Estoy Aqui!

Hey everyone!

Sorry it´s taken me so long to write, I haven´t had much time to get to the internet for more than a few minutes at a time. Today is Tuesday, our second day of training, and it´s around 5:30pm here in Chaclacayo, the region we´re staying in about an hour outside of Lima. Thursday we met in DC and went over basic information about Peace Corps and travelled all day on Friday. We flew first to Miami where there was some bad weather and we had to wait on our plane on the ground for about 4 hours before we could get off to catch our connecting flight to Lima. After a long ordeal, we arrived at our retreat center at around 3am on Saturday morning and started the retreat bright and early at 7:30. We basically did a lot of ice breakers and learned a lot about each other and Peace Corps. I´m not really going to go into much detail about this because the interesting things are what happen after the retreat. We went out to a nearby restaurant that night to celebrate the birthday of one of the other volunteers and got up early again to head to PC´s training center. The training center is awesome, it´s so nice, it´s like a resort here. We´re surrounded by hills (that look like mountains to me but apparently they´re not) and the weather during the day is beautiful even though it gets cold at night.

After lunch on Sunday I met my host family which was sooo nerve wrecking considering my Spanish is not so good. My host mom (Susana) came to pick me up with her youngest son Mario who is 8 years old. The grandfather had driven his car down to pick me up and when he was putting my things in the trunk said to Susana, ¨Un otro gringo¨ basically commenting that, like the 4 volunteers they hosted before me, I brought a ton of stuff. I also have 2 other hermanos (brothers) who are 15 (Gabo) and 14 (Cesar) and they´re adorable. Everyone gives kissed on the cheek whenever they greet each other and the boys are really outgoing and like to talk to me and ask me questions (even though I can´t really answer and they have to talk realllllly slow). I live in a town called Tres de Octubre, which means 3rd of October, with two other Trainees. I tried to ask why the town was named after a date, but they didn´t understand the question. The town is tiny and surrounds a park, it´s about twenty minutes from the training center. On Sunday afternoon we walked around the town and I talked with the family and unpacked. We´ve had several meals so far, most of them consisting of rice, chicken, and potatoes, but all of them good!

On Monday we had to be at the training center at 8am to start the week and in order to get there we had to take a combi which is basically like a small bus and a typical form of transportation here. This was extremely interesting haha - it´s so crowded and you have to jump on as soon as it slows down (they barely stop) and tell the person at the door where you´re going. He tried to charge us more (because we obviously didn´t know what we´re doing), but one of the Trainee´s host sister was with us and she told him that we weren´t going to pay any more. I went to training where we broke into technical groups (there are two of them: Small Business Development and Youth Development) to learn about what we´d be working on. It sounds really excitíng, I can´t wait for the field based training! After that we seriously had a two hour talk on diarhhea. Enough said.

We tried to catch the combi home, missed our stop, and had to go back the other way. We probably paid double what it actually cost, but we didn´t have anyone else there to help us! No worries though, we got home! In 3 de Octubre I watched the boys play soccer and tried to use the internet cafe which was apperently closed and hung out in the park before going inside. I got in at about 7:30 and the entire family (aunts, cousins, grandpa, and all) sat around talking for hours while eating dinner. They asked all about the U.S. and I told lots and lots of stories, probably about some of you haha, especially comparing my brothers at home to my hermanos here haha - don´t worry Andrew and Craig, all good things! Went to bed at around 10:30 for another early morning.

Today we successfully used the combi for the first time and it was AWESOME!! My Spanish is getting better and I´m definitely understanding a lot more. Or maybe the people who are talking to me are just making it easier by speaking slower with more basic vocabulary, I don´t know! I´m not missing home yet, but I wish I had more time to talk to you all about what it´s like here! Hopefully I´ll be able to get into more of the culture that I´ve witnessed the next time I post, I just wanted to give you all an update about what´s been going on. Don´t forget to email, I´ll post pictures soon, and maybe even videos since Cesar taught me how to take videos with my camera haha.

Peace,

Steph