Done with Lima for now...

Proper format for my new address:

Katie M. Lee, PCV
Cuerpo de Paz
Casilla #48
Serpost, Chota
Cajamarca, Peru S.A.

Don't worry if you have already sent anything to the other address, it should be fine this is just a better format. I arrived in Cajamarca yesterday and have been enjoying a little bit of wifi at our hostel before I head out to site tomorrow...I really dont know what to expect...not sure if Ill have my cell connection and I know I wont have internet. I'll take pictures and hopefully have some good things to report next time I'm online...

Happy thanksgiving, lots of love....

K.

I know my site!!!!

Well, in true Peace Corps training fashion things have been prohibitively busy this week and so this has been my first chance to post on my site!!! It all started two weeks ago in Lima, we were all at the big office in Surco to find out our sites...we did it by throwing a mini javelin at balloons and reading out the names it was fun :)I had one of those surreal moments when I heard my name, held my breath, and was very happy to hear the word Cajamarca in the name of my site! It was an emotional and fun day, with dancing and getting to know the staff at the Peace Corps office, then we were all off to our next field based training and thats where I was all last week. Sooo, since I'm officially swearing in as a volunteer in the morning and have a lot to get packed tonight I´ll give a quick rundown of where I'm going to be with lots of details to come later:

The name of my site is La Paccha and it is in the department of Cajamarca, about 5 hours north of Cajamarca city and 20 hours north of Lima by bus.

There are about 900 people in the town, and it is surrounded by mountains on all sides, and about an hour and a half to the nearest town with internet.

Im replacing another health volunteer who did great work at site including setting up a library for kids in Paccha.

My family seems great so far, and I feel kind of 'poshcorps' with my room as its cement not adobe, and very clean. I also have desagua which means a toilet with a seat so rock on!

My community partners will be a doctor and obstetriz, the doctors name is Stalin which I find rather entertaining, cant wait to find out the story behind that one, and he is from Bolivia originally but came to Paccha to work in rural health.

I already got to sit in on a charla-meeting on malnutrition in children in the nearby villages that are very poor, and I will be working most with these communities.

I think Im going to use the city of Chota as my home base for getting things done (bank, email, some phone calls), its about 3 hours away from Paccha, but has a nice hostel, the volunteers rent a room there for very cheap for when they need to stay over and Ill get a key, and theres a yummy restaurant that doesnt make me sick and has wireless.

Even though Cajamarca currently has 36 volunteers, there are only 3 of us going from my volunteer group....me, Barbara, and Annie..they are a lot of fun and Ill tell you more about them later, but we are all in the health program while many of the other cajamarquino volunteers are youth development and nearer to cities rather than in rural areas like us. Ill be about an hour and a half from Annie, so shes the closest I have to a site mate.

Everyone I spoke to in Chota about La Paccha always pointed out that its famous for its wonderful pineapples and coffee plants. While its in the mountains, its about an hour geographically from the Selva and the perfect climate for all sorts of amazing vegetation and landscapes, its beautiful. Paccha actually means waterfall in Quechua, and the name suits well as there are many nearby.

Below are pictures from Field based training in Cajamarca, four cuys had to die for our lunch and we were not spared the view...then the pictures of my site at La Paccha, and the view from my bedroom window with the mountains and roof.

I swear in officially tomorrow, its going to be a tough day as there are some people Im going to miss a lot..thankfully though I feel great about the 2 other girls going too, and my other friend Matt is about as close as possible for not being in Cajamarca, so I feel lucky about that.

Lots more pictures and news to come soon, and Ill give more details about reaching me at site, like if ill have cell reception etc. as there was none during my visit but they said thats not always the case.

My new address in Chota is below, mail makes me smile and once Im at site Ill have a lot of letters to write and send.
Con Cariño
K.


Kathryn M. Lee, PCV
Cuerpo de Paz
Casilla #48
Chota,Cajamarca-Peru

Cordilleras...and Field Based Training take one

I finally have been able to get pictures up, yay! So its been a whirlwind of a week....Tuesday I was in bed sick barely able to move, by wednesday I was back to semi functional and hopped on the 8 hour bus trip for Huarez...it was an incredible ride, started off in oh so lovely Lima, then we started winding through the desert dunes on the Panamerican highway heading north to the department of Ancash, then desert turned to coastline and we saw the Pacific, then we started winding our way up into the Andes, by sunset we were definitely VERY high up on switchbacks and I just looked out the window taking it in for a long time, then by about 10 we arrived in Huarez. Huarez was completely destroyed in 1970 by a massive earthquake that killed 70,000 in Ancash alone and so it may not be the most gorgeous, but when we awoke the next morning the air felt incredible after being in the coast with the dry dust and dirt everywhere, it felt great. Then we headed another 2 hours out to the first volunteer living site we were visiting, it was a rock-dirt road for two thirds of the ride up and I think its pretty impassible in the rainy season-dec through march-when we got there we put our things down in a little hostel like place where climbers stay the night before they hike the tallest mountain in Peru, Huascaran...we were literally at the base of this mountain it was a fabulous site, this guy we stayed with got really lucky. The town has about 2000 but its spread out among surrounding villages higher up too. The first day we built latrines, not just the hole in the ground ones but with three different rock filters and tubing for a house that has 12 people and no bathroom only the chackra or surrounding farm.Oh, and just for laughs of course I happened to brush into a cactus...however I after me like three others did too over the course of the day so I wasnt the only idiot. After that the volunteer was having a party with the locals to celebrate the end of the Latrine project so they had LOTS of Cuys waiting to be devoured...first came the giblet soup then came the Cuy...I had one of its little legs, and just grabbed it by its paw to try get the meat off...theres like NO meat on the thing so I tried my best but I don´t really understand what the point is, although people who are used to it probably dont mind eating the skin to, but not for me thanks. The whole time I just kept reminding myself that in the states we eat far more disgusting things we are just more removed from the animal that our meat comes from, I also had to remind myself of that with the Giblet soup I had 4 times over the course of 2 days hehe. We also did workshops on early childhood stimulation, home visits to check on cocinas that were put in houses with tubing to ensure that the smoke goes outside. Im actually pretty excited to see if my site has a need for cocinas mejoradas because I think its a cool project if I can get a grant for it. We learned how to construct one of the cocinas as well with different techniques. So I got to see two different sites in Ancash, one near the cordillera negra which obviously looks like the black mountains from a distance, and one at the fabulous base of the cordillera blanca covered in snow! Both sites had a fair number of Quechua speakers, though Id still of course use spanish with many, and both sites get very isolated and inaccessible during the rainy season. Anyway only one volunteer is going to Ancash so my hearts not set on it, but I DO really want Sierra so fingers crossed for this week. Regardless it was great to get out of Lima and see some of the Andes, not just some, but the highest mountain there is..and even though I was missing celebrating Halloweeen and felt really far away on the bus ride back to Lima we did an overnight ride and left at 10 50 halloween night, so I just watched out the window as we did the switchbacks back through the mountains and there was a full mooon so it was a pretty fab way to spend halloween...although we did all joke that my costume was Pepto Bismol because I was wearing pink hahaha...some people dose up on that stuff here like mad but understandably because you can´t trust anything you eat especially with all the new things we all ate this week in the sierra, I cant really remember the name of a lot of them but I´ll email the volunteers we met and find out for future reference. On a side note, Peruvians know how to do NICE bus travel, I guess I had sort of blocked out just how uncomfortable my bed has been but when I got into one of these reclining seats I was in heaven for 8 hours, its like 10 soles more than other bus services but since buses have been hijacked sometimes even with locals on them and people have been robbed, etc, Peace Corps only allows volunteers to travel on certain lines and this one was one of them, they film you getting on, check your passport, and only allow a bathroom for peeing, which means if you have to do anything else the entire bus knows about it as its a process of stopping and letting you off to the local bathroom, pretty hilarious unlesss its you...so those of you who might visit, buses might not be as bad as I thought we will see.

So as far as the pictures, start from the bottom up is better....the ones with the kids were at the WaWawasi from last week so cute! The kids danced and sang for us, then there are some from my bonfire with my family, then ones of our trip to Huarez, sorry these are all of the cordillera negra ill have to find my ones of Huascaran..then the little girl was absolutely filthy trying to eat worms in the grass while we built the latrine but she got all cleaned up then started at the dirt again, she was running around like crazy and I think she was pretty tired when I took these ones....then the last ones are of on halloween we did a workshop with youth 14-15 year olds and made piñatas, mine was hideous and the volunteers couldnt stop mocking me so I turned it into a lechuga and got totally upstaged by the kids but it was fun, last but not least was today, dia de los santos and it was with my host mom and her friend Carmen, we made Wawas-Quechua for babies- and they thought it was funny I did mine in the shape of babies and again made fun of me profusely but it was entertaining...we literally made like 500 of the things its a traditional sweet bread for this day and we made it in an earthen oven outside, yum yum!

So I feel great I got to get outside of Lima, this week is going to be busy I think, and friday we find out our sites, I realllly want to know mine and start to at least imagine where I might be going, all next week Ill be at said regional field based training and then visiting my site until I return for my last week of training, Ill update as soon as I am able.
Oh and by the way, for those of you who dont believe me about the chicken feet in the soup having serious riger mortis or however you spell that look at the last picture below up close, I took it especially to demonstrate!

Con Cariño