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And now for the second installment of The Perez Family in Peru, written by the wonderfully talented Michael J. [aka my dad]. Enjoy! After three nights in Guadalupe, we headed to the wonderful beach town of Huanchaco. It’s about a 2 ½ hour bus ride to Trujillo and from there about a 20 minute cab ride to Huanchaco. This is the town where Jamie has spent time with fellow PCVs for meetings and get-togethers. Visiting in June meant we were here for the Peruvian winter, so it wasn’t as hot as it normally is. For Huanchaco this meant it was in the 60’s and foggy/overcast….it actually felt and looked a lot like home in Pacifica. Too cold for a swim, but we managed to get shorts on for part of our stay, and nighttime wasn’t too bad either. We stayed at nice roomy hotel called Las Palmeras, located right across from the beach, in which we were the only guests (there were at least 20 rooms at this place). Kickin' it patio-style at Las Palmeras This area is known for trad...

As I am super behind on blog posts and have been avoiding a large and exciting chunk of my Peruvian adventures because it is too daunting of a task to tackle on my own, my dad decided to take it upon himself to begin the chronicles of the Perez Fam Peruvian Adventure. My parents and younger sister came down for a 2 week long visit at the end of June and it was amazing! Here's my pop's take on the beginning of the adventure (with just a couple of my own footnotes at the end). This is the first installment of many. We (Chris, Marlee and I) left June 15 th and spent 17 wonderful days in Peru traveling. We stayed in 7 different places and saw so many amazing things. But of course, our favorite attraction was our very own Peace Corps Volunteer - Jamie.   Let’s start with getting there….the plane ride – we got up at about 4am, to make it to SFO early enough for our AM flight to Houston. We had a scheduled layo...

Many of you may be asking yourselves, what is a cocina mejorada? Allow me to explain. A cocina mejorada is something us WASH 20ers know all about, were trained to construct and can give you a well-rehearsed lecture on its benefits as well as a basic tutorial on how to use it. It is an improved cookstove, improved meaning it's better than putting a pot on a couple stacks of bricks and cooking over an open fire which is a pretty common way to cook out here. Cocina mejoradas are enclosed cookstoves with chimneys to allow smoke to exit your home and away from your lungs. They use less wood than open fires and, when constructed properly, are quicker and more efficient. We built a couple throughout pre-service training and you can find all that here in a previous post. When I first arrived, my site mate, Amanda, was working in a small secondary school in one of Guadalupe's annexes, Casa Blanca, and the director of the school was interested in a cocina mejorada to prepare breakfast...

As I mentioned before, in May I became a member of the Peer Support Network. As the PSN representative for my department, La Libertad, I'm here to call the volunteers in our department and to be available to answer calls from anyone struggling with their service or even wanting to share something awesome that happened. I'm here for chats. Every month we send out a e-magazine article written by current volunteers that touch on topics any volunteer could relate to. Last month, I got the opportunity to write my own and I decided to talk about saying goodbye, something that is CRAZY hard for me. So here's the article: Before starting my service I thought the hardest part would be actually saying goodbye and leaving home. Of course I would run into obstacles throughout my service itself but that would happen on the day-to-day no matter what country I was in. The thing is I hate goodbyes, they’re the worst, and everyone knows (really, they do) that I’m a weepy gal with tear d...

I know, it's August. Why am I writing about Mother's Day in August? Mostly because I am too lazy to tackle the crazy Perez Family Reunion in Peru post but also because I have some cute photos from this past Mother's Day and I wanted to share them with you. Amanda and I bought flowers for our host moms and they loved them. Here's Mari showing off her bouquet. Jorge, Trini and Juanita posing with mom My lovely host parents Mari and Julio Just some pictures to hold you over until I tackle the next post and update you on my crazy month of June 2013. Missing ya'll!

So. It's been a while... and a lot has happened. So I'm going to start catching you all up slowly but surely starting with MAY. Yup that was three months ago but I think you'll enjoy these photos from my  in-service training (IST) with WASH 20 in Chachapoyas, Amazonas. Beforehand, we met up in Chiclayo, Lambayeque each with a work counterpart to teach them more about Peace Corps and working with Peace Corps Volunteers. From there we took an overnight bus to Chachapoyas to visit the sites of our sierra friends and help them with their projects. We got off the bus around 6 am, hopped on a combi to Olga's site Lamud, a cute sierra town, and were put to work on fixing up a rural water system. Reservoir Times Our attitude: The quicker we get to work, the quicker we can finish up and move onto nap time My group worked on adding a cleanout line to an existing line that was feeding a house down the hill Check out that handy work! Proud of our work but mo...