bienvenidos a peru

Hi everyone! I have just a few minutes between classes, but I thought I would give a quick update on where I am and what I am doing. I arrived in Peru one week ago, and am now living with my host family in the city of Chaclacayo about 30 minutes east of Lima. My days are currently filled by training activities, which include 4 hours of language classes in the morning, then 4 hours of technical training, safety instruction, and medical information in the afternoons. The days are long, but the instructors are incredible, and my fellow volunteers are some of the most interesting and friendly people I have ever met. I am pretty tired, partly because the chickens and guinea pigs that live on the roof over my room make so much noise in the mornings that I have been awake at about 5 every morning. Speaking Spanish all the time is also exhausting right now, but I know that will get easier. Hopefully I will learn to sleep through the animal noises as well.

The next 11 weeks I will be living in Chaclacayo, training every day and getting ready for my site placement. We volunteers in the medio ambiente (environmental) field have been warned that our sites will most likely be among the most rustic in the country, so we are enjoying electricity and running water and internet access while we still can. We don´t know our specific sites yet, so therefore do not know exactly what kind of work will be needed in our placements, but the three main focal points of the environmental program are 1) waste management and recycling 2) environmental education, and 3) reforestation. I can´t wait. For now, I am off to lunch and then class. Chau chau!