Warning- dry and not very entertaining post, but informative nonetheless.Well, Im sitting here in the lovely house of the host family that I have been staying with in Lima for the past two days. It has been a long and exhausting week, capped off today by my first bad stomach problems in Peru. I am tired. Last Sunday night, Angela and I rode to Huanchaco (a small beach town outside of Trujillo, where Angela and I spent some time around New Year’s {see pictures in facebook}) with our Regional Coordinator, Carmen, and her husband. It was raining quite a bit in the little coastal town, which was apparently very unusual. We were beginning what would be the longest amount of time that we have been out of site ever. We spent Monday taking care of some logistical stuff and meeting up with some friends/coworkers, many of which we had not seen since the end of training. Tuesday began our formal Reconnect event, where we met back up with our entire training class for the first time to mark the first three months and share ideas and challenges with the training group. Tuesday morning my boss, Eric, came by all jazzed up early in the morning. He talked me into renting a surfboard for the day and we did about 45 minutes of surfing before I had to run back to the hostel and horf down some breakfast before the Reconnect began. The waves were consistently big that day, and later that afternoon I went back out and got in a bit over my head. Luckily, there was no major damage aside from some delicious seawater in my belly, and I was able to paddle in and look out from the comfort of the beach in the dying sunlight, wondering what the hell I had been thinking. They were big and strong waves. Reconnect is a two day event. Tuesday we met as an entire training group to run through some exercises and such. Wednesday we met in technical groups and did presentations on our first three months and our diagnostics. The rest of the day was spent going over technical issues with Eric, some of the staff that had come out from Lima, and the environmental group. Angela did the same with the Health group. It was a great exchange of information and it really helped me to get some ideas in order for my return to site and the eventual working up of a project. The nights of Reconnect were spent, predictably, partying, singing, eating great food, drinking too much bad Peruvian beer, etc. The normal stuff. These nights were some of the best times I have had in Peru, and it was great to hang out with what are now old friends from our training group. All in all, the “conference” (if it could be called that) was really informal and yet informative time to rest, relax, and recharge, and hang out. It was also a chance to figure out what people have been spending their time doing and it is amazing what some people have done in only three months. On Thursday morning, I hung out and ate a long lazy breakfast with lots of friends and then headed into Trujillo to catch a bus to Lima. Angela had to leave early with her boss, Emilia, to go back to our site for their official site visit, which ended up being very positive and helpful for Angela, who has recently been having some trouble feeling like she is doing any real work and therefore feeling comfortable in our site. A couple friends and I left Trujillo at 1 pm and rolled into Lima tired and hungry at 930pm. My friend Amanda and I listened to some Dane Cook standup comedy which I liked and played a cool card game called Set. I think I need to get the game sent to me (anyone?). I came down to Lima for a VAC (Volunteer Advisory Committee) meeting that started on Friday morning at 9am. VAC is a chance for volunteers to air concerns and problems as well as to communicate with Lima staff about changes and enforcement of PC policy and such. I was elected by my technical training group to be one of the 8 members of the committee and it was a good experience. After our bus ride on thursday, some friends and I went to grab some late night pizza in Miraflores. Other people had come to Lima for various reasons not related to the VAC meeting – some headed back to the states for a quick wedding, others meeting up with family coming to visit. In Lima I was offered the chance to stay with a host family from the US Embassy here in Peru. The family has been great – both the parents work for the Embassy – and their kids are incredibly smart and fun to hang out with, as well. So I had the meeting itself on Friday morning and then Friday afternoon was spent tooling around and resting. By this point I was quite tired from the succession of late nights and early mornings. Saturday morning, I woke up at 4am spewing diarrhea out of my ass and nearly doubled over with stomach cramping. I alternately slept and pooped water for a few hours and then came downstairs to get some tea. Immediately I ran back upstairs and violently vomited a lot of food that I guess had been sitting in my stomach all night. I have no idea what did it but I had a fever and achiness all over and the stomach was not right. The host family has been great and let me set up an infirmary in my room and I just lay around sleeping, drinking tea, and watching movies all day. Luckily, after the violent vomiting I seemed to keep all my fluids in pretty well and I was able to stay good and hydrated all day. After waking up from a nap at 4pm or so I was able to eat something and I think whatever it was is passing quickly (I hope). Now it is 8pm on Saturday and I still don’t feel great but I am not doing nearly as bad as I was this morning. I have an overnight bus back to Trujillo this evening and should get in around 7am tomorrow. There I will meet up with Angela and we will probably head back to site tomorrow afternoon (as long as I continue to feel better), putting us back into site exactly a week after we left. It has been a long, exhausting week, but (aside from this sickness this morning) it has been great and necessary. I am as ready as ever to go back to site and continue working. Also, it has been good to come back together and find out that my Spanish has, indeed, gotten much better and I have been able to communicate quite easily with everyone that I have met this week. That has been even more encouraging. So Im gonna sit here and finish up my 6th cup of Anis tea today and maybe try to eat a little something before I head out to the bus station for my overnight ride. Many thanks to the entire host family here in Lima for helping me recover and for letting a sick bum lay around their house all day. The big week we have been looking forward to for three months has come and is almost gone. Larger still, this marks the end of our time dedicated to the formal diagnostic and I will now begin to finish and formalize the diagnostic that I have been working on since I got to site at the end of November. And even larger still, the month of March is almost halfway over, marking the change of summer to, well, not summer, in our site. The heat and mosquitoes are supposed to let up by the time April rolls around, and this coincides with the draining of the paddies and the harvesting of the rice fields surrounding Tecapa for miles. I cannot describe how nice it will be for the heat to let up and the mosquito levels to drop to something resembling a manageable number. Angela and I are incredibly sick of holing ourselves up in our room at 630pm EVERY night to escape the mad swarms. And the heat has been trying our patience lately, as well. Needless to say, things should be improving greatly in the next few weeks. They say that the first 6 months of service in your site are the most difficult and stressful, and we have successfully made it through three of the rougher months of our whole lives. Not that things will be easy now, but these days I look forward to going back to the calm pueblo life of Tecapa. I look forward to the routines that we have in place and the conversations that I am having and the people that I am getting to know and understand more each day. I have the brightest outlook on my work here that I have felt since the end of the removed idealism that I experienced during training. More than ever, I feel that my time here cannot be anything but a success, as long as I am doing the things that feed my soul and make me happy (including the work and the relationships). And I have begun to realize that these are the very things that will allow the community to view our time spent with them as something positive. Anyway, I am rambling. Things are good, my stomach is chilling out a bit, Angela and I are meeting up tomorrow (these three days have been our first time apart since going to site, and it has been a great break for both of us), and things at site are only looking to get better in the next month. Peru is lovely, and I am growing to love it more each day. Much love to all friends and family in the States. I am officially coming home in May for Twink’s wedding and I will be buying my ticket soon. I think I will come home for about a week or 8 days around the 12th and will spend the time between Austin, Dallas, and the Hill Country. Until then, I guess I will have to keep blogging it up. Patty out.