of Piura, which are more or less shanty towns in I understand correctly. So, I have been warned never to bring anything remotely valuable to the sites. But, these are the kids that need that early development the most, so I really just want to get out there and see everything.
We leave for our site visits next Sunday, so I will be staying with my host family and meeting all of my community counterparts the following week. I am a replacement volunteer, so there was a girl from Peru 9 who was a youth volunteer in Piura city and lived with my same family. I am a little nervous about that, but the city is so big and she was never officially connected with the NGO and did not work with the special ed school, so I am pretty new to everyone except my host family. Also, she will still be there when I visit, so I can ask her the million questions that I have about living in Piura City.
In terms of the other volunteers, most people seemed to be really happy with their placements. My friend Chrisite, another sped volunteer, is going up into a mountain department, and we are both really curious to learn about the sped situation in a more rural part of the country. A lot of us are really close to other volunteers. The administration here does seem to cluster us within our various departments. For example, there are 3 volunteers in Peru 13 within about an hour of my city, and more from other programs. Also, I am the capitol city for all the volunteers in Piura. That means regional meetings take place in my site, and when other volunteers from smaller campo sites need to stock up on supplies, they usually come into Piura city, so I will get to know a lot of other volunteers.
It is crazy that they tell us our sites and then we have a week before we can visit, but this week is fiestas patrias, to celebrate Peruvian independence day, so we have a 4 day weekend at the moment to go out and celebrate finally knowing our futures!
I never did update everyone on my Field Based training, so if you are still interested here goes:
Field Based Training…aka learning how to work with youth while youth are on an early school vacation :) (sorry for the delay jon)
So we all got back to the center a week ago from Field Based Training, basically where we all break up into smaller groups and travel around Peru meeting current volunteers in their sites. We left Saturday night from Lima and had a 13 hour overnight bus ride to Chiclayo, Lambayeque. Chiclayo is a regional capital so it was a pretty nice sized city to wander around for the day. We had a little scavenger hunt in Chiclayo because what better way for a youth development group to get to know a city?
Mall in Chiclayo
The inside of a Combi, comfy no?
Christie and me with all our belongings
My group had all 4 people in the special ed program, and a few other youth volunteers who have had experience working with individuals with disabilities (yup I use person first language on my blog, Prof. Lehr better be proud). So, the main focus of our FBT was to visit the site of a special ed volunteer, Kat, who lives right on the beach in La Libertad. The initial idea was to visit her special ed school for 2 days, observe the students and present a lecture to the teachers on one of the days. However, Peace Corps and Peru being ever unpredictable, the government had suspended classes nationwide in order to prevent the spread of the swine flu. Basically the kids get their winter break a few weeks early, which just so happened to correspond to our FBT. Que Bueno :( So what ended up happening was we had to present 2 days to the teachers in the school. Teaching teachers in a language that I am nowhere near fluent in was not my favorite life moment, and it was definitely a hit to my confidence here, but at the same time we ended up working really well as a team. Those of us with teaching certification were also the same people with the lower language level, while those people who had less formal education were more fluent. It was a real life game of telephone, seriously, but I was so grateful to have Frannie there to translate. I am not quite sure what will happen in site, but we shall see… The three teachers and the principal at the school really wanted to have specific suggestions for each of their kids, but for all the sped teachers out there, you cannot tell anyone what to do with a kid if you have NEVER seen them… The positive side was that the teachers were so passionate about helping their students. They really did want advice on how to improve the learning of their students. That gives me a lot of hope for my work here. The system might not be all that functional, but if the teachers want change, at least I can work with that.
We also visited a few other sites of current volunteers, and helped out with one chat on self esteem and one on sex ed. Yup a sex ed charla with 13 year olds… haha como se dice awkward? Somehow I ended up leading most of that charla, because I knew how to play the opening game and just ended up talking from then on. Aside from the fact that half the kids did not understand the directions to the activity the first time, it was so much easier to stumble through Spanish in front of kids… I am such a teacher :) In addition to the assigned projects with was so awesome to get to see volunteers actually out in their sites. We traveled around and visited ruins in a few sites, went shopping for handmade jewelry everywhere, hung out on the beach, and got to see a little bit of Peru outside of Lima. All in all, we visited three departments: Lambayeque, La Libertad, and Cajamarca, and saw a good range of sites. Its nice to be back with everyone at the center, but really FBT just makes you want to get out there and start the next 2 years. The kids we met were so enthusiastic, and the teachers really impressed me.
One of the PCVs, Elizabeth leading a self esteem charla.
The kids had to write nice things about each other on their backs, we did this as a group too...haha I do recommend it though
My FBT group at the beach at Kat's site
Kat's boardwalk in La Libertad
Inside the Special Ed School, notice the lack of por favor...
2000 year old ruins and our 7 year old tour guide.
Cajamarca
Keenan, Christie and me on the roof of our hostel in Cajamarca
The man in the middle can make a mean pastry, we bought him out of several things :)
That would be a woman cleaning medical equipment in the street...
Our cookout in Cajamarca, and below is my language facilitator having a little fun with the bonfire...
Our strange hostel room, with the door randomly out on the street - not in the building, we don't ask questions...
Cajamarca - some of the kids from opur sex ed charla
My group with some Peru 9 and 11 volunteers before we went out for Yaell's b-day in Chiclayo.
In the category of random details of the trip, I spent my free day getting a pedicure, manicure, and massage in Chiclayo. So incredibly not peace corps, I understand, but don’t judge me. The funniest part is, I never spend money on that stuff in the states, but here it made me feel like home. A girl needs a little chill time… We also had hot showers in every hotstel but 1. I have never appreciated that concept so much in my life, enjoy your hot showers ladies and gentlemen. On that note, ciao!
8 dollar pedicures :) So not peace corps...
