More from the first week

Hello all,

The past two days have been busy, like every other day! My spanish class started having our lessons in our community yesterday (wed.) We are starting out in Melissa´s home. Then mine next week. My mom says she has to do a bunch of cleaning in our living room before next week...which to me seems spotless, but i suppose it is a mom thing. After class i walked back down to my house and ate lunch. Then around 12:30 proceeded to preactically repel down the steep road down to the highway. Going up and down that thing two or three time a day, usually filled to the brim witn potatos and rice is relly going to get my ass toned. And yes if anyone would like to learn more about my diet i would recommend diving head first into the potato pile at Fred Meyers, but only after eating a pound of rice. No i´m just joking...well kind of. It really is good food though, and my mom is really really happy that i eat everything. I guess they had a volunteer that didn´t really care for much, so they are always surprised that i will eat what´s in from on me.
My training in my WatSan (water and sanitation) group was really frustrating that day, but it is great because i am really able to talk with my trainers, who really care and understand what is going on. So that makes it a bit better. I also have friends to help me laugh it off. After training, we had a yoga lesson taught by one of the volunteers. It was nice, and there were tons of people. Even tons of people that hadn´t ever before. EVeryone thought i must really be into yoga seeing that i had my own mat...but i´ve only been 4, no 5 times. Last night i did some homework, and then watched a movie with my host bro. During it i thought i felt something rumbling a little, like a big truck outside. Bu there was no truck. I came to learn today that it was a small earthquake. One of many that i guess plague this country.
This morning for my spanish class we went into Chosica, where i had to walk into the local municiple building to ask the about the local water. It was a little strange, but i have this strange sense of courage, which i am taking as my knowing that it really doesn´t matter if the people don´t like me. However it was awkward walking into te crowded building, and then finding a woman to talk to, but did so while she was trying to make a call. This afternoon in my WatSan class we talked a little about site locations and how they are chosen (but no, i don´t and won´t know mine for several weeks). Then we made Tippy-taps, which are water dispensers made from plastic bottles. YOu leave them in the sun, on the roof, for several hours, and by doing so you allow the uv rays to disinfect the water, then you have clean water t wash your hands with! The use of uv rays in this manner is known and SODIS, which i´m sure i´ll know a lot about at the end of 10 weeks.

The bad thing about living here with the internet right next door is that i here the shitties MTV pop songs played over and over and over again. And then somehow they will even find the same song, but with like a chipmunk voice over. oh how wonderful!!!! Another great thing here in Yanacoto is the plethora of crazy dogs that try to nip at you! :) I think i´m going to start a page on our volunteer website called PPP (los perros mas peligrosos en Peru). I think it would be great for volunteers to put up pictures of the crazy dogs in their site. Also, every morning i wake up and think that it is foggy, but have realized it is just the dust and burning trash in the air! Chris has joked that he is from LA and that he understands poor air quality..but that this is ridiculous. YOu can really see how a lifetime of conditions like this would have serious ramifications later in life.

I went with a group of my fellow voluntarios to play soccer today. We found this place in the town just about 5 minutes up the highway. It is this little turf field that you have o pay to get into, but it was nice because we just played 5 on 5 with the people that we came with. Well 4 on 4, but two locals who work at the place joined in. I did pretty well actaully. but unfortunretly i got some pretty bad blisters on my feet, so mi hermano told me we´ll go find me some soccer shoes this weekend. It was also a bit hard to to the previously mentioned air quality. I think we were all feeling the burn pretty quick.

I´m really excited to get out and see more o peru....whenever that might be. It seems like it is going to be an amazing place to be.

Well that is all for now. I think i´ll go pass out now!

Patrick