For starters, sorry for not updating more. I promise that in 2012 I will be better about it because I now have good internet everyday! Please enjoy this entry full of pictures and love!
I am now back in Peru after a wonderful month in the United States. I managed to get my peruvian desert dog to New York, after a very complicated and costly interaction. He is happy and now bonding with my parents while I miss him terribly and all the time. I had a BLAST in the Ithaca, Kentucky and Toronto while I was home. I told Mom that I had about 6 major highlights and she said that is more then she has in half a year sometimes! So I feel very lucky. I saw so many friends and friendly faces, got to visit my Mom´s Montessori school, had a hilarious and fun filled Christmas in Kentucky and New Years full of lantern walks, drinks and dancing. Kentucky was so great because so many of my cousins came this year and we laughed so much I swear I came out it with stronger ab muscles! On new years, Greg and Jackie and I somehow all came together at the same place without planning it and broke in the new year together dancing around and just acting like the crazy Booth´s we always are. I had a visit from one of my best friends in Peace Corps for 4 fun filled days where we explored Ithaca and drank lots of hot chocolate and caught up on our girl talk. I even made it to Toronto to see some of my college buddies and hang out with all my brothers wonderful house mates, accompanied by another Peace Corps girlfriend from Rochester. At the end of the trip I must have wanted to stay longer because I mis-read my plane ticket and completely missed my flight! I don´t know how that happened because I like to think I´m pretty responsible about dates and traveling usually. But, it was solved easily and I ended up leaving the next day, 2 days before I thought I was going to leave. It was a shock to suddenly be going back before I was ready, but it was nice to arrive to a warm climate and a bed that is mine.
Being a volunteer in Lima is a completely different reality. I work 9 to 5pm, I take a bus to work. I speak a mixture of English and Spanish all day. I live on my own, cook my own food and its… well… its like being a grown up again. I take a 40-minute bus to work everyday and usually listen to music or read a book. One day, in the giant city of Lima with almost 9 million people, a guy got on the bus and sat next to me while I was deeply engaged in my book. He didn´t say a word but eventually I looked up and realized he was someone I knew! It was such random meeting; I had just met him that weekend as one of the friends of a fellow volunteer. He proceeded to tell me about his work experiences. Do any of you remember a service that would turn your voicemails into text messages that you could read? Turns out, that is not a computer translating your voicemails to written text, but Young Peruvians who speak English writing them out for you! He told me hilarious things about not being able to understand accents well, all the wild things people would say in voicemails, and noted that the of the voicemails in Columbia he listened to, 90% of them said ¨I bet you are cheating on me!¨ often in much stronger language. Not only that, but he also used to do translations for Hispanic clients in American hospitals. The hospital would call a number and it would go to his phone and he would help to translate the whole medical interaction.
Where I have decided to live is a 10 minute walk from the beach front and right in the heart of one of the nicest parts of Lima. I have a room in a shared house where there is a comical mixture of characters including a salsa dancing polish couple, a writer and internet editing single woman in her 40´s, an 18 year old Peruvian girl who works and is studying to be a chef, and a middle aged man from Canada working in something I can never remember and barely speaks any Spanish. Oh, and of course there is the 40-something owner who is a fun loving, self employed guy taking care of the house. It is a fun and funny family who has invited me in with open arms, taking me out dancing, inviting me to food and offering to teach me to prepare certain plates. They are a friendly and outgoing group and I am content with the situation as it is right now. Soon another volunteer will be moving in as well. I have a great room with internet, tv and a great big window. It is a big change from my tiny, dirt floored, adobe house in the dry forest of the north of Peru.
However, after only 2 weeks in Lima and a month in the states, I had seriously started missing some well-cooked Peruvian food. So, one Sunday I made a voyage to the outskirts of Lima just to visit my training host family and to prepare and eat delicious Peruvian food with them. It was one of my best days in Lima so far! I re-bonded with the family, the sibling all being around my age. We joked around as I helped them around the house and sang along to popular songs. It was great to feel Peruvian again.
In terms of my job, I am considered the
My theme song for January: Adele - ¨Someone Like You¨
¨Never mind I´ll find someone like you,
I wish nothing but the best for you too
¨…sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead¨
¨…regrets and mistakes they´re memories made, ¨
Who would have known how bitter sweet this would taste¨
Not trying to be a downer, but that is just how my year started out and Adele has been inspiring me with that song all through the month. Please don´t get me wrong, I have been super happy lately!
Hasta pronto,
-C
I am now back in Peru after a wonderful month in the United States. I managed to get my peruvian desert dog to New York, after a very complicated and costly interaction. He is happy and now bonding with my parents while I miss him terribly and all the time. I had a BLAST in the Ithaca, Kentucky and Toronto while I was home. I told Mom that I had about 6 major highlights and she said that is more then she has in half a year sometimes! So I feel very lucky. I saw so many friends and friendly faces, got to visit my Mom´s Montessori school, had a hilarious and fun filled Christmas in Kentucky and New Years full of lantern walks, drinks and dancing. Kentucky was so great because so many of my cousins came this year and we laughed so much I swear I came out it with stronger ab muscles! On new years, Greg and Jackie and I somehow all came together at the same place without planning it and broke in the new year together dancing around and just acting like the crazy Booth´s we always are. I had a visit from one of my best friends in Peace Corps for 4 fun filled days where we explored Ithaca and drank lots of hot chocolate and caught up on our girl talk. I even made it to Toronto to see some of my college buddies and hang out with all my brothers wonderful house mates, accompanied by another Peace Corps girlfriend from Rochester. At the end of the trip I must have wanted to stay longer because I mis-read my plane ticket and completely missed my flight! I don´t know how that happened because I like to think I´m pretty responsible about dates and traveling usually. But, it was solved easily and I ended up leaving the next day, 2 days before I thought I was going to leave. It was a shock to suddenly be going back before I was ready, but it was nice to arrive to a warm climate and a bed that is mine.
Being a volunteer in Lima is a completely different reality. I work 9 to 5pm, I take a bus to work. I speak a mixture of English and Spanish all day. I live on my own, cook my own food and its… well… its like being a grown up again. I take a 40-minute bus to work everyday and usually listen to music or read a book. One day, in the giant city of Lima with almost 9 million people, a guy got on the bus and sat next to me while I was deeply engaged in my book. He didn´t say a word but eventually I looked up and realized he was someone I knew! It was such random meeting; I had just met him that weekend as one of the friends of a fellow volunteer. He proceeded to tell me about his work experiences. Do any of you remember a service that would turn your voicemails into text messages that you could read? Turns out, that is not a computer translating your voicemails to written text, but Young Peruvians who speak English writing them out for you! He told me hilarious things about not being able to understand accents well, all the wild things people would say in voicemails, and noted that the of the voicemails in Columbia he listened to, 90% of them said ¨I bet you are cheating on me!¨ often in much stronger language. Not only that, but he also used to do translations for Hispanic clients in American hospitals. The hospital would call a number and it would go to his phone and he would help to translate the whole medical interaction.
Where I have decided to live is a 10 minute walk from the beach front and right in the heart of one of the nicest parts of Lima. I have a room in a shared house where there is a comical mixture of characters including a salsa dancing polish couple, a writer and internet editing single woman in her 40´s, an 18 year old Peruvian girl who works and is studying to be a chef, and a middle aged man from Canada working in something I can never remember and barely speaks any Spanish. Oh, and of course there is the 40-something owner who is a fun loving, self employed guy taking care of the house. It is a fun and funny family who has invited me in with open arms, taking me out dancing, inviting me to food and offering to teach me to prepare certain plates. They are a friendly and outgoing group and I am content with the situation as it is right now. Soon another volunteer will be moving in as well. I have a great room with internet, tv and a great big window. It is a big change from my tiny, dirt floored, adobe house in the dry forest of the north of Peru.
However, after only 2 weeks in Lima and a month in the states, I had seriously started missing some well-cooked Peruvian food. So, one Sunday I made a voyage to the outskirts of Lima just to visit my training host family and to prepare and eat delicious Peruvian food with them. It was one of my best days in Lima so far! I re-bonded with the family, the sibling all being around my age. We joked around as I helped them around the house and sang along to popular songs. It was great to feel Peruvian again.
In terms of my job, I am considered thecoordinator of the environmental volunteers in Peru, of which there are about 35. I work directly with the director of the environment program in the office, doing any errand he asks while being a contact person for the volunteers when they need materials or advice. Another part of this job is traveling with my boss to every environment volunteers´ site to see how they are doing, see their projects and see if they need any support. I am just retuning from a week long trip t
o JunÃn, a province of Peru high in the Andes mountains where there really is no escap
ing the cold. There are 9 volunteers there, and we visited two or three
of them each day, using a Peace Corps issued car. We left from the boiling hot summer climate of Lima and by late afternoon we arrived to 3,800 meters and freezing cold temperatures. The first night we all just went to sleep so that we could acclimate to the high altitude and cold. At night I slept in layers of clothing, tons of blankets and never took a shower because it was just too cold to take of my clothes and then at the end have get out of the luke-warm water. The volunteers in this region are some of the most hard core I have seen. They suffer extreme cold without ever being able to enter a warm home or sit by a fire. Some of them don´t bath for weeks at a time because the
water is ice cold and they just don´t feel the need. We even have the highest working volunteer in the world at 4,200 meters! And yet, they work hard and are an incredible group of young volunteers. Almost all of them have started ¨recycling buys¨ where they call on the community to bring in their plastic bottles and tin cans to sell to them. They buy them and then sell them to a big city nearby, making their money back. All the recycling they buy is garbage that previously would have been burned in people´s back yards. Such a small step, with such a big impact! All of that with some of them only having a hole in the ground in the middle of a field for a bathroom! I feel so fortunate to have the position I have, getting the opportunity to see the changes these volunteers are making all over the country despite the hardships of poverty, cold and learning a new language.
I spend my free days in Lima (and I´ve had very few) walking along the beach front, meeting up with friends, preparing food
I spend my free days in Lima (and I´ve had very few) walking along the beach front, meeting up with friends, preparing food
for the week, going to the beach to take advantage of the few months of sunshine and still trying to organize my room and life. I now have access to most luxuries and don´t feel myself missing American foods or culture because I am basically in a mini Spanish speaking America with a Peruvian cultural twist.
On a personal note:
On a personal note:
My theme song for January: Adele - ¨Someone Like You¨
¨Never mind I´ll find someone like you,
I wish nothing but the best for you too
¨…sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead¨
¨…regrets and mistakes they´re memories made, ¨
Who would have known how bitter sweet this would taste¨
Not trying to be a downer, but that is just how my year started out and Adele has been inspiring me with that song all through the month. Please don´t get me wrong, I have been super happy lately!
Hasta pronto,
-C
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