FBT: Field Base Training

Field Base Training (FBT) was one week in the Andes Mountains in northern Peru in a department called Cajamarca. We travelled 23 hours to get there! Above, the red arrow is where I have been training for the past 2 months, and the yellow arrow is where we went for FBT. Basically, FBT gives us trainees an idea of what life is like serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer. It was a challenging week, but by far the most exciting week yet! We stayed in a beautiful town of about 17,000 ppl, where a current Peace Corps Volunteer resides. Here is a pic of San Miguel, Cajamarca:

I LOVE THIS TOWN! Believe it or not, me and two of my other classmates taught business to 24 college students! Each day of the 3 class days, we taught for 6 hours in Spanish the themes of:
-Entrepreneurship/ What is an Entrepreneur?
-Feasibility
-Market Analysis
-Finance
-Accounting
-Marketing
My amazing co-professors and I in being silly in San Miguel, and here I am teaching class:

The fourth day, we had the students actually apply what they learned and start a small business. We split our class into four groups of 6 students each, and gave them each a loan of up to $30 in which they had a day to pursue their business and repay the loan to us with 2% interest. I remember doubting one group who wanted to do a free movie showing in which they would sell their products. I thought it was a great idea, but their break-even point of sales was over 300 popcorn/tomales/and juices! I was sure they were absurd to think this could be reached on a Wednesday night, but sure enough:

300 ppl showed up to watch Titanic and our business group easily surpassed their break-even point, and ended the night with huge profits! It blew my mind, watching the movie was the biggest high I have felt since I have joined the Peace Corps. It was so rewarding! I hope that these kids can continue to apply their abilities and make this a sustainable business. 17,000 ppl in a town with no movie theatre and 6 months of rainy season = great market! I am so proud of them! We also had 2 teams make typical Peruvian dishes (of course including Ginnea Pig!) and 1 team make Popsicles, which we were lucky enough to spend a couple hours with them actually making the popsicles from scratch!

In San Miguel, there were 3 teams of 3 peace corps trainees/professors teaching 25 students. In total there were 13 small businesses who were all able to pay back their loan, and on top of that, made earnings totalling 750 Soles (about $250, which is so much money here!) At the end each student received a certificate which stated that they were trained in business by American Gov’t –or of some sorts J Here is my fellow professors, Salvador, James and I with our class:

Yay we survived FBT and it was a success!

The last night in San Miguel, our students threw us a dancing party! We had a campfire and danced all night! Sure am gonna miss those kids…

Unfortnaltly my biggest high was shortly followed by my biggest low—I finally got sick. Friday morning I woke up vomiting and #2-ing like crazy…the worst part was we had 6 hours of mountain bus travelling! At one point I even told a taxi driver to pull over and got out of the car to vomit in front of everyone! In a different bus I was used as a baby diaper changing table for the Peruvian mother next to me. I soon explained to the woman that if she didn’t get her child off my lap I would probably vomit on it. When this lady finally got off the bus, another woman walked one with a baby pig in a plastic bag! I just wanted the day to end.

Fortunatly, sickness is only temporary. By the end of the day in hell, I was starting to feel better. We met up with the other 9 business volunteers in Trujillo (refer to map above) and got to spend a day and a half relaxing at the beach! The boys went surfing, while the 4 of us girls watched and chilled out. It was a great way to finish the trip.

Peruvian kayaks:
(This will probably be the closest I get to white-water playboating!)

Training Classes

So training classes aren’t exactly like your typical college class. Our classes are pretty entertaining. We do a lot of hands-on type learning, especially when it comes to culture:















And in-class cooking lessons! Here is a delicious typical dish of Peru which we cooked called Ahi de gallina:














We even have presentations on different departments of Peru to learn different customs and traditions. Here I am wearing the traditional clothing of the dept. Ancash:



















Quite flattering don’t ya think? I am looking forward to rocking this at site. Below, we are acting out a tradition in Northern Peru where people dance around a tree and each person hits stump with an axe and when the tree falls, the person who hit it last becomes the patron of next years fiesta! Because the patron must pay and plan for the entire festival the following year, each person barely taps the tree with the axe! Don’t worry though, us Peace Corps wouldn’t actually act it out and kill a tree:














Something that I just had to add to my blog because its just too funny…Peace Corps reviews a lot of HIV/AIDS and STD education, and with that proper CONDOM USAGE! To ensure we are retaining the information, we had a mandatory relay race in which we split into 3 teams and each person ran down, put a condom on a dildo (for lack of a better word), took it off, tied it, and ran back. Unfortunately, our team lost the relay race, but the experience was just unforgettable:














Sometimes we go on fieldtrips! Just the other day we went to Lima to check out an artisan fair, where 3 volunteers came from all over Peru with their artisan groups which they work with at site. The artisans here make the most incredible goods:















Some school days are even followed by guitar classes from fellow PC trainees. They are teaching all 10 or so of us inspired Peace Corps Trainees guitar basics so that during the downtime of our 2 year service we can become pretty badass guitar players. Here’s a little insight into guitar lessons with Sal and James:














So as you can see, life is good over here. I will try to post tomorrow about the incredible Field Base Training which I just got back from. It is late now though, I am going to sleep in my beautiful bed (imagine me sleeping):

Fun Times and Good pics

Fun times before FBT
Callahuanca
So I have realized I haven’t posted many pics, and have just been writing too much. Don’t you kids worry, cuz this is about to change. So I mentioned before I took a field trip to Callahuanca to see a trout farm, and see how business works in mountain areas. It was amazing, and heres some pics to show for it! And a group shot:

This makes me want to be live in the mountains so badly! I can’t wait to learn where my site is! Also, here’s a trout farm we learned about:

Also, there are incredible Incan ruins and carvings at this site. The rock formations were stunning, and you can also see how big my heart is.

Take a look at the rock formations! Can you see a dog?

So this town was incredible, I am excited for site!

Lima
I mentioned that I am about an hour and a half from Lima, (really no more than 30min in taxi w/o traffic, but that’s just unrealistic and expensive). So, you are probably thinking what is Lima like? Its big, bad, beautiful and crazy:

So, these are the nicest pictures of Lima. The city itself is pretty dangerous. The higher touristy areas are defiantly safer, but theft is a problem, and one must always be aware of their surroundings. As I may have mentioned before, right outside of Lima, almost every Saturday, we attend an agriculture institute where we are learning how to farm and grow sustainable agriculture. Here are some pics from this learning adventure:

Maybe they just want us to do their dirty work. Just kidding, its been a lot of fun.

Training and home:

My host family loves me dearly, and I love them too J I know I’ve mentioned they are overprotective, but that’s just how it is here. I believe I mentioned before I made my family pancakes one day which is defiantly is picture worthy for those of you that have lived with me and know my (lack of) cooking skills…:

Needless to say, my host family loved the banana pancakes dripped in honey! The good cooking doesn’t end there. Of the 38 volunteers in training in Peru right now, 9 of us live in Huascaran (pictured in a previous post). The other trainees live in nearby neighbourhoods. The Huascaran-ers (pronounced West-Koran-ers) decided to unite together and make our host families burritos one Sunday. What a success!! All the families showed up, and each voulunteer brought a different ingredient or cooked goodness to the table. It was quite a hit, and heres some pics to prove it:

Upon popular belief, most Peruvians have never eaten burritos! Below is a picture of the nine of us and our families which showed up to our big lunch bash!

Huascaran neighbourhood Volunteers!

Check out my buddy, James Ofczar...? 's blog --click the link on the right, hes great at posting! good times...

July 11 2008

Dear blog,
Next week I am going 17 hours away to Cajamarca in northern Peru to teach 6hrs a day of Business in Spanish to University students studying to be professors! I’d be lying if I were to say I am not scared shitless. Two of by wonderful fellow volunteers and I are, believe it or not, teaching 3 full day classes to about 20 students followed by a day long simulation with the students. The simulation involves groups of 5 students who open a one-day small micro business, which can be as simple as a lemonade stand. The idea behind this simulation is that we give the groups about $30 to buy their products and do marketing around the community. The students must return the money in addition to a two percent interest to us, and the rest of the money they earn through their business is theirs to keep. The students must keep a record of all their credits and debts, and use the knowledge we teach them to be a successful business. So, that’s the general overview. I’m really excited but especially nervous about the language barrier and the amount of time we are actually teaching for. I can’t wait to write the next post and let you all know how it goes!
Other crazy things: The other day there was a strike against a raise in the cost of living. I hear in some parts of Peru there were huge riots and fires. For us, the most excitement was in that our Spanish classes were canceled in the morning. Instead, I took the morning to cook banana pancakes (with a touch of honey) for my host family! It was AMAZING!
I experienced my biggest wave of culture shock the other day walking to class with my fellow volunteers one of which has an adorable dog—‘Sweater-Dog’—who walks with us all the way. Sweater-Dog (who wears a camouflage sweater everyday) was minding his own business when two other dogs started barking at him. Sweater-Dog ran after the dogs, who all three began to chase after a car that was driving down the road. The car did not stop, or even slow down as the dogs approached it. Instead, the car just ran directly over Sweater-Dog! The car continued down the road, as if it were nothing. Fortunately Sweater-Dog made it out alive, but was limping very painfully. We asked the host family to take it to the vet. It turns out he has a couple broken ribs and will fortunately be okay. I still can’t believe how that car never slowed down or looked back—that is what was so shocking. L
On a more positive note, my computer crashed and I have an awesome tech-savvy host cousin who put a bunch a weird codes in my computer and fixed it! Its now running better than ever J
I am starting to think knitting isn’t my specialty, and my 1/4th of a scarf in progress is approaching just plain embarrassing.
We celebrated Fourth of July! Hope ya’ll had a good one, we played field games and had hamburgers and peanut butter! It was amazing! Okay, those are all the updates for now, I will post after my Field Base Training next week. Peace.

A new month, a new blog!

Hey yall!
No worries, I am still alive and breathing! No diarrhea episodes yet--knocking on wood! We are twiteling down on the number of people who can still say that. Anywho so I left the US a month ago tomorrow for this adventure...its gone so fast really, only 26 more...I feel like I am practically home! Everyday is a new adventure, and I have learned so much since my last post! First, Ive picked up a couple hobbies in my little spare time: 1) Knitting--I am working on my first scarf, its a beauty, cant wait to show ya! 2) Guitar playing-- yup! thats right, I now play the guitar (mas o menos) but I do have the help of two avid players and purchased a very nice classical slightly smaller than 3/4ths size guitar (for a whopping $40 including case, book, strap, pick) ---oh, and dont worry, this will be followed by singing lessons as well as soon as I get back in that U S of A. 3) learning how to farm both normally and organically, and 4) trout farming, thats right, I can raise my own trout farm now...what you think about that? Thanks government funding for these incredible new talents! This is just the first month! Just imagine after 26 more, you guys wont even know what to do with me. So Ive had a couple questions about what I am doing here so Ill explain. I am living in a small town called Huescaran with a wonderful family pictured below. I will be living here for 3 months (until Aug. 22). During this time, I am training and learning better spanish, and Peruvian business trades. I attend school/training in the small town of Chaclacayo which is a 15min walk from my house. I hand wash my own panties, socks and bras. This town is about an hour and a half from Lima, the capital of Peru. After Aug. 22, I will be send to a different part of Peru, probably at least 10 hours away from here to live with a small, rural town and new family and new life for 2 years helping with business development!! Its kinda scary not going to lie...Its def going to be an emotional roller coaster. Anywho, with the support of all of yall that love me and can accompany me through my loneliest times in life –I think I can do it. I will make a change, if only just a little, in this crazy world down here. Peace.
I MISS YOU ALL!!!! xoxo