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.