Final Post?

Hey all. I will only acknowledge the ridiculous length of time elapsed since the last post . . . and move on. Well, as many of you know, Ang and I finished our Peace Corps service. Since May, we had been busier than ever in site. Summer ended, Tecapa was beautiful again, and life was good. We had a great "winter" and continued our work in local schools doing recycling projects. I got involved doing environmental education at a different local primary school. We worked up a small cooking stove improvement activity and the people of Tecapa turned out like never before to help us make it a reality. Hopefully, we did make it a reality, and we left it in the hands of the community. Living with our host family, the Roncal family, was incredible. The best parts of our whole service were the times spent with our Pervian family, and we already miss them so much.

In June, Angela's mom and our good friend Sophie came up from the States and we all travelled around southern Peru for two weeks. Aside from the normal Latin American stomach issues, the trip was amazing, and we all got to visit Cusco, Machu Picchu, Puno, Lake Titicaca, Arequipa, and Ica. Great trip with good friends.

Our Close of Service Conference with all of our fellow Peru 8 volunteers was at the beginning of September, and we got to spend two days reflecting on our two years of service and beginning the long process of figuring out what the hell to do next and how to transition into the next phases of our lives. It was strange, fun, and emotional. I have been moved and changed by my life over the past two years probably more so than I even know, and it is almost impossible to digest the two years as a tangible thing; as a piece of myself. Angela and I left the conference feeling odd. I think the most useful metaphor for my feelings about finishing up is, in all of its different meanings and uses, a sigh. A sigh of nostalgia for the peaceful simplicity of life in Tecapa and the constant learning. A sigh of resignation at the realization that our lives will now continue to take us on into the unknown. And, because this literary device feels better in a trio, a sigh of relief at leaving a place that never stopped challenging and pushing me to grow and change. Like finishing some sort of experiential marathon, I left Tecapa and Peru feeling exhausting. In many ways, that helped, as saying goodbye to the community (Tecapa, Peru, and fellow Peace Corps Volunteers included) that we had worked tirelessly to get to know and love over the past two years would have been more difficult if I had been allowed the time to really understand what leaving would mean. It is behind us now, though, and through my internal comfort over the past month I can tell that in many ways I was ready to go.

Since finishing up, Angela and I spent a short time with friends and family between Dallas, Houston, and College Station. It was necessary and amazing to reunite with loved ones. Then we set off for Guatemala to travel for a bit and visit Sean and Stimmel in Antigua. We flew into Cancun and travelled around southern Mexico. Two days ago we crossed the border and arrived to Antigua, Guatemala in true Guatemalan Chicken Bus Glory. Antigua is a party town and it has been great to spend time with Sean and Stimmel. We will let everyone know what our plans are for the new year. We will be setting up shop somewhere, as of now it is looking like Austin, Washington DC, Chapel Hill area N. Carolina, Seattle, or Colorado, depending on what jobs/grad school options pan out over the next few months. Thanks for keeping up with us over the past two years and I guess I'll have to come up with a more appropriate name for a continuing blog.

much love

Ang and Patty

New phone number

Hey all, our phone numbers have changed. There is a new code.

Our numbers are now

Patrick: 51 44 94 9484113

Angela: 51 44 94 9484013

I will post soon.

Patty

Athletic footwear advertisement in the mountains of Peru

Angela with our summer school group in San Jose.


By the way, I'm adding these pictures, not Angela.

- Patrick

I finally learned how to post!

Hello All,

I hope the winter is treating you well and the sun is starting to warm the land as you enter into Spring. We are doing great here in Tecapa and continue to work really hard and rest well. Our new family we are living with is an absolute joy and will be the most difficult part of leaving Peru in November. The 9 year old twins boys, Aldair and Rodrigo, and Ronnie, their 15 year old brother, are the best part of our days. The lady we live with, Chela, and her parents, the aunt, the uncle, two dogs, many turkeys, ducks, chickens, guinea pigs, and rabbits all complete the stereotypical Peruvian family we have come to call our own. We love it! Patrick and I have started doing a formal diagnostic in our town to better understand the need in the community as far as projects are concerned. Perhaps this is a little late you ask? Yes, maybe as we have little time left in the eyes of development work. But due to the closed nature of our little Tecapa we found it to take no less than one year to become truly accepted, and in turn comfortable with doing a survey of this sort. It is quite possible that the only fruit of this labor we will see is the project planning for our replacement (if there should be one) when we leave. If there is nothing else I have learned from this time in Peace Corps it is PATIENCE, MANAGEMENT OF EXPECTATIONS, ENDURANCE, and MORE PATIENCE.

We have just recently traveled down south of Lima to the area that was affected by the earthquake that hit last August. We had a great time working with an international non-profit based out of the US called CARE. They received funding to build 6,000 latrines in multiple affected communities. It was truly heartbreaking to see just how vulnerable the lives are for people living in mud housing. There were many bricked houses in the area in which we were working that remained unaffected (in areas closer to the center everything was destroyed, and yet to be rebuilt). Patrick and I were unfortunately plagued with a virus that went straight to our head leaving us bed ridden with what I would consider the closest thing to a migraine for multiple days; accompanied by spiking fevers. The most dreadful part was that laying down made it worse. Thanks to strong pain medications and fever reducers we were healed in a matter of 5 days more or less. And thanks to God that we made it through without killing each other-you know how cranky one can get when they don’t feel well. Try two! Peace Corps has definitely brought us together in ways nothing else will, not even kids (obviously not written from experience, perhaps in a couple of years I will be writing on a “baby blog” that Peace Corps was a cake walk-doubtful but possible). So needless to say we got to do a little bit of work on a different project and will now head back to the north to our comfortable bed and home cooked meals.

Our summer camps (two of them) went really well and we managed to come out with a big beautiful organic vegetable garden planted and growing. Patrick and I must admit that we were humbled by our lack of gardening skills when it comes to Peruvian planting and failed miserably the first go around. You wouldn’t think it would be hard to put seeds in the ground, water them, and harvest the fruit especially since we gardened for years in the states. Well “yeah, no yeah,” (common response in Peru, not to be confused with the affirmative response of “yes,” but instead “no.” No one knows why. Don’t ask.). The thing is, because we live in the desert we have to water with irrigation ditches meaning one must plant in humps or long elevated rows allowing the water to come in on the sides and water from the bottom up. Shouldn’t be that hard, but we managed to mess it up and run for help. In the end it was great because we made a new friend in the process, Jesus-no not “The Jesus.” He is another reminder of how strong Peruvian men are after working in the fields all their life. We owe him many beers. Anyone that says that poor people in other countries are lazy is just showing their ignorance!!!

My aerobics classes are going great. Instead of diminishing in number my students are increasing! We have recently mixed up the routine a bit by adding a little step. This, for those of you that know how uncoordinated I can be, is dangerous and cause for prayer. The biggest concern, however, is that I am the most coordinated of the bunch. But hey, Peru has taught me that everything will work itself out and to just tuck your head and go. So we do, with a little kick and a punch. Keep the good energy coming, we don’t need any sprained campesino ankles on any of these hard working señoras!

We are planning another trip to the jungle for Easter break. But this time we are going to go on a boat down the Amazon and stop to take a canoe trip through Pacaya Samiria National Reserve. We are really excited and hoping we don’t get sick again as we will be camping and eating in really poor communities. It will be fine, mom. More good news, my mom and friend Sophie just confirmed their trip in June (Yeah!!). We will hike up to Machu Picchu as well as visit Lake Titicaca, the highest lake in the world, and the beautiful and famous Colca Canyon. You better start working out girls.

If you are ever looking for a place to vacation you should definitely consider Peru, there are so many wonderful and cheap places to explore.

And meanwhile Patrick and I will be sweating our butts off and swatting mosquitoes in our little village. Love to you all, Ang

Thoughts for a new year

“Improve your own soul, and be confident that only in so doing can you contribute to the improvement of the larger society of which you are part.”
- from Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom

2008 is here. It is strange to know that before this year ends we will have already left Tecapa and the life we have worked so hard to become comfortable with here. I guess we knew that was how it would go before we started. Luckily, we have a long time to savor our life here as we won’t be leaving until at least the end of October. Unfortunately, knowing the way that time goes by here, that will be here much sooner than it seems.

And this figures into our thinking lately as we are starting to think more about where we may end up and the moves we will make after Peace Corps. To add to thoughts of home and other past lives, we had a great holiday with my family (I can say that now). Chris, Bill, and Alex flew into Lima on Christmas Day without, unfortunately, their carefully packed luggage to meet up with Angela, Andrew (who came to Peru on Dec. 15th and spent the time before Xmas hanging out with Angela and I, painting, and generally wishing he spoke more Spanish. Thanks for coming to hang out, Andrew. The time here was great for Angela and I.), and me. The whole family (and me, as I was repeatedly reminded that I was not a Faught whenever I got fresh) went up to the mountains of Ancash, up to our site where we were shown amazing Peruvian hospitality, and then to the northern jungle of Peru in and around the town of Iquitos on the Amazon. It was an amazing trip, no one got too sick despite the major country and climate changes over the short period of time, and it was too short. It wouldn’t have been such a great holiday without the family, and I haven’t seen Angela that happy for that long in a while. Thanks so much for coming and all the pains and stresses that you put up with just to come see us and Peru. And by the way, they did eventually get their luggage back.

A special thanks to Brook for the Xmas gifts. The music is clutch, though the only thing it is missing is Ween’s new album. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Amy Winehouse is the shit. I’d never heard her before. You hit it on the mark with her.

We are already well into our second year here in Tecapa and the summer and mosquitoes are coming on in a mercifully slow way. The weather is amazing right now, sunny and warm but not too hot for more than an hour or two a day. The nights are perfect and the mosquitoes, as I said, are not nearly as bad as they were at this point last January. Living in our new room with our new host family is amazing. They are so nice to us and it is so clear that we are welcome and wanted here. I found myself today thinking of how peaceful and desirable the life is here in this home. It is in no way simple, as it may be called or thought-of in the U.S., but it is a form of subsistence agriculture and small animal husbandry. It works in its own beautiful way. And in its own beautiful way it is too different and boring for those of us used to museums, movie theaters, coffee shops, books, restaurants, and all those other modern bastions of U.S. urban/suburban normalcy for us to really feel comfortable in. But I have been able to approach a kind of self-aware comfort here and hope to be able to remember the importance of the things I find here in this home when I get back into the whirl of distractions that passes for culture in the States. Of course, I can’t say I’m too far into the lifestyle here, as I am sitting up at night typing on this laptop in our room at home. I call it cultural exchange.

Getting back into site after our extended trips out of site in December (a week or so in Lima for medical checks and conferences at the beginning of December, having Andrew here with us in site, and then traveling with the family for the holidays) has been a process. Things are slow here. The schools are out for summer vacation and the kids aren’t quite bored yet. It is comfortably hot. The rice transplanting is almost done, so there is little work until the rice is harvested beginning in April/May.

S . . . .L. . . . O. . . . W.

But there are some encouraging signs here in the community. There has been a shift in some local leadership positions, and so far it seems like the new people in charge are more interested in doing some work than those that vacated the positions. We’ll see how that plays out over the next few months. Right now we are greeting it with guarded optimism (if we were cynics we probably would have left a while ago). English class is back on and I am painfully starting computer classes back up with the kids. We are planting a summer garden with some kids in the district capital. Work is, well, normal. I think that one of the major breakthroughs that has recently led to our feeling even more comfortable here these days is the realization that in many ways it is the relationships that we make here in Peru and in our site that will last the longest. As volunteers, we are always told this, but don’t really want to believe it. Sure, relationships are great, but what about helping some people get access to cleaner water, cleaner air, a life with less health hazards, take care of their town a little better, treat their women with more respect, etc? We want to do whatever small part we can to help with these issues. But being here for a while has made me realize that our true power lies in our commitment to these issues. What could be more sustainable than making real friends and gaining trust and using that to provide people with another way of looking at things? I am not underestimating the importance of basic health and environmental issues (which are intricately linked), but rather underestimating our ability to be the people to initiate these changes. The models of effective aid to developing countries are constantly changing, but it has become clear over the past few decades that giving people things is not a great approach to development. I think that now the common thoughts run more along the lines of facilitating the desire in people to change their own lifestyles and then ensuring that they are provided with the tools necessary to gain access to a new way of living. In many cases, development work done poorly can actually create more problems instead of solving them. This is broken record stuff to people working in the field of development (and maybe to you all still reading this blog, too), but it must be remembered day in and day out to prevent us from becoming overzealous and trying to make things happen on our own initiative and in our own timeframe instead of in the organic way that things develop on their own.

Granted, great leaders generally grab society by the ears and drag it forward towards what we all know should be but still isn’t. This is what makes them so amazing and necessary to the masses and so dangerous to the status quo (hence their habit of being murdered). But for those of us that don’t have the combination of character, vision, timing, spirit, power, etc to be a Ghandi or a Martin Luther King, Jr. or a Malcolm X, we must content ourselves with making the mark that we can through the sacrifices that we are able to make. Living in our site in rural Peru for the past year has been a sacrifice in some ways, but Angela and I are finding that we are making a difference here in our community in our own insignificant and meaningful way. And, as I was saying earlier, pre-rant, the most successful strategy for helping that we’ve been able to come up with is to befriend people, take a real interest in their lives, listen to them, think about what they say to us in a way that they might not be able to (from the mindset of an outsider), and then work together with them to try to come up with new ideas or possibilities. I’m afraid that this mentality doesn’t always get a lot of latrines built or reduce embezzlement or stop a bunch of trees from getting cut down, because it leaves the real movement in the hands of the community. And we all know that sometimes communities, like people, don’t always choose to push themselves to become better, especially when it requires a lot of hard work and doesn’t include the prospect of a bunch of money. Even when there are clear, short-term benefits, we know from our own lives that it is still hard to break habits, routines, mindsets, and expectations in order to make necessary changes for the better. Not for the sake of progress, but for our own personal quality of life. Why do we expect more out of others? Because we want to believe that people are rational creatures, always choosing the correct option, the best option, when presented with it. We want to believe that about ourselves. Our job is not to throw our hands up and admit that people are probably deranged, helpless, and hopeless and certainly do not always choose the best option out of a line-up, but to accept ourselves despite our hang-ups and faults and work with the reality of a situation. In our case, this often means spending a lot of time getting to know people, sharing their life and validating it through our time spent with them, and providing the small pushes we can as we lay in wait, ready to pounce on the next fleeting opportunity that may or may not come along and then may or may not materialize after pounced upon and then after materializing will certainly not end up looking like we originally thought it would.

We are comfortable in Peru and even more so in our site and even more still in our home with our host family. More and more we are becoming aware of how hard it is going to be to leave. Love to all my family and friends and hope everyone had a good and restful holiday.

Patrick

One-year musings

Hey there. Its been a while. Everything is going well. Kudos to the stalwart followers of this blog that continue to check up every few months. Angela and I are doing well. Some things have changed recently, but things are more or less the same. Work is still slow, but we continue to enjoy every day in our site. I recently went through what I think was my “one year slump.” When you come into Peace Corps they tell you that lots of volunteers go through a tough time around the one year mark. Luckily, mine was fairly quick (it lasted about a week), and I only tried to slit my wrists once. Just kidding. I guess that’s not really funny. I didn’t do that. Anyway, it was just a week of that “we’ve-been-here-how-long-and-what-have-I-done?” feeling followed by the “what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here?” blues. It seems like my ambition is going to let me go with just that slap on the wrist, but I guess we will have wait to see. Overall, it was probably my most difficult few days in the Peace Corps so far. I have been pleasantly surprised with my tolerance for/enjoyment of the slow pace of life here and living in a way that is more in tune with the ancient rituals of life – living in a more basic way. Unfortunately, living in a more basic manner (coupled with poverty and a struggle to do anything for another 30 cents, among other things, of course) adds to the “me versus nature” mentality that supports and justifies the abuse of the environment and incredibly unsustainable living practices. Here in the countryside of rural Peru there are few known and/or understood incentives to treat the local ecosystem well. This could easily be compared to the U.S., but in the States local leaders (granted that they were and are urged by local populations) have taken certain precautions to prevent people from consistently abusing the local ecosystems (in certain culturally unacceptable ways – its still perfectly fine to level a forest to make room for a suburban development, but you would never catch an American neighborhood dumping their waste water directly into a local creek). Whatever, I’m rambling about a topic that would take quite a long time to truly treat. Point is, environmental work in the community we are in is kind of difficult, to put it lightly. Work in general has many obstacles, and environmental work doubly so. Nonetheless, like a good volunteer, I am focusing on what I can do and Angela and I continue to do our classes and share life with the people here and look for helpful and interesting activities that the community might be interested in. We have a year left and are trying to use this fact to motivate people to take advantage of our time here while they still can. We comfort ourselves with the self-affirmation that it is not for a lack of trying on our part that we have not found more work here in the community. This along with the knowledge that there are still many things that we can work on in the year to come.

We have been working with young kids in an organic gardening project for the past 7 months or so at a local school. School is about to end for the year in mid-December when the schools let out for the three-month summer vacation. Recently, we got to know a lovely gentleman who offered us access to an unused portion of his large fruit and vegetable garden for the summer. This was perfect timing, as we are going to lose the ability to keep working with the kids at the school over the vacation. So Angela and I are cooking up ideas for doing a group garden with interested kids from the school. In addition, we are working on a project with a small number of motivated students from the school to plant small kitchen gardens inside their homes over the summer, with the help of the families. It should give us something to do over the break and will give us a great chance to meet families that we otherwise never would have known. That is about the coolest thing that is going on here, and we are happy about it.

Though the weather has been strange this year and spring is coming very late (it has been mercifully cool and cloudy up until this past week, which has been absolutely incredible weather – pleasant, breezy, sunny during the day and cool nights), summer is just around the corner. In January, it should start getting warmer and the mosquito swarms should show up again. Like many things in life, though, summer here has two sides. For though it may be hot and buggy, it is also the season when almost all the fruit comes into season. That means as many freakishly huge and utterly delicious mangoes as a human being can shove into his or her salivating maw. Yum. Im sorta not that worried about the mosquitoes, seeing as how we survived last summer without major problems. That might be folly caused by a bad memory, though. More on that as it develops.

Angela and I are taking a short vacation for Thanksgiving next week (one of our three sanctioned vacation periods during the year) to visit our friend in the mountains of Piura near the Ecuadorian border. We are going to enjoy the chilly, rainy climate and take some trips into the cloud forests above his site. The break is going to be nice. And the trip is the beginning of a long period of movement for Angela and me. In the first half of December we will each spend at least a week in Lima for our mid-service med checks and conferences. During this time we will find out what parasites we have and if we’ve picked up any STDs. Cool. More importantly, it is a rare chance to see how our friends are doing and hang out for a few days. At the same time, Angela’s brother Andrew is riding his motorcycle to Peru!!!! Just kidding. But he is coming down and Angela is about to drop a load in her diaper over his visit. We are stoked. He will spend a few weeks with Angela and I in and around our site and then the rest of Angela’s family (Alex, Chris, and Bill) are arriving in Lima to join us on Xmas day. We are going to take a week and half off to travel around Peru with them. The plans are to go to the mountains for a few days and then to Iquitos and the Amazon jungle for a few days around New Year’s. So December is going to involve a lot of traveling, and when things settle down in January I think that will be the best time for our mental breakdowns.

For the moment, we are busying ourselves with moving into a new house in the same community of Tecapa. Our old host family is incredible and we have loved spending this past year with them, but we need more privacy. “Simples as dat,” as my late friend J.D. might have said. So we are moving into a newly-constructed house on the other side of town. That is about a 200 yard walk. But trust me, it is a big move for this town. We have been good friends with the new family for the past year and we are looking forward to spending lots of time with them helping to take care of their guinea pigs, ducks, chickens, rabbits, turkeys, sheep, dogs, and cat, as well as passing beautiful sunny afternoons in their huge garden. We will have a room that is connected to the house but only opens to the outside. In that way, we should have a lot more privacy will still enjoying experiences with an awesome Peruvian family.

Aside from all that, I had pretty much the coolest disease I’ve ever had the other day. Its called “pique,” and it involves a small bug that crawls out of cow shit, latches onto your toe, and then borrows inside of your toe and lays eggs and makes a home for itself and its little eggs inside your toe. Remarkably, this doesn’t really hurt that much. It is sort of annoying dull discomfort, but I was able to continue running and working out without any problems for the week and half or so that this little guy lived with me. The reason I let it go on so long is because just before I got pique I had a big blister on my other toe. That blister looked strikingly similar to my pique nodule, also caused mild discomfort, but was caused by some mild infectious agent and not by a bug living inside me. So I thought my pique was another blister. It wasn’t. And by the time I tried to pop it and realized that it wasn’t popping, the little bugger had had plenty of time to latch on to my toenail from underneath and lay a whole baker’s dozen of eggs. I immediately called my host mom in to confirm the pique diagnosis. She said that it was and immediately got a chair to begin the extractive surgery. With the kids and angela crowded around the most exciting thing of the day or week or possibly month, Mery went to town on my tow with a safety pin, needle, and tweezers. The little bastard was really in there, and it took over 20 minutes of digging and prying to convince him to leave with all his little eggs. I’m proud to say that I didn’t cry, but I was sweating profusely by the end of it. Mery is quite the pique extractor, though, and she got it all out despite its advanced stage. Unfortunately, it broke on the way out, so we had to pack salt into the gaping hole left by the vacant insect in my toe to kill any remaining eggs. That part hurt less than I thought it would. I have been taking good care of the wound and went running again today for the first time since before “the extraction.” Looks like I will be fine. And I got a great story out of it. The people here are absolutely delighted that a gringo like me got pique. Its apparently some sort of right of passage. Perhaps I am now a man in the eyes of the community. Perhaps I am just more integrated into their way of life. No matter the cultural significance, I am strangely proud to have carried and subsequently expelled the nasty little creature without so much as a tear. I am getting as much mileage out of the tale as I can hoping it will become a fireside fav sometime in the far-off future of Tecapa.

¿Recuerdas cuando el gringo tuvo pique?

Love to all stateside and otherwise and shout out to those lucky enough to have received a visit from the elusive Sean aka Bronco during his short trip back to the U.S. I miss you, brother.

Patty

PS I posted a bunch of new picture on Facebook recently. I will continue to post pictures as we take them.

Benchmarks

Hey there. All is well here in Peru. Actually, things are good. Angela and I are finally feeling like this is home. We could never have guessed (even after hearing it from so many other volunteers) that it would take so long to feel normal here in Peru. But it has, and it is nice to be looking back at some of the harder times and looking ahead to something that is no longer so daunting as to be unquantifiable. A year ago this coming weekend, Angela and I were arriving in Peru without a clue about what lay in store for us and ready to begin training. We had just finished an incredible honeymoon road trip around the western United States visiting friends, family, and beautiful scenery. At this moment one year ago, the two of us were in Boston with my aunts, uncles, cousins, and nana about to head off to Washington D.C. for our two day staging event. Crazy. The next training group of Environment and Health volunteers (Peru 10) arrives in Peru this Friday, exactly one year after we got here. When this new group finishes their training in early December, Angela and I will be heading to Lima for our mid-service Medical Checks – where we get to shit in a cup, turn our heads and cough. More importantly, though, it will signify that we will have completed one year in our site and that we have a little less than one year to go. And in the midst of all these benchmarks, things plod along.

A few weeks ago, Angela and I attended IST, Peace Corps lingo for In-Service Training. At the 3-day IST workshop, 13 volunteers, each with a Peruvian counterpart from his/her community, learned about business strategies and how to run a small business in our communities. The workshop was really interesting and all of us had to do a business simulation during the three day workshop. This means that in 6 small groups we had to outline a group business idea to implement during the workshop itself (held in Contumaza, a small, rural town in southwestern Cajamarca). The ideas were awesome and mostly related to delicious and unhealthy foods being sold to the townspeople. Groups of Peruvians and volunteers made and sold picarrones (the Peruvian doughnut), cheese with honey (which is actually excellent, the honey is not bee honey – this group was made up of locals of Contumaza and actually made a good amount of money in just a few hours taking advantage of their contacts in town and their knowledge of local customs and materials available), manjar blanco (sort of like caramel, eaten with bread, it was incredible), and other things. We decided to do a little event at a local school and play games with the kids and paint kids’ faces. The kids paid a small fee to have their faces painted and we returned the profit to the school to buy needed materials. It was a really cool event, and we even had to take out a small loan for our materials from a fake bank and then return the loan with interest after the event. Really cool experience for us, and it seemed like the Peruvians really enjoyed it, as well. Along the way we learned a bunch of basic business concepts about supply chains and basic accounting and stuff. At night, all the volunteers got together and drank and sang songs and shot the shit. Good, wholesome fun.

Things in site are good. The weather is absolutely perfect – warm, sunny days with a nice breeze and chilly, clear nights. It will continue warming up gradually through the summer, which starts in December. Then, in December/January the mosquitoes come. We are not looking forward to another four to five months of heat and mosquitoes, but we will get through it one way or another (probably involving lots of sweating, bug spray, and hiding in our rooms every night at around 5 or 6pm, like last year). And it will be helpful to know that it will be our last mosquito season here in Tecapa, as our service will end next November, just in time to sneak out of town before the mosquitoes come. We are staying busy with work in the schools, our English and computer classes, and constantly pursuing new ideas and new leads for activities in Tecapa and the surrounding communities.

In addition, we are about to head out for a three-day youth retreat with a group of volunteers and community youths at the end of September. We have been planning the event for months in Trujillo as a group, and Angela and I have invited 5 youths from Tecapa and the nearby community of Santonte. Each volunteer involved in the retreat will bring a few motivated youths from their communities and we will all hang out together for three days and have a sort of youth camp thing involving lots of games, eating, a career fair, presentations about the different communities, among other activities. Angela and I attended one of these camps in April, and it was really fun for the youth participants as well as the volunteers and Peruvian staff involved. We are excited to attend a camp with youths from our community, and excited to finish the seemingly unending planning for the camp. It has required too much annoying travel to too many Monday morning meetings in Trujillo. But such is a youth camp, apparently, and with hope our planning will pay off.

I have been a bit out of touch with the world lately. Apparently, there was a hurricane that hit Guatemala. Luckily, it didn’t hit as hard as expected where my blood-brother Sean is working up in Lanquin. Good thing, too, as I like my brother and don’t want any hurricanes to hit him. There are rumors that he may be coming down to Peru sometime early next year. Same rumors coming out of the Lake Atitlan area of Guatemala in the form of Stimmel and Italia’s possible impending adventure. More on that as it appears.

Angela’s family (Chris, Bill, Alex, and Andrew) is planning a trip down here to Peru in December to spend Christmas and New Year’s with Angela and myself. We are planning on going up to the mountains in Huaraz and then out to the Amazon jungle of Iquitos during their two weeks here in Peru. It is a ways off, but Angela and I are already enjoying planning for the big vacation and excited to think of family visiting us here in this zany Peruvian reality. It should be fun.

Brian and Jodie, we would like to see some pictures of little Carter Smith (aka Horace Jesus). We are awaiting an email or something. He must be growing like crazy. I hope he didn’t inherit his father’s tremendous butt crack. I hope all is well and that maybe he is starting to let you both sleep a little bit longer at night.

My family (Kathy, Adriana, Stacy, Jeff, and the 4 nieces) is about to head to Massachusetts for my nana’s surprise 85th birthday party. Wish I could be there with them to meet all the extended family and see my grandma. I hope for safe travels for all heading a long way to get there.

Angela and I have been watching crap tons of DVDs lately on our little borrowed DVD player (its an awesome feeling knowing that a Peruvian had to loan us technology to watch movies), and we finally had to set up rules about when we can watch movies at night. DVDs are so cheap here (can’t imagine why), and when I went to Lima a while ago I bought a couple seasons of Arrested Development. Things were getting a little out of hand and we were watching movies or TV shows three or four nights a week. Turns out, reading is cool, too. So we had to discipline ourselves and set up one or two movie nights a week. We’ll soon see how good our self-control is, but so far its been nice reading again. Angela and I have recently read One Hundred Years of Solitude and Marquez’s Collected Stories, The Rastafarians, Ria Loa: Station of Dreams, Wild Geese Flying Backwards, The Tale of Genji (had to take a break, but I’ll go back to it), and are now reading Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates and Almanac of the Dead, respectively. I would recommend any of the above, though Tale of Genji is a patience-tester. Lately, we’ve watched Amelie, Knocked Up, and a bunch of Arrested Development episodes. All good stuff. Don’t know why I felt someone might want to know that information, but there it is, recorded for all time on the freakin internet.

Okay, I feel like this was a boring blog post, but it was necessary. I am finding the time to get in touch with people as it becomes possible. You might be next. Keep your fingers crossed.

Much love. Pretty soon, it’ll be October. Crazy.

Patty

Earthquake

To everyone wondering if we´re okay, we are fine. Our site is way up north of Lima, near Trujillo, so we didn´t even feel a thing. Damage in Lima is minimal, as the epicenter was a ways to the south near the city of Pisco (which was heavily damaged), in the department of Ica. All the Peace Corps volunteers and staff in Perú are safe and sound. Lima didn´t get hit hard enough to cause things to start falling, so everyone we´ve talked to from there is scared but unharmed. As of now, though there was heavy damage and it sounds like there are a few hundred dead south of Lima, in Ica. It seems like the earthquake happened a few hundred miles away from where it could have caused any number of much larger catastrophes. Communication here in the country is a bit messed up, but our cellphones are working intermittently. Thanks for thinking of us. Much love.

Patrick