Photos, As Promised

Buenas, amigos!

I’ve finally got some pictures for ya’ll, as promised. I feel like I’m still not taking as many as I should be (especially because I forgot to bring my camera on our Lima field trip last Saturday, LAME) but here’s a few for now.

This is the training center in Chaclacayo where we spend a giant chunk of our time. We have classes in Spanish (and some Quechua starting week 5, I believe), Safety and Security, Peruvian Culture, and general training from 8am to 5pm, Monday thru Friday.

This is LuLu. She lives at the training center and is my favorite pup in all of Peru! Mostly because the majority of pups around here are raggedy/sketchy street dogs who roam around and chase cars/joggers/each other. There are also a lot of roof dogs who are used kind of as a security system. Sometimes, for training, we’ll be assigned to a district and have to ask locals about their water system. The first week we all got rabies shots, just in case. YIKES.

I was feeling crazy unmotivated one day and decided I’d try to make friends with the street dogs and see how they felt about the water system. It sounds ridiculously stupid, I’m sure, but every time I think about it I can’t stop laughing! If I can pull it off, I’ll have a kick ass community diagnostic once I get to site for suuuuure…

This is Pishka, the cat who lives at the center. She looks sweet but she bites and I’m too scared to pet her. Pishka is the Quechua word for the number 5; she showed up at the center during Peru 5’s pre-service training and has been kickin it with us ever since.

This is the most awesome mug ever that I use on the regular for my multiple tea times throughout the day. It says “Volkswagen Combi” and cost less than 2 soles! That’s like $0.80! This fabulous discounted price is also the reason a ton of other volunteers have the same mug and are lovin it, as well.

Last Monday I got hit with the stomach bug and spent the day at home watching Elf and napping away.  The day before, my host sisters, the other volunteer, Nathan, that is a part of my host fam and I made some origami. I found one of the origami critters outside my door on Monday with a "feel better" note attached to it, superrrr sweet. This photo also shows off my profesh manicure done by my host sister, Yerlin, and some 49ers pride.

Last week we proved how politically concerned we are. One of the volunteers chatted with the owners of a karaoke bar down the street from the center and we were able to watch Wednesday’s presidential debate while sharing some discounted jarras (small pitchers) of beer.

My Spanish class took a trip to Chosica, a neighboring city to Chaclacayo that’s kinda like the San Francisco to Pacifica. Our teacher gave us some assignments and set us free. I had to figure out where I could find transportation to Matucana, directions to the police station and had to figure out how to get to “el puente colgante” to meet up with the rest of my class once I was done. Unfortunately, I thought a “puente”  (bridge) was a “fuente” (fountain) and everyone I asked was not pointing me in the direction of the fountains so I ended up wandering around until I gave up and cheated by calling one of my classmates.

Rocoto Relleno. The other night our WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) group went out to dinner with our visiting volunteer guest of the week. I ordered this beautiful dish which is basically a pepper stuffed with cheese, carne, raisins, onions and other delicious things. This pepper was soooo spicy that it managed to clear out sinuses and make me cry. It was a dish I’ll my cabin roomies would die for (minus the carne for Maria and maybe plus antelope steak for the rest of us, yuuum).

This weekend we went on a field trip to La Universidad Cátolica in San Miguel to check out an engineering group they have on campus that has been working on different ways to transport water, improved cookstoves and innovative construction techniques. It was pretty great and I think we were all pretty bummed our own university campuses didn’t have a group like this. Here’s some of the  pictures from the trip.

Our WASH group also got to make biosand filters, which are AWESOME, but I didn’t want to risk bringing my camera to the river where we constructed them so I have no pictures. They were super cool and I hope I have time to make a better functioning filter sometime within the next two years. Unfortunately, I got a million bug bites that itch like crazy and are all gross and blistery but I thought it best to spare you a photo of that. GROSS.

Well, that’s week 3 in a nutshell! This week we’ve got language interviews so hopefully I’ve learned enough to advance from low-high to med-low. The requirement is to get to med-med by the end of training so then I’ll only have one more level to go, YAY! Saturday the 13^th, we’ll be leaving for our first field-based training in a city about 3 hours south of Lima (I think). We’ll be staying in a hotel from Saturday to Thursday and everyone’s first hope was Maybe we’ll have hot water! Please oh please, let it be so!

Chau, ya’ll!