Here I am curled up in bed under 4 thick wool blankets, watching Iron Man on my laptop, and drinking tea which reminds me of Fruity Pebbles. Nearly two months in site and I’m sure many of you are wondering if I’m just on vacation. I think I’ll explain a little more about what I’m up to. Other than the 24/7 job of attempting to integrate and possibly reduce the amount of awkwardness I emit. Well like a said in an earlier post the first 3 months are for doing a Community Diagnostic. I attempt to embody Margret Mead and put my anthropology and research training to use. I’ll have to present this report to other volunteers at a training event at the end of November and to my community. The idea is after researching and getting to know my community for 3 months I’ll have a better idea of what big projects I should start. 

Some of the deceptively innocent looking boys in my English class

 Other than that I’ve started with English classes. Understandably that’s the big thing everyone wants from me. It’s not my favorite thing to do but it’s a good way to get to know more people and they benefit from it. I now teach a group of 8-12 year olds every week. The priest is letting me use a spare room in the church for classes which is great…too bad I spent the first 15 minutes of the first class trying to open the door.  Not really an authoritative first impression. After many tries I gave up and had class outside. I now understand why we never had class outside in elementary school. It’s a terrible idea. I spent most of my time trying to get them to sit still. Classroom management techniques really go out the window in a situation like that. Things went much smoother for the second class. In an effort to avoid having high schoolers (who have English class in school) coming to my house all the time for homework help. I’ve set it up so that after my English class h.s. students can come get English help. From what I’ve seen so far they need it. How are they supposed to answer geography type questions in English if they don’t even know the answers in Spanish? Nope that blob is Brazil not Canada kid. Due to popular request I may start an adult class soon as well. I’m also meeting with one of the h.s. Spanish teachers to work on her English pronunciation and hopefully set up an interchange with my friend Dana’s Spanish class in the states.

Some of the girls in my crocheting "workshop"

English is easy. Getting people interested in other projects is a little tougher. I’m getting my feet wet with doing talks at the h.s. during their tutoria time (think study hall). Mostly on self esteem, although there are the times where I end up teaching without any warning so I try to piece together something for them from my memory. A game of telephone can turn into a great impromptu charla on communication. I also assist one of the professors in one of the h.s. with a series of talleres or workshops. Every afternoon we do some sort of cultural workshop which students are supposed to lead. I would say 2 out of the 5 are well attended and one of them I ended up teaching. Every week I teach a little drawing class. I’m using this opportunity to paint a map of Peru on one of the walls in the city.  A world map is one of projects all volunteers are expected to complete and it’s a worldwide initiative. Since previous volunteers already did one I’m doing a map of Peru instead. I also do other little things during the week and I’m trying to get involved at the health center doing education/promotion.

Rainy season should be starting roughly next month and it’s a source of anxiety in my life right now. This city is basically situated on one decently steep hill. It’s rained a bit here and I’ve seen what happens to our streets. They flood and become a slippery death trap which is not a good match with my clumsiness. Soon I need to invest in a pair of lovely rubber boots, hopefully with really good traction. Unfortunately, they only come in generic black. No Target style zebra print boots here which is a shame, maybe I’ll pass that idea along to my small-business site mate. Speaking of, thanks to my site mate I was able to see game six of the AL finals! A little dose of America watching the Rangers boot the Yankees out of the post season which was just lovely (sorry Maren). Thoughts have also turned to the holidays. Since the weather hasn’t changed here I must I feel like it’s just been one really long August. Since we get a few days for the Thanksgiving holiday and youth development volunteers will be having a training event starting pretty much right after in Ancash it looks like a group of us are going to try to get together down there early to celebrate. I think we’re all really looking forward to it.