I decided to change things up for the holidays! Miss all of you. Wishing everyone a
VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS
and a
HAPPY NEW YEAR :)
Merry Christmas to ALL :) Hope you enjoy another Kelsey and Brielle production.
And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice
cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came
without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags.
And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought
of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from
a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?
I have been in Perú now for 6 months and I have learned many new things. I haven't updated this post since Thanksgiving and my Early In Service Training. I figured that my very passionate followers (Grandma and parents) have wanted to see a new post. Things are slowing down in site with school ending, Navidad and Ano Nuevo coming around the corner. Most people in my town leave for the summer months (January and February), but me and my site neighbors (Kyle and Kelsey with special appearances from Lucas) will be starting a "Gringos Útiles" during Vacaciones Útiles, for the youth of the town that aren't leaving. With the words stolen from Kyle's blog the program will be "to hopefully offer the youth a place to come and hang out that's safe, fun and educational and giving them a chance to utilize our vast wealth of gringo knowledge."
So, since I have time on my hands (besides having to fill out an extensive report for Peace Corps on my service thus far) I will give you a little idea of 6 things I've learned since I've been in Perú in honor of making it here for 6 months.
Here we go.
1. "I've been sittin' waitin' wishin'...." Jack Johnson you couldn't have put it better. I've learned that there is always going to be a LOT of sitting and waiting. I noticed that I spend my time sitting and waiting for meetings, tallers (workshops), collectivos out of Tamarindo, busses, collectivos back to Tamarindo, and getting new bank cards. I was a very impatient person when I first got here, and I still have a lot of room to grow when it comes to patience, but I've learned to appreciate the times that I spend sitting around and waiting. I often now take a book or something productive to do as I wait for something to start an hour and half late. I also have come to really enjoy the rides from my site to to Piura city. The ride is actually pretty beautiful and on a good day, when I'm not crammed next to a smelly old man, I can take it all in. When I first got to site even the security guards noticed I was aggravated when things wouldn't happen on time. They would give me the international hand sign of "patience Brielle, we do things differently here."At first this would make me even more mad, but now, I find myself doing that to other people.
2. Spanish. Spanish. Spanish. This is a part of Perú that I will never learn enough about before I leave. I have started to realize that I'm understanding more and more of what people are saying to me. There are moments where I'm still completely lost, but I've gotten a lot better. It hit me the other day when I was getting off a bus and an American came up to me and asked me a question. I answered her questions and watched her walk off into the swarm of men yelling "TAXI" "MOTO" at her, and could hear her struggling with her Spanish. The last thing I heard was her getting ripped off on the price of her ride, and realized that-that was me merely 6 months ago. Oh how much I've grown.
3. SOMEONE PUT SOME TUNES ON! The constant stream of music in this town used to really bother me, but now I find myself sitting in a collectivo or on a bus and I'm wondering why no one is pulling out their cellphones to bust out some tunes. Where the heck is my Daddy Yankee?! It is something I know I'm going to miss about Perú. My friend Kelsey and I were walking down the street the other day and some great reggaeton song just started blasting out of nowhere. We caught ourselves dancing our booties off like "weird gringas" in front of EVERYONE. I've learned that we're already abnormal to most of these people here and most of the time they are laughing when I'm busting out "normal" dance moves... why not have some fun with it and be weird?
4. A support system is the best thing you can have as Peace Corps volunteers. Before I had left for the States I had asked people how they felt about Peace Corps and some people responded by saying they felt really alone. I can understand how they felt that way. As I've said in posts before this, moving to site was QUITE the adjustment. During training you form many friendships and you are constantly around people speaking your language, and then you find yourself in site with little to no communication (THANK GOD FOR RPM CALLING FREE FROM VOLUNTEER TO VOLUNTEER) with other gringos. I got really lucky here in Piura, not only are my group of Peru 17ers that are here... amazing, but the people from other groups are amazing as well. My BIGGEST piece of advice for new volunteers is to find people you can count on in a moments notice because I've found myself in situations where I needed help or maybe just someone to talk to. Having someone, in country, doing exactly what you do, that understands... is a great thing to have.
5. Everything SMELLS. I mean everything. I'm still not completely used to the smells of burning trash that welcomes to me home to the campo of Tamarindo. Then there is the smell of stagnant water. The smell of the farm animals out back. But then there are the good smells... like a fresh mango just cut open or churros being sold on a street corner. Perú, you have so many different scents.
6. I will always miss home, but, I got some great advice from my mother that I would like to post here. "When you get homesick you have a tendency to make home out to be way more than it is... think about that. We miss you and would like to see you, just don't make home out to be this great thing you are missing out on. Remember it ain't all that." You couldn't be more RIGHT mom. I am here for 2 years and then I get to go back HOME. I forget that the months I spent waiting to leave for Perú.... I couldn't wait to leave home. I have the coolest job out of most people back home (sorry friends, but its true). Ok... so having a non-working bathroom for a week and not having constant water can be really aggravating... but I also get to see some of the coolest things and experience a culture that most people will NEVER get to experience... and get PAID for it.
Because I haven't had the greatest internet I wasn't able to post all the videos from my Chachapoyas trip. Well folks, here you go... some more little clips of my very awesome vacation.
This is my dear Philip Moses (also known as Uncle Pip) doing a great introduction of himself... in his really amazing Spanish.
Our out on control tour guide that didn't let us ask questions because she was too busy running up the hill.
Gocta Waterfall where we all jumped in!
"How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these." - George Washington Carver
The ban has been lifted and Perú 17 is allowed to start taking VACATIONS! The first vacation time to roll around for us was Thanksgiving. A group of us decided to go to a place called Chachapoyas for a few days. The capital region of Chachapoyas is the Amazonas. Chachapoyas is considered "the eyebrow"of the jungle.
The group of us took an overnight bus from Chiclayo to Chachapoyas- about 8 hours. It wasn't the greatest ride because there were a ton of swerves. We barely got ANY sleep. We got into Chachapoyas around 6am and decided to grab some breakfast and head out on a tour to Kuelap. Kuelap is like a mini Macchu Picchu. Itis an ancient fortress-city from the Chachapoya people, which is an Inca word that means "Warriors of the Clouds." This fortress was built pre-Inca domination, and was eventually taken over and abandoned by the Incas. It was massive, containing a multi-tiered city inside, complete with water management, burial grounds, and defense mechanisms.
(All the pictures on this blog were taken by Lucas with his awesome camera)
Kuelap
The Chachapoyas Group :)
I also took some small videos of us at Kuelap:
The next day the group of us took a tour to Gocta, the third largest waterfall in the world. We took a van up to the small town of Maria where we began our 2 1/2 hour hike. We had a tiny little tour guide that basically ran up the mountain the whole time while some of us (not me of course) were huffing and puffing up the mountain. It was amazing to hike through some jungly looking areas- the pictures we took of the views will NEVER compare to what it actually looked like. The waterfall is made up of 2 separate falls, which you can see in the photos below, so we went to two "look-out points". We were able to jump into the water below the water fall. It was amazing. The water was SO COLD and pretty dark, but since we had all just done a pretty ridiculous hike to go all the way up there we had to jump in. It is a moment I will never, ever forget. We celebrated Thanksgiving all together at a small pizza place right off the plaza in Chachapoyas. It was a bitter sweet Thanksgiving. I had a great time experiencing this amazing places, but I missed my family back home.
But here are some AMAZING pictures of Gocta!
The ride up to the town.
What we hiked through :)
Gocta!
Where we all jumped in
Peace Corps Volunteers do Gocta!
The few days in Gocta seemed to go fast and it was time for Peru 17 Youth Development's Early IST (In Service Training). It was a week of presenting our communtiy diagnostics and going over what projects to start in site and what to do during the summer months. The school year is wrapping up here and Peru and will not start again til the first week of March. This means us Youth Development volunteers are going to have to start getting creative during the summer months. The week fell on World Aids Day on December 1st and for our practicum we were split into 3 groups and had to do skits for a ton of people in the Olmos, Lambayeque plaza.
A great photo of Kyle and I practicing our ABC's of prevention. Our skit was about-"A" for Abstinence. Abstinence all the way baby. QUE RICA! :)
It was a great week reuniting with everyone and hearing about everyone's sad. The week went quickly and it was time to return back to sites. Once I returned back to Piura I noticed how much HOTTER it has gotten. I'm nervous for summer to start here.
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving back home. Christmas is quickly approaching and I plan on staying in site with my host family. It will be interesting to see how my family celebrates this . I miss everyone back home! "Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as you ever can." - John Wesley
