Sunday, June 26, 2011

Day 15: LIMA!

went to lima yesterday! and i had CEVICHE. what is ceviche, you ask? well, the best way for me to describe it is to think of sushi. now pretend sushi is a pirate. now pretend the pirate has an intense fear of scurvy and drowns himself in lemony lime goodness.

that is ceviche. and it's awesome.

besides the greatness of ceviche, our trip to peru began at 7:30am and we met at the center to take a coster there (basically, a bus-van). it took roughly an hour to appear in central de lima and our adventure there was basically the same as when we were in chosica, in that we had to interview random people on the streets to practice our spanish and to learn about the area and the people. there's a gorgeous cathedral and tons of museums, but i basically had zero time to spend admiring the area. once our interviews and things were over, we took a taxi to miraflores to do pretty much the same thing again. again, no time to look around the area until after our work. however, after our interviews and things, we basically just ate as much as we could.

heads up, lima is the gustatory capital of the WOOORRLLDDDDDDDDD!!!! seriously. but we went to a nice, kinda pricey restaurant (where i ate my ceviche), moved to pinkberry for desserts (froyo with chirrimoya as a topping. i freakin love chirrimoya.), and ended in starbucks (iced grande caramel macchiato with soy milk. not the best, my coffee was kind of watered down? ah well, i finally got a hit of coffee that isn't nescafe). too soon, it was getting kind of late and we needed to get a cab back to chosica, which we lucked out on and found a taxi guy who hailed a nice, van-y one for the group i was in.

i immediately passed out and woke up today for church, followed by family activities! today was the day my host great grandmother passed away. we all piled into a van and drove to lima, where the cemetery is located. after paying our respects, we went to a park and had a picnic lunch (chicken, potatoes, and ocoba- delicious except it's made with msg...), and then we went to a place that serves pachamanca, not to eat, but to drink and dance. so drink and dance i did! well, mostly hydrating because i hadn't had a lot of water all day, but i did have a small glass of this mix of beer and coke, which is a bit strange but it's not bad. then we danced to different music, slow music that is played around junin and later, faster music from the region of santiago. personally, i prefer faster music but i had a good time trying to figure out how to dance to more traditional music than i'm used to. plus, i danced with mi famila so that was fun! grandparents, mom, uncle, aunt, cousins (one other PCT lives basically next door to me, and is currently my cousin! haha, awesome). the festivities ended and we needed to return home (my host sister has finals this week and she needed to get back home to study. her birthday's coming up this week and i'm going to attempt to make a cheesecake! hope it goes well... i wonder if sour cream exists at the supermarket called plaza vea. this market is basically a walmart and i can find most things here, except for a few random ingredients so i hope sour cream isn't one of them!)

in totally different news, i've just been elected president of PC Peru 17! a junta directiva is basically a small governing group that exists in basically every different organization and area. it's super serious and can get pretty intense at times, according to the instructors, but our PC JD exists in order to get a few matters done, like figuring out PC Peru 17 souvenirs and organizing a thank you party for our host families. i've never been president before, so i'm gonna do my best! it helps that everyone here is just so freakin awesome, and the PC JD is composed of those amazing people.

PC Peru 17: these next couple of years are going to fly like no other, and it's gonna be totally awesome.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

day 13: dead dogs make me sad

title says it all. yesterday, a bunch of mis amigos were chilling at a bodega after classes and meetings when they watched a dog get run over by a car. apparently, it got up, walked over to them, and lay down under their table. a man at another table walks over, picks the dog up by its legs and drops it off to the side of the road. another man walks over and pets it until it dies.

i feel like i've written this before.
in any case... super sad. i'm really glad i wasn't there cause i would have been a mess, especially considering how easily i cry and i'm a sympathy cryer so i'd have just been incredibly sad.

how easily do i cry? well, today i was ignored by my tech trainers, who were running a session, about 9 times. literally, i would put my hand up, they would point to every other person around me and then go on to the next question. at first i thought, maybe they can't see me? except i would be acknowledged, as in they would hold out one hand and do that thing where they point at you and you know you're speaking next, except then they would stop to elaborate on a point that someone made, totally forget about me and move on. tech trainers behind me were even like, "what? but wait, sue didn't go" and then just look at me apologetically, to which i would respond with a shrug.

i felt like i was going to burst into tears. not because i was sad, to be honest, but mostly because i was tired of being ignored and i know bursting into tears gets me attention. how ridiculous is that? i am so ridiculous. and today, i threw a mini tantrum because we went to chosica for class and i had eaten a quick breakfast of a glass of yogurt because i didn't want to be late (teachers had stressed that we had to be punctual). once we got there, we were sent on these little missions, left and right, to find information and the winners would get like chocolate or something silly. first of all, my group should have won. seriously. i could go into the reasoning behind it, but that would be a waste of your time and mine. let's just say, i'm extremely competitive and we should have won >:P lol~

but anyway, i was STARVING by the end of it. and we were reviewing the information we had gathered, and i just felt like so much of it was unnecessary. like why ask 4 different groups the exact same question??? wouldn't it be better to give the answer and then discuss what difference we had found? it was just so inefficient... i am not a fan of inefficiency... anyway, it was taking forever, i was really annoyed by how redundant everything was and how much time was being wasted, and i was mad hangry. they asked me a question, and my brain felt like it stopped. i couldn't think anymore, i was getting a terrible headache, my stomach had growled nonstop for nearly an hour, and i just wanted to walk away and go get the food located literally less than 10 minutes from me. ugh. i'm the worst. so anyway, questions kept being asked until finally i was like, "no puedo pensar mas. lo siento." and sat there until we were done. it freakin hurt to move and my usual reaction to hunger is to sleep, until food was around me so i was exhausted on top of all of this. FINALLY it was all over and we got food, which i demolished. i also finished part of another amiga's plate.

yea, sometimes, i can be pretty awful. i'm gonna have to stop being a brat one day : /

ahora, i have to finish this and go to SLEEP! running at 5:30am is gonna be tiring, but we're visiting a school tomorrow! and i want to be ready to observe and play!

Monday, June 20, 2011

day 11: pooping yourself

currently, there is a "last wo/man standing" pool going on. it's S/.2 (aka 2 soles. i think the currency exchange rate has been hovering around 2.75 soles per $1) to enter and basically, the last person to poop themselves wins.

it's been said that 70% of PCVs in peru poop their pants, but the doctors here believe that percentage is higher. apparently, there were only 2 or so volunteers by the end of last year's group to not poop themselves.

i thought this was hysterical, until i found out that someone "peru'ed" themselves today. no names, mind, but it's now definitely a reality.

to quote doctor jorge, "never trust a fart."

ok, i'm gonna do my best to stop talking about poop now. seriously though, this has become a usual conversation piece at lunch and it kind of makes me laugh, like a lot. i never talked about anyone's digestive system so often back in the states, and now it's a thing. hilarious.

in other news, i've started a small running group with other peace corps trainees in the morning! i'm now going to be getting up at 5am to meet runners in front of my house at 5:30am. i think my host sis natali is going to be joining us as well! yaaaay~ this way, i can get some exercise and not feel like a major slob cause all i do is eat delicious things and sit around in front of the tv or at the table, chatting away with my poor castellano.

speaking of delicious things, i ate pacay and chirmoya yesterday! it was after i went to watch pachamanka a la tierra, which is basically a meat dish that goes through an intense process in order to get cooked. the ovens are located underground, so you put rocks from the river (they've been washed first) into a hole in the ground. you somehow get them really really hot, then you put a metal rack kind of thing on top of it with meat on it. there're herbs put on top of the meat, which is then covered with corn husks. more super hot rocks are placed on top of that. there's another layer of meat, more rocks, and some potatoes too. more rocks and more rocks and then you just leave all of that alone for a few hours. later, rocks and things are all removed and the pachamanka (the meat dish) a la tierra (of the earth) is removed and eaten. i didn't try any cause i had another dish (some pork thing called chicharron) moments before at my grandparents' home.

the pachamanka a la tierra was located in santa eulalia, and i walked with my host sis natali and one other PCT, jessica. on the walk back, nati introduced us to pacay and chirrimoya, both of with are super delicious fruits. pacay looks kind of like a gigantic pea pod, except you crack it open and eat the sweet, fibrous white flesh inside, discarding the gigantic seeds on the street. oh! so good! and then chirrimoya. oh my god. chirrimoya. it's this weird, not quite round blob of green thing but inside is a super soft, white piece of flesh with small black seeds. again, you don't eat the seeds, only the white flesh, but jesus christmas on a cracker. that thing is the sweetest fruit i have ever eaten. ever. i've never had it in the states, which is just stupid sad. it basically tastes like a soft lump of pineapple/orange/banana/guava and dear baby jebus, que rico. i was in fruta heaven and wished i could just shove the entire thing in my mouth, but that's not at all lady like, so i refrained. sort of. eh. i might have failed at the refraining. whatever.

once i'm not a lazy bum and i post my pictures, i will do so. right now, i have TONS AND TONS of castellano hwk that i need to do because i want to go to bed early so i can run again tomorrow. i like running so much more than i used to. i don't know why. i literally woke up around 4am today and just rolled around until my alarm went off, so i would have an excuse to get out of bed. something's wrong with my brain, maybe. that's ok. i like it.

chao for now! more to come!

Saturday, June 18, 2011

day 9: lente y seguro

slow and steady. it's a chant that goes through my house pretty often, usually accompanied by "poco a poco" or, "little by little."

this is usually in reference to my inability to speak castellano (aka spanish). turns out, i was right about the whole 'language is gonna be my biggest weakness' but it's one i'm working on every day. currently, i'm at the point where i can basically understand what's being said to me, with some confusion here and there, but my ability to speak is, at best, awful. i can piece together a few phrases but it's really frustrating when i want to describe something and the only thing that comes out is, "what movies do i like? well, i like... movies... comical. uhm. what? oh! yea! comedies. i like comedies. what else? uhm. i don't know." errrggghhhh. sigh, poco a poco.

in other news, last night i went out to chosico, which is like the bigger city, to meet up with youth development volunteers and some small business development volunteers (we were split up cause our group is so huge). i was surprised that so many SBDs showed up! it was super nice seeing them all again, but i'm terrible with names and clearly forgot a few of them : / it's ok, i had a few drinks (gaseosos are sodas, of which peruvians drink a lot of. cerveza is beer, but cusquena is the brand here and i think it tastes a bit too much like natty light, but maybe that's just me.) and managed to remember quite a few after a bit of yelling. we went to this loud, chill place where i found myself shouting instead of talking, because i could barely hear myself speak. which doesn't really mean that the shouting was necessary, just that i couldn't hear myself cause i'm practically deaf and i took to shouting to make up for it. we went to a karaoke bar afterwards, where i tried a pisco sour and discussed the finer points of pisco. i tried to sing 'hey jude' cause it was there, but we left before it was my turn :( ah well, my friends will have to endure my singing voice some other day. entonces, we crammed ourselves into a little taxi and took it back up to buenos aires, just before my curfew~

what a way to end a week! my brain has been kind of dead for a long time as it's been focused on trying to figure out what's been going on for so long, so it was nice giving it a break and letting it basically turn off for a few hours. now i'm recharged and ready for 9 more weeks of training!

actually, i woke up this morning (kind of late... it's saturday!) and washed my clothes by hand. i don't know why i'm so proud about this, just that it's the first time i've done it and now i have clean clothes! mi mama showed me how and now my clothes are drying on a line. it's kind of weird having my underwear just hanging outside for the world to see, but meh. so's everyone else's, i guess. it's kind of a strange metaphor for my adventures here. i'm really hoping my 2 years in peru will expose parts of me that are intimate, that even i am currently unaware of. how do i react to stressful situations, where nothing seems to be going well? do i have the ability to initiate programs in a community that i have no history in? how do i react to these kinds of experiences? what other stories can i create in this life of mine? i don't know, but i'm excited to know!

i should probably calm it down a little though. i'm definitely mildly ill right now, with a cold or something that makes me cough like i'm on death's door and talk like i'm a pack a day smoker but whatever. i'll take some nyquil and hope for the best! tomorrow is father's day, so i hope i can coordinate a skype chat with my dad. i think i'm going to try to speak with mi papa in espana too. dunno what i'm going to say but it'll be fine. anyway, i'm going to sit in front of skype and wish really really hard that my family in cali decides it's a good idea to maybe check if i'm on!

chaufa (which is slang for bye, but is also a type of food).

edit: p.s. here's a fun fact: there are wild turkeys running around the place i train at in santa eulalia. four of them. 3 dark ones, and 1 pale turkey. they do NOT gobble. i would, in fact, say the scream. also, the horse that was tied up in front has broken free and was last seen running up and down the street. there's also a chicken with like 10 chicks pacing that same street. there used to be an alpaca, but it died. damn, i want an alpaca.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

day 7: after a week in peru...

ahhh! so it´s been a few days in peru now and i feel like i´ve lived here for months, not just 4 days. it´s a strange feeling but at the same time, i´ve found that i´m extremely spoiled here! i´m living with a family of 3- mi mama anfitriona and 2 hermanas . the dad currently lives in españa and i had the chance to talk to him on the phone, but both of us were like... erm, i cant speak spanish... so that talk did not happen.

in any case, i will be living in a very small town close to where our training center is located for 3 months. in that time, i will have running water with hot showers available, and possible wireless internet sometime tomorrow. yea, this is very spoiled. most of the other volunteers definitely do not have hot running water and if they want to take a non freezing shower, they bucket bathe. there are internet cafes, and i know some volunteers live very close to them but HOW LUCKY AM I???? i am well aware. so i´m gonna go ahead and thank the dear baby jesus for all of this.

especially my family. i don´t want to leave theeemmm because i looovvee ttheeeemmm... en serio. they have been absolutely amazing, both in helping me with my spanish, or rather my castellano, and in making sure i know wth is going on around me. they´re just so amazing and i wonder if this is what it feels like to be the youngest with 2 older sisters, although one is younger than i am but right now, i´m definitely the baby of this family. for goodness sakes, mi mama makes me lunch and walks me to the corner every morning to make sure i get there safely to meet my other compañeros. i freakin love it.

besides feeling like i used up all my karma chips to live in such an amazing place, i´m doing pretty well. i walk with others who live near me to class every morning, which is located roughly 30 minutes away, and we learn some spanish, sometimes medical things , sometimes about peru history , and sometimes about youth development. ´

i understand that i´m going to be in my current location of buenos aires for 3 months, but i´m already getting really nervous and excited about my 2 year site. i wonder if it´ll be coastal, mountains, desert, or ...???? dunno. anywhere. i don´t know if i´m going to be the first PC to be stationed there, or simply taking over and continuing in a region that has had members before. i know nothing.

knowing nothing doesn´t bother me. the one thing that continues to irk me is my inability to speak castellano. i can undrestand it much better now and my language abilities are starting to return, but i´m def still struggling with conjugations. i mean, i´m sure things´ll be fine but until they ARE, my nerves will continue to fry at the edges.

something that i find interesting is that the PC really stresses how to be safe in Peru. We have had some instructions on keeping our things safe, which is mostly common sense but i wish there were some more instructions regarding taking cars from our cities to neighboring places. i definitely got a little lost tonight, but thankfully one of my compañeros lives next door to me and happens to now be my cousin because his host family is related to mine and he is also a super chill guy who just doesn´t freak out like i do, so that was nice. less me running around screaming BUENOS AIRES??? and more calm, rational thought.

anyway, it´s nearly 10:30, i have a cold and i need to sleep because i wake up around 6am every morning to do my workout before a shower and breakfast. by the way, i´m going to gain like 50 lbs while im in peru so don´t freak out when i get back after my time here. the food is amazing, and it´s mostly carbs and starche. also, peruvians drink soda. not water. so i might have a rather toothless grin greeting you...

i´m hoping to start running in the mornings with my other compañera but we´ll so how that turns out. i like to sleep. i´m gonna go do that now. chao.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

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.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Day 2: 1st official day in Peru!

AHHHHH. TODAY HAS BEEN AWESOME.

So, yesterday was a blur of, as one PCT put it, just a whole bunch of waiting. Waiting to get on the bus, waiting to get on the plane, waiting on the plane, waiting to get off the plane, RUNNING TO GET TO THE NEXT PLANE BECAUSE WE HAVE 3 MINUTES, waiting to get on the plane, waiting on the plane, pacing because the ride from Miami to Peru is 5 long hours but finding the time just passed by super quickly because PCTs are the friendliest and chattiest people to ever exist, waiting to get off the plane, waiting to get through customs, waiting to get on the bus to get to the retreat area, waiting on the bus and feeling weird about it because it feels like I'm still not in Peru yet but in San Diego, waiting to get off the bus, and finally, waiting to get to your rooms because it is now 1am and I'm exhausted.

yea. waiting. lots of it.

And last night, I was so discombobulated and tired that I just didn't notice anything going on. We ended up in our rooms, which are pretty awesome. They kind of remind me of the rooms I had in Guatemala. My roomie and I were in a room with 2 beds and a bathroom. After socializing way too long, we were starving and got sandwiches composed of:

2 pieces of bread. 1 slice of cheese.

and it was the greatest sandwich ever. honestly. delicious.

after that, we went to bed and woke up bright and early, eager to take a shower to wash off the stench of travel. roomie went first because I wanted to stay in bed for as long as possible.

"How's the water?" I ask.
"Not bad," she answered.

I stood in front of the shower, holding my hand out to test the water go from freezing cold to really cold until the guilt of wasting water took over and I braced myself and shoved my head under the running agua. Later, I remarked that I screamed out but my roomie informed me, this was not a fact. Apparently, the screaming was all in my head.

Training went by. We got some cool info, played some silly ice breaking games, met lots of people and etc. You know what? I honestly can't remember exactly what happened. I got my picture taken, I got this super awesome bracelet from the doc, I got moolah, I ate awesome lunch at some point, I learned how to differentiate between fake money and real money (sorta. not really. I'm going to be like an epicenter of fake money. Literal monopoly money. I am going to be the banker of monopoly money. fun fact: apparently, peru is known for its really real looking fake money.)

Now, I'm trying to connect with my family on skype while there's just a few rays of daylight still out but guess what? NO ONE. NO ONE IS ON SKYPE. WHAT. THE. EFF.

Finally get myself some internet aaaannnddd nothing. bah. If my fam decides that one day, they will use skype, then I am going to show them the most amazing mountains, and you know what they're going to see? DARKNESS. because it's night time. I'm going to show them that night in Peru looks exactly like night in cali.

peace.

p.s. please mail me things? mostly pictures of your face. because i have nothing to put on my walls because i'm an idiota who forgot to bring anything that reminds me of home. well, minus the bottle of sriracha, which is worth its weight in gold.


Friday, June 10, 2011

Day 1: Here's to 2 years

No big update, just that I'm flying to Peru now. Yea, no biggie. Gonna go make sure my stuff is under 50lbs, that I haven't forgotten anything, that my world here is now ending and a new chapter is starting. IN PERU.

Is this the most exciting thing to happen in my life? Maybe. Unless you count that time my lil brosef was born, which I don't remember. Or that time I got into college, which I'm still not sure was real or made up in my head cause 4 years really shouldn't go by so quickly.

Honestly, these next 2 years are going to go by so fast. College was like a blink. Peru is going to be difficult, I'm going to be constantly frustrated by the language barrier, the culture difference, and the isolation, but how long do you think that'll last? I'm going to make an absolute fool of myself trying to speak, I'll probably find myself in situations that I do not want to be in, but after all of the headache and difficulty, I'm going to become a better person.

Plus, I'll get to try guinea pig. That's just weird and amazing.

Alright, here we go next 2 years. You might feel like a soul drain the first few weeks, and like a difficult child throughout but like it or not, I'm going to enjoy it all!!! FACE MY OPTIMISM AND BE SUBDUED.

I'll figure out the internet situation once I get there and keep you updated about that. Good luck USA! Please become a better place by the time I get back? k thnx.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Day 0.5: hours before takeoff

So, I fly to Peru tomorrow. Or rather, in about 8 hours. How weird is that? I went from counting down 100 days ago to 8 hours. This is one of the most surreal things to ever happen to me, except it's REAL. and it's HAPPENING.

Also, I elected myself to be group leader. This delights me to no end, and there really is no reason for me doing so beyond me wanting to say silly things like, "follow the leader!" and "you shall obey the leader!" and etc. Yea, but it's an easy job, I just need to figure out exactly what/who the "bell staff" is and be confused as to why a bell is the title... if you know, please tell me!

So, we need to check out by 8am and be on the bus, to the airport by 8:30am. Our plane isn't until like 1pm or something though and we land in Miami about 2 or 3 hours later. As soon as we land, we're gonna have to book it to our plane to Peru and then we're OFF to Peru galore!

The first 2 days we are in a "retreat" which basically means, I need to make sure I pack enough business casual stuff for 2 days. By the way, I do not own many business casual things. These next 3 months are gonna be difficult, since I own mostly t-shirts and very few nice shirts... I'm going to have to figure out how to buy more. This, I believe, will be difficult as most Peruvians tend to be of a smaller stature and as such, have clothes that do not fit gigantic me.

(fun side anecdote: during the Spanish interview, which is when the PC called me to conduct a little interview to determine my level of spanish capabilities, I basically panicked because the lady on the phone, who was extremely nice and patient with me, asked me about my time in Guatemala. The only thing I could come up about the people, in my moment of total blankness of mind, was that the people of Guatemala were "pequeño"... I honestly meant to say "bajo" for short, but i said "pequeño," which means tiny. TINY. I described an entire group of people as tiny. I don't know what's wrong with me, except that my spanish is the worst.)

The morning will definitely be interesting. I have a last minute letter that I need to post to Cornell so that I can get my Perkins loan partially cancelled (how cool is that? serving in the Peace Corps means I can get as much as 15% of my Perkins loan cancelled per year I serve. Amazing.) and deferred while I'm away. I also need to remember that this needs to be filled out and sent once again next year. I very much doubt I will remember this. Hrm. Let's just hope for the best, eh? I also need to call my dad and remind him to run over to Verizon and put my phone on military hold (another awesome thing). I really hope everything goes smoothly and that all 51 of us make it safely and happily in Peru!

I CAN'T WAIT. MY LIFE IS FINALLY GOING SOMEWHERE. AAAAAAAAAWESOOOME!!

p.s. it is crazy LIGHTNING outside right now and I looooooovvveee it <3 Finally, Washington D.C. is gonna take a chill pill and cool it, cause the muggy weather was too much Louisiana air. You walk through it and it feels like you can eat the air, it's so humid and hot. I'm actually full from all the humidity I devoured.

Oh! And I had my final restaurant meal in America! Fino Italiano on Mth and Washington (or something ridiculous like that. The streets are named by letters. That's the funniest thing ever. If I had a lot of time on my hands, and a hoodrat streak, I would steal the signs and play the most BAMF game of scrabble, ever. Scrabble bit there isn't very hoodrat. I would be a very scholarly hoodrat, who steals vandalizes, steal street signs, and reads Proust. Actually, not Proust. Yet.). I ate a delicious pasta dish, a glass or two of red wine, seafood appetizer, and finished it with ice cream. Yikes. But the Italian man serving us was a sweetheart with the most endearing accent, I couldn't help myself!

Ok, seriously, bed time. I only slept 4 hours last night because I'm insane and insomnia continues to plague me. Still, I manage to function beyond what I believe a person who sleeps as little as I do should be expected to do. Maybe I really am a robot.

One can dream.

P.P.S. I won't have access to my phone after around 3pm tomorrow!! If you text me and I do not respond, please do not be offended. I'm just no longer able to access my cell BUT you should leave me an email or comment here or fb me or something. I'll probably have access to Internet at some point :) LOVE YOU ALL <3

Day 0: Staging

Today is the first day of the next 27 months of my life. I'm not 100% sure how I should feel right now. Honestly? It just feels like I'm going back to college, or I'm at a rugby tournament. I mean, I have my rugby bag, I'm at a hotel with all my electronic things (laptop and now a brand new KINDLE that my friends bought me as a going away gift. I should probably mention that all my friends are gorgeous, in mind, heart and body, and I love em all to death.), and I'm meeting amazing people left and right.

Speaking of the people: the PC is doing a fantastic job with that. As of yet, everyone I've officially met has been just mind blowingly friendly, funny, and an absolute pleasure to talk with. I know for a fact that I will be developing a mild crush on every single one of them. Probably not romantically, mind, as anyone who knows me can tell you that I'm basically incapable of traditional "romantic" love. Like a robot. Actually, robots are awesome. I wish I had a bionic arm or something, that would be so cool.

But I really do hope everyone likes me. I know I can be kind of weird and "quirky," to put it nicely, but I hope it doesn't put anyone off :/ I know, I know, I probably shouldn't be worried about what other people think, but you know what? I do. I want the other PCTs to like me, I want my 2 host families to like me, I want the community I will be serving in to like me. Why can't we all just be friends? Is that a naive sentiment that dwells solely in my mind? I don't think so. I think it's an attainable goal, I just have to keep myself in line, I guess.

But in any case, I'm getting nervous. Also, because I left my external at home with all my movies and things. Because I am an idiot who shouldn't pack last minute. My bad. I'll live without it, but it's going to be annoying. On my laptop, I have the Firefly series, The IT Crowd series, Tangled, and Princess Bride. I'm really hoping these will last me the next years but I doubt it very much. It's a good thing I like to read so much, cause I'm def going to be doing that a lot. Unfortunately, I'm a fast reader and I've already finished Tina Fey's Bossypants on the plane ride over (p.s. I read the entire thing with her voice in my head. It was both weird and wonderful.)

While I'm in D.C. I also plan on going to CVS or something and getting some last minute things, like crayons and stuff to bribe future peruvian children with. No, bribing children with goods is not something that is beneath me. Read above: I WANT THEM TO LIKE ME. no matter the means. As long as it isn't my kidneys or something, I'm totally fine just giving away everything I have for them to like me :( it's a little sad, a little desperate, but that is actually how much I want to be liked T.T

Anyway, something else I will have to do tonight is readjust some of my packing. So, once we get to Peru, there are like 3 or so days of like a retreat-format thing, or something. I don't know, apparently it was in one of the attached docs we got as an email, which I haven't read... Still, I don't think I have enough clothes on my carryon for something like that. Like pants. I have 1 pair, the one I'm wearing right now. I'm totally okay with wearing that for every day until they fall apart, but I'm pretty sure that's gross and people around me will not appreciate it. I'm thinking wearing the same thing every day and being grody for that long will hurt my plans to be liked. This also means that I will have to open the bag that my father was able to somehow shut with all the stuff inside of it. Part of me worries that opening it will be like opening Pandora's Box, in that everything will suddenly explode out of it and I will feel like an idiot, but the butterfly of hope (aka, a pair of jeans) might not be worth it in my situation...

Ah well, I'm going to grab breakfast at Starbucks* (read: a caramel macchiato, because I'm too nervous to eat solid food but a macchiato has the same number of calories as 1/4th a supreme breakfast platter at McDonalds. By the way, I don't know when they started including the calories of dishes at restaurants, but I LOVE IT. I'm terrible at figuring out that stuff, so I was shocked- positively shocked- when I found out that said breakfast platter has 1010 calories. what? I used to eat that so much as a kid! No wonder I'm such a fatty... Bah. I'm hoping time in the PC will also allow me some "get healthy" moments, even though so far everyone I've talked to says I will most probably gain 10-15 lbs from the rice and potatoes I will be consuming by the truckload. Erm. That's not good, but it sounds really delicious... See? Like I said, it feels like I'm going back to school. Maybe the freshman 15 will actually hit me in Peru? I lost weight in college, mostly from sports and not eating anything that would make me tired/consuming atrocious amounts of sugar free redbull and monster as the bottom of my food pyramid. I'm going to assume my diet of energy drinks will not be continued in Peru. I assume.)

Off to breakfast! I shall report what my day is like later. Thanks for reading :)
Peace.


*edit: so we went to bruegger's bagels instead, except that turned into going to whole foods which meant i got me a naked juice (that weird green one? it's the best kind) and some fruit/nut mixture for later. also, i'm editing this during my break from orientation and they gave us soda but it's these cute tiny things and the bottles are made of glass! i love it!! i want to take them all home with me, just so i can look at them... glass bottles are so much better than plastic. i dunno how they rank next to juice boxes though. a side by side comparison will be necessary for that.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

I'M IN D.C.

so staging is tomorrow. for those of you who don't know, staging is when all the Peace Corps Trainees meet up for meetings and getting paperwork done, and all that jazz.

THANKFULLY i've already met some ppl here and they are AWESOME! which makes me really glad right now :D sadly, it's super hot and humid right now. but then again, the A/C is blasting full force so i get to enjoy that for a while! huzzah!

but now i should socialize and see how many other PCTs are around. OMG! THIS IS HAPPENING! except it still hasn't quite kicked in. intellectually, i am aware. emotionally, i am not.

for any PCTs reading this: i'm in room 624. come say hello! either that or i'm in the lobby. probably eating ice cream.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Day -1

so it's the day before i get on that plane to DC for staging. i haven't exactly completed my packing. more like, i put all the stuff i want to take with me on the floor next to the bags i have to take them. the proportion of space in bags to stuff i own... does not bode well...

so i ate some marshmallows instead and recharged my camera.

there's still paperwork i haven't completed and random things that i know, for sure, i've forgotten. but hey, (to quote one rugger, buffalo) whaddyagonna do?

i'm pretty sure i've packed the essentials, and probably a whole bunch of things that i shouldn't have packed but i've done so anyway.

it still hasn't really hit that i'll be leaving for peru.
these next few days will certainly be interesting...

Sunday, June 5, 2011

dear god, two more days

2 more days until i depart for staging in DC, and then head to peru for the next 2 years of my life.

packing: 5% complete
paperwork: 78% complete
saying goodbyes: never. i hate goodbyes. let's just not and say "see you in a few years" instead.
vlog: yea. too much fear of having my face on the internet. but i'll try to get over it...

2 days to prepare less than 100 lbs. of things that i get to take with me. this will, hopefully, consist predominately of clothes so i'll actually have less? but who knows. cause i sure as hell don't.

i hope my stuff isn't stolen in transit from the US to Peru, which seems to be a possibility.
note to self: mark all things with "God bless" in the hopes that fear of God will help deter some thieves from taking my things.

how did it get to 2 days already? dear me, i don't know. could have sworn i had much time.

they say time flies, but they didn't tell me it flies like a mach 10 plane.