October 10th

*I wrote this on Monday, but I didn't get around to the internet cafe until today....so it's a mix of what I wrote monday and other stuff I added in today*

Today was the first day of my 4 week of training.  The first two weeks felt like two months, but now time is flying by.  My training schedule feels a lot like being back in school.  I have language classes most days in the mornings from 8am-12pm.  We get an hour for lunch and then from 1-5pm we have more classes in various topics; technical training, culture lectures, and lectures from the Peace Corps doctor about volunteer health.  A lot of our training is somewhat theoretical, but it is slowing starting to feel more applicable to real life.  It must be difficult for Peace Corps to design training sessions for volunteers since each community is very different.  Peru has so many different types of natural environments and volunteers are placed in the majority of them.  On Tuesday November 1^st I will find out my site assignment and then I will have a better idea of what Peace Corps is going to be like for me.

My brother David emailed me some fun questions about Peru and I thought you may be interested to read about them;

-What types of American popular culture have infiltrated Peru?

-What is the food like?

-Do you know any Peruvian slang words?

As far as pop culture goes-at least where I am living in Chaclacayo-there is a big presence of American t.v., music, movies, etc.  People in my community watch a lot of television.  I was very surprised by this when I first arrived, but my family has a lot of the same channels that my family in the U.S. has.  My brother and sister watch cartoon network, Nickelodeon, and Disney channel (all dubbed in Spanish).  I was also surprised the number of hours spent in front of the tv- a ballpark guess on my host brother is around 4 + hours per day.  In Peru the school days are shorter, or at least the state schools are shorter.  Younger kids 8am-1pm and older kids 8-2pm (there is no middle school here, just collegio primaria and collegio secondaria).  Justin Beiber is very popular here, but my sister is also a big fan of a Korean singing group.  Korean popular culture has a presence in Peru as well.  Everyone here is a fan –or hincha- of futbol.  It’s a really big deal here.  I watched a game with my family on Tuesday; Peru vs. Chile, and we got our butts whipped by Chile.  I love the futbol announcer's voice and his style of speaking.  He just rolls r's all over the place and screams 'GOOOOOOLLLLLLL!!!!!'  So even though Peru lost I found it interesting to watch.

The food here has been really good.  The staples are rice and potatoes.  In my family eggs are also a staple, because of the chickens we keep on the roof.  One of the dinners we have most is white rice, fried banana, and a fried egg.  It's really good, but I'm pretty sure it's not too healthy.  Raw veggies seem to be very uncommon.  Once we had a salad at lunch and I made a really big fuss over how much I liked it, because I wanted my host grandma to make one again.

Fruit is a different story, there are a ton to try.  My new favorite is called granadilla.  Granadillas have a semi-hard shell that you have to crack open.  Underneath the shell is something that kind of looks like a membrane and you have to pop or tear it open.  In the middle are these weird juicy and slimy seeds.  They look really gross; kind of like frog eggs, but they taste really good.  Plus it is kind of fun to eat!  I’m not sure if they sell granadillas in American supermarkets, but a lot of times fruits and vegetables have different names in Spanish than English. 

I have slowly been learning Peruvian slang, but I have a lot of work to do.  A lot of times I will hear a new word, but later I will forget it and have to ask about it again.  Thankfully my host family is very patient with me asking over and over ‘how do you say?’ or ‘what is this called.’  Learning a new language is really fun, but also very tiring.  We get Spanish for four hours a day, but after school I don’t get to rest since I speak Spanish with my family.  Sometimes I get really frustrated with not being able to say what I want to say, but usually it just motivates me to work harder to learn new words. 

*Send me more questions!

¡Chao!

Pictures from last weekend trip to Lima with the language classes-this time we actually saw the downtown part of Lima:

The president's home in Lima.

The last supper with guinea pig as the main dish.

The beach!

My language group at the Plaza del Armas.