Who forgot to bring the Torro Loco?

Happy belated Birthday America! We PCTs also celebrated the 234^th anniversary of our nation’s birth. Surprisingly enough Peace Corps didn’t plan anything for the 4^th, at least not out here where we are. Who knows maybe the folks in Lima had a torro loco at the US Embassy. One of the PCT’s host dads had a party for us though at their house. Almost all 50+ of us were there plus some of their neighbors and my host sister. It was a ton of fun and nice to get the whole group together just to have fun. We all brought something to eat and I have to say it was the most awesome-strange mix of food. A 4^th of July Cake, Guacamole, Mac&Cheese, Potato Salad, Apple Pie, Apple sauce, Pizza, hot dogs and that isn’t the half of it.

I decided to make cheesecake but then switched to cookies after to being able to find cream cheese at Plaza Vea (you may remember me mentioning this South American Wal Mart-esque chain). Turns out they have Philadelphia cream cheese at various mercados and tiendas. I made the cookies Sunday morning and after some recipe manipulating due to lack of ingredients/ lack of measuring utensils I ended up with my hodge podge “m&m” cookies. I substituted Chin Chins for m&ms, which worked out because they are essentially the same thing. Also, turns out just adding more sugar to substitute for a lack of brown sugar doesn’t actually work too well. Oh well, my host family liked them and so did the other PCTs. I should also add my host family practically laughed at me when I told them I wanted to cook something. They weren’t being mean, they’re just aware of my lack of culinary abilities.

As for the actual work I’ve been doing they’ve been keeping us pretty busy. We spend half the day in language training and then the whole afternoon in talks or sessions related to our program. Last week we started a kind of a mini project. In groups of four we had to put together a youth group in the community to meet with once a week pretty much until the end of training. We opted to work with the library in town. The librarian is really great and super helpful so when she said she could get the word out and get some kids for us we thought that it was great. Another group opted to use the library as well and had their group the day before us. We had a great turnout (about 15 kids) and we asked who was a part of the other youth group as well and almost all of them raised their hands. Looks like we’re going to have to make sure we’re creative with our activities. Overall it was a pretty good first meeting. We were all a little bit intimated to lead our own youth group in Spanish. We thought we over planned…..turns out we under planned but it ended being a good meeting. We have kids age 4 to like 12 so that’s going to be a bit tough to plan for but overall It looks like we have good group of kids. Plus having to organize the youth group is great practical experience.

This week we have our mid-training language evaluation. They’re going to “test” us and see if we’ve improved enough to move up a level or not. A bit stressful but we’ll see. To be perfectly honest I think it’s kind of up in the air as to whether ill move up or not. As some of you reading this know me trying to study in my room never really works. I would kill for any sort of establishment in my community where I could sit and study. We don’t have anything but little tiendas where I live.

In about 2 weeks we head to field based training. During FBT we head out to current volunteer sites and to some shadowing and actual field work. We’re going in 3 groups to 3 different departments (2 coastal and 1 sierra) but we don’t know who’s going where yet. Also it looks like I can narrow down what departments I could end up in (I’m not completely positive on this). For those of you who want to Wikipedia them they are ; Lambayeque, Piura, la Libertad, Cajamarca, and Ancash.

That’s all for now, I thought I would go back to adding what I’ve been eating for you all so here you go.

Yesterday:

Breakfast- Tortilla (think egg and hot dog omlete) and Quacker (basically milk and quinoa

Lunch- Causa (Picture a sandwich with mashed potato for bread and chicken salad inside. Much more delicious than it sounds) and Arroz con Leche

Dinner- Fish, Rice, and Lentils

*As you may be able to tell I would kill for some veggies