Tremblor

The sign says "Caution, there are kids here too! signed, the fox" Love it.




Buenas a todos!

Monday night, I felt my first temblor!! Or, my first little earthquake. I shouldn’t sound excited, but I thought it was pretty cool. Not surprisingly, I was in the bathroom and I heard the roof rattle a little and thought to myself “is this an earthquake?” but told myself it wasn’t because it was only the roof I could hear and see. I thought maybe it was a low flying plane (which afterwards I realized was a little ridiculous because I had never heard or seen any planes around here). But when I came out of the bathroom, my host Mom asked me right away if I had felt it. I said yes, but I didn’t know it was an earthquake and they told me about past earthquakes, big ones and small ones. My host Mom was living here in Lima apparently when there was a REALLY bad one in 1970 or in the 70’s (I’m not sure which one she meant). The last bad one in Peru was in 2005, and primarily hit Ica, a province a little bit south of Lima. Apparently there are several earthquakes everyday in Peru, but they are so small that usually people don’t even feel them.

Other then mini-natural occurrences (not quite a disaster), I am not in week 6 of my Peace Corps training. While my Spanish is still progressing in what feels like a snails pace, I feel more and more equipped to handle my future projects every day. It is great to feel like I might actually be able to contribute something to a community. What I really love about the Peace Corps mandate is that their aim to make things geared towards one particular community, after getting to know that community thoroughly. They also aim to make everything they do sustainable because they want the projects we start to continue after we leave. They say that if we are doing something alone, we are doing it wrong because we should be involving as many community members as possible in everything we do. After all of my blended environment and anthropology training, I feel like this job is exactly what I was meant to do at this point in my life. Hopefully I can succeed in starting a few useful things in my future community.


Class I taught.. very interesting situation where we were supposed to teach 12 to 13 year olds and ended up with 15 and 16 year olds. They thought our lesson was really comical, but they were good sports more or less.

I guess I should also admit to finding my weakness in terms of dulces (sweets) that satisfy my sweet tooth. There is a pastry and coffee café right down the street from our training center that in constantly visited by volunteers. I had my first dessert there this week and almost died from the goodness of it. Combine that with the delicious candy bars I have been introduced to and now I understand why female volunteers tend to gain 10 pounds in training! Rice, potatoes and chocolate, diet of champions!

The chocolate addiction we are all feeling was not helped when, on the way to one of our field trips, our bus stopped at a mysterious rest stop with tons of American candy! We were all a little overwhelmed. The real cool thing however, was where we went on this field trip. We went to a protected park that is covered in grass, trees and greenery in the middle of a desert! It was really cool to drive for miles along pure sand, and suddenly drive into a mass of green! We were all very happy to be there. I guess how it works is that it is a valley, and the clouds and mist that form from the ocean somehow get trapped in there and feel the soil with condensation. There is never actually rain, just moist clouds. While hiking through the area, there was a mist everywhere, it was like walking in clouds the whole time! It is difficult to explain, but it was really neat to see. The other weird thing is that it is only there for about 4-5 months out of the year and we happened to visit the park at its peak of greenery. Beautiful. For anyone who has read Life of Pi, this place reminded me of how I imagined the green floating island Pi encounters while floating around at sea.


Saturday, we went around Lima looking at the small protected wetlands that are often polluted by people using the water for all kinds of things. It was fun... but the best part was ending on the beach! We all ate our tupperware lunches from home in the sand, and then a lot of the volunteers stripped down to their underware and ran into the ocean! It was awesome and hillarious. What a good way to spend a friday afternoon in Peru!

I write this entry while thinking about my cousins wedding that is this weekend. I am sad to be missing all of my family together for such a great celebration. I wish I could be there with all of you, but my heart is there and I love you all!