First of all, Mom, I want to thank you for all the candy you sent me! Personally, I am not a huge fan of candy (I loooove cookies!), but you should have seen the faces on my fellow volunteers when I opened the packages at the training center! I obviously let anyone who wanted something take whatever they wanted and passed candy corn around during information sessions and everyone loved it. People even came and found me saying “I heard you have chocolate from the U.S!”… a very exciting time. As for my host family, they also seemed to really enjoy it. I think it was really different because, as I have come to learn, everything in the U.S. is made from sugar processed from corn, whereas here in Peru, they use “real sugar.” Now I understand the labels at on the Mexican coca-colas in Wegmans! “With real sugar” actually means… with REAL sugar, not corn syrup. Cool, eh?
And now on to the title of the e'mail, birthdays! There happened to be two volunteer birthday´s this week. The very first one, this tuesday, no one really knew what was going to happen. We have training everday from 8am to 5pm. On Tuesday, durring a session on STD´s and right after I got three shots for rabies, yellow fever, etc, a MARIACHE BAND marched into training and started playing songs! They dedicated everything to the birthday boy and made all of the females in the room dance around him. It was sooo fun and funny! I was bummed I didn´t have my camera, but a lot of people did, so I will either have pictures on facebook or flicker in the future. Then today, after training, we set up a piñata and a cake for the second birthday boy. When he walked in, one of the other volunteers charged in in a full barney costume! I kid you not... fully dressed as barney! I guess he borrowed it from a nearby library. Anyway, good times all around. We have one volunteer who is VERY dedicated to making birthday´s special and she has done a really good job so far. And we are all loving it!
Also today, the U.S. ambassador to Peru visited us! He ate lunch with us and gave us and hour of questions and answers. Sometimes I foget that I am working for a U.S. government agency, and it always an honor and a reminder when people from other agencies come in and treat us like we are very special for doing what we are doing.
As for my Spanish, well, there isn’t a moment I am not thinking about it. It is obviously the most important aspect of my training in my opinion. Recently however, I have come out of my shell in terms of speaking. I try out talking about all kinds of things at home. My host Mom has even started explaining things about all the local politics in my pueblo, like who likes whom, why some houses are so fancy and others are not, etc. Turns out, there is quite a lot of conflict among the host families of my classmates. My host Mom and I have been having long conversations about our Pueblo and who she likes and doesn´t like. Also, two of my host brothers know a bit of English, one is an English teacher and the other is training to be one. So, sometimes, they will use their teaching techniques on me to help me with Spanish and I really enjoy it because they are really sweet. Last night, while we were all talking about the neighborhood dramas, my host brother described my neighborhood with a word I didn´t know. He made me ask my Spanish teacher what it was today, to make it a kind of scavenger hunt for me. Turns out, he was calling them snobs. But the whole point is that I love the time they spend helping me and talking to me.
But of course, my Spanish is far from perfect. The other day my family almost fell over laughing when I asked if the dessert we were eating had “gallinas” in it when I meant to say “galletas.” Basically, I asked if there was chicken in the dessert instead of cookies/sweet crackers. I realized my mistake right away however, and corrected myself. But it was too late, they were laughing to hard! But I am always happy when people are laughing, and I’d rather make mistakes that are funny then shy away from practicing.
I guess the last fun story for today is that our Spanish classes continue to be incredibly interesting. The other day, and I am not exaggerating when I say this, we had lessons on how to turn down men at dances. They actually did skits to demonstrate good excuses when you don’t want to dance with someone, or if you want to stop dancing with someone. It was pretty hysterical. After which, they gave us a few dance lessons and we all hoped around awkwardly trying to learn what I now will call the Peruvian shuffle/hop.
As usual, I want you all to know that I love you and miss you all the time! Thank you for all of your e-mails and attention, it makes me laugh and smile every time to read about how you guys are doing. So tell me all the stories you want, about your dogs, cats, kids or spouses! I love them!
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