hi everyone. hope everything in the US is good. Things in Peru have been going pretty well. Training is flying by--only 3 weeks left. We have started to get a lot more hands on experience, doing site visits and practicing various skill sets. over the past few weeks we (the 19 environment volunteers) have done hands on garbage management, planted 100 trees, visited a national park and a protected wetlands and learned a lot related to all of those topics. On these field trips I also got to see an eagle and I swam in the Pacific for the first time in a couple years, so that was awesome.

the other thing that´s starting to be emphasized is giving educational sessions. Last week i gave a 20 minute session about trees, in spanish, to a bunch of 8-12 years olds in an after school program. it went ok, but it´s hard to teach and it´s especially hard to teach in a language that isn´t english. This week we are going to Ancash, a province in the Andes, for a few days and we are going to be teaching a few more times, so hopefully the practice will do me good. it´s also supposed to be really beautiful and about 4000 meters high, so I´m really excited for that

Other notable things that happened: I turned 23 last week, which was fun. my host family threw me a party on the roof of their house and a bunch of volunteers came over. it was fun and it was nice that they were willing to do something special for me. a few of my friends also surprised me with some homemade pizza and a cake, both of which were delicious, so I was well taken care of on my birthday

and the last cool thing of late was that I ran a half marathon today in lima. I don´t think it was notably different than a half marathon in America, but for reasons that are still unclear to me, i got interviewed by a Peruvian TV network at the finish line and my host family said they saw me on TV. I´m pretty sure I embarrassed myself cuz i was too tired to think or speak in any language but oh well.

so yea, that´s it. hope this finds you all well

--alex

Disclaimer: This post reflects solely my own opinions, not those of the Peace Corps or the US government




yea so that´s it. life is good. miss you all and I hope