¿Hablas Spanglish?

Hola from Buenos Aires, Lima, Peru! I just completed my first week as a trainee in the Youth Development program and my first week with my training host family, and I am happy to say I survived. And maybe that doesn’t seem like a huge accomplishment considering I am supposed to be in Peru for 27 months, but let me tell you, little could surpass the feelings of terror and dread I had on those first days in my training site. I feel like I’ve been gone months, and Monday was weeks ago.

I would be lying if I said I felt confident, secure in my abilities, happy with my Spanish, and like I had made the right decision. I felt the furthest from it. Monday during the first day of training, tears sat in the corner of my eyes all day long and waited until I was alone at my host family’s house to pour out in a bout of self-pity and fear of having made the wrong decision. I felt like I had spent a year of my life applying for a job I wasn’t fit for. I was just so overwhelmed.

They say Peace Corps will give you the highest highs and the lowest lows, and I am already starting to get a feel for what they mean. Imagine turning your life upside down and heading to a country you’ve never been to with people you’ve only just met, living with people you don’t know and have a bit of a language barrier with, and then throw culture shock, new standards of living, eight-hour training sessions, constipation, freezing-ass cold showers, and terrible coffee on top. Now, how does that make you feel?

But things have already gotten better. Everyday things get better. Poco a poco is a popular saying here; little by little.

So now that I’m past discussing feelings and junk like that, here are some things about what I’ve been doing. I think until things start slowing down, I’m going to be making these blogs mostly “highlights” of my time here. So much happens on the hour, it would be impossible to recollect it all.

Training: Training is actually pretty fun, but it’s a lot of information to handle at once. In the past when I’ve done language classes in country, I spent three to four hours max in class, two hours napping, and the rest of the time having fun in the city.  But this isn’t study abroad-- this is a job. Training is eight-hours a day with approximately four-hours of language training, and the rest of the time is split between presentations on culture/medical information/etc and job specific training. To be honest, I feel like a little kid more than someone training for a big job. Mostly because we are all a bunch of goofy, loud people who can’t sit still for five minutes, but also because we all walk to training together with our sack lunches and backpacks.

Family: I’m currently living with an awesome family who I get along with really well. They have housed Peace Corps trainees for many years, and they are pretty used to our “backwards” ways of doing things. My host family consists of Lilia (mom), Javier (dad), Ruth (23 year-old daughter), Josie (17 year-old daughter) and Diego (10 year-old son). They are all incredibly nice. Lili can be quiet sometimes, but lately she’s been hanging around me more and asking if I need help with homework. Javier works 22 hours away (still don’t know what he does) so he is gone for 20 days at a time, and comes home for eight days. I just met him today! Ruth lives next door and has a toddler (Michaela) and houses another PCT. Josie is studying to be an engineer at a University over an hour away, and she commutes back and forth everyday. I rarely see her, but when I do she talks so fast my head spins. And Diego is the best thing that has ever happened to me. He’s at that age where he still likes to play with action figures and is absolutely ridiculous without worrying about looking cool, but he totally crushes on all of his amigas and uses Facebook and Twitter like a true addict. He makes being here so much easier, because he’s patient with my language skills, he often gets me out of the house by asking if I want to play basketball or futbol at la conchita (basketball court), and he always greets me (sometimes hanging out his window) with a big grin and, “AH-MAHN-DAAAAAHHH!!!”

Health/Hygiene: On one of our first days of training we were discussing hygiene and showers, and a PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer--I know, lots of acronyms, get used to it) suggested to us, “Only wash what folds.” And that’s all you really can wash when the water comes out of the showerhead so freezing cold, you don’t even WANT to take a shower. I’ve only taken two since I’ve been in Peru.

We actually have a lot of meetings on health and hygiene, because it can get to be an issue for volunteers if they’re not careful. There’s a lot of different food, bacteria, parasites, viruses, etc. I’ve already gotten four shots, and I think I’m still getting a few more. We can’t drink the water, Peruvians like cold showers, lots of people are constipated, some people already have diarrhea and vomiting—it’s a pretty picture I’m painting, isn’t it? We also are recommended to brush our teeth at least twice a day, if not more. They don’t have fluoride in their water, and they eat way more sweet and sugary things than we are used to, so keeping teeth can be a problem (which by the way, Peace Corps won’t pay for lost teeth, so I’m planning on keeping mine). But our medical staff is awesome, and they are freakin’ hilarious! Actually, everyone is hilarious.

On a funny, but completely miserable topic, we’ve started a “70% Club” money pool. Some of us heard there is a statistic that 70% of all PCV’s poop their pants at one point in their service—our medical staff tell us the percentage is actually higher—so we decided to all put money in a pool, and the person (or people) that don’t poop their pants by the end of service (or sooner), WINS! Fun game, huh?

Speaking of poop, in Spanish you say “kaka” but its direct translation is “shit.” For two years, one of our medical staff was asking volunteers, “How was your shit?” every time he had appointments with them, until someone finally told him “shit” isn’t the appropriate term in English. I love our staff.

Otra vez, I will tell you about food, customs, culture, more about poop, and how having piel blanca gets you more attention than you ask for, and mi piso.  I want to talk more about where I live and what it’s like, but I’ll save that for another day and hopefully I’ll have a new and exciting way to present it.

Que vaya bien, y un gran abrazo y beso!