First Week in Site

Hey everyone! I hope Thanksgiving was great! I was thinking of everyone back home as I finished up my first week here in the town of Pacora, Peru. So far everything here is "tranquilo" (a word that is used in the same way good or chill is used in the United States). My family is really sweet and involves me in everything but doesn't mind if I hang out in my room. This is especially important because I have been reading the last installment of Twilight so I have been absorbed in that most of the time when I'm around the house. My life here is much easier than I was expecting as a Peace Corps volunteer because I have every amenity I could need, running water, electricity, internet down the street, and stores where I can get most things that I would want. I even got the water heater working the other day and had a hot shower! Despite the comforts, I am definitely not living the same life I had in the USA. Every morning I wake up to people and animals screaming next door as they butcher their sheep, goats, etc. to take to the market. As I walk through town on any given morning or evening, I am often almost run over by herds of animals being taken out to graze. I may still be in the honeymoon stage in my new home but I find all of these quirks very endearing.
Although I'm having a great time, I'm also starting to see where the frustrations will come from in my next two years. It will be the little things not working out for example my technical difficulties on Thanksgiving that got in the way of my Skype date with my family. I am slowly realizing that I am no longer in the world of Teflon non-stick pans and running water at all hours of the day (we only get water for two hours at breakfast, lunch, and dinner). Not everything works properly all of the time and this is what I can tell I will have the most trouble adjusting to.
One thing that is going to keep me sane while I am here is the people. In the last week I have met so many people with great ideas for projects and incredible energy to get things done. Since I have been here, I have been teaching daily English/environment classes to a growing group of neighborhood kids. We usually start out with some English and then move to talking about environmental issues at my insistence. Yesterday we even drew posters to encourage people not to litter and cut trees that we will be putting up around the plaza for the anniversary. These kids are so enthusiastic about working with me that I literally have to kick them out of my house after our hour-long sessions.
For the first three days this week I worked with the obstetrician at the health post on materials for an HIV-AIDS education campaign. Her idea is to lighten the mood so that people are more comfortable discussing STDs and AIDS in particular. We made four-foot tall cardboard cutouts of condoms wearing ties, hats that say "put on your hat," and a wheel of risky and non-risky behaviors. The first thing she showed me when I arrived was a huge book of she had made with three-foot tall glittery drawings of various STD infected body parts. It was pretty hard not to laugh at the super sparkly version of herpes she showed me.
One of my secondary projects here will be to help out with the tree nursery that my predecessor started in one of the rural areas outside of Pacora. The trees from this nursery will be used to reforest parts of the National Historical Sanctuary Bosque de Pomac. I can tell that this project will be both a source of joy and frustration after my first week working with them. I showed up on Tuesday for our meeting and it turns out they had decided to have the meeting Thursday so I came back Thursday. When everyone finally arrived and we went to start planting trees, the neighbor came out and started yelling at us that we couldn't plant trees because he wanted to run his animals there. Since we are working in a national protected area, he technically shouldn't be running his animals there anyway but that was irrelevant. After sorting this and a few other details out we began to plant our trees. All of the volunteer park guards that I was working with were so enthusiastic and grateful to have me there so, overall I found this rewarding. I have a feeling that when I go back and find all the trees dead, my frustration might come back but for now, I'm just enjoying the fact that everyone got out there and got their hands dirty with me.
As I finish up my first week in Pacora, I feel like I become more a part of the community each day. Yesterday I started doing my community surveys where I sit down with someone in each household for about 20 minutes and ask them about their garbage, whether they would be interested in planting trees, and whether they would be interested in attending lectures on environmental topics. So far, everyone that I have talked to has been welcomed me into their home and expressed an interest in helping me get to know Pacora. Even though it can be awkward to go into someone's home and start asking them personal questions, I can already tell that this will help me to figure out what types of projects will best benefit the community. After all my training in the theory of participatory community development projects, it is awesome to actually start putting it into action. At this point, I don't think that I could have been given a better site to work in.