Yesterday was the Swear-In ceremony for Peace Corps Peru 12. I'm officially a volunteer!! That also meant saying goodbye to our host families as we departed from our training center where we spent the last 3 months. My host mom and 14 year old sister were bawling. The previous night we had watched a video they made me with photos of me and the family, and from around the house, set to music. This, of course, made me bawl. It was really hard to say goodbye, and I'm surprised by how much love they shared with some strange girl from the US who always had diarrhea and couldn't carry on a full conversation. I can only hope I have the same luck with my next host family.
With that said, I will be moving into my new home this weekend. I visited my site a couple weeks ago and met my new family. My "mom" is the same age as me, so I won't be calling her "mama" like the previous host mom. Same goes for my 30-year-old host "dad." They have 2 kids, one 7 year old boy with ADD and full of energy, and a 3 year old girl who is super-cute and speaks a mix of spanish and quechua. My room needs a lot of work, but hopefully when I get there, they will have put concrete on the floor and plaster on the wall. There's no window, so I won't be having a plant-filled room as anticipated. I will put up christmas lights and make my room a little sanctuary. I can touch both walls with my arms out-stretched. The picture below shows the living room with my soon-to-be-installed door for my bedroom. The middle photo is taken from the patio, of the outside view of the living room. The third photo is the view from the kitchen into the patio. Note there is a sink with a tap of running water. I'm one of the lucky ones. The latrine is outside the house in the neighbor's patio. But inside the latrine is an actual flushing toilet. There's a septic tank to allow this. Still not sure how I'm going to bathe. Maybe in the sink?
My site is called Cashapampa, and it's gorgeous. It's part of the Cordillera Blanca mountain range of the Andes. I have a volunteer living close by, 20 minutes by foot. The major stuff going on in Cashapampa is trekking, tourism, agriculture, and a burro association. My APCD tried to find me a site with horses, and he found burros. I can buy a horse if I want, but it's expensive and I make $300 a month (not $300 a year as I had misunderstood). I'll see if I can find someone who owns horses and just exercise them. Of course, my first priority is to conduct a community diagnostic for the first few months, so I'll ask around as I'm figuring out the needs of my community.
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