patty and angela in peru

2008-10-31T16:36:00.001-05:00

Final Post?

2008-10-31T15:14:00.003-05:00

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

2008-05-02T16:43:00.002-05:00

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

2008-02-24T14:30:00.002-06:00

Athletic footwear advertisement in the mountains of Peru

2008-02-24T14:19:00.001-06:00

Angela with our summer school group in San Jose.

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

- Patrick

2008-02-24T14:08:00.000-06:00

I finally learned how to post!

2008-02-24T12:58:00.001-06:00

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

2008-01-22T11:52:00.000-06:00

“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

2007-11-16T11:13:00.000-06:00

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

2007-09-16T12:57:00.000-05:00

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

2007-08-16T11:53:00.000-05:00

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

Fiestas Patrias Vacation

2007-08-01T17:19:00.000-05:00

Angela and I are coming off a big vacation for Peruvian Independence Day. Like many Peruvian parties, it lasts for at least three days. After travelling to Lima for a few days of work at the Peace Corps office, Angela and I took some vacation days and made a long trip to Huaraz, the capital of Ancash (a department to the south of La Libertad and the home of the biggest mountains in Peru). High in the Andes, Huaraz is smaller than the coastal cities and has a much larger number of foreigners. It is in the middle of the dry season, so tourism here is running full steam. Luckily, it doesn't get the kind of tourism that Cuzco does (old, fat, rich people that have no clue about anything except that they want to see Machu Picchu), but a lot more of the somewhat rich, adventurous, moutaineers from all over the world. The food is incredible (for gringos), as the town has more established tourism and therefore more non-Peruvian food choices. The mountains are huge and their snow caps and receding glaciers loom over the city.

We met up with some friends from Peace Corps (and some non-PC people) and had a few great days of getting used to the altitude and relaxing at a backpacking hostel (The Way Inn) up in the mountains 45 minutes above Huaraz. The days were mostly clear and warm in the sunshine. The nights were chilly. Huascaran and the beautiful mountains of the compact Cordillera Blanca, many over 18,000 feet, were visible almost the entire time we were there. The weather could not have been better. After three days of hanging out, we took a three day summit trip with a great local tour agency (Galaxia Tours). With 8 good friends, we took an amazing trip to the top of a mountain called Ishinca (all the mountains are named in Quechua, the language of the Incan Empire and the dominant language in the area still to this day). I wrote this about it:

Angela and I just finished a three day summit trip to a mountain called Ishinca in Ancash, Peru. It was incredible. The first day we got all our gear from the agency and hiked a few hours up to base camp in the Ishinca Valley. We went to bed early to summit the next day. The day of the summit we were hiking from base camp under a full moon at 3:45 am. At sunrise, we were in the middle of a huge, boulder-covered morraine and some alpine glacial lakes, looking up at the summit of Ishinca. We arrived at the glacier freezing cold in the soft early morning light, donned crampons, ice axes, harnesses, and continued the ascent on ice. I lost my glacier virginity in style, with numb hands and breathing hard as a hell on the first steep ascent. The glacier was enormous and steep, making for very slow going. After many hours of alternately walking and resting, we arrived at the final summit climb - about 100 feet of very steep and by now slushy snow. It was intense and crazy fun. Definitely the most intense thing I have ever done. The summit was okay, a bit scary due to slushy snow and very steep and narrow trail. But the view was amazing - sitting at 5500 meters (I found out today that the peak is 18,143 feet) and looking around at monstrous nearby peaks towering over 6000 meters and glacier covered mountains shining in the warm sun as far as the eye could see. Incredible. Spiritually altering. The way down was luckily much easier going. We got back to base camp late sometime between 5 and 6pm - a 14 hour round trip. Exhausted, tired, dehydrated, and starving. Grinning from ear to ear. Give me mountains, anyday.

Angela had some problems with headaches up at altitude, but I was unexpectedly free of altitude issues - no problems breathing or anything. Just some minor digestion issues, but I heard that they were common. I am amazed and happy that I was able to take the trip I just did. I don't want to go back to site - the vacation has been so incredible and this part of Peru (full of nice mountain people, expat-run restaurants with great, affordable food, and the breathtaking scenery of the Cordillera Blanca) calls to me so much that I am having trouble convincing myself to go back to site tomorrow and return to work as usual. But the overnight bus ticket is bought and so it must be. The vacation comes to an end, and it has been a vacation in so many ways. I have a fresh new feeling inside. I have been cleansed. Hopefully I will be able to put some photos up on facebook within a few days if the internet here will work the way I need it to. Its back to the coast and back to site after an incredible Fiestas Patrias. Peru continues to amaze and confuse me. Couldn't be happier about it.

What more can I say? Great trip, great friends, and new adventures. Cheers.

Patrick and (to a lesser extent) Angela

2007-07-20T11:38:00.000-05:00

“Love is no big truth. Driven by our genes we are simple selfish beings.”
-Kings of Convenience

Regardless of whether or not you agree with those words (I can neither agree nor disagree with them at this point – I’m still thinking, and of course it doesn’t really matter if they’re true or not), the song is great and they at least invite introspection. Ha! I bet you all thought I was going to forget my promise to write more blogs. Well, isn’t it comforting that even a lame old married couple can still surprise? Admitted, it is a mundane surprise, and it has been about a month and a half. . . Anyway.

Blogs are inherently self-absorbed little exercises, and in light of that truth, I will attempt to make this one more outward-reaching. A huge burst of happiness to Jodie and Brian Smith in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and their new baby, Carter, who was born on June 27th at 4:30am. It is for Jodie’s sake that I began to create paragraphs on the blog instead of the long, medieval, block format that I was using previously. I have now implemented spaces between the paragraphs, thanks to a recent moment of innovative forethought.

Another huge burst of happiness for the gigantic music care package that Sean sent me sometime around my birthday and that I received sometime in early June. Thanks, brother. You are missed.

Angela and I are doing quite fine. As always, the experience is inconsistent in its level of comfort. Yesterday was rough, today is nice – that sort of thing. The weather appears to be warming up a bit early this year, as it is only august (supposedly the coolest month of the year) and only the late afternoons and nights are chilly. There has been no fog to keep things chilly throughout the morning. Hopefully this is not an indicator of an abnormally hot summer to come. Regardless, the weather is consistently beautiful. We have been kicking out some English classes two nights a week with a group of young adults (and the occasional full adult). They are going well. The students are participating in a community clean-up day today, in “payment” for the free classes. The system seems to be working, as they all showed up yesterday to help with notifying the population of the town door-to-door. I realized yesterday how small Tecapa really is. Three groups of people talked to someone at each and every home in the course of about an hour and a half. It is small. You can walk at a leisurely pace from the any entrance to any exit of the town in about five minutes. It is small. It is difficult to explain how the level of disorganization could be so great in such a small community, but you must see it to believe it. I also realized yesterday, though, that somehow Angela and I are in some ways exempt from this mutual distrust (at least on the surface). That is comforting and will help us to continue working. This little one hour clean-up event this morning will be the first full-community event that we are participating in since arriving in Tecapa almost 8 months ago. It remains to be seen how it will go off. It would surprise us little if it fizzles out like a fart on the wind. But it is the hope that drives us, no? Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.

In addition to English classes, Angela and I have been teaching computer classes at the local internet cabina (it is not a café). They are quite successful and we have three separate classes per week. We are going to have to start an additional class next week. It is admittedly very nice to finally feel like we are “doing something.” That is, in the sense that we are doing something more concrete that the stuff we were doing for the first months. I apparently fall into the group of people that gain a sense of peace from my own perceived productivity. Thank you, United States of America. Luckily, I am also good at rationalization, so my definition of productivity is more in line with the soft goals of Peace Corps – cultural interchange and things of that sort. “Intercambio,” as it is called here, to Peruvian smiles and slow, thoughtful nods of deep understanding. One word is all that is necessary. It has been truly helpful to see this experience as not one of teaching, but of learning. Yeah, that stuff helps me feel better, but I cannot quite get away with just that, as made obvious by my role as a teacher in the classes we are teaching. The progress and productivity is apparently really good for my mental state. Not that surprising.

Through the miracle of time, it is now tomorrow, Friday, July 20, and morning again. I am here in our little “kitchen” room (the room that is not the bedroom) typing away on our Stone Age laptop and sipping South African tea brought back to Peru from the United States. Thank you, globalization. Yesterday, we had the clean-up event and it was really, for lack of a better word, awesome. All our English class students came out to help, as well as many community members that had no real incentives other than internal ones, and we ended up working for over two hours instead of the hour we had planned (realizing that maybe little Tecapa is a lot dirtier than we all thought). Also, although we did a lot of work, the clean-up was actually the idea of a group of community members, which makes it even better. I can’t say what a great feeling it is to have something go better than expected. And everyone really seemed engaged, people weren’t just dicking around. And to top it all off, it was actually kind of fun (for them, of course it was fun for us). Everyone was working in a big group and making fun of each other and laughing – it wasn’t like forced labor or anything. We will post pictures on facebook. It wasn’t a huge deal, I know, one little event, but the confidence that it gives people to continue trying to do more is sorely needed in Tecapa. Also, it is a way of taking young people that are somewhat engaged and curious and showing them how simple it is to do something important and necessary. With any hope, it is a first step toward more action here in Tecapa, and it cannot be overstated how important this small thing actually is. So that was that.

For the past two weeks, the teacher’s union here in Peru has been on strike. The union is very powerful and includes most teachers nationwide. Peru has rather progressive labor regulations for a growing Latin American country, and the strike was met with fierce resistance, some use of the military, and some jailing of union leaders, but overall it has been little more than a hot debate between the government and the teacher’s union. As is the usual custom, other labor sectors chose to strike along with the big teacher’s union to express solidarity and, in some cases down south and in the mountain areas (where labor is much more organized and radical), to wreak havoc. At the very least, the strike has stopped all classes for the past two weeks. I don’t want to get too negative here, but to me the strike has been damaging and unjustified. Of course, there are many others who have different ideas, but the only real support for the strike here in this area of the coast is among teachers themselves. The main point of the strike has been an attempt to roll back the new government policy about teacher capacitations. Last year, the teachers of Peru were given a test to assess their abilities in basic subjects such as math and Spanish. To the surprise of almost no one at all, the tests came back with piss-poor results, the most frightening of which being that over half of the teachers did not pass the basic math test. Results in other areas were also discouraging. The government, apparently balancing the surplus of teachers in Peru (there are thousands of people educated to be teachers that are unable to find jobs) and the strength of the union, did not fire a single teacher. Instead, they created a nationally-sponsored program of local capacitations or workshops for teachers. Some teachers are required to attend workshops each Saturday, in which they are being taught about the subjects that they scored so poorly on. These teachers attending the workshops will eventually be re-taking the competency exams. If they fail to pass the competency exam after a certain number of tries (I think it is 3), they will be fired and replaced. To me, this all sounds completely reasonable. There were many other routes the government could have attempted to take in their reform. I, and many parents of school-aged children, believe that it is completely reasonable, if not lenient. This is the main point of contention of the teacher’s union. There are other, less important reasons for this strike. The union wants to privatize the school system and have local people pay their own teachers’ salaries, but this effort seems misguided and not really valid as a reason to strike. Governments with much better education systems (i.e., the USA) still rely heavily on government funding for public education. Why would such a horrible education system benefit from this, aside from possibly causing consolidation of students into larger, urban, and hopefully better schools? Also, this is an issue that can be worked out through mediation – striking further alienates teachers from the communities that they are working in. And there was the same worn-out bullshit about low wages. Yes, like teachers all over the world, Peruvian teachers do not earn enough. But unlike teachers all over the world, they often earn a lot more than the families of the students that they are teaching, at least outside of major urban centers. In reality, this strike has been, in my eyes, a manifestation of teachers’ violent resistance to education reform in a country badly in need of it. The simple and unavoidable result of education reform in Peru is that many teachers will lose their coveted jobs. The education system is in need of reform in large part due to the obvious inadequacies of teachers. Certainly, schools do not receive enough funding for materials and such, but teachers could do much better with the small amount of materials available. The truth is, though, that these same teachers are unwilling to take even basic steps necessary to become better teachers. Their job performance, in most cases, also shows a lack of real interest in education, and in many cases, they are doing just well enough not to make it worth the effort to replace them. I am in no way anti-union. I believe that labor organization in this country is a necessary and welcome progression. But strikes like this one show the dark underside of labor organization and give conservative, anti-union, pro-business activists (already much more powerful than unions anyway) firepower in their crusade to show organized labor as a bunch of self-serving socialists preventing the free market from improving their mediocrity. This fantasy of organized labor as the bane of capitalism and progress, which has been proven completely absurd so many times in the past, continues to be believed by many. The truth being, of course, that organized labor has its good and bad points just as free market capitalism has its good and bad points. Unfortunately, this strike has done nothing more than add to the negative image of (badly needed) organized labor here in Peru, along with depriving students of two weeks of classes that they badly need. (sorry jodie, no place to put a paragraph)

Deep breath, moving on. Angela and I are about to spend over a week out of site. We are leaving for Lima to do some work (Angela will be working with a Peace Corps-designed group to assess and train volunteers to deal with gender issues in development and I will be working with some other environment volunteers to rework the community diagnostic that we were asked to do upon arriving in our sites in order to improve it for the next group of volunteers coming in September) early next week and then will be taking a vacation for Fiestas Patrias (Peruvian Independence Day) to Huaraz, Ancash, at the foot of the Cordillera Blanca, the highest tropical mountain range in the world. These things are huge – many peaks are over 6000 meters (more than 18,000 feet). Angela and I are planning on doing some hiking and camping while in the mountains for the short time that we have, and we are going with a group to summit Ishinca, a 5500 meter, snow-covered peak that is easily accessible without technical climbing. It is a first for us, and we are both nervous and excited (as we currently have been living at about 90 meters for the past 8 months). Of course, we heard yesterday that some Portuguese climber just died yesterday near where we will be hiking, but that is not normal and it is certain that he was climbing a much more challenging peak in the area. More on all that afterward. It’s been a challenging and great last two weeks or so, which makes it a good time to bust out of routine and head to parts unknown. I really missed home this July, as 4th of July is one of my favorite times of year and most of my good friends got together in San Diego for a big blowout party. Also, Stacy’s birthday and hearing my nieces growing up on the phone makes it hard not to want to be there. But the progress here in site and this vacation will calm those feelings and remind me why I could not be anywhere other than where I am right now. Buck up and enjoy the moment. Regret and nostalgia are silent killers of new experience and growth. Love to all from me and that girl I live with that hath no blogging abilities. As Benjamin Cranklin Sterling Hill would say (thanks for the update from Mexico, Frank) peace in your crease.

Patty

2007-06-01T15:07:00.000-05:00

Back in the day when things were cool.
-Erykah Badu

Oh my god. Its been so long that it is absolutely absurd. There is no excuse, just an explanation. Its actually been really busy. Seriously. Let’s see, it all started back around Easter, Semana Santa as they call it down here in the dirty south. We had four days free from Peace Corps duty and so we took an extra day on either side of the four days and took our first extended journey in Peru, or S. America for that matter. We went to a place called Chachapoyas – high in the mountains that border the Utcubamba River Valley in Northern Central Peru – the department of Amazonas. The trip started with a 13 hour, overnight bus ride on a not-very-comfortable bus. It was long and uncomfortable. At some point during the night we stopped for over an hour at a river crossing and then just crossed the river anyway. What could have happened to the river level during that hour was not made clear to the passengers, but when we finally crossed it was marvelous. Angela and I had been genuinely worried that the rainy season would ruin our trip out to Chachapoyas – no one wanted to go with us and that is worrisome. Only two of our friends were brave enough to meet us out there, and I could easily call their judgment into question. We made it there tired and dazed after a morning drive through the most surreal landscape I have ever seen. I had never seen anything that one could call “the jungle” before that morning, and it blew my mind. On either side of the raging, brown Utcubamba River rose sheer cliff faces higher than I could see out of the bus windows. Aside from the river, not a speck of the scenery was any color other than green. The flora ranged from large, sprawling, moss-covered giants to tiny ferns, and it seemed unaware that it was growing on a sheer cliff face. It was unreal – I kept saying to Angela that I had never seen anything like this before. The sleep deprivation, anxiety, hunger, and motion sickness added to the surreal nature of the trip. Great stuff. The first day we just recovered and then met up with our two friends. It was a great trip – Chachapoyas is a traveler’s dream (I refuse to call myself a tourist, though I was playing the part of one). It appeared on the tourist map only five years ago, is still fairly difficult to access and located safely in the extreme north far from the Panamerican Highway and the heavily-traveled southern reaches of Peru, is completely surrounded in all directions with relatively unaltered nature and ruins from pre-Incan cultures, etc. It has developed the small amount of luxuries necessary to make it fun for adventurous visitors – good, cheap hostels and a couple of honest, locally-run, sustainable guide agencies. It is a nice place, to say the least. For 6 days, we hung-out, were serenaded quite loudly by a boisterous local guide, took warm showers, slept underneath blankets happily, sat and listened to the rain, hiked through primary forest and camped in a chicken shack, ate Peruvian/vegetarian food, spent an hour or two in an herbal sauna, saw a gigantic waterfall and lots of other, smaller ones, went to an ancient mountaintop fortress in pouring rain, almost died on a crazy combi ride to and from said fortress, and generally lived it up on the cheap. And to top it all off, we found a bus back to Chiclayo that was much nicer and cost only a few soles more, so the trip back wasn’t nearly as shitty. Good times.
(That’s for you, Jodie) Let’s see, after that, Angela started having a much better time here in site (not because of the trip but due to some other stuff). Work started picking up and Angela and the community began to genuinely warm up to us. This hasn’t made working here any easier, as the community is still fairly unorganized, but it has made us feel a lot better, which makes everything easier. Angela has been working in some of the local schools, I started a computer class, and we are starting an English class, among other things. Not anything you would call a project yet, but that isn’t really realistic in our site at this point. We are looking at doing outreach activities possibly indefinitely, but hopefully with the intention of creating a space in which to create a group strong enough and motivated enough to create a shared vision and decide to take steps toward it. This made my trip back to the States a little bit harder, as a common question most people felt (logically) compelled to ask me was “So . . . what are you doing down there?” It was difficult to walk the line between answering that question adequately enough to make me feel okay with myself and spouting off development jargon containing the words “process-based” and “sustainability.” Mostly, I think I succeeded in making people feel like I didn’t really know what I was doing down here, but that it was certainly not bad. And that is probably somewhere closer to the truth.
Oh yeah, so I went to the States. Last summer during our wedding celebration, Chris/Twink asked me to be the best man for his wedding in May. In my state of natural inebriation of all sorts, I said of course I would be and that I would do whatever it takes to get there in May. Chris was moved. Later, I realized that I was in Peru and that May was coming up rather quickly and somehow my mutual fund wasn’t producing the gains that my accountant had assured me it would and that round trip tickets to the States were not to be had cheaply. I called Twink to beat a tail-tucked retreat from said promise and was brought back to the reality of having good friends. Twink offered to help me out with the ticket home and so I went for it. To be honest, the timing was a little off. Things in site were going really well at that time but I had been out of site a lot in the weeks before. What I really needed was some time to sit down and just hang out in my site and get some work done. But I can’t complain; it was their day. So I took a long trip through Ecuador to fly home (the tickets were half the price) and spent some amazing time relaxing in DFW with my mom and “Gentle” Ben “Mexican Mafia” Perez before taking a road trip to Austin through Ft Worth with the Guatemalan Refuge Crew of Stimmel, Frank, and Babas (stimmel’s first true life companion - an incredibly intelligent and well-mannered German Shepard puppy). Still too beautiful for this world, Frank was, in a word, svelt. The kid has lost the baby fat but not the baby face. Stimmel, too, looked svelt, but more in the way a cancer patient is svelt. The kid has not been eating well. But all was well, I am just used to the old, pumped up version of Stimmel, not the new, world-weary, cardiovascular workout Stimmel. I love them both, luckily. After a night trading stories about the world outside of the US, we made out way to Austin and participated in an extended wedding celebration that began at Temple’s House on Thursday evening and ended sometime Monday morning as I drive back to Dallas in the truck that I was supposed to leave at Temple’s to rest for a year or two. Along the way I got the chance to spend a lovely Mother’s Day with my mother (in law) and brother (in law) and dog (the face biter herself, Lily is doing great). Such is life. Great wedding, great friends, and, ironically, I somehow received a surprise stomach illness in Austin much worse than any I have experienced in Peru. Or at least on par. My mom assured me that no USA cuisine could possibly have done it to me, but I knew that the lack of bacteria and level of cleanliness and sanitation really pissed off the smaller forms of life that are inside of me. I found out from various people that it is not uncommon to get sick upon returning to the States from Peru. Is it even worth the effort to ask why? On Tuesday afternoon, I began a long trip back to site through Ecuador. My diarrhea luckily subsided enough to make the hour-long delay on the Houston tarmac in the midst of a thunderstorm and an Ecuadorian teenage folk dance group coming back from their first trip to the States mildly enjoyable. Back in the developing world, things were just as I had left them and that brought me instant comfort. Seeing Angela again after what was surely our longest time apart since getting married and apparently becoming completely co-dependent upon each other ended the stress for good. The difficulties of the stressful trip home were overcome by the happiness of seeing friends and family and returning to a place that I truly felt happy to be going back to (and not just cause my wife was there). I cannot say what a good feeling it was to not feel bad upon leaving the States. Sure, the food was good and I love my friends and family, but coming back felt much more comfortable than going.
Upon returning, Angela and I almost immediately went to a workshop in Cajamarca with two community members. It was an intense, 3-day workshop on project design and planning. Amazing stuff. The community members loved it, we loved it, and I got a cold. Finally, the almost blessed first 8 months of (almost) not being ill have ended for me. Whatever. The workshop was great and while we were there our community was beginning work on expanding the water system from a system of 16 community spigots to a water pipe into each individual home. Two days ago, our family and ourselves received water right into the kitchen of the home for the first time . . .ever, I guess. Quite an amazing thing to see. The moment passed in our home as most incredible moments do in Peru, with a lot of silent staring and a sigh. Its crazy how people here can react to the most amazing things with such lackluster amounts of shock and awe. I was pretty stoked. Regardless, we have a spigot in our kitchen now and water comes out of it for an hour or so every morning. I’ll post a picture of it soon. Development, I have known you.
I am almost finished finalizing my diagnostic of Tecapa so that I can stop sitting at a computer for large parts of the day. As I said, we are attempting to start some stuff locally and are much busier than we have ever been. It is not any easier, but things are better. The community has really taken us in, and the time Angela spent here “alone” in the community was incredible for her relationships here. Good stuff continues and challenges are changing everyday, though never seeming to exit the stage as we ask them to. While I have been neglecting the blog, I have not been forgetting to post pictures on facebook. For those of you that don’t have facebook, I will give you access to the pics there as soon as possible. It is a process, though, and I will do it the next time I have some time to kill in front of a computer. Angela and I bought a hip new camera, though, so the pics should get a whole lot better quickly. Apologies for neglecting my duties as a blogger, though it is obvious that someone else neglected her duties, as well. I won’t mention names. If anyone is still reading this, thank you. Much love. Its freaking June, 2007. Unbelievable. Completely absurd. Shout out to Sean – miss you, blood brother and I still haven’t gotten that CD of music. I’m beginning to think you lied to me.

Patty

facebook fix

2007-04-11T15:56:00.000-05:00

Okay - the Patrick Bridegam profile is back up and running on Facebook with all the photos and messages and such. Yeah! The other profile is now deactivated due to the aforementioned complete loser coward that was using it to mess with other people on facebook. Later.

Facebook problems

2007-04-11T09:56:00.000-05:00

Angela and I just got back from our vacation to Chachapoyas today and we are doing fine. Unfortunately, I am having trouble with facebook. Here´s what´s up:
1. I had to deactivate the patrick friends account that I created to allow non-facebook users to view the pictures that Angela and I have posted under the Patrick Bridegam account because some useless asshole was using the account to send nasty messages to other facebook users in my name. So it doesn´t exist anymore now thanks to some waste of space ridiculous joke of a human being that would actually have the time to do something so worthless and stupid. So I will figure out a way to make the pictures public and let you all know how to access them in the near future.
2. The normal account that has all the photos has somehow been wiped clean. I am in touch with facebook trying to recover the profile at this moment, but somehoe it worked yesterday and now today everything is gone. So I will let all know what happens with that but as of now there is no information under the patrick bridegam profile (what used to be my normal profile with all the pictures and friends and such), so it will take some time to figure out how to get it back.

Anyway, Angela and I are fine and have a busy 2 months coming up. We will get a post up soon about the vacation and the work we are up to. Love to all. Oh yeah - it is finished - I will be flying into dallas on tuesday may 8th, driving to austin for Twink´s wedding on thursday, may 10th, and then flying out of dallas again to come back to peru on tuesday may 15th. Although this is much earlier than I ever intended as far as coming back to the USA, I can´t wait to hang out with old friends and be the best man and watch a great friend get married to the woman he loves. Love to all from Ang and myself. Back to site we go.

2007-03-11T13:14:00.000-05:00

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.

quickie

2007-02-25T17:57:00.000-06:00

Angela and I are about to finish up our first three months in-site here in Tecapa, Perú. It has been a lot of up and down but always moving forward. The time is going by ridiculously quickly. We meet up with the PC staff and all of our training group for two days in a week from tomorrow. Things are starting to begin to hint at the idea of taking shape with some of the leaders of the community, and we are celebrating each step. But we are doing fine and looking forward to each coming day. After talking to him today, I realized that I miss my blood brother, Sean, a lot. Love you, brother. Some Peace Corps volunteers in Africa refer to Latin America as ¨Peace Corps Light.¨ I found that out a while ago and thought it was pretty funny. If this is Peace Corps Light I got nothing but respect for the PC volunteers in Africa. I did some quick reading about a friend of a friend in Mozambique and came across the following website about an amazing National Park in that country. Enjoy the great website: www.gorongosa.net. It seems like possibly one of the coolest places on Earth. Love you all and hope all is well back stateside and otherwise.

midsummer update

2007-01-28T12:11:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the recent drought of meaningful posting, although for those of you that hate reading blogs it must have seemed like a welcome respite. Of course, if you hate reading blogs you are in the wrong place. I hope that all the photo issues have been taken care of and that all have access to the photos at this point. Again, if you have trouble viewing the photos or accessing the facebook website (now available through the convenient link to your right, yeah, I did it) please email me directly. Anyway, I have finally figured out how to write a blog – I never seem to have the time to get to it in the internet cabina (a cabina is like an internet café without food or drinks or ambience, just computers and wooden dividers to encourage what I guess must either be the guilt-inducing complete waste of time crap that we all do on the internet or bolder porn viewing) so we are now writing them at home on the old laptop. Thanks Todd! This will either hoist the blog to new heights of eagerly awaited creative expression or bring it crashing down in the flames of cobweb-covered vanilla self-indulgent, seemingly-endless descriptions of my relatively boring life here. Let’s hope my 22 years of formal education and four years of doing other stuff have provided me with the tools to captivate your attention. The other day, Angela hurt her back carrying a big bucket of water early in the morning. Our morning routine every other day or so is to carry water in from the fountains out behind the house. Tecapa does not have potable water piped into the homes (nor does it have a waste water system of any kind – waste water is emptied into buckets which are dumped into the street), but luckily it does at times have a system of conveniently located communal spigots (grifos – fountains) that provide “potable” (still not to be drunk without boiling by white people, but not from the irrigation ditch) water delivered from the towns large elevated cement tank daily between the hours of 6:00 and 7:00am. “6 am,” some of you lazy Americans might mumble to yourselves, “gee, that’s early.” Well, its not. Most Peruvians, and more so in the country, have been up for a good hour or two by 6 am. And I kinda dig it. The mornings are beautiful and cool and there is no point in going anywhere outside our mosquito-proof room after nightfall so that pretty much makes 9pm a late night for us. So if you are up and doing stuff around 6 am you don’t feel so crazy to be stuck in your room that night because you don’t dare risk getting eaten alive by mosquitos because you are really ready to go to bed. Anyway, we were up early and working it the other day because there had been this rumor that the committee in charge of the potable water was going to cut the potable water to the whole town in a show of force to convince the people to start paying their weekly bill (consequently, if you do not have water piped into houses but instead into communal spigots, it is incredibly difficult to restrict a person’s access to water regardless of whether or not they choose to pay their bill). So we were filling everything that had a hole in it with potable water. Angela picked up a not that full washing basin to move it somewhere else in the always incomprehensible shuffle of basins and buckets and tubs that precedes any morning water fetching, and heard something rip in her back. Needless to say she was in a sorry state for the rest of the day and I had to carry in all the water that morning and again two mornings later. Luckily the injury wasn’t too bad and the same day we were able to successfully have our afternoon site visit with some of our Peace Corps bosses – the PC Peru Country Director and the Head of Security for PC Peru. It was one of our two recent site visits by bosses and both went well – they affirmed our frustrations and gave us good advice to keep working. So with some over the counter muscle relaxants (thanks, Peruvian pharmaceutical system – who needs doctors?) and a night of me laughing so hard that I fell on the floor when she gingerly rolled over onto her stomach and then started yelling at me because she was stuck and wasn’t able to roll back over onto her back she was still moving slowly but no longer in pain. God that was great fun. And she’s healing well. Our community diagnostic rolls on and the days are moving by quickly. We have been in site now for over two months and in Peru for almost five months. Our diagnostic should be coming to a close in the next month and we will cease diagnosing and start . . . doing something else. It remains to be seen what exactly it will be. The more time that I spend here in Tecapa the more I see basic community organization as the primary struggle. I am unsure of what form it will take, but what I will probably be working on the most (as with many volunteers, I assume) will be creating and or fostering organization and participation (to whatever end I can find to entice people) among the people. The hard part is finding something to get people interested – I have no money, I am not a doctor or agricultural engineer, etc. Therein lies the rub, and that will be what I have to try to put my creativity and/or man-hours toward. But Angela and I are becoming incredibly comfortable here in Tecapa. Even though it is quite warm during the day and the mosquitos are absolutely frightening (thank god there is no dengue fever here and almost no malaria or any other of the various mosquito-born tropical diseases– the little bastards laugh at our slathered-on repellant and my stifling long-sleeve shirt and pants barely slow them down, though thank god the mosquito net over our bed works) in the evening and all night, it is still absolutely beautiful. The sunrises and sunsets are consistently breathtaking. The stark desert browns and tans contrast beautifully with the green algarroba trees of the dry forest and endless rice paddies as well as the blue skies – pale in the mornings and later ominously dark with afternoon rains in the far-off mountains of Cajamarca. If the rains ever make it here they come at night or in the early morning and do not last long (except in El Nino years like 1998 when the whole northern coast of Peru floods), though Angela and I love them for their reminders of Texas and for making it so pleasant to lay in bed early in the morning. The rain is a mixed blessing – cooler temperatures and refreshing, but it creates humidity to mix with the heat and brings even more insane amounts of mosquitos. In other news, I got a huge stack of Newsweek International Editions and have been catching up on the goings-on of the rest of the world. It’s crazy out there. Be careful. Oh yeah, not to give the wrong idea of what I’m doing here, but I am buying a used surfboard in the next couple weeks. I met this shaper in a town on the coast outside of Chiclayo and he’s hooking me up with a cool, thick, 80’s board and a used Boz wetsuit for when winter comes. Angela and I are living less than an hour from the coast – a town called Pacasmayo – and the incredible Peruvian waves. Also, we are within a day trip of so many good beaches on the northern coast that I figured I couldn’t pass up this opportunity. Even if I only go out once or twice a month I will save money over renting in the long run, and it’s a lot more convenient to have my own board and suit because rental is restricted to only a couple beaches in Peru. So I’m gonna keep learning to surf. So before I go any further I will stop in the name of general taste and a deep understanding of the business of other people’s lives. There is so much more that has been going on, though for the most part it is incredibly mundane. I will try to hit the blog with an update more often. Friends and family are in our thoughts often, and things here are pretty much on the track we thought they might be on – complete chaos and uncertainty. But we are loving every minute of it, and rest assured that it is a very safe and enjoyable kind of chaotic uncertainty.

Our Photos!!!

2007-01-21T12:26:00.000-06:00

Quick update on the pictures. All of our pictures our on-line at www.facebook.com, as stated by Angela in the previous blog. For those of you that would like to view the pictures but do not want to waste time setting up a facebook account and asking me to be your friend and all the other needless crap this is for you. I have created a facebook account that you can all use. You can use it to access my facebook profile with all the pictures. Here is what you do.

Go to www.facebook.com
Sign in using the following information:
Email: pbridegam@hotmail.com
Password: bumlooker

That will take you to a profile that I have created for the sole purpose of allowing non-facebook users to view our photos. Upon entering the profile you will see a picture of angela and I. Below it is a link to the facebook site for Patrick Bridegam - click on it and you will be taken to the facebook page for Angela and I. Our photos are available on that page on the bottom right-hand corner. If you have problems, of course, email me at pbridegam@gmail.com. Love you all and things are fine and I will post a real post soon. For now, look at the pictures.

mapi mundial

2007-01-08T11:25:00.000-06:00

If you are having problems viewing the photos go to www.facebook.com and create an account of your own. It is free and fast. Search pbridegam and our photos should come up. If this doesn´t work send one of us an email and we will give you our password to access it through our account.

Everything is going well here in Tecapa. We have recently started painting a 2x4meter map of the world on a community wall. We have been getting the kids of Tecapa together on wednesday afternoons for a little something we like to call ¨vacaciones divertidas.¨ This translates into fun vacations. Its lame, but hey, so are we. We have just been playing group games and stuff, and in the future we are going to do some arts and crafts and do some nature hikes and any other sort of educational activity that we can disguise as a game. School is out for summer break, so the kids that are not working with their parents are often bored senseless. So we are working on this map and including the kids in its creation now that we have been hanging out with them. The point of the world map is to get us outside and hanging out in public and that way people will see that we are working and will feel more comfortable coming to talk to us (we dont have an office) - and not so surprisingly it is working. People are really curious about us and what we are doing (we are constantly trying to find a better way to describe our work here, but it is hard enough in English and often just comes out ridiculous in Spanish). Telling people we are here to build a school or medical post, teach english or technical farming, etc is comprehensible. We, on the other hand are obviously not saying that. The idea of two people leaving the ¨land of gold¨ to teach preventative health techniques and environmental awareness and preservation is close to crazy, and even funny. So, in turn, the folks of Tecapa can often be heard saying that the gringos are vacationing-also ridiculously laughable upon seeing our little poor town which lacks the draw of tourism. So as they say in Peru, and almost any other developing country: poco a poco. It really has been nice to see the small changes of acceptance that have taken place over the past weeks of being here. The kids are so bored that sitting and watching us work on the map is a good option for the afternoon, and they will be able to help a lot as the process continues. It is quite a large map - we will post some pictures soon.

Also, Peace Corps recently loaned us some bicycles for our time here, so we will now be able to more easily head out to the other pueblos close by. They are far nicer than the ones awaiting us when we return to the states. We are looking forward to school starting in March so as to get more involved with existing programs and teachers.

We are looking forward to heading home for weddings this summer: Patrick in May for Twink and Shaina´s marriage and me in June for Eva and Luke´s knot tying-Congratulations to you both!!!
Love to all!

New photo website

2006-12-25T18:04:00.000-06:00

All the photos will now be found in facebook because the uploading is much better.

www.facebook.com

search patrick bridegam

love you all and merry christmas.

Just another typical day in the campo

2006-12-17T13:29:00.000-06:00

Our Saturday:
We started the promisingly hot day by taking the sheep out to graze in the morning with our crazy and energetic grandma of 75 years. After stopping to chop some wood in the field with our other ¨grandpa-type family member¨ we returned for a lunch of ¨aji de gallina¨(Patrick´s favorite) cooked by our host mom. When the food coma quickly overthrew desires to do anything but sleep I crashed onto the bed while Patrick started writting a letter to Sean; only to be rudely interrupted 30 minutes later by ol´granny yelling that the wood we chopped earlier needed to be gathered and brought back to the house (of course it does, the temp is about 100 and the sun as strong as it could possibly be, why wouldn´t we go put the entire tree into the back of the truck and bring it to the house). So, because we are trying to ïntegrate¨into the community, and family more importantly, we headed out to the field with the rest of the fam. After a couple of hours of family fun time we remebered we still needed to haul water from the neighbor´s well (so as to avoid any waterborne diseases easily contracted from the irrigation ditch we were drinking from). Evening had set in at this point and we decided to take a bucket bath in our yet-to-be-finished shower, and to also start a batch of laundry. We then lit our NEW gas stove (yep, the talk of the house!) to start our bean stew and sat down with the family of 10 to talk about the days work well done...Home on the range! It has been interesting, and almost slightly romantic... All you have to do is wake up and do it all over again, and you might even mix in a little rice farming and street watering (don´t ask about that).

Life in Tecapa is going well and we are slowly settling into the idea of living here for two years. While we are eager to get rolling on our work in the field of health and environment we are happy to get more involved with the day-to-day life of our new home, so as to better understand the community and actions of each individual. And of course in all reality our work here began the day we arrived. While friends and family will be missed this holiday season we are looking forward to spending Christmas in the Peruvian fashion: dinner at midnight on Christmas eve followed by dancing, music, church, and games until sunrise. I guess we will have to pull it all out so as to not fall asleep before dawn. Yes it is true, we have become an old married couple heading to bed around 9pm (very similar to our college years too huh?). It would be pretty embarrasing to poop-out before ol´granny, wouldn´t it!
Love and happy holidays to all.

Two weeks in, no place to poop

2006-12-10T11:48:00.000-06:00

Well, we have been at site for two weeks now and it has been an interesting two weeks. We have spent the greater part of our time setting up our living space the way we want it - putting a door and window on the room, getting a bed to sleep on, and working for over a week on the latrine project that will never end. When Angela and I showed up there was no latrine. No biggie, we didnt exect it to be made. We hired a local albanil and started working last wednesday. Our family cannot afford the costs of the latrine, so we are financing it with our first couple months of rent. Unfortunately, we did not go over design and detail before turning our family loose to start the project. Our idea of a latrine was a hole in the ground with some cement and some sort of curtain or wall for privacy. Our family had other ideas. So far we have dug a 1.5 meter square hole that is over 2 meters deep out behind the house. That hole must be lined with bricks and cement to control humidity to prevent eventual collapse. The bottom will use a sand trap to filter urine and water out of the hole over time so that it doesnt fill up. Since the hole is out behind the house we had to connect it to the shower room (that we had not planned as part of the initial project) and bathroom via in ground tubing. Then the building of the actual bathroom and shower rooms got a little out of control - 12 foot high walls of adobe that apparently now need to be covered with cement or something to prevent them from degrading over time (ignore the 900 year old adobe ruins still standing less than 3 miles from the house - it doesnt rain at our site), topped with tile ceiling pieces, with cement floors. As you can imagine, costs started to stack up and the work is slow and arduous. Over time Angela and I finally confronted the family and since then things have started to wind down. As of now we are no longer working on anything that is not immediately necessary to create a place for us to poop. We have brought that issue to the forefront and with hope it will be respected. Anyway, we are finishing bricking and creating a cement top for the hole and then creating a cement floor for the bathroom in order to throw in the free terlet that we got. Then, with any hope, Angela and I can terminate the service of the albanil and do the rest of the work ourselves with the family. This has added a bit of stress to our first weeks at site. Things were rough the first week - lots of questioning (i.e., what am I doing here?, will I really be able to be here for two years?, what is that thing on my leg?, can I really speak spanish?, etc etc) and little time out of our house to remind us why we were there. The second week has been much better. We have been getting out and talking to people every day. On thursday we had a meeting with some of the community and it went really well. Everyone told us that no one would come to the meeting because nobody in our town comes to meetings, but actually 15-20 people showed and it went really well. We explained a bit about why we were there and opened the conversation on some of things that the people in our community expect from us and what we need from them. They were responsive and we learned about some of the active organizations in our small community. We are still trying to meet with the teachers at the local schools before they get our for three month vacations this coming week, so we will see what happens. Also, the best part has been walking around and meeting people in the community. We have been welcomed openly by all so far - invited to lunches, invited into homes for a drink, conversing on the streets - and are starting to figure out about the problems and strengths of our community. The schedule is quite difficult for us to get used to. The people get up anytime between 4 to 6am, with a 6am start being a little late. They do household cleaning and chores and retrieve water in the morning and then eat a breakfast around 7 or 8. The morning is taken up with getting lunch prepared (everything is made from scratch and much is retrieved from local farms, such as lentils, split peas, sweet potatoes, etc), as it is the largest meal of the day. The men go off to work in the fields. Lunch happens between 12 and 2 and it is big. Afterwards, the community goes into a deep coma. Some men go back to work in the fields for the afternoon, sometimes work is done around the house, but most of the time the kids are off school and out playing and the adults are sleeping or relaxing. It is quite warm in the mornings and early afternoon as we are approaching summer (jan through mar), which may acount for this schedule. Late in the afternoon things start to cool off and the people return to the streets or to converse. Light dinners are usually early and socializing and stuff takes place in the evening. People go to bed early. The weather in the early morning and late afternoon and evenings is really nice - cool and always a breeze. The late morning and early afternoon can be oppressive when the sun is strong, as it often is. All we hear about is that summer will be hotter and that the bugs are coming. I think these reports are likely exaggerated, but apparently it will be unbelievably hot and the air will be thick with mosquitos and biting flies of all shapes and sizes. Im sure it wont be our favorite time of year, but I think we will survive. I mean, with a little humidity is sounds a lot like austin in the 5 - 6 month summers we lived through there, not to even mention houston. So we are a little curious about the next three months, but I wouldnt say Im worried. Plus, we hear from all that the other 8 months of the year are very nice and temperate. Anyway, we have been getting out and meeting people, as I said, and those meetings and interactions are making the time much richer and giving us lots of hope and ideas about what is going on. We will spend until about march getting to know our community and learning how things work and what we can possibly work on for the next two years, and then start projects then. Of course, it will be ongoing as far as revising and evaluating progress, but for the first months Angela and I are involved in a formal participatory diagnostic of the community and it will be time consuming. It is a way to integrate more fully - getting us out and talking and meeting and learning - but it is also a really good way to figure out how to focus our two years on projects that will (with hope) be the most effective, accepted by the people, and continued after our eventual departure. Of course, these are our goals, and taking time to learn about community needs, abilities, and expectations is such a better way of doing things than to try to come in with our own ideas and force them onto people, or to force projects that we believe in for two years only to have them fall flat after we leave in two years. These are some of the fun things we spent a lot of time talking about in our training. So that is what we will be up to for a while and as things begin to take shape and we gain trust in the community, ideas will start to emerge. In the meantime, things are okay, we are riding that emotional snake to Valhalla! and continuously working to feel more at home in this new place. I am in the process of trying to teach Angela how to be a good Peruvian wife for me - cooking all my meals, doing my laundry, not talking back to me, and not asking me where I have been when Ive been gone for possibly weeks with god knows whom. She is not responding to these lessons as I had planned, and I think I may need to rethink my strategies over the next two years in order to fulfill my original sinister desires for bringing her here. We´ll see. I think she may be too corrupted by silly American notions of equality and monogamy, in which case I may have to think about full-on brainwashing techniques. Im reading up on some information about Scientology conversion and retention techniques for these purposes. She is strong, but I am determined to have the Peruvian wife of my dreams. She will be mine, oh yes, she will be mine. Love to all and know that I have never missed friends and family so much as in the last two weeks. I am sending out some Xmas greetings to family today and I hope they arrive on time. By the next post we should god willing officially have a place to poop. Please keep our poop hole in your thoughts and prayers. Im out.

Training has ended - going to site

2006-11-27T13:08:00.000-06:00

Angela and I are sitting in a restaurant in Chiclayo, Lambayque - on the northern/central coast of Peru. This will be our capital city for the next 2 years, where we will come to do grocery shopping and buy any of the things that we cannot find in our site. Our site is about 1.5 hours south of Chiclayo by bus. Although our site is in La Libertad, one department to the south, Chiclayo is closer than Trujillo (the capital city of La Libertad) by about a half hour, and we felt no real draw to Trujillo (it is a bit larger and not quite as safe-feeling as Chiclayo to me), so we switched to Chiclayo. Anyway, the last few days have been crazy. We held a huge American Thanksiving dinner for all of our host families in Santa Eulalia last thursday, which was really fun and they all enjoyed it - especially the desserts (they really love apple pie). That night was a big birthday/sending off party for the soon-to-be volunteers. On Friday we had our last day of our 10-week training, and the swearing-in as volunteers happened on friday afternoon. After the ceremony we had a tearful goodbye with all of our host families for the past 10 weeks of training and got on buses to Lima along with all of our ridiculous amount of stuff. We came with two bags of stuff and our backpacks from the States, and during training we received so many materials to possibly use at our site that we filled an additional huge Peruvian market-bag. We are travelling quite heavy as we head to site, and will be glad to get our stuff to its two-year resting place and be done moving it. That night (friday) we were put up in a hotel in Miraflores - a small, affluent, very western district of Lima. It was our last night together as a group of volunteers, and we all went out and fended off our exhaustion with booze. It was a fun night and since we were in Lima and it was our last night we had a chance to cut loose a bit. Saturday was a day for nursing hangovers, last minute preparations before heading off to site, saying "see you later" to good friends made during training (we will see each other as a group in three months and again in one year), and, of course, Hooters. Believe it or not there is a Hooters restaurant in Lima. My language class had been all guys and our language trainer offered to take us to lunch and, well, we just ended up there. It was weird and strange and the food was damn good. I also got the extremely gratifying surprise of catching the 4th quarter of the Mavs-Spurs game from friday night that the Mavs took despite a close game there at the end. That was a great way to spend an afternoon. Saturday night we were on an overnight bus to Chiclayo, and we spent an exhausted saturday and night in a hotel in Chiclayo resting. It was necessary. Today, Angela and I took care of some business around town and are now about to leave for site. We are anxious and a little excited and definitely ready. Its hard to believe that it has been 10 weeks since we got here, and I imagine the time will continue to fly by in site. 10 weeks down, 2 years to go. That sounds scarier to everyone else, I think, cause I am quite excited. We will spend this first week getting our room set up and settling in - hopefully the latrine at our house has been built since it did not exist during our site visit. We will find out this afternoon. For the next three months Angela and I will be doing a community diagnostic in an attempt to figure out what projects will be the most helpful, relevant, and hopefully successful in our community. As that diagnostic finishes up we will be starting whatever projects we will be working on. A lot is up the air, but that is the way of things. Two weeks ago we received the sad news that Angela's grandfather, Don, had died of a stroke. We had a rough week and I wrote some stuff that I will post as soon as I get the chance. He was an incredible person and I was honored to be able to get to know him these past years. More on that later. We received permanent information for contact and it is as follows:

Mail:

Patrick/Angela Bridegam/Cuerpo de Paz
Casilla Postal No. 208
Serpost, Chiclayo
Lambayeque, Peru

We will check our mail every few weeks. If you send something to our training site address that is fine - it is the PC office in Peru and they will forward it to us. Otherwise, just use this one from now on. Please feel free to send us anything under 1.1 pounds (.5 kilo). If you have some crazy desire to send us something heavier than that PLEASE email us first so that we can discuss it. The customs regulations here in Peru are quite strict and we need to at least know before something larger is sent because we will never get it out of customs if we dont know that it is there. Even if we do know that it is there, often you have to pay 20-30% import taxes and sometimes you still never get your package. Basically, lets talk first.

Phone:

Angela and I both have cellphone provided by the Peace Corps. You can call them internationally if you want, but it will most likely be very expensive. dont feel like it is necessary, but just so everyone knows how to get in touch with us. We cannot use them to call the States as it is exhorbitantly expensive and not a part of our service. We can still call from land lines using phone cards, so if you want a call you can ask us for one by email and we can call you and it isnt super-expensive. Here's the cell numbers

Patrick: 011-51-44-9484113
Angela: 011-51-44-9484013

Love you all and wish us luck as we head to site. More pictures and words to come. Sorry for the journal/business format of this post, I am pressed for time.

Patrick

Return from Site Visit

2006-11-12T09:25:00.000-06:00

Angela and I have returned from our site visit in Tecapa, a small rural caserio (peruvian for small rural village) in the northern dry forests of La Libertad. The visit went very well overall. It was tough and trying at times, but as we left our future host family and drove away from Tecapa, we were both excited about returning for two years after we finish these next two weeks of training. This is a good thing because that is the reality. The visit was stressful - meeting our new family, counterparts in the community, the people that we will be trying to work with for the next two years - and only lasted three and a half days. It was sort of a rollercoaster - good and bad. The family that we are going to be living with was definitely one of the good. They are incredibly open, caring, and loving towards us. Even though they can not possibly understand why Angela might be a vegetarian, they respected her desires and encouraged us to be open and honest with them about the food we do or don't want to eat. Im going to go eat and finish this post up later. We are safely back from site visit and hanging out in Lima for the morning, at which point we head back to Santa Eulalia for the last two weeks of our training. We are excited and glad to be back to spend our last time with our host family in Buenos Aires and with all the other volunteers in our training group. Oh yeah - how incredible it was to come back from this week and to find out that:

The Republicans lost control of both houses.

Rumsfeld is resigning.

What an incredible and uplifting thing. It makes me so much happier to talk about the U.S. gov't with the people of Peru and feel real hope while doing so. I guess we wil now have to see what the Dems do with their advantage. To the end of a week of the hope for new beginnings.

Cheers.

Patty

Site Assignment and the End to a Tough Week

2006-11-04T20:17:00.000-06:00

Lots to talk about. The last three weeks have been intense and long, as is the story with training in general at this point. Both of us are still really positive about the training at this point, but at times it is difficult to be told what to do all the time. Regardless, it is quickly coming to an end. Angela and I leave tomorrow for our site visit. We found out on friday that our site for the next two years is in the department (like a state) called La Libertad. We are in between the major cities of Trujillo (to the south) and Chiclayo (north) in an ecosystem only found in Peru called the dry forest (bosque seco). We are quite near to the Panamerican Highway - the major north and south route in Peru that goes through Lima - but not ON it, which is a very good thing cause it is heavily travelled. We will be living in a small caserio near Pacasmayo. There is a lot of complicated business pertaining to the site that I wont get into now and probably wont be able to fully explain on the blog as there are some interesting and well-intentioned guidelines for what to post about your service on your public blog. Basically, I will not be posting specific names of sites, including our own, of volunteers for safety reasons. Also, I will not be posting anything negative about my site or specific people in our community in order that we do not inadvertently mess up our relations with our communities. Overall, the point is that if you want to get the dirt on stuff like that you wiull have to wait to talk to angela and I. Sorry - just a heads up in case it ever seems like I am writing vague ramblings. Anyway, enough brainwashed policy shit. Things are going good here. This pastg week was the most difficult for me and it was the first time that I have questioned my decision to come to Peru. Luckily, it was just a combination of stress, frustration, a marching band outside our window, being sick, poor diet, and finding my wife passed out tits up in the shower at two in the morning. Seriously. Before I tell this story just let me say that angela is fine, I promise. All is well now. Angela has been sick lately with a bad case oif diarrhea and the other night she was very weak and got up to go poop and vomit at 1:30 in the morning without waking her peacefully dozing husband. I awoke to the sound of a loud thud and had a strange feeling that angela had passed out in the bathroom and fallen. I went to the bathroom to find I was right. In an attempt to vomit into the sink while shitting, she had passed out and fallen backwards onto the toilet and into the shower on her head. In the calmest way I knew how I started yelling and crying as Angela informed me that she did not know where she was. I just about had a heart attack. It is funny now, but it was not as it happened. Luckily all she had was a bump on her head and no blood. After calling the Peace Corps doctor and calming down a bit (me, not her), I put some cold pepsi in my platypus to put on her bump since we had no ice and then we went to sleep. I could have killed her for not telling me she was going to the bathroom, but I was really glad she was okay. It was a nice reminder that things can get scary quickly and that we need to be a bit more careful here as we go to a site that will not be as close to a hospital. She is fine now, as I said, though the diarrhea is still running its course and she may start some antibiotics tomorrow. She just got slammed and dehydrated the first day of the infection. Anyway, we have learned and will be sure to take some extra precautions in the future. Anyway, that and a lot of other stuff has made this week a long and trying one. But things are much better now and I can expect to have other days like those this week over the next year, no doubt. We have been learning and doing a lot. Two weeks ago we did a week of field based training in northern Peru. We spent the week apart as we visited sites of current volunteers separately with our own training groups and learned a lot more about the practical application we will be going through in our own sites starting in the three weeks. It was a great experience and our first chance to get out of Lima and see some of the rest of Peru. The past week of training was lots of technical sessions and Angela and I finished our long-term community project that we have been doing in the background during our time here in training. It went well, althought for me the training environment is starting to seem a bit distant from what is actually going to be going on in the small rural community of our site. We will see over time how true that is, and to balance that criticism the training has made me feel much more prepared to head to site and actually possibly do some helpful and sustainable work. In all, I am really ready to start moving toward our site, and that is exactly what we are off to do tomorrow. We are going together to our site for the week to meet our host family, counterparts, and community. Gotta go eat dinner now. Love to all and more to come within the week. We are posting pics as we can. Enjoy.

2006-11-04T19:48:00.000-06:00

Angela in San Juan Miraflores - a less-developed area of Lima

2006-11-04T19:30:00.000-06:00

Halloween Nuttiness - all the big decades covered

Lessons at Casa Blanca - a small self-sustaining organic farm in southern Lima

Yes, that guy was actually twice as cool as he looks like he is

The Training Center in Santa Eulalia - where we have spent the majority of the past 7 weeks

Outside Trujillo(city) - on Angela*s trip to La Libertad(departamento) for training

2006-11-04T19:24:00.000-06:00

Dia de Todos los Patrones y Dia de los Muertos - at the cemetary with our family, lots of people, candles, flowers, music, and beer. Good times.

One Month

2006-10-15T16:02:00.000-05:00

It is hard to believe that its already been one month. I cant even begin to explain how easy it has been thus far to consider Peru a new home, its hard to imagine us doing something different in this moment. The days are definitely long and draining, but we are learning an incredible amount about the culture and language, and just life in another country. Language is soaring, Patrick is already talking fairly fluently and expressing emotion clearly. It is absolutely amazing to see how fast language progresses in this learning model. If only every person could experience emersion when taking on another language... I am still struggling to grasp the many forms of a new language and continue to say silly and ridiculously incorrect things, oh well it gives us something to laugh about. Our family and house feels like home as we continue to spend more and more time with them going on outings and cooking, talking about politics and sexual health. I am so in love with them and even shed a tear the other night when thinking about how wonderful it would be to show them our life in the states-perhaps one day... I have already started working in the community, both alone and with my group, giving educational sessions and chats on hand washing, team work, leadership stuff, and illnesses contracted on account of poor hygiene. I am excited to get out of training and start a few womens groups around sexual health education and mental health. We are starting a pilot group about domestic violence in the next couple of weeks with a group of women in our community. It is short and not all that realistic since we will be leaving in six weeks, but will be interesting to see how it is received. We have already done a few needs assessments and the problem definitely exists (surprise) but more importantly the desire and interest as well. We plan to stay basic and perhaps concentrate more on "healthy relationships" instead of violence. Of course I am excited as it is my passion, but am even more excited to do it with Patrick and use it as an opportunity to demonstrate a health relationship since they already know us in the community. Speaking of, we have recently joined a little "knitting and crocheting group" in which a few women in the community are teaching us how to make bags and scarves. And yes, Patrick is making a scarf-no I didnt talk him into it, I was planning to do it as an activity for our mom and I, and he wanted to join in too. It is awesome! We will have to send some pictures in the future. Next week we will be traveling separately to different parts of the country to work in the campo for about 5 days, cant wait! It will be so nice to be out of training and on our own doing some different stuff and visiting volunteers. Thus far the experience has been VERY different from Guatemala both in the area of training and culture (of course). The training has been a lot more intense this time...
So, this entire time I have been trying to load more pictures and it looks like it is a no-go at this time. Soon, promise.
Love to all!

Training it up

2006-10-02T18:47:00.000-05:00

Everything's good here, except for the spanish keyboards. I guess it could be worse. Peru is lovely, the weather here is incredible. It sounds cheesy but they call this valley that we live in the place of eternal sun. It is a bit of an overstatement, as the mornings are often foggy, but it is incredibly clear and dry. It never gets very hot, but its never cold in the sun. The nights are always chilly enough for good sleeping, but it never really gets cold. It rains little enough that most people do not bother to finish building their rooves, I think the annual rainfall is less than 6 inches. And in Lima, 45 minutes down the road at the ocean, it hasnt even misted for two years, and they have zero inches of rainfall on record since they started keeping records. Of course, the only drawback to our area is the lack of green. Even so, there are amazing flowers and plants and trees and bushes wherever people can water them. Lawns are basically pointless and luckily for this small watershed people here are smarter than those sad bastards in Phoenix that waste their lives and so much water growing weeds in their yards. Unfortunately, lots of people here water and hose down the dirt in an attempt to keep dust levels down. Of course, this is silly because the water dries quite quickly and the whole enterprise causes more erosion, and at the end of the day there is still dirt and dust everywhere. Oh well, so it goes. The mountains around us are so stark as to be eerie at times, some other volunteers say it looks like the moon. I dont really think so, but it does kinda look like some parts of the Southwest. The Southwest is more lush that this desert though. Of course, this is just one small slice of Peru, and as I am learning this country is "mega-diverse" in many ways - flora, fauna, lifezones, climates, geography, peoples, etc etc. Still no more about where we will be for the next two years. My Spanish is coming along and is more boring and frustrating than "cute" as some would say. But it is coming along. "Poco a poco" as every living thing here has told me in these first two weeks. The people are great, we're getting three squares a day, what more could we want? Anyhoo, Im out. Love to all stateside. Love goes out to the incredible Otis, the Little Man of the Woods. His fame has traveled far and wide and I, for one, will miss him very much. Cow ca cow cow. What a great dog. I hope you are all coping well with the loss. Now the only question is how to get Memphis to play in traffic? Love you guys.

Las Fotos!!!!

2006-10-02T18:46:00.000-05:00

Beautiful!

Organic Gardening

Too cute! (cousin Noelia)

Sarah in the kitchen

working hard washing the ropa

School kids with their lunches (oh how sweet!)

Buenos Aires (our new town)

Las Ranas at field day (gincana)

Alpaca (of course it´s standing in the entrance to the store)

Las Pelotas Azules at field day (wonder whose idea that was?)

La Familia (Sarah, Teadoro, and Noelia-cousin)

2006-10-02T18:43:00.000-05:00

This is our host dad. His name is Teodoro. He loves to play soccer, or futbol, as its called here.

Buenos Aires

2006-09-24T14:33:00.000-05:00

We have been in our town now since Sunday and living with the Poma family. It is going really well, the family is so nice-two kids ages 17 and 19. The room is small, cold shower (at least we have one though), and the water works almost all the time. My Spanish is coming back quickly as well as my comfort in conversing. I am already doing some really cool stuff in the community with health education. We are going to start working with the health center, the soup kitchen, and the school, providing presentations and activities on health issues. The town we are in right now is actually fairly progressive and affluent (for Peru that is) so talking about these things doesnt present as many challenges as I am sure my future holds when working in the poorer areas. Patrick is working hard at his Spanish and is using it all the time, it so cute to see him follow our host mom around the house asking her all kinds of questions-she loves it! He has found that comedy is the best way to go, and can make more jokes in Spanish than most fluent people-the man is truly amazing. He will be fluent in no time. The other volunteers are awesome of course, it is so fun to get to know so many people from all over the states. Exercise in the form of running, soccer, and hopefully more frisbee are definitely a big part of our day, as well as Spanish, culture, and safety training. It is amazing how exhausting one can be at the end of a day-I am embarrased to say that we have been going to bed no later than 10pm every night. The food is pretty starchy-potatoes, rice, potatoes, rice. But lucky for us we got a great host mom that cooks lots of veggies and beans (our favorite as you know). We went to a Peruvian discoteca last night with 26 other Peace Corps trainees and our host mom (very awesome) and danced the night away, it was amazing!
One week down and 9 to go...
Keep us in your thoughts and prayers and we cant wait to see you here in Peru!
All the love.

All is well

2006-09-16T20:56:00.000-05:00

Angela and I arrived in Peru after our two day staging orientation in Washington DC. The group of 36 other volunteers is amazing and our experience is getting off to a promising and tiring start. We are still recovering from a huge day of travel to Lima and we have been busy beginning our 10 week training today. Our spanish needs work (especially mine) and the group is already taking bets on who will be hooking up first. Great people, great staff, and a great first experience outside of the United States for little sheltered me. I am officially an unhealthy carnivore again and will continue to be for the next 27 months at least. Angela asked me to write something about her so here it is: Angela is stupid and maybe at some point in the future she will begin writing her own posts. Anyway, this is truly amazing and I am incredibly excited about working here out in the community. On the ride out of Lima from the airport last night we saw an unattended car quietly burning on the side of the highway. I thought to myself that I am no longer in the United States of America. But that sight is not a good description of this place, just a reminder of how different it is here. My energy level is so high right now as I am incredibly excited about what lies ahead for us here. I hope that it stays that way for a while - training is going to be long and stressful, but necessary. Much love to all and will be in touch soon when I actually have real downtime. We head to the training center tomorrow morning in Santa Eulalia and we meet our host families for the next 10 weeks. Should be fun - nothing but good experiences so far, aside from some travel lethargy. Truly, all is well.

Got on a flight. . .

2006-09-11T14:10:00.000-05:00

and we ended up in boston. Thanks to malik for that one. We are visiting family up in boston this week as we build toward our crescendo this friday. I watched a badass show on big wave surfing this morning - very busy as you can see. Our visits with family and friends continue to be remarkable. Great stuff all around. We head back to D.C. on wed. for staging/orientation, then fly to Lima on friday if hurricane florence permits. Will check in soon - next post may be from Peru.

Map Attack

2006-09-07T18:18:00.000-05:00

Here is a link to a good interactive map of Peru - describes cities and some natural areas:

Obnoxiously-scrolling but informative interactive map

Here is a more detailed interactive map with some grammatical license taken:

Incredibly detailed and tiny interactive map

Here is a great physical map of Peru:

Nerdy map of the physical geography of Peru

And if you need more - there are all the maps of peru you could ever want here:

Map Attack

Have fun, map geeks. I did.

Here's a map for cross-referencing and whatnot

2006-09-07T18:11:00.000-05:00

I just noticed

2006-09-07T12:38:00.000-05:00

I would like for it to be noted that the only f bomb dropped on this post was dropped by none other than the highly progressive ordained minister that married Angela and I back in June, one Miss Ann Pittman. Congratulations, Ann, you made the baby Jesus cry.

Mailing address during training

2006-09-07T12:30:00.000-05:00

Our new mailing address for our time in Peace Corps training. Beginning on 9/15/06 and until around 12/1/06 Angela and I can receive letters (no packages yet) at the following address:

Angela or Patrick Bridegam
Cuerpo de Paz
Calle Via Lactea 132
Urb. Los Granados, Surco
Lima 33, Peru

After training we will be assigned to a village or city for two years and will get a regional mailing address at that time. We should have good access to email during that time as well, and we will be in touch about internet access after training ends.

road trip ends

2006-09-07T12:17:00.000-05:00

Angela and I returned from our road trip unharmed to find the weather in Texas relatively cool and dry. Good omen. Much thanks to our L.A. homies Stacy, Sgt Jeffrey Bert LAPD Extrodinaire, Erica, Ivy, Parker, and Ava. Shout out to our San Diego slackers Brook and Jen, Robin, Danny and Toni. And who could forget the congenial Tuscon Halfway House Operators Ashley and Bucky for helping us finish our trip upright. Thanks people, seriously. We have a few busy days to get stuff together before we fly out of DFW on saturday morning. We are going to spend a few days in boston with my family before reporting to staging in Washington D.C. on 9/13. On the morning of 9/15 we will be on a plane to Lima, Peru to begin our ten weeks of Peace Corps training in Santa Eulalia (45 minutes northeast of Lima). I need to go run errands.

The nieces at the beaches

2006-08-29T19:13:00.000-05:00

2006-08-28T14:46:00.000-05:00

Hey all. Still figuring out how to drive this thing. Angela and I are on the Los Angeles leg of a three week road trip. At this stop, we are learning about the wonders of birth control as we spend a few days with my sister and brother (in law) Stacy and Jeff and my four nieces Erica, Ivy, Parker, and Ava. Hopefully we will get to the beach today. After this it is on to San Diego and then back to Houston to prepare for our staging with the Peace Corps in Washington D.C. We spent the last two weeks in Oregon and Northern California - Lake Shasta, Yosemite (crowded), the Rogue River where the salmon were running. Great stuff. I will have to work to spice up my writing style or else this will become the least-cared-for blog out there, which is saying a lot.

testing

2006-08-08T17:54:00.000-05:00

testing