Visits to Sites (and Cock Fights)

The sign in our hostel from the other PCVs

Park in Downtown Piura

So this is way delayed, and I apologize to anyone who really does read this for the fact that I never update…
Anyway, I got back last Sunday from my first visit to my site, and I was AMAZING. I really love the city of Piura, it’s a big place with a lot going on, but it kind of reminds me of Boston in terms of the size and I feel like I will be able to learn it pretty fast. I do have to take a lot of public transportation to my jobs, which is a terrible thing to have to say in this country because public transportation is not an enjoyable experience. If you are wondering why, scroll up to the last post about FBT and look at the picture of the combi. No bueno…
But, onto more pleasant aspects of my trip. I have 2 socio-comunitarias, aka counterparts, in my site who help me set up projects and work with me over the next two years. I definitely lucked out with mine, they both arrived on time (no small feat around here) and seem really enthusiastic and excited to be working with me. Our second day in our sites, everyone was still in the capital with me, and we all spent the day in the worlds longest conference meeting our counterparts and getting to know each other in the ever exciting structured activity setting. One of my socios, Amparo, is the director of the special ed school where I will be working, and she is a sassy little woman in her late 50s. My other counterpart, Lucilia, is the executive director of an NGO which works to improve different aspects of education. She is such a warm wonderful person. She kept telling me that this experience is more than just the work and I really need to do whatever I can to know Peru and Piura better. The only problem that I am going to have with her is that she speaks Spanish like I speak English. So I basically understand about 24% of what she says to me. The best part is she knows that my Spanish isn’t good, and always reminds people we meet to speak clearly but she just can’t speak slower… I understand this problem though.


My family is adorable! There is nothing Peace Corps about my family situation though. I live with a very well educated retired couple. My father is so cute, and loves to talk, to an excessive degree. But I don’t mind it yet, from what Jah tells me (the volunteer I am replacing in the house) it gets old after a while but I’m thrilled right now. My host mom writes poetry and draws really well, she reminds me a lot of my grandma in the states actually. She is half Italian and speaks English pretty well, yet another thing I did not expect. I went to the going away party of Jah and met other extended family members. They have big family dinners every Sunday which I am looking forward to. By the way, I have wireless internet in my house…peace corps what?
Mi Casa (the top 2 floors are rented out)

I went to visit the special education school where I am going to be working, but of course this being PC Peru, things did not go according to plan. Originally my schedule for the week said that I was going to have to speak in front of everyone at this big ceremony. As it turned out, since there were no kids in school due to the swine flu (yup still on vacation…), the big ceremony turned out to be 8 teachers sitting outside in the courtyard to meet me. However, I much preferred this situation to any situation in which I have to present things in Spanish. I actually thought it was pretty amazing that they all showed up during their vacation just to talk to me, and they really seemed excited to have me there. As soon as I get a chance to meet my kids I can post some pictures of the school. It is not as bad as I expected, but it is pretty shabby in terms of what schools in the states are like. From what I can understand, the school has 41 kids with severe and profound disabilities, ages 5 to about 18. But, I think they only have classes up to third grade, and then it seems like they just lump them altogether for life skills. I am excited to start working with them next week, but I am nervous because I have so little experience with students with severe disabilities. I may be pleading for ideas and materials from all my teacher friends soon :)

Because there were no kids I had the third day free, but being the overachieving PC volunteer that I am, I went to help out one of the volunteers that I am replacing, Jah, finish the mural he his painting. As part of youth development, we all have to paint a world map, and he decided to have the kids paint a whole mural of some of the 7 wonders of the world to go with it. The whole thing is actually pretty cool, and I am looking forward to making my world map. Some people just get the thing up there in a week, paining it mostly themselves, but yall know me, I want to do a whole cultural unit to go with it. The only problem I have right now, is the shanty town where my second job is, is a little lacking in walls to paint on… vamos a ver.

Speaking of my second job, I went to the office of the NGO and met a bunch of the employees, who all seem pretty awesome. One of the workers is a volunteer about my age from Spain. There are a TON of international volunteers in Piura. Jah introduced me to a few of his friends from Spain, Germany and France who all live near my neighborhood. I think I am going to have the chance to meet some interesting people from all over the world here, that I did not expect. Anyway, Lucilia took me out to one of the afterschool programs where I will be spending most of my time in La Molina. The difference between where I am living in Piura and a 20 minutes combi ride out to the shanty town is hard to actually believe. I am really upset I didn’t have my camera, but Lucilia had terrified me so much with threats that I would be sure to get robbed out there that I did not want to risk losing it. The theme of the program is Art for All, the idea of me working there is hilarious if you have ever seen me try and draw, but I think I will be able to do a lot of intereting things with the kids. It’s a really interesting group of kids, ages ranging from 4 to about 15. Some of them ran right up to me and asked questions and others were still terrified after 2 hours with me. I do love being around kids though, they don’t judge your Spanish grammar.

Friday night in my site I actually had a chance to meet the US ambassador to Peru who had agreed to meet with all the Piura volunteers. He’s actually a really interesting man, and he decided to hold the meeting in the hotel bar rather than the conference room and bought us several rounds of beer. Not what I expected from the night. Friday I went out into Piura with a bunch of current PCVs and people from Peru 9 who are about to end their service…It is going to be an interesting 2 years living in the city that’s all I have to say about that night ;)

My final day in site, Lucilia decided to take me out to see Catacaos, which is a smaller town about 20 minutes from my site. It’s a huge artesian location with tons of street vendors that sell jewelry, bags, pottery, straw hats, etc. She was born there and wanted me to have a chance to see a little more of the cuture of Piura. Despite the fact that I still do not understand the women, I had the most amazing day. She is just such a fun person to be around. I love that she took an entire Saturday just to sightsee with me, how many bosses in the states would really do that?? It is a beautiful little town, and any time people come to visit we are definitely going there.

To jump back in time a little, because I am the worst updater ever, a few weeks ago I attended my first cock fight in Peru, which are perfectly legal here. The dad of one of the other volunteers raises these lovely fighting chickens so a bunch of us went out to see the fight. That night officially goes down as one of the top 5 most ridiculous nights of training. At first we walked in and the PC girls were the only females in the whole place, shocking I know. The first few rounds were actually relatively dull, and none of the chickens died within 10 minutes so the whole thing is just a draw. After a while most people left, but the volunteer’s dad had not gone yet so I stayed with 2 of the guys in our group. Somehow we all ended up in a Peruvian drinking circle, which goes something like this:

1. Get a 650mL bottle of beer
2. Get 1 cup
3. Form a circle
4. Fill the cup with beer
5. Down it
6. Pass the cup and beer to the next person in the circle
7. Continue until beer is gone
8. Buy another beer
9. Repeat steps 1 to 8
10. Spread diseases (well that’s not really a step, but it seems like a pretty obvious result)

If you are a girl, these are pretty easy to avoid, and they generally should be, but if you are a guy there is no way to get out of them, you just have to learn to sneakily not drink much. Anyway, eventually Justin’s dad went and both of his chickens won, meaning they killed the other one. One actually did it in under a minute, so his dad won 400 soles. That was not something I ever expected to do in my life, but there you are…and don’t get all animals rights on me – there are bigger issues in the world than fighting chickens

The News has arrived:

Officially, I am going to be spending my grueling, hardcore Peace Corps experience in…

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...