Day 3: Meeting the training site family

This morning, I woke up and realized a diet of carbs laced with carbs is probably not going to be the best for me. Not only because I'm going to gain so much weight, I won't fit in my clothes anymore, but also because I get these energy spikes, super charged one moment and crashing the next. Not much I can do about the latter, but I figured I could get in a morning workout to help slow down the onset of the former.

Except I don't want to run. Running is, it seems, one of the biggest forms of exercise that the Peruvians have accepted as a crazy weird thing the American volunteers seem to enjoy doing. Unfortunately, 4 years of rugby and not seeing a physical therapist when I really should has resulted in knees that get a little rough if I push myself for longer than 30 to 45 minutes. Time at the gym, working on my lower body, has really helped keep a lot of the pain in check but there are no free weights or a gym to be found where I am located. If I'm really determined, I might consider using my luggage (at exactly 51.5lbs, according to American Airlines) to do some squats. I'm not that determined.

So for cardio this morning, I decided that I wanted to jump rope and do some boot camp-y workouts. First of all, can I just let you know how amazing Peru looks? There are these gorgeous mountains and at 6:30am, they're covered in fog. About 20 minutes later, the sun is rising, casting rays of light onto the peaks as fog slowly evaporates, revealing more and more mountain. I was jumping rope and wondering on how it felt like I was watching some special on National Geographic, when sure enough, those who work here file back and forth, up and down the stairs, watching the crazy, sweaty, Asian PC girl jumping around. What? Yes, I did look a bit mad, my hair just all over the place, doing burpees and leg lifts and all that. I mean, this stuff looks weird when people do it at a gym, where everyone does this stuff. I can only imagine what it looked like beside a pool that's never used, and the mountains in the background.

Weird.

Still, the cold shower in the morning felt SO GOOD after that, especially compared to the same experience I had the previous morning. I'm going to go ahead and accept that my community will think of me as strange, if it means I will get a cold shower that is actually welcomed.

In other news, today is the day I meet my training site family. There are 2 families I will be living with while I am here: One family for 3 months while I am at the training site, and another family for when I am actually on SITE to work for 2 years. I have asked for children in the families I will be living in because I've found that chatty children will probably work best for me while I am trying to learn Spanish so let's hope that works out!

Alright, time to start the morning meetings. I'll post again once I know what my internet situation is going to be like for the next 3 months.

I WANT MY SITE FAMILY TO LOVE ME. because I am a needy person.