2012: A Recap

To all those who have been/were followers of my blog I suppose an apology is in order. Without looking back to old posts I honestly don’t remember the last time I wrote something. However I am back to bring you a sort of recap of all the things I should have written about during the past year, so you can catch up on my Peace Corps experience, or just hit a couple highlights.

Before I get started though I wanted to take a second to explain some of the reason behind why I stopped blogging for so long. For a while I didn't feel like I had anything to new to write about, then when I did have new things I was busy and forgot, but above all I just see things differently now. When I first came to Peru back in June 2011 I found myself thinking a lot about the way things are in the states and how I wish everyone could experience what I was experiencing and so I was always thinking of things to write in these posts. However as time has gone on and I have been here longer things are just normal to me. Instead of everyday finding strange things that are going on, it all just seems normal. Before it seemed like a trip away from my “real” life back in the states, now this is my life. That’s not to say I’m not looking forward to coming back (approximately 6.5 months!), but leaving San Pablo is going to be a lot harder than I ever imagined.

On to the recap, some of this may be repeated in other posts, but here is my 2012 all in one. 

January – This was probably the most difficult month of my service. I went on a New Year’s vacation with my volunteer friends and came back to an empty house. My host family always spends the two months of school vacation in Lima so I was home alone (even the cat ran away) with the constant rain and fog that brought brown water out of the faucets and made it impossible to wash or dry clothes. Along with those difficulties I was attempting to cook for myself without the aid of a microwave, oven, or freezer full of pizzas that heat up in 20 minutes. However beyond all that we did start a pretty cool summer program for kids as well as the first of many adult English classes.

February – Pretty much a continuation of what I said for January. All the classes kept going smoothly, we painted a map of the world on the wall of one of the classrooms in the high school, oh and Carnaval. Carnaval is the celebration here before the start of lent. It starts pretty much after the New Year and goes until Fat Tuesday. Leading up to the party there are kids lining every street launching water balloons at cars and any other passerby. The actual fiesta includes a paint fight in the streets, parades, dances, and of course more water balloons.

March – School comes back! I was excited for this for several reasons, mainly that I would actually have the high school kids back in town that I wanted to be working with, my host family was back, and I had just spent two months studying Spanish every day and was ready to try out my new skills in the classroom. This month didn’t  turn out quite as I had planned, I spent the first week of school in a Peace Corps training, then got back and had a bit of delay trying to get back into the schools. After returning from the training I think I spent two-three weeks just meeting with principals, teachers, and anyone else I could think of trying to get some sort of schedule set as well as present them my project ideas.

April – This was one of the two most “regular” months of the school year. That meaning there were no town fiestas or anniversaries to contend with, just classes. Which was great for me because I finally had my class schedule sorted out, working in the local high school four days a week, once in a more rural community, and 4 nights a week in the institute teaching two levels of adult English classes. All of this would continue more or less the same until the end of the school year in December.

May – This month can be summed up by two words, school anniversary. Before the two weeks of the actual fiesta, just about every day had a class-ending meeting of something that had to be planned or discussed for the party. The actual anniversary celebration included a singing and poetry competition, two soccer tournaments, a sports day, a sort of Ms. San Pablo High School competition, a dance, and more lunches than I can remember. A really fun time but not the most productive for me still trying to get someone interested in the project ideas I had. I was able to bring two of my high school boys to a regional camp we put on as volunteers twice a year, once for boys and once for girls.

June – Mas fiesta. June is the month of the biggest fiesta in San Pablo, which I had a hard time imagining after the 14 day extravaganza thrown by the high school. But as I saw people rolling in from every direction and country I knew this was a whole different level of party. I met returned sampablinos (people from San Pablo) that are now living in places that range from Lima (Peru) to New York to Sweden. This fiesta included a soccer tournament played by teams from other towns that came to play, another tournament that I got to play in (but lost in the first round), 3 nights of dances, fireworks displays you can’t even imagine, bull fights, masses, parades, and I’m sure there is more that I am leaving out. I did manage to get some classes taught during this month, and even started planning what I would be an awesome youth group with some local professionals. Unfortunately the youth group ideas all came apart when the fiestas started and some of those professionals changed jobs and left town.

July – The fiestas subsided somewhat, but not completely. The mining strikes were still hanging around and interrupting classes. There was some fierce opposition to a mining project in another area of Cajamarca that ended in the deaths of a few protesters in another province. In San Pablo it felt like more of a recovery time from the fiestas and for me a new starting point having my best chance at a sustainable project ended the month before. Classes continued and this was also the month of Courts for Kids. Courts for Kids is an NGO that a lot of Peace Corps volunteers try to work with who send groups of volunteers to under developed areas of the world and build athletic courts in those areas. My former site mate had already done the application before I arrived and the last week of July we got to see the project come to fruition. We spent a week with a group of Americans from Washington and Oregon mixing and pouring cement and at the end have an awesome court to show for it.

August – The end of July/beginning of August marks school vacation time in Peru, something comparable to a Christmas or Spring break. July 28^th is Peru’s Independence Day so things start there and are followed by two weeks of vacation. This was a transition period for me as I was still making an effort to restart things after they had come apart in June, my first site mate Ana left, and my new site mate Jackie arrived. There were no classes to be taught but I did somehow manage to get a group of artisans into the fair we had in my town and we won first place. This was also the month of yearly medical checks for Peace Corps so I got to go back to Lima for the first time with my entire volunteer group.

September – After January, this was the second most difficult month of service. I got back from our medical checks and was able to have roughly five days of classes before the teacher strike came. If I thought the fiestas and vacations were an interruption, I had yet to see anything. The teachers went on strike for one entire month, fighting things like pay raises and a new law that would require them to take exams to prove they are qualified to teach. I still had my English classes in the evenings but anything I had hoped to accomplish with the high school would have to wait. I did have break in this month and that was my new site mate introducing me to one of the new psychologists in town. We almost immediately formed the San Pablo Mental Health Team between my site mate, two psychologists, and me. The youth group had a new hope.

October – The strike finally ended…and I was on vacation. To be fair this was a trip I had been planning on taking for months before there was even the idea of a strike, and it was an awesome trip. Along with one of my volunteer friends, Amanda, her boyfriend, and her friend from the states we made a loop of the south of Peru getting to see Machu Picchu, Lake Titikaka, and the Colca Canyon in the departments of Cusco, Puno, and Arequipa. That could possibly be the best trip I ever take. The best part I think was that when I got back to site it was time to hit the ground running. Classes were back, we had the new mental health team, and I had a lot of energy with little time left before the end of the school year to expend it all. We quickly formed our youth group, “Young Leaders of San Pablo” (Jovenes Lideres de San Pablo) and had weekly sessions with our group of about 12 students.

November – This was the best month of work I have had. In comparison with September where I was teaching night classes and looking for something to do the rest of the time I was now working roughly 12-14 hours a day. I would have classes at a high school or grade school in the morning, some sort of meeting or the youth group in the afternoon, and English classes at night. It was a great way to end a year full of frustrations and interruptions. The schools were also making up classes that they missed during the month of strike so I even had classes in the afternoons sometimes. This was also the month of our second youth camp and we were able to bring three of our high school girls, specifically three girls from our youth group, to take part in the camp.

December – The pace of the November work kept up for about the first two weeks, we took the youth group on a field trip, finished our sessions with them, and I finished my classes both in the high school and with the adult English students. Finishing with the adult classes was a gratifying experience that having been one of the only things that continued throughout the year without interruption. Then it was time for more fiesta! However this time I was ready for it. Having already experienced a December in San Pablo I knew a little bit more of what to expect, although this year was even more intense than the last. Things got started with my birthday, or maybe I should say birthweek. I think in all I counted seven different parties that different groups threw for me, including my adult English students, a few classes in the high school, the elementary school girls, my host family, and our youth group. I got caked in the face twice, ate tons of awesome meals, danced in the middle of many circles, and just had a blast. From there came some baptisms, graduations, and of course the chocolatadas (fruit cake and hot chocolate parties) and all ended with a Navidad cookout on the roof with the extended members of the host family that came to visit.

2013

So now I am in the last stretch of my service working again in a summer camp in the high school, which we have been able to improve a lot based on the lessons learned from the year before. I am living alone again, although it is more manageable this time and has been a much less severe rainy season. From here I will be looking forward to being able to accomplish a few more things before my time is up and to finding out what I will be doing in the United States come August time.     

2012: A Recap

To all those who have been/were followers of my blog I suppose an apology is in order. Without looking back to old posts I honestly don’t remember the last time I wrote something. However I am back to bring you a sort of recap of all the things I should have written about during the past year, so you can catch up on my Peace Corps experience, or just hit a couple highlights.

Before I get started though I wanted to take a second to explain some of the reason behind why I stopped blogging for so long. For a while I didn't feel like I had anything to new to write about, then when I did have new things I was busy and forgot, but above all I just see things differently now. When I first came to Peru back in June 2011 I found myself thinking a lot about the way things are in the states and how I wish everyone could experience what I was experiencing and so I was always thinking of things to write in these posts. However as time has gone on and I have been here longer things are just normal to me. Instead of everyday finding strange things that are going on, it all just seems normal. Before it seemed like a trip away from my “real” life back in the states, now this is my life. That’s not to say I’m not looking forward to coming back (approximately 6.5 months!), but leaving San Pablo is going to be a lot harder than I ever imagined.

On to the recap, some of this may be repeated in other posts, but here is my 2012 all in one. 

January – This was probably the most difficult month of my service. I went on a New Year’s vacation with my volunteer friends and came back to an empty house. My host family always spends the two months of school vacation in Lima so I was home alone (even the cat ran away) with the constant rain and fog that brought brown water out of the faucets and made it impossible to wash or dry clothes. Along with those difficulties I was attempting to cook for myself without the aid of a microwave, oven, or freezer full of pizzas that heat up in 20 minutes. However beyond all that we did start a pretty cool summer program for kids as well as the first of many adult English classes.

February – Pretty much a continuation of what I said for January. All the classes kept going smoothly, we painted a map of the world on the wall of one of the classrooms in the high school, oh and Carnaval. Carnaval is the celebration here before the start of lent. It starts pretty much after the New Year and goes until Fat Tuesday. Leading up to the party there are kids lining every street launching water balloons at cars and any other passerby. The actual fiesta includes a paint fight in the streets, parades, dances, and of course more water balloons.

March – School comes back! I was excited for this for several reasons, mainly that I would actually have the high school kids back in town that I wanted to be working with, my host family was back, and I had just spent two months studying Spanish every day and was ready to try out my new skills in the classroom. This month didn’t  turn out quite as I had planned, I spent the first week of school in a Peace Corps training, then got back and had a bit of delay trying to get back into the schools. After returning from the training I think I spent two-three weeks just meeting with principals, teachers, and anyone else I could think of trying to get some sort of schedule set as well as present them my project ideas.

April – This was one of the two most “regular” months of the school year. That meaning there were no town fiestas or anniversaries to contend with, just classes. Which was great for me because I finally had my class schedule sorted out, working in the local high school four days a week, once in a more rural community, and 4 nights a week in the institute teaching two levels of adult English classes. All of this would continue more or less the same until the end of the school year in December.

May – This month can be summed up by two words, school anniversary. Before the two weeks of the actual fiesta, just about every day had a class-ending meeting of something that had to be planned or discussed for the party. The actual anniversary celebration included a singing and poetry competition, two soccer tournaments, a sports day, a sort of Ms. San Pablo High School competition, a dance, and more lunches than I can remember. A really fun time but not the most productive for me still trying to get someone interested in the project ideas I had. I was able to bring two of my high school boys to a regional camp we put on as volunteers twice a year, once for boys and once for girls.

June – Mas fiesta. June is the month of the biggest fiesta in San Pablo, which I had a hard time imagining after the 14 day extravaganza thrown by the high school. But as I saw people rolling in from every direction and country I knew this was a whole different level of party. I met returned sampablinos (people from San Pablo) that are now living in places that range from Lima (Peru) to New York to Sweden. This fiesta included a soccer tournament played by teams from other towns that came to play, another tournament that I got to play in (but lost in the first round), 3 nights of dances, fireworks displays you can’t even imagine, bull fights, masses, parades, and I’m sure there is more that I am leaving out. I did manage to get some classes taught during this month, and even started planning what I would be an awesome youth group with some local professionals. Unfortunately the youth group ideas all came apart when the fiestas started and some of those professionals changed jobs and left town.

July – The fiestas subsided somewhat, but not completely. The mining strikes were still hanging around and interrupting classes. There was some fierce opposition to a mining project in another area of Cajamarca that ended in the deaths of a few protesters in another province. In San Pablo it felt like more of a recovery time from the fiestas and for me a new starting point having my best chance at a sustainable project ended the month before. Classes continued and this was also the month of Courts for Kids. Courts for Kids is an NGO that a lot of Peace Corps volunteers try to work with who send groups of volunteers to under developed areas of the world and build athletic courts in those areas. My former site mate had already done the application before I arrived and the last week of July we got to see the project come to fruition. We spent a week with a group of Americans from Washington and Oregon mixing and pouring cement and at the end have an awesome court to show for it.

August – The end of July/beginning of August marks school vacation time in Peru, something comparable to a Christmas or Spring break. July 28^th is Peru’s Independence Day so things start there and are followed by two weeks of vacation. This was a transition period for me as I was still making an effort to restart things after they had come apart in June, my first site mate Ana left, and my new site mate Jackie arrived. There were no classes to be taught but I did somehow manage to get a group of artisans into the fair we had in my town and we won first place. This was also the month of yearly medical checks for Peace Corps so I got to go back to Lima for the first time with my entire volunteer group.

September – After January, this was the second most difficult month of service. I got back from our medical checks and was able to have roughly five days of classes before the teacher strike came. If I thought the fiestas and vacations were an interruption, I had yet to see anything. The teachers went on strike for one entire month, fighting things like pay raises and a new law that would require them to take exams to prove they are qualified to teach. I still had my English classes in the evenings but anything I had hoped to accomplish with the high school would have to wait. I did have break in this month and that was my new site mate introducing me to one of the new psychologists in town. We almost immediately formed the San Pablo Mental Health Team between my site mate, two psychologists, and me. The youth group had a new hope.

October – The strike finally ended…and I was on vacation. To be fair this was a trip I had been planning on taking for months before there was even the idea of a strike, and it was an awesome trip. Along with one of my volunteer friends, Amanda, her boyfriend, and her friend from the states we made a loop of the south of Peru getting to see Machu Picchu, Lake Titikaka, and the Colca Canyon in the departments of Cusco, Puno, and Arequipa. That could possibly be the best trip I ever take. The best part I think was that when I got back to site it was time to hit the ground running. Classes were back, we had the new mental health team, and I had a lot of energy with little time left before the end of the school year to expend it all. We quickly formed our youth group, “Young Leaders of San Pablo” (Jovenes Lideres de San Pablo) and had weekly sessions with our group of about 12 students.

November – This was the best month of work I have had. In comparison with September where I was teaching night classes and looking for something to do the rest of the time I was now working roughly 12-14 hours a day. I would have classes at a high school or grade school in the morning, some sort of meeting or the youth group in the afternoon, and English classes at night. It was a great way to end a year full of frustrations and interruptions. The schools were also making up classes that they missed during the month of strike so I even had classes in the afternoons sometimes. This was also the month of our second youth camp and we were able to bring three of our high school girls, specifically three girls from our youth group, to take part in the camp.

December – The pace of the November work kept up for about the first two weeks, we took the youth group on a field trip, finished our sessions with them, and I finished my classes both in the high school and with the adult English students. Finishing with the adult classes was a gratifying experience that having been one of the only things that continued throughout the year without interruption. Then it was time for more fiesta! However this time I was ready for it. Having already experienced a December in San Pablo I knew a little bit more of what to expect, although this year was even more intense than the last. Things got started with my birthday, or maybe I should say birthweek. I think in all I counted seven different parties that different groups threw for me, including my adult English students, a few classes in the high school, the elementary school girls, my host family, and our youth group. I got caked in the face twice, ate tons of awesome meals, danced in the middle of many circles, and just had a blast. From there came some baptisms, graduations, and of course the chocolatadas (fruit cake and hot chocolate parties) and all ended with a Navidad cookout on the roof with the extended members of the host family that came to visit.

2013

So now I am in the last stretch of my service working again in a summer camp in the high school, which we have been able to improve a lot based on the lessons learned from the year before. I am living alone again, although it is more manageable this time and has been a much less severe rainy season. From here I will be looking forward to being able to accomplish a few more things before my time is up and to finding out what I will be doing in the United States come August time.     

2012: A Recap

To all those who have been/were followers of my blog I suppose an apology is in order. Without looking back to old posts I honestly don’t remember the last time I wrote something. However I am back to bring you a sort of recap of all the things I should have written about during the past year, so you can catch up on my Peace Corps experience, or just hit a couple highlights.

Before I get started though I wanted to take a second to explain some of the reason behind why I stopped blogging for so long. For a while I didn't feel like I had anything to new to write about, then when I did have new things I was busy and forgot, but above all I just see things differently now. When I first came to Peru back in June 2011 I found myself thinking a lot about the way things are in the states and how I wish everyone could experience what I was experiencing and so I was always thinking of things to write in these posts. However as time has gone on and I have been here longer things are just normal to me. Instead of everyday finding strange things that are going on, it all just seems normal. Before it seemed like a trip away from my “real” life back in the states, now this is my life. That’s not to say I’m not looking forward to coming back (approximately 6.5 months!), but leaving San Pablo is going to be a lot harder than I ever imagined.

On to the recap, some of this may be repeated in other posts, but here is my 2012 all in one. 

January – This was probably the most difficult month of my service. I went on a New Year’s vacation with my volunteer friends and came back to an empty house. My host family always spends the two months of school vacation in Lima so I was home alone (even the cat ran away) with the constant rain and fog that brought brown water out of the faucets and made it impossible to wash or dry clothes. Along with those difficulties I was attempting to cook for myself without the aid of a microwave, oven, or freezer full of pizzas that heat up in 20 minutes. However beyond all that we did start a pretty cool summer program for kids as well as the first of many adult English classes.

February – Pretty much a continuation of what I said for January. All the classes kept going smoothly, we painted a map of the world on the wall of one of the classrooms in the high school, oh and Carnaval. Carnaval is the celebration here before the start of lent. It starts pretty much after the New Year and goes until Fat Tuesday. Leading up to the party there are kids lining every street launching water balloons at cars and any other passerby. The actual fiesta includes a paint fight in the streets, parades, dances, and of course more water balloons.

March – School comes back! I was excited for this for several reasons, mainly that I would actually have the high school kids back in town that I wanted to be working with, my host family was back, and I had just spent two months studying Spanish every day and was ready to try out my new skills in the classroom. This month didn’t  turn out quite as I had planned, I spent the first week of school in a Peace Corps training, then got back and had a bit of delay trying to get back into the schools. After returning from the training I think I spent two-three weeks just meeting with principals, teachers, and anyone else I could think of trying to get some sort of schedule set as well as present them my project ideas.

April – This was one of the two most “regular” months of the school year. That meaning there were no town fiestas or anniversaries to contend with, just classes. Which was great for me because I finally had my class schedule sorted out, working in the local high school four days a week, once in a more rural community, and 4 nights a week in the institute teaching two levels of adult English classes. All of this would continue more or less the same until the end of the school year in December.

May – This month can be summed up by two words, school anniversary. Before the two weeks of the actual fiesta, just about every day had a class-ending meeting of something that had to be planned or discussed for the party. The actual anniversary celebration included a singing and poetry competition, two soccer tournaments, a sports day, a sort of Ms. San Pablo High School competition, a dance, and more lunches than I can remember. A really fun time but not the most productive for me still trying to get someone interested in the project ideas I had. I was able to bring two of my high school boys to a regional camp we put on as volunteers twice a year, once for boys and once for girls.

June – Mas fiesta. June is the month of the biggest fiesta in San Pablo, which I had a hard time imagining after the 14 day extravaganza thrown by the high school. But as I saw people rolling in from every direction and country I knew this was a whole different level of party. I met returned sampablinos (people from San Pablo) that are now living in places that range from Lima (Peru) to New York to Sweden. This fiesta included a soccer tournament played by teams from other towns that came to play, another tournament that I got to play in (but lost in the first round), 3 nights of dances, fireworks displays you can’t even imagine, bull fights, masses, parades, and I’m sure there is more that I am leaving out. I did manage to get some classes taught during this month, and even started planning what I would be an awesome youth group with some local professionals. Unfortunately the youth group ideas all came apart when the fiestas started and some of those professionals changed jobs and left town.

July – The fiestas subsided somewhat, but not completely. The mining strikes were still hanging around and interrupting classes. There was some fierce opposition to a mining project in another area of Cajamarca that ended in the deaths of a few protesters in another province. In San Pablo it felt like more of a recovery time from the fiestas and for me a new starting point having my best chance at a sustainable project ended the month before. Classes continued and this was also the month of Courts for Kids. Courts for Kids is an NGO that a lot of Peace Corps volunteers try to work with who send groups of volunteers to under developed areas of the world and build athletic courts in those areas. My former site mate had already done the application before I arrived and the last week of July we got to see the project come to fruition. We spent a week with a group of Americans from Washington and Oregon mixing and pouring cement and at the end have an awesome court to show for it.

August – The end of July/beginning of August marks school vacation time in Peru, something comparable to a Christmas or Spring break. July 28^th is Peru’s Independence Day so things start there and are followed by two weeks of vacation. This was a transition period for me as I was still making an effort to restart things after they had come apart in June, my first site mate Ana left, and my new site mate Jackie arrived. There were no classes to be taught but I did somehow manage to get a group of artisans into the fair we had in my town and we won first place. This was also the month of yearly medical checks for Peace Corps so I got to go back to Lima for the first time with my entire volunteer group.

September – After January, this was the second most difficult month of service. I got back from our medical checks and was able to have roughly five days of classes before the teacher strike came. If I thought the fiestas and vacations were an interruption, I had yet to see anything. The teachers went on strike for one entire month, fighting things like pay raises and a new law that would require them to take exams to prove they are qualified to teach. I still had my English classes in the evenings but anything I had hoped to accomplish with the high school would have to wait. I did have break in this month and that was my new site mate introducing me to one of the new psychologists in town. We almost immediately formed the San Pablo Mental Health Team between my site mate, two psychologists, and me. The youth group had a new hope.

October – The strike finally ended…and I was on vacation. To be fair this was a trip I had been planning on taking for months before there was even the idea of a strike, and it was an awesome trip. Along with one of my volunteer friends, Amanda, her boyfriend, and her friend from the states we made a loop of the south of Peru getting to see Machu Picchu, Lake Titikaka, and the Colca Canyon in the departments of Cusco, Puno, and Arequipa. That could possibly be the best trip I ever take. The best part I think was that when I got back to site it was time to hit the ground running. Classes were back, we had the new mental health team, and I had a lot of energy with little time left before the end of the school year to expend it all. We quickly formed our youth group, “Young Leaders of San Pablo” (Jovenes Lideres de San Pablo) and had weekly sessions with our group of about 12 students.

November – This was the best month of work I have had. In comparison with September where I was teaching night classes and looking for something to do the rest of the time I was now working roughly 12-14 hours a day. I would have classes at a high school or grade school in the morning, some sort of meeting or the youth group in the afternoon, and English classes at night. It was a great way to end a year full of frustrations and interruptions. The schools were also making up classes that they missed during the month of strike so I even had classes in the afternoons sometimes. This was also the month of our second youth camp and we were able to bring three of our high school girls, specifically three girls from our youth group, to take part in the camp.

December – The pace of the November work kept up for about the first two weeks, we took the youth group on a field trip, finished our sessions with them, and I finished my classes both in the high school and with the adult English students. Finishing with the adult classes was a gratifying experience that having been one of the only things that continued throughout the year without interruption. Then it was time for more fiesta! However this time I was ready for it. Having already experienced a December in San Pablo I knew a little bit more of what to expect, although this year was even more intense than the last. Things got started with my birthday, or maybe I should say birthweek. I think in all I counted seven different parties that different groups threw for me, including my adult English students, a few classes in the high school, the elementary school girls, my host family, and our youth group. I got caked in the face twice, ate tons of awesome meals, danced in the middle of many circles, and just had a blast. From there came some baptisms, graduations, and of course the chocolatadas (fruit cake and hot chocolate parties) and all ended with a Navidad cookout on the roof with the extended members of the host family that came to visit.

2013

So now I am in the last stretch of my service working again in a summer camp in the high school, which we have been able to improve a lot based on the lessons learned from the year before. I am living alone again, although it is more manageable this time and has been a much less severe rainy season. From here I will be looking forward to being able to accomplish a few more things before my time is up and to finding out what I will be doing in the United States come August time.     

2012: A Recap

To all those who have been/were followers of my blog I suppose an apology is in order. Without looking back to old posts I honestly don’t remember the last time I wrote something. However I am back to bring you a sort of recap of all the things I should have written about during the past year, so you can catch up on my Peace Corps experience, or just hit a couple highlights.

Before I get started though I wanted to take a second to explain some of the reason behind why I stopped blogging for so long. For a while I didn't feel like I had anything to new to write about, then when I did have new things I was busy and forgot, but above all I just see things differently now. When I first came to Peru back in June 2011 I found myself thinking a lot about the way things are in the states and how I wish everyone could experience what I was experiencing and so I was always thinking of things to write in these posts. However as time has gone on and I have been here longer things are just normal to me. Instead of everyday finding strange things that are going on, it all just seems normal. Before it seemed like a trip away from my “real” life back in the states, now this is my life. That’s not to say I’m not looking forward to coming back (approximately 6.5 months!), but leaving San Pablo is going to be a lot harder than I ever imagined.

On to the recap, some of this may be repeated in other posts, but here is my 2012 all in one. 

January – This was probably the most difficult month of my service. I went on a New Year’s vacation with my volunteer friends and came back to an empty house. My host family always spends the two months of school vacation in Lima so I was home alone (even the cat ran away) with the constant rain and fog that brought brown water out of the faucets and made it impossible to wash or dry clothes. Along with those difficulties I was attempting to cook for myself without the aid of a microwave, oven, or freezer full of pizzas that heat up in 20 minutes. However beyond all that we did start a pretty cool summer program for kids as well as the first of many adult English classes.

February – Pretty much a continuation of what I said for January. All the classes kept going smoothly, we painted a map of the world on the wall of one of the classrooms in the high school, oh and Carnaval. Carnaval is the celebration here before the start of lent. It starts pretty much after the New Year and goes until Fat Tuesday. Leading up to the party there are kids lining every street launching water balloons at cars and any other passerby. The actual fiesta includes a paint fight in the streets, parades, dances, and of course more water balloons.

March – School comes back! I was excited for this for several reasons, mainly that I would actually have the high school kids back in town that I wanted to be working with, my host family was back, and I had just spent two months studying Spanish every day and was ready to try out my new skills in the classroom. This month didn’t  turn out quite as I had planned, I spent the first week of school in a Peace Corps training, then got back and had a bit of delay trying to get back into the schools. After returning from the training I think I spent two-three weeks just meeting with principals, teachers, and anyone else I could think of trying to get some sort of schedule set as well as present them my project ideas.

April – This was one of the two most “regular” months of the school year. That meaning there were no town fiestas or anniversaries to contend with, just classes. Which was great for me because I finally had my class schedule sorted out, working in the local high school four days a week, once in a more rural community, and 4 nights a week in the institute teaching two levels of adult English classes. All of this would continue more or less the same until the end of the school year in December.

May – This month can be summed up by two words, school anniversary. Before the two weeks of the actual fiesta, just about every day had a class-ending meeting of something that had to be planned or discussed for the party. The actual anniversary celebration included a singing and poetry competition, two soccer tournaments, a sports day, a sort of Ms. San Pablo High School competition, a dance, and more lunches than I can remember. A really fun time but not the most productive for me still trying to get someone interested in the project ideas I had. I was able to bring two of my high school boys to a regional camp we put on as volunteers twice a year, once for boys and once for girls.

June – Mas fiesta. June is the month of the biggest fiesta in San Pablo, which I had a hard time imagining after the 14 day extravaganza thrown by the high school. But as I saw people rolling in from every direction and country I knew this was a whole different level of party. I met returned sampablinos (people from San Pablo) that are now living in places that range from Lima (Peru) to New York to Sweden. This fiesta included a soccer tournament played by teams from other towns that came to play, another tournament that I got to play in (but lost in the first round), 3 nights of dances, fireworks displays you can’t even imagine, bull fights, masses, parades, and I’m sure there is more that I am leaving out. I did manage to get some classes taught during this month, and even started planning what I would be an awesome youth group with some local professionals. Unfortunately the youth group ideas all came apart when the fiestas started and some of those professionals changed jobs and left town.

July – The fiestas subsided somewhat, but not completely. The mining strikes were still hanging around and interrupting classes. There was some fierce opposition to a mining project in another area of Cajamarca that ended in the deaths of a few protesters in another province. In San Pablo it felt like more of a recovery time from the fiestas and for me a new starting point having my best chance at a sustainable project ended the month before. Classes continued and this was also the month of Courts for Kids. Courts for Kids is an NGO that a lot of Peace Corps volunteers try to work with who send groups of volunteers to under developed areas of the world and build athletic courts in those areas. My former site mate had already done the application before I arrived and the last week of July we got to see the project come to fruition. We spent a week with a group of Americans from Washington and Oregon mixing and pouring cement and at the end have an awesome court to show for it.

August – The end of July/beginning of August marks school vacation time in Peru, something comparable to a Christmas or Spring break. July 28^th is Peru’s Independence Day so things start there and are followed by two weeks of vacation. This was a transition period for me as I was still making an effort to restart things after they had come apart in June, my first site mate Ana left, and my new site mate Jackie arrived. There were no classes to be taught but I did somehow manage to get a group of artisans into the fair we had in my town and we won first place. This was also the month of yearly medical checks for Peace Corps so I got to go back to Lima for the first time with my entire volunteer group.

September – After January, this was the second most difficult month of service. I got back from our medical checks and was able to have roughly five days of classes before the teacher strike came. If I thought the fiestas and vacations were an interruption, I had yet to see anything. The teachers went on strike for one entire month, fighting things like pay raises and a new law that would require them to take exams to prove they are qualified to teach. I still had my English classes in the evenings but anything I had hoped to accomplish with the high school would have to wait. I did have break in this month and that was my new site mate introducing me to one of the new psychologists in town. We almost immediately formed the San Pablo Mental Health Team between my site mate, two psychologists, and me. The youth group had a new hope.

October – The strike finally ended…and I was on vacation. To be fair this was a trip I had been planning on taking for months before there was even the idea of a strike, and it was an awesome trip. Along with one of my volunteer friends, Amanda, her boyfriend, and her friend from the states we made a loop of the south of Peru getting to see Machu Picchu, Lake Titikaka, and the Colca Canyon in the departments of Cusco, Puno, and Arequipa. That could possibly be the best trip I ever take. The best part I think was that when I got back to site it was time to hit the ground running. Classes were back, we had the new mental health team, and I had a lot of energy with little time left before the end of the school year to expend it all. We quickly formed our youth group, “Young Leaders of San Pablo” (Jovenes Lideres de San Pablo) and had weekly sessions with our group of about 12 students.

November – This was the best month of work I have had. In comparison with September where I was teaching night classes and looking for something to do the rest of the time I was now working roughly 12-14 hours a day. I would have classes at a high school or grade school in the morning, some sort of meeting or the youth group in the afternoon, and English classes at night. It was a great way to end a year full of frustrations and interruptions. The schools were also making up classes that they missed during the month of strike so I even had classes in the afternoons sometimes. This was also the month of our second youth camp and we were able to bring three of our high school girls, specifically three girls from our youth group, to take part in the camp.

December – The pace of the November work kept up for about the first two weeks, we took the youth group on a field trip, finished our sessions with them, and I finished my classes both in the high school and with the adult English students. Finishing with the adult classes was a gratifying experience that having been one of the only things that continued throughout the year without interruption. Then it was time for more fiesta! However this time I was ready for it. Having already experienced a December in San Pablo I knew a little bit more of what to expect, although this year was even more intense than the last. Things got started with my birthday, or maybe I should say birthweek. I think in all I counted seven different parties that different groups threw for me, including my adult English students, a few classes in the high school, the elementary school girls, my host family, and our youth group. I got caked in the face twice, ate tons of awesome meals, danced in the middle of many circles, and just had a blast. From there came some baptisms, graduations, and of course the chocolatadas (fruit cake and hot chocolate parties) and all ended with a Navidad cookout on the roof with the extended members of the host family that came to visit.

2013

So now I am in the last stretch of my service working again in a summer camp in the high school, which we have been able to improve a lot based on the lessons learned from the year before. I am living alone again, although it is more manageable this time and has been a much less severe rainy season. From here I will be looking forward to being able to accomplish a few more things before my time is up and to finding out what I will be doing in the United States come August time.     

Successes and Setbacks

It has recently been brought to my attention that people are in fact still reading this blog (thank you Adam!) and so it is time for an update that covers a little more than the silly things I say in Spanish.
I am now underway in my first full year of service. In some ways it has started with a bang, and in others it has kind of limped along. To end the blog on a higher note I think I will start with a few of the setbacks I have met. As a sort of disclaimer to the setbacks section, I hope that no one takes them as complaints, my goal in sharing these are simply to give a realistic picture of what is like in my situation in PC Peru.

First, as I approach the year point of being in Peru (I left Ohio June 9th for D.C. and arrived in Peru the 10th) I have made a few realizations. In some sense the time has flown, I am used to living in Peru and my life here, and don't really have dreams about food anymore. From another perspective thinking about all the upcoming important events back home and looking at more than a year left in service, it is hard to imagine that much more time before seeing my family and friends (and devouring a turtle cake!).
As far as personal issues go that's really all there is. Spanish has improved a ton and I can now understand a lot more, including the side comments kids make in class which make things a lot more interesting. Also the sickness problems have died down (knock on wood), and for those keeping score at home I have been almost completely healthy since the beginning of March, a huge streak for me.

On to the work setbacks. Coming into the school year out of summer vacation my mind was full of possibilities and projects and just general excitement for the options I was exploring. So starting the school year I was pretty optimistic that some of these things would happen, and soon, and well, that basically just didn't happen.

One thing that I think the overwhelming majority of Peace Corps Volunteers face, if not all volunteers, are these types of situations. I think the only real remedy is to keep expectations realistic and continue to try new things, which is the stage I am in now. But I am getting ahead of myself.

First, essentially what happened is that the school year did not get off to the start I had hoped for. I spent the first couple days of classes in our In-service training and Project Design Management workshop in the department of Ancash and got back in the middle of the first week of school. I made it to school that week to show my face, see what was going on, and try to present some project ideas to the principal. All of that was accomplished and I was excited about doing things more officially this time around (last year I just showed up and started teaching classes). Then the first drag came, and it took over a week and a half to get the class schedule and to get the individual teachers on board and decisions made about what type of programs we would be doing in the tutoria hours. This approach did take a lot longer time than just showing up at classes, but so far has proved to be way more effective, which I will get to in the "successes" section.

From there things proceeded normally as far as classes go. I got my schedule defined and then set my sights on the next thing which was the reading initiative I had been dreaming up since last fall. I presented to teachers and students alike as a general idea of wanting to do something about reading. After about a month I got a meeting with two teachers, my host mom and her friend and presented them the two ideas for the reading projects, the Book It! idea along with a form of reading buddies we call "Amigos y Libros." After the Book It! speech I got blank stares, however after the reading buddy presentation there was a little bit better response and we set up a meeting for the following week with other teachers. That meeting came, I presented the plan a little more in-depth, and well it got pretty convoluted in the discussion that ensued and it ended with a decision that they would pair kids up within the same classes to help their other classmates catch up to their level, instead of its original design to have older kids work with young kids. Now maybe you have a different opinion, but I am pretty sure that no high school kid is going to listen to his or her classmate trying to read to them. Needless to say I haven't pursued that strategy and am trying to form a different plan.

As an additional note here the original plan was to open the library in March and inaugurate it with the Book It! type plan, just going straight to the students and getting them to come and read. The hitch here is that it is now May and the library has not changed (still window and floorless) and there is now an argument within our municipality as to whether it will end up being the library or not...

Another setback that I imagine is probably not something that will change is what we call the "Feriado." I think this would translate as holiday, basically days off school. The popular claim in San Pablo is that it is a very festive town, which is completely true, but also amounts to a lot of days out of school and difficult time trying to get anything into a rhythm, or if you do it is soon interrupted by a feriado. Prime example, I am writing this blog on our two days off for 'labor day' and in two weeks is the school anniversary. While it's always good to respect tradition and custom, it is certainly an adjustment for me coming from a different culture where we do not celebrate these same events and certainly not in the same fashion.

The final area of setback right now is with the youth camp, VALOR, that I posted about awhile back. Some of you may remember back in November-December time there was a big strike in my region, Cajamarca, about a mining project. Well those strikes died down in January and have since been quite. Meanwhile there was an environmental impact study done that recently concluded that the project is a go. With this news the strikers have been called on to come back, scheduled to begin May 31st, the same day we had planned to start the camp. The logical decision was then to move the camp up a week so it would be done before any protests started up, but it just so happened that it moved right into the anniversary of my high school. The problem now is going to be getting kids interested let alone permission to travel to the camp instead of being at the anniversary activities. Hopefully it all works out. To those of you that may have donated rest assured that your funds are being put to good use, and I also want to say a first of many thanks.

On to success.

I think the clear overall success has been advancing in my ability to communicate. It's far from perfect, as you can see by the last post, but at least now I can appreciate things like that instead of just being confused by everyone laughing at me. I think more than anything the best part is no longer feeling like it is a barrier, or at least not as much as it used to be. However I am starting to miss the ability to pretend like I don't understand what's going on when uncomfortable comments are made.

In terms of work success I have a pretty busy schedule and almost always have something going on all day, everyday of the week. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday I spend at the local high school working in tutoria and helping out the English teacher. In tutoria we are doing a variety of life skills and other topics like communication, leadership, self-esteem, life planning, etc. It so far has been going really well, most of the teachers are staying with me, and more are participating in classes and seeking me out to see when I am coming back. With the English teacher I pretty much just hang out in her classes during my free periods and field questions and pronunciation problems, it is a nice way to bond with the classes I can't get to in tutoria but probably not something I am looking to continue all year. Hopefully it's also helping the teacher to learn some more that she can pass on in the following years when I am not there.

Santa Rosa
Aside from the local high school I am also working in a high school out in the 'campo' (country). Every Wednesday I ride out the 30-40 minutes to the school with a couple of the teachers that live here in San Pablo. The school is really small, and I see everyone in the one day a week. There I am working in tutoria (the reason I accepted to go there in the first place) and, of course, teaching English. However for once this doesn't feel like the basic English classes where you teach a few words and leave. This is set up so the teacher there stays in class with me and is pretty much a student himself, with the goal of ending the year and him being able to repeate the lessons and actually know some English himself. It has been my favorite form of teaching English so far, something that actually might be sustainable.

More English
Santa Rosa and the high school are of course not the only English programs I have going on right now. The other two successful ones are for adults. My site mate and continued the class she did last year and the one we did together in January-March and are now at intermediate level. I am also doing a new round of basic for adults who missed out on the last cycle, including my host mom (she now asks me "what's up?" and tells her children "peace" when saying goodbye to them on the phone). This time around we are coordinating with the local secondary school who is coordinating with the regional school board (or whatever you want to call it) and this course is actually going to count for credit from legitimate institutions instead of something we just sign ourselves.

The other, and last, English program we are involved in right now is with the tourism department of our municipality. Basically they took six of the town's barrios and my site mate and I split them between the two of us and teach some basic English to these groups on Monday and Friday afternoons. We are supposed to have some kids ready to do a dialogue and a song in front of the town in the big fiestas in June, so we'll see where that goes. The big plus of this is that I think it is maybe leading to the formation of a youth group though, which is more than I expected when we started the classes.


On a non-English note, I will soon be getting back to my soccer roots hopefully as a player and official-type position. The league I played in last year is supposedly starting up again in May as well as a regular soccer tournament on the field which is apparently a big deal in town (Copa Peru). I was also recently asked by some of the high school students to be a part of helping them form their own league, equivalent to the one I played in last year but for kids. I have signed some stuff but I am not entirely sure what my role will be yet but it is really exciting to see that the kids are going to have something for themselves.

So to wrap up I have a few more ideas of things I would like to do, one of which is of course to continue working on the library and eventually literature project. Forming a real youth group would be great, and maybe some type of youth center or something for them to do, a lot of them just spend time walking around the streets. I have also been thinking about bringing a little bit of St. Charles to San Pablo and making some type of Positive Addiction event, just as something different to encourage positive habit forming. Just a thought for now.

I also should mention that I think everything is set to go for the court, so thank you to anyone who may have donated for that. I don't think I will get to know who you are, so just know it is greatly appreciated.

Final note, my site current site mate, Ana, is finishing her service in August. She has been a huge asset to everything that has been my service so far, getting me acclimated, introducing me to people, and being a friend as well as someone who speaks English! We have recieved word that they will be sending a replacement for her, not sure who yet, but I will be getting a new site mate. Hopefully I can be as helpful to the newbie as Ana has been to me. I may even be in a position where I am more advanced in Spanish, which is amusing and hopefully for their sake not true.

There is your update friends. I will be back with a VALOR update when I have one. So talk to you all soon and see you in roughly a year and 3 months!

Hunting for 'Eggs'

Now I must warn you, the title may be a little misleading here as I did not actually participate in an Easter Egg hunt. In fact I am just writing this blog because I thought you might miss hearing about the silly things I say in Spanish. School is back in session and so is the inappropriateness!

To give a little context last night we were teaching our adult English class about how to say things like "I am going to..." and then had them write about what they are going to be doing during Holy Week. We then broke into groups and discussed what they had written. My group then asked me what kind of things we do in the United States and about our customs for Easter. So I told them about several things and was concluding with Easter egg hunts. I didn't at the time know the Spanish word for 'hunt,' so I said the word for search. A discussion then ensued and they taught me the real word for hunt, which is cazar. I wrote it on the board to make sure I was spelling it right.

One of the students then asked me, "te gusta cazar" (do you like to hunt?) and I responded with a simple "si, por huevos" (yes, for eggs) of course referring to the Easter egg hunts I had just described. The group erupted with uncontrollable laughter and it took me a second to realize why....

Huevos (eggs) is slang for testicles.

Some of the male students then proceeded to leave covering themselves and laughing at me.

That is all.

The First, the Second, and certainly not the last times

Hello Friends, Family, and other random people who may have stumbled upon this blog somehow,

I know I said there would be another blog coming around this time, and I still will be doing that (once I get a more completed schedule worked out) but in the meantime I have a couple requests for anyone interesting, willing, and/or able. We have a couple projects coming up over June and July and right now we are working on some fundraising to make sure that we can do these projects.

The first is a youth camp for boys that will be taking place in June. We are looking for funds/materials both to run the camp and to get youth there. We do two camps a year, one for boys and one for girls. The girls' camp was right after I got to my site last year so I didn't get a chance to bring anyone, but I did get to participate a little bit and see what the camp was like. Needless to say the girls loved it and I think it made an impact in some of their lives. Now it is coming time for the boys, and since I have been in site for some time I am going to have the chance to bring two boys from my site to the camp.

The second is a project that my site mate, Ana Madrid, has applied for through an NGO in the U.S. called Courts for Kids. You may remember me mentioning this project in previous blogs. Right now we are in the preparation stage and we need some help with funds getting the ground leveled out and prepared and what not. The volunteers from the NGO will be coming the last week of July and everything has to be ready by then, so we are trying to get a jump on things now that rainy season is starting to clear up.

So anything you could help us out with would be great. The two websites are listed below where you can go and donate online by credit card. Or if you prefer you can always send check or money orders (sounds like an infomercial), however I figured it would be easier for everyone to just do it through the websites. Also that way I won't know how much you are donating (or how cheap you are being...just kidding).

Please help out if you can, but if the timing is not right, remember I have a year and a half left of service (today I have officially been in Peru for 9 months) so there will be plenty more opportunities to come!

Here is the website for those looking to support our youth camp, V.A.L.O.R.
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=527-087


For the court donations go to http://www.courtsforkids.org/ go to the donation tab, and when making your donation indicate that it is for La Conga, Peru. There is also some information there about the project if you would like to read more.

Thanks in advance! Let me know if there are any questions about the donating process or about exactly how we will be spending the funds.