La Lluvia!!!

So….I’m wearing a head lamp. Yes, I know it has been over a month now since I last posted anything, but a lot has been going on. If you couldn’t tell from my comment about the head lamp, our power went out today. We have been without electricity, internet, lights, and refrigeration since sometime in the middle of Tuesday night. So I am taking this time of quietness, stillness, and darkness to just reflect on what has been going on the past month, and honestly, there is a lot to catch you all up on.

Sunset from the Obispado

We moved out of our host families’ houses on March 2^nd, about a week and a half ago. The month with them as a whole was very helpful and a nice transition into life here. Tina, my host mom, was always working around the house and put everyone before herself. Her kids were great too. My last couple days with them were spent playing monkey in the middle with Laura in the rain and asking Juan Carlos to sing to me over and over again…that kid will make up the sweetest song about just about anything you tell him to. They absolutely loved being twirled around or me holding them upside-down. I also got really close with my host cousin, Claudia. We watched “Rojo Fama Contrafama” together which is a Peruvian singing and dancing competition TV show, and she loved that I picked up the phrase “Que Aaaaaasco!” (how disgusting!) from a telenovela they liked to watch. Now we just say that all the time to each other haha. She wants to go to Disneyland next year for her 15^th birthday, so Mom and Dad, I already invited her to stay at our house when she comes to visit…hope that’s okay! But in all honesty, I really had fun getting to know them better. There were some rough points, like having to take bucket showers for 3 out of the 4 weeks I lived there, or just feeling like I wasn’t really doing anything productive. But in the end, it was a great experience living with a host family and being able to learn first-hand about how to cook papas huancayina and Peruvian spaghetti, make mango juice, wash clothes by hand (okay, that part wasn’t actually that fun!), and dance to some of the popular songs. 

 

Now we are on our own to just kinda figure things out! It has been fun, and Lacie, Britt and I make a pretty good team. When we moved into our house, it was still being painted and the roof had quite a few leaks in it, even after it had supposedly been fixed already. So, our first week at our new house consisted of us trying to get settled and unpack, having to coordinate when we would be home so the workers could finish our house, Britt starting to teach English at Santísima Cruz and Lacie starting to teach computers at CEO Betania, and planning the spring break trip for and showing around our first school group from the U.S. YES! HECTIC!!!

26 Villanova students and a few faculty were here last week for their spring break trip. Half of the students were here as a mission/immersion trip, and half were nursing students who were here to do home visits and hold health seminars in the different parish zones about diabetes, sun protection and the environment, hypertension, and self-esteem. I helped plan the mission/immersion part of the trip and assumed that I would be helping out with that group, but on the first day I was told that I would be the translator for one of the small groups of nurses doing home visits. I was nervous about having to explain patients’ health problems in Spanish, and almost told them I couldn’t, but I decided to embrace my inner Peruvian and just go with the flow. Looking back now, I am so happy I did! Going on the home visits, interacting with the patients and hearing their stories, practicing my Spanish health terms, and seeing the nursing students impacted by their experiences really re-awakened me as to why I am here doing service and why I want to go into the health field when I get back. It was also just fun being pretty nerdy and talking about science and health with the nurses and nursing students! With help from Birtt and Lacie I was able to split my time between the two groups of students and it all went really well.

Britt's in uniform and all ready for her first day at school!!
Lacie's getting ready for her first computer class and I'm getting ready to meet up with the nursing students!

Since Villanova left and our house is done being worked on, it has settled down a bit. We were able to unpack, clean the house, decorate by putting pictures on our walls, make our first trip to the market as a community, and sweep our dirt in the courtyard…yes Peruvians sweep the dirt in their yards. I tried it and it looks great! As a community we were all very pleased with the cleanliness of our dirt. We have noticed some visitors lately, too. We have baby kittens!!! We walked into our backyard one day last week and there were just 2 tiny kittens near our sinks to wash our clothes. They had to have been only days old, but now they are starting to walk around a bit and are getting use to us. The mama kitty trusts us now too and even comes to feed them when we are outside with them. We are working on names. TBD. We also have A LOT of cololos!!! Yes, frogs are everywhere, especially when it rains. There are always one or two that are just in the house. Speaking of rain, it is pouring right now!! It didn’t rain all of February and people were getting very worried that they weren’t going to get enough rain this year for crops. Well, lucky for them, it rained quite a bit last week and is really pouring now. UN-lucky for us, we have realized that the plastic they put on top of our roof to try to “fix” the leaks for the second time now, did not hold up. We have a lake in our entrance room…which is why I say “entrance” room, because it can’t actually be used as a living room since we have to keep moving our couches out of it to keep them from getting soaked! 

Our first AV meal together in our new house. Chicken and beef heart stir fry...naturally!

Me removing our frog friend from the bathroom and showing Britt

Kittens!!!!

Another funny thing about the rain…Chulucanas has absolutely no drainage. And the one tunnel that all the water from the city runs to is right around the corner from our house. So, whenever it rains a lot, rivers form in all the streets around our house…among other low areas of the city. Most sidewalks and houses here are built about 3 feet higher than the street so that when it rains rivers may form in the streets, but the houses are less likely to flood. So last week when it rained, we had heard about the rain but had yet to realize the severity of it haha. Our moto driver literally told us, “No, there’s no way I am going down that street to your house. You girls can get out here and walk.” So we did, but we couldn’t even cross the street to get to our house! Our neighbors invited us into there house to take refuge for a little while, but it didn’t let up, so we finally crossed the river in the street, feeling dirt and bugs going by us in the current, and having to search for where the 3 foot high sidewalk was that we needed to step up onto, because the water had even risen above that! It was quite a scene.

Well this happened again tonight. Today was my third day at work and we left a little early tonight because it started raining so much. By the time I got home, though, there was already a river in our street. Moto driver refused, once again, to take me to my house, so I got out and walked. I waded across the street through water that was up to my thighs, climbed up onto the sidewalk, and got into the house. But like I said earlier, we haven’t had power all day, so this time it was pitch black outside as I waded across the river, and there were no lights on in the house as I walked inside. I was, however, welcomed by Lacie and Britt wearing their headlamps! So I went and put mine on (Thanks, Mom!!!), we cooked dinner  by the light of our headlamps and without any electricity, and now I am about to fall asleep to the sound of pouring rain hitting our metal sheets of a roof and leaking water falling into the bowls we have out to try to catch them. This is my life in Chulucanas, Peru, and I could not be any happier to be here.

  

Once again, another long post, but I hope I caught you all up on what we have been up to here, and I will write again sooner this time!  Happy Birthday to my Mom! Love you and miss you!!

 Ciao!

P.S. I wrote this last night and our power finally came back on this morning so I can post it! Yay for electricity!!

¿Cómo?

I have been welcomed into my new Peruvian family and I have been living with them for just over a week now. I live with Tina, my host mom (although she is only in her mid-thirties), her sister, and Tina's two kids, Laura who is 6 and Juan Carlos (JuanCa) who is 4. Tina's husband, Carlos, is here now, but will leave shortly for Lima where he works for about a month and then has 8 days off again to come home. The other morning JuanCa said that he was really sad, and when Tina and Carlos asked why, he said because he knows his dad is going to have to go back to work in Lima again. I can't imagine how hard it must be for them, but it is how he provides for his family and can afford to give them the rather well-off lifestyle and home they have. The house is two stories and has floors, a patio in the back, furniture, multiple TV's, internet, a fan, running water (no hot water), toys for the kids, a washing machine (no dryer), kitchen utilities, and even a blu-ray player. While these things may seem like normal household amenities in the U.S., they are extreme rarities here. A couple houses down, Carlos' mom, Señora Rosa and her husband live with their daughter (Carlos' sister), Nena, and her kids, Claudia who is 13 and Danilo who is about 10. We have lunch there every Sunday since they have a restaurant connected to the back of their house and make the best ceviche (among other things) in town.

The family is very welcoming, and have learned to be a little more patient with me. Their last volunteer was from México and spoke Spanish faster than they did, so the bar was set a little high. After all of the blank stares and "¿Cómo?"'s (which means "what?") the first few days, Tina said to me, "you only understand about 50 or 25 percent of what we say..." oops. They clearly noticed that I was just smiling and saying "Sí" a lot. Since then they've realized that I'm not exactly fluent and have been trying to accommodate. Laura is very affectionate and gave me a huge hug the minute I walked in the door. She loves to grab my arm and put it around her. It's not just with me though; she also plays with, cradles, and kisses our pet pigeon. Yes, we have a pet pigeon! They call it La Paloma, which means dove in spanish, but I am 99% sure it is a pigeon...I'll give Laura that 1%. JuanCa is also affectionate and often tells me to close my eyes and count to ten, and as soon as I start counting he sneaks a kiss on my cheek. He caught me once on the lips and was warned by Claudia that my man back home would not be too happy haha! He loves to sing, and is very talkative and although I have gotten a lot better, at first I could barely understand anything he said. He was always asking me questions and when I would hesitate to answer, he would repeat the question and say, "Sí o no?", repeating that more and more fiercely until I answered "Sí"....God only knows all the things I said yes too. They both love watching movies, so we have watched Twilight, The Avengers, Lady and the Tramp, The Lion King, Ice Age and many others since I've been living with them, and all in Spanish. Another thing they love is my iPhone. They love taking pictures with it, and going through all of mine. They think the videos I have of Chechis dancing and laughing (my friend Adrianna's baby) are hilarious. I also showed them that game "Cootie-catcher" that you make out of folded paper, where you choose a color and a sequence of numbers and then get a fortune at the end. Laura and JuanCa loved it and now it has spread throughout our whole street!

         
                                            

                                         


As for what I've been up to lately, some days are still filled with only eating, napping and sweating, but some have been a little more productive! My non-productive days have been spent watching movies and reading Tattoos on the Heart, a part comical, part inspiring, part heart-wrenching book written by Greg Boyle, a priest who works with gang members in Los Angeles and whom I've had the pleasure of hearing speak a few times. I definitely recommend it! As for some of my productive moments, I walked around the main plaza, Plaza de Armas, with Lacie and her host dad for a couple hours the other night. It is a very happening place at night and people just sit and talk or walk around, enjoying the cooler air. Last Sunday the three of us met at the Obispado (the Bishop's home, that is basically our second home here) and Skyped Paul and my friend Devyn who was having a Super Bowl party back in San Diego. We go to see the game, commercials, and even Beyonce all the way from Peru! By the way, while the game highlights didn't make Peruvian news, Beyonce did. Monday morning I went to the market for my second time, this time with my host family. It is an interesting area, four square blocks of fruit swarmed by flies, vegetables that hit the ground and get put back in place, beef hanging slung over metal rods, fish being scaled, chicken being chopped, and people bartering for the best food and best prices. I've also hiked a couple hills with Britt and Lacie. We go early in the morning or in the evening to escape the heat. You can see the whole city of Chulucanas, but what is even more breath taking is the view of of the mountains embanked by fog and the lush green area of farms and palm trees leading up to them. They look so close we could touch them. Wednesday morning I left for the beach with my whole extended host family. There were 17 of us, and it was almost a 3 hour trip to get there. We took a moto-taxi, two buses, and a 12 person van (with 19 people in it) to Cangrejos (Crabs). We all stayed together in a small beach house, with 2 bedrooms, blow-up beds, one bathroom, and no running water. Needless to say, it was quite a bonding experience. The beach was nice, different than back home. The water was freezing but at least the waves were calmer than in Lima. We saw sea horses, crabs, jelly fish, and these strange translucent beach bugs that settle just under the top of the sand called muy muys. The sun is much more intense here, and even with sunscreen, the family spent the whole next day saying how roja (red) and quemada (burned) I was. Friday we taught two English classes at the University. The morning class was with teens and the night class was for adults. The teens were fun, and very enthusiastic about a tic tac toe game played in two teams where they had to compete to translate Spanish words into English. The adult class was very obviously eager to learn. They asked us tons of questions and were most interested in our pronunciation of words. It was a very tiring day but very rewarding. We just got back from Happy Hour with Ed and Pat and Bishop Dan (who, remember, is a celebrity in Chulucanas). We ate popcorn, drank gin and tonics and beer, and talked about the short-comings of the Church as and Institution versus the hope brought into the Church by different people we have all been reading about. We're a pretty privileged group.

               

We are getting much more accustomed to the lifestyle and our surroundings here. We found a pizza place and a smoothie place, and are on the hunt for an ice cream place we have heard about from Pat and Ed. Mass is still a mystery; the Sign of Peace is an awkward half hug half shoulder pat, there are no lines for receiving communion, just a mass of people trying to get towards the altar, and I have yet to learn any of the songs or prayers in Spanish. I am able to find my way around most places, walking to and from my host house during the day and taking motos at night. The food has been very good. I still haven't had cuy (giunea pig), but I did have cabrito (kid goat) for lunch today. My host parents make different juices for every meal and they are all delicious. I also had calamari in a type of rice soup with vegetables and other seafood for lunch yesterday and I really liked it! Shout out to Paul because he knows how much I dislike calamari and has always wanted me to like it :)  I am still adjusting to the heat, and can't wait for the rain to come....although they say that when it rains, it POURS!

Pouring my heart into life in Chulucanas, but missing everyone back home. Oh and sorry this post is so long, there have just been a lot of changes this past week!

¡Ciao!

Eat, Nap, Sweat

So we have been living in Chulucanas for almost a full week now and are starting to get the hang of things! Shannon and Hannah returned back to the U.S. a couple days ago, so we're on our own now to figure out the rest. They came to show us where we would be working and living, and to introduce us to everyone. Small problem....almost every single person we were supposed to meet while they were here has been on vacation! So now we are waiting, which we have gotten used to by now, for them to return so we can introduce ourselves. However, there have been a few people we've met at the Obispado (the Bishop's house where we have been staying) that we didn't expect to meet but have been a huge help to us!

Bishop Dan is usually a very busy guy, so we were told he wouldn't be around too much, but he was actually here when we arrived. He is the bishop of the whole diocese of Chulucanas, and is basically a huge celebrity here. We went to mass and people of all ages surrounded him during the Sign of Peace. It was quite a scene, especially because he is about 6'4", a foot and a half taller than most Peruvians. Every house we have been in has a picture of him meeting the pope, and every time he leaves the Obispado he stops and talks to every person he sees on the way to wherever he is going.....he is late a lot. He is originally from Chicago but has been living here for 45 years! He has been so accommodating to us, and is one of the most caring and compassionate people I have ever met. While there are a lot of things I think the Catholic Church still struggles with, Bishop Dan gives me hope for how leaders of the Church can really affect people and inspire people to care for each other. There is also a couple here, Ed and Pat, who are from Chicago as well. They were originally a nun and a priest, but left their orders, met and got married. They are quite the firecrackers! Their witty banter is amusing and they have given us a lot of advice! They also hold a Happy Hour for English speakers every Sunday at 3 with beer and gin and tonics. They say it is part of their ministry to give us a time to relax and not have to be constantly translating in our heads. I agree!

Our first full day here we were supposed to walk around the city and ask people how to get to certain places like our work sites, our house, and the university. Naturally, the three of us accidentally found a "tour guide"instead. Juan is basically the night guard at the Obispado and he offered to walk with us and take us to all the places on our list...we accepted. We walked around until we were nice and sweaty  and decided we have a whole year to wander Chulucanas. Another day we went to the orphanage where we will be working during the summer since they can always use the help. Not three seconds after I walked into the building, a little girl wrapped her arms and legs around me, and my new little mono (monkey) did not let go until I had to pry her off of me when we were leaving. This morning we went with Lydia, one of the cooks at the Obispado, to the market to try to learn her expert ways of buying and bartering. She moves fast and doesn't put up with much. We saw your typical fruit and vegetable stands, and then came the meat. We watched the beef get carved, the fish get de-scaled and filleted, and the chicken get chopped up. I'll spare you the details. The meat is very fresh. The other day we walked by the dirt lot by our house where they sell live chickens and turkeys and ducks, and saw a man riding his bike carrying two live turkeys upside down, one on each side of his handle bars. We have started concocting a plan to set them free.


Another thing we've noticed is how much Peruvians like to celebrate. Not only do they have discotecas for young adults to drink and dance and party, they have "chicotecas" for kids from age 10 to 17 so they can party without alcohol. Standard. There was also a huge party in the plaza across the street the other night. They were celebrating the 77th anniversary (random?...they clearly do this every year, not just for the big ones) of the creation of the providence of Morropón, which Chulucanas is a part of....not the country, not the city.....the providence. Apparently it is a solid excuse for a huge party here. Starting around 8 pm there was a band, people cheering, make-shift restaurants set up in the plaza, and people selling carnival-like toys. Around 12:30 the three of us were about to fall asleep when we heard huge bangs, seemingly gun shots right outside our windows. That went on for about 7 or 8 minutes, and we finally realized they weren't gun shots, but actually fireworks and dynamite going off!

While it may seem like there has been a lot of action going on, we've actually really been doing a lot of nothing. It's their summer here now and it is so hot that no one does anything besides sleep between the hours of 1 and 4 pm. We've been eating breakfast, then trying to meet people (who have all been on vacation), sweating from walking around, then eating lunch, then napping, then sweating, playing some cribbage, then eating dinner, then going to bed. It's basically a cycle of eat, nap, sweat...the most exhausting week of doing practically nothing in my life.

Hope all is well back home! Today we move in with our host families so my next post will update you all on that experience!


¡Ciao!

¡Bienvenidos!

Welcome to my first blog ever! Fitting that it is also my first night ever in Chulucanas, Perú. Lacie, Britt  (my community members) and I flew from Lima to Piura this morning with Hannah and Shannon (2 of the 3 directors of the Augustinian Volunteer program). Then we gathered our 500 pounds of luggage...a rough estimate...and were driven to our new home, Chulucanas. Not too much to say about this small city quite yet, so let's start with a recap of the last 10 days.

I flew into Philadelphia, where the AV program is based, on January 17th and spent the first few days in Ocean City, NJ for our international AV orientation. There were six of us volunteers...3 going to Perú and 3 going to South Africa...along with all three directors. Those days were fairly relaxing and gave us a chance to get to know each other better and figure out the logistical differences between what we all heard with the domestic volunteers back at the general orientation in August and what we would be experiencing as the international side of the program. The days passed slowly but it was a nice transition into the pace of life in South America. On the 21st we flew into Lima and were picked up by a man named Joel, who I now joke is our best friend in Perú. He started out as our driver, cooked meals for us when no one else was there to cook, translated complicated and fast Spanish into slow and simple Spanish, and just this morning traded emails with us so we could become friends on Facebook. We stayed at the Augustinian house of hospitality outside Lima in the district of Chorrillos, where we were spoiled compared to what is to come in the next eleven months. We had two working bathrooms with hot water, a television, breakfast waiting for us every morning, and a gated community where we could walk to the beach from our house. The only thing lacking was a translator.

On most of my other trips to Spanish-speaking countries I could get by in conversation with my own knowledge of the language, but I always had a translator to rely on as back-up...which I still had to do quite often. This time, Britt, Lacie and I have had to just pool all of our knowledge together and make the best of what we know. Sometimes we can have two hour long conversations on the beach and other times we can barely order three slices of pizza. Our confusion in cases like this, along with misused words and unconjugated verbs, are common sources of laughter on both sides of the language barrier. Albert, who is, like Joel, a former seminarian staying at the house of hospitality, was trying to teach me some slang. He was trying to tell me that "Wha? No?" is a common way of saying "What?" or "Again?" instead of "Que?" in Chulucanas. I proceeded to combine them too quickly, saying "Whano" which sounded like "guano," essentially meaning animal poop. Oops.

Our time in Lima was mostly spent exploring different parts of the city and getting our Peruvian ID cards for the year. Our first day we went to the center of the city, walking around La Plaza de las Armas where the president's house is, napping on the grass of La Plaza de San Martín, admiring a few churches, and trying to find authentic Peruvian food. The next day we were more successful finding good food in MiraFlores, the beautiful beach district we visited after the five and a half hour process of getting our ID cards (we were definitely on Peruvian time that morning). Nonetheless, we had a great afternoon eating fried yucca, ceviche, and arroz con pollo, and wandering around El Parque del Amor and what we had thought were the indian markets. Luckily, we also discovered how much the three of us all love ice cream and sitting around just people-watching. The next day we went to the beach which was just a few blocks from our house in Chorrillos. Joel advised us to get some sun but not to really go in the water because the waves are so strong. All three of us having lived near beaches, we politely said thank you to the warning and went on our way. We should really listed to Joel more often. Lacie and her bathing suit top got pulled down by a ridiculously strong wave returning from the shore, and later all of us and our belongings were engulfed by a wave that far surpassed what we thought to be the safety zone. Britt's iPhone is currently in a bag of rice hoping to be revived. That night we also visited El Parque de Aguas which is the park with the most fountains in the world. On our last day we went into Barranco, a touristy town with great views of the cliffs and the ocean. We wandered aimlessly (as we seem to do best) and escaped from the intense sun with some milkshakes de fresas, which are more like strawberry smoothies. When we returned, we went to a very intimate Mass with a family that had just arrived to stay at the house as well, and then had dinner together, which typically lasts hours here. We ended the night with a walk to the beach and a long talk including laughter and plans for the future with Joel, Albert, and the two sons from the family, Martín and Cesar.

It was bittersweet saying goodbye to the new friends we have just met, but I know that the best is yet to come! From the abdominal workouts and tears that have so far accompanied our laughter, I know that my friendships with Britt and Lacie are only going to get better, and our community is only going to grow stronger. I can't wait to get to know Chulucanas and the people I will be serving with here!

Missing everyone back home!