Welcome to Ancash

Look at me I’m a Peace Corps volunteer!! My swearing in ceremony was yesterday, and after ten weeks of training and consistent confusion I’m officially ready to start my two years of service. Training was actually a pretty good time…I had a really great host family in Lima who always made me feel comfortable and it’s nice to know I have people who I can go and visit who will give me a warm welcome whenever I want to visit. Sitting with them at dinner last night I realized how far I’ve come since getting to Peru—during my first meal with them I couldn’t really say anything beyond “my name is Alex, I’m 22 and from New York.” But last night I could converse clearly, crack jokes...I’ve definitely made a lot of progress here.

And I guess that’s part of the reason why things don’t seem so exciting around here. A lot of the things that were overwhelming and exciting at first are a lot more commonplace to me now. I can take public transportation without a hitch, order in restaurants, talk to people on the street and I can do it all in at least passable Spanish. It feels pretty good.

This isn’t to say that there weren’t some bumps and funny experiences along the way. A couple weeks ago we taught English classes in a Peruvian primary school, where we walked in to twenty kids waving hand made American flags at us, which they then asked us to sign. And it’s been a consistent challenge trying to explain the differences between American and Peruvian culture and society. And I’m 99% sure that Peruvians with size 13 feet don’t exist, so getting shoes may be a bit of a challenge over the next two years…

So now I am sitting in a nice hostel in the Hauraz, the capital of the department of Ancash. Tomorrow I am going to Yanamito, the small village in Ancash where I will be doing my service. I am right in the foothills of the Andes, and when I walk out of my house and turn my head to the right, the first thing I see is the tallest mountain in Peru. I am going to be living with a young farming couple and their two young daughters in an adobe house. They cook with firewood, they have running water, but no shower and I'm gonna be using nothing but latrines for the foreseeable future. They grow potatoes, corn, cabbage, carrots, beans, peas, cows, sheep…it’s right down my alley. Oh they also have like 50 guinea pigs. Which live right above my room. And if you're not sure why they keep guinea pigs, I'll leave you to do your internet research for a nice surprise. My town has about 150 families in it and I’m going to be spending the next three months doing a “community diagnostic” which will involve talking to as many people as possible in order to determine what the focus of my main projects should be. So I’m excited. Nervous too, but excited. So that’s pretty much it, tomorrow is gonna be a big day but I think I’m ready. Hope this finds you all well and I’d love to hear from you…

--Alex

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