“Thank you for your happy!”

This entire blog post is going to be about Field Based Training.  I don’t know if I’ve explained what FBT is, so I’ll go ahead and do it now. FBT is a weeklong trip filled to the brim with different activities and lessons.  Each group of Trainees visits different Volunteers’ sites and carries out charlas (basically like classes) over different subjects, as well as observes current Volunteers’ give their own charlas. This week of training is when most Trainees say they feel most like a Volunteer and become excited for swearing in.

 Day 1, Sunday, July 17, 2011: My group of 12 Trainees, our tech trainer Lindsay, and one of our Directors Miriam traveled to the Province of La Libertad. After our 9 hour overnight bus ride on Saturday,  we were met in Trujillo, the capital city, by two current volunteers Ian and Kelsi.  Ian and Kelsi planned our entire schedule for the week and accompanied us the whole time.  We arrived in Trujillo at 7:30am on Sunday, and from then on out things were crazy! The first day was pretty relaxing and laid back. We had a panel of current La Libertad Volunteers in which we asked them every question under the sun, from their Spanish level upon arrival to the best place to get ceviche. Afterwards we had a quick scavenger hunt to get to know the city and then headed to Huanchaco, a beach town about 30 minutes away. Here we had lunch and a couple hours of free time to explore the area. The beach was beautiful, even though it was a dreary day. That evening I had my first anticuchos experience for dinner! Anticuchos is what the Peruvians call the stomach of a cow. Sounds gross, huh? Definitely not gross! They lather ‘em up with spices, stick them on a kebab, and grill them right there on the street. If you ever come to Peru and want a quick, delicious, and cheap dinner, I suggest anticuchos!

Day 2, Monday, July, 18, 2011: We traveled about an hour and a half to another beach town called Puerto Malabrigo, where a current YD Volunteer lives.  Here we observed a charla over the importance of dental hygiene to a group of 4, 5, and 6 year olds. Then we each partnered up with a child and taught them how to correctly brush their teeth. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially with children so young, but it wasn’t too bad. I was paired up with a cute little girl and she told me and another Trainee that we were Princesses. She was so adorable! After this activity we went to a Special Education School in the same town. Special Education Schools are hard to come by in Peru, and if there is one, they are almost always underfunded. The Director gave us a presentation about her school and Special Ed in Peru, then we got to visit with the students for a little while. It was a cool experience but it definitely made me realize how hard life can be for children with special needs. Afterwards at lunch, we learned the true facts about the Director and the school we had just visited. During her presentation, the Director tooted her own horn a lot and made herself look like a Saint because of all the hard she’s been doing for her students. Erin, though, had another story. This Director is a fraud. When Erin (the Volunteer at this site) first started working with this school she went around neighboring towns with the Director and recruited 3 or 4 children with special needs who were qualified to go to this school. The Director promised the families that the Municipality would pay for their child’s education as well as travel to and from school 3 days a week. Obviously, the families were so grateful and excited for this opportunity. So the Director turns in their enrollment forms to the Municipality and receives the funding to pay for their tuition and travel. Awesome, right? Nope. The Director kept this money, and never again contacted the families to include them in the school. Nobody knows where this money is going or what she’s doing with it. It was definitely interesting to see the contrasts in stories from Erin and the Director. I realized that people will often lie to make themselves and their organization look good and that you can’t always trust one person’s word. You have to ask numerous people to get the full story. Anyway, after lunch we headed to the beach! Here we met the members of a surfing school that Erin works with. We helped the kids with a beach clean-up (which they could stand to do every day, because the beach is littered with trash), and then some of us put on wet suits and helped the kids surf! It was too chilly for me to justify jumping in the Pacific, so I stayed on the sidelines and watched. After traveling back to Trujillo we went to a Pollo Abrasado restaurant, which was delicious! Pollo abrasado is basically roasted chicken that is served with a mound of french fries and tons of different sauces. One piece of advice if you visit Peru: when you ask for ketchup, you won’t get ketchup. The ketchup here is a lot sweeter and has a purpleish color. It’s not terrible, but it’s definitely not ketchup!

Day 3, Tuesday, July 19, 2011: We hopped on yet another combi and traveled about 45 minutes away to the pueblo of Bello Horizonte, where Ian lives as a YD Volunteer.  In the morning we taught English classes to elementary school students.  This was the first charla of the week, and it went okay. My partner, Brice, and I had a bit of a tough class. The children were very rowdy and didn’t exactly listen to instructions. However, we did have some cool activities planned so they were at least engaged most of the time. We taught them the English alphabet and some basic colors and had activities to go with each.  Afterwards we observed Ian and Kelsi give a charla about communication with parents, and then we had to give our own charla to middle and high school students.  This charla went a lot better than the first one. The kids were interested and actually thought we were funny sometimes.  I’m not sure if they were laughing WITH us or AT us, but it doesn’t matter because we were all having a good time.  This charla boosted my confidence quite a bit because it seemed like the students understood what I was saying and were engaged most of the time.  Afterwards we had some lunch and walked to Ian’s house.  He’s definitely not living at the Ritz, but he has decent accommodations.  I could definitely make it in a house like his.  After meeting some of the members of his family and walking around the pueblo we took a combi to the Aldea Infantil in a town about 10 minutes away.  Aldea Infantil is a lot like a children’s home or foster care.  It’s not an orphanage because many of the children living there have a family.  In all cases, the living conditions at their respective houses were terrible, and thus they were taken away by the government and placed in the Aldea.  Many of the children come from a background of abuse; physical, sexual, and mental.  For these children to be taken out of their homes and be placed here their circumstances must be absolutely horrible.  It was easy to pick out the children that come from abuse, and it was almost devastating to realize the tough lives that they have all led.  The Aldea is an interesting place because of the way it is run.  There are 6 or 7 houses on the property, and each house has a “Tia” and anywhere from 10-15 children that live there.  The Tias live in the houses and take care of the children.  They prepare breakfast, make their lunches, and prepare dinner.  All of the children are required to go to school during the day and then return to the Aldea.  After school each house a required homework time.  Each child has to finish his or her homework before he or she is allowed to go outside and play.  It’s incredibly sad that organizations such as the Aldea have to exist, but it’s very fortunate that they do because the children are living a much better life than before they were placed here.  They are guaranteed 3 meals a day, they go to school, they have a bed and a roof over their heads, they always have water, they have playgrounds, and they have someone to watch over them.  It’s really an incredible organization and I’m so glad I had to opportunity to see what it was all about.  After an hour or so at the Aldea we combied back to Trujillo for the evening.  This night was probably the worst night of FBT.  We had a debriefing as soon as we got back to the hostel, and it lasted over 2 hours.  I don’t think we went to dinner until 9 or so.  During the debrief we all got critiqued on each of the different activities for the day, and it seemed a little harsh.  These were the first charlas we’ve done that we were being evaluated on and it was a little difficult to take the critiques.  I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we were all extremely tired and worn out, but it was hard nonetheless.  Then after being told about all of the things we did wrong, they sprung a huge activity on us for the next day.  We had to write a session plan in Spanish over a charla about the environment or the importance of hygiene.  Let me explain to you a session plan- it is a minute by minute account of absolutely everything you will be doing during your charla.  Every activity has to be explained in detail so that you could hand the session plan to a complete stranger, and that person would be able to carry out the entire charla without your guidance.  To say the least, session plans are not easy to write, especially in Spanish, and over a topic that I know nothing about.  This would not have been a big deal if we had been given more time to prepare, but we were given the assignment at 9pm and were expected to have a completed session plan before we went to bed that night.  All of us were pretty upset and on edge for the rest of the night, but we got everything done and were able to get a few hours of sleep.

Day 4, Wednesday, July 20, 2011:  On top of staying up late to complete our session plans the night before, we had to be up and ready to leave by 7am, which was a greeeeaaaat start to the morning.  We hopped on a van to Otuzco, which was about an hour and a half up the mountain.  We had all planned on using this time to go over our session plans and prepare a little more for our charlas, but it turned out that we all suffered from motion sickness.  The road was incredibly curvy and our driver didn’t understand the concept of slowing down so we were all struggling to keep our breakfast down instead of preparing ourselves for our charlas.  Once we got to Otuzco we headed to the hostel, dropped off our stuff, and went straight to the school to give our charlas.  Each of us gave our own charla, so we had another trainee sit in our class and do a peer review.  First I sat in on Kelly’s class, and then she on mine.  I realized how difficult it is to fill an entire hour with activities and lessons.  I was finished with my charla and still had about 10 minutes left to kill, so I just chatted with the class about Peruvian and American foods and had a cultural exchange of sorts.  For being my first solo charla, I think it went pretty well.  Besides the time management thing, it was okay.  The kids liked my activities and thought I was hilarious.  My theme was about cleaning up the streets and river and respecting the environment, and one of my activities included throwing trash all over the classroom during a conversation.  The kids thought this was hilarious because I was literally hurling trash everywhere.  I think this activity helped me relax and realize that Peruvian youth can actually enjoy learning.  So despite the fact that we had little time to prepare and we were all upset about the charla, I think it went well for everyone.  I actually had the opportunity to do my charla twice because the school asked us to give more charlas to more classrooms than we had originally planned, so some of us went twice.  The second time was a lot smoother than the first because I actually knew what I was doing, and I also had a partner.  The second class was full of older students so they weren’t quite as participative, but it still went okay.  Wednesday was a pretty monumental day for me because not only did I give my first solo charla, but I tried cuy! Cuy is Spanish for Guinea Pig, and yes, they do eat them here.  This area of the Sierras is known for its abundance of good cuy, so I felt compelled to try it.  Cuy is actually pretty tasty, but there’s not a lot of meat on it.  Also, you have to get past the fact that the feet and head are still attached.  I’m almost positive I was gnawing on a cuy toenail at one point :-/  But once you overlook all of that stuff, it’s not too bad.  After lunch some of the group went on a hike up a nearby mountain.  I was contemplating going, but I had sprained my ankle the day before at the Aldea and quite frankly, I didn’t really want to go hiking.  It’s a good thing I didn’t go because we did some research and found out that we were at an altitude of over 8,000 feet, and since we all know that Kansas doesn’t have elevation like this, I probably would have died.  So instead of bursting my lungs, I chose to stay behind and take a nap.  This was quite possibly the best decision I made all week!  That night we all had a variety of street food that was all delicious.  I could live in Otuzco solely for the street food.  After the tasty experience on the streets we had yet another debrief that took way too long, and were given another assignment.  This time we all took it much better and were more ready to work than the night before.  We were still up past midnight and had to be awake and ready by 7am, but our moods were drastically better than Tuesday.

Day 4, Thursday, July 21, 2011: We headed out of the hostel at 7am and caught a bus down the mountain to a town called Poroto, where Kelsi lives.  The first task was to quickly drop our stuff off at the hostel, but we’ve learned that things never go as planned.  Turns out the couple who owned the place weren’t in communication with their son, who took our reservation over a month earlier.  Therefore, they had no idea we were coming and didn’t have enough space for us.  So a quick drop-off turned into a long conversation about what to do.  The couple agreed to let us leave our things there for the day and they would try to figure something out for us.  So after a good 20 minutes we finally headed to the local secundaria school to give our charlas.  My partner, Jessica, and I had prepared a charla over orientación vocacional, which is basically vocational orientation.  The concept of goal-setting is very foreign to Peruvian youth so this is what we focused our charla on.  We went over the steps involved in setting and achieving a goal.  One of the steps is to evaluate the goal and understand if it is realistic or not.  If it’s not realistic, it is necessary to change it.  To demonstrate the different steps Jessica and I did a little role play.  My goal was to be a singer.  I told the entire class that I was the greatest singer in all of Peru and that I had the voice of an angel.  I just kept building myself up to be this awesome singer.  When they begged me to sing for the class I purposefully butchered it which they thought was hilarious.  I had to swallow a bit of my pride to stand in from of 30 students and sound like a dying dog, but it was worth it to make them laugh.  In case you didn’t know, Peruvian youth don’t laugh or smile when they don’t know you.  So to have an entire class erupt in laughter was an awesome thing for me.  Anyway, the entire class was focused on the students setting a goal and figuring out a way to meet it.  We had them each draw out what they want to be when they grow up, three abilities or things they need to do in order to achieve it, and one ability they already possess.  The class didn’t seem too incredibly interested in the activity, but in the end they all participated without much prompting so it went well.  After making a fool of myself in front of the class and finishing the charla we headed to a town about 10 minutes away to a primaria school.  When we arrived we realized that they had prepared a show for us.  All of the students were outside, standing in their lines, marching for us.  They marched and sang the Peruvian national anthem, which has about 89 verses.  It was really cool because they were so excited to see all of us and show off their marching skills.  After this we split up into groups and carried out some different dinamicas (games) with different groups.  We were only there for about an hour but it was really fun.  Next we headed to lunch and then off to the local Health Post that Kelsi works with a lot.  The director or main doctor gave us a little presentation about the post, and then we met with some Promotores de Salud.   Promotores de Salud are secundaria students who are interested in health and meet with Kelsi once a week to go over different health-related themes.  Kelly and I paired up with the president of the club, Paty.  Let me tell you something about Paty- she is going to be the president of Peru when she’s older, and she would definitely have my vote.  This girl is going places.  I only knew her for a few hours, but she showed me that she is very determined and driven.  We worked with her to prepare a charla about the importance of dental health to give to a secundaria class the next day.  Paty knew everything there was to know about teeth and caring for them.  I’m fairly certain she thought Kelly and I were crazy because of the way we were acting.  We’re learning that when you don’t know how to express yourself in Spanish, all you need to do is laugh at yourself and Peruvians will love you.  They make think you’re crazy, but they’ll love you nonetheless.  After our successful meeting planning with Paty we headed back to the hostel to start cooking dinner.  There’s only one restaurant in Poroto so we decided to make dinner instead of go to the restaurant.  We had gluten-free pancakes made with oatmeal, eggs, and bananas, as well as an egg scramble.  Pretty delicious dinner.  After dinner we had the whole night to do basically whatever we wanted.  Some of us decided that the only way to pass the time was to have a dance party.  I made the mistake of saying “Dance Party 2001,” so the new phrase became “Such a blast it’s from the past!”  Needless to say we had a great time, and there are plenty of pictures to prove it.  After tiring ourselves out we decided to retire for the night only to find out that there were 11 beds for 16 people. Cool.  So we did some bed swapping and sharing and finally figured it out.  I ended up sharing a twin size bed with our tech trainer, Lindsay.  Not the roomiest of beds, but it worked out.  Some of us stayed up telling ghost stories so it was actually kind of nice to share a bed because I wasn’t as scared.  All in all, a good night’s sleep.

Day 4, Friday, July 22, 2011:  We didn’t have to be ready to leave until 9:15 so it was nice to sleep in a bit.  After gathering all of our things we headed back into town to drop off our stuff at Kelsi’s house then go to the school to give our charlas with our health promoters.  Turns out that the school director had forgotten we were coming and had invited another school to have a series of sports competitions throughout the day, so none of the students wanted to be in class.  We were planning on eating the loss and just weren’t going to give the charlas, but Kelsi and the health promoters were insistent.  Eventually they wrangled up around 10-15 students for each class and we went ahead with the plan.  Paty rocked that classroom.  Kelly and I were basically just there to help her if she needed it, but she definitely didn’t need our help at all.  She had that class on lock down and did such a great job!  It was really cool to see a young person so determined to do a good job, it was actually pretty inspiring.  Soon enough it was time for lunch so we said Adios to Paty and her gang and headed to the restaurant for a leisurely lunch.  After lunch we once again split into pairs and had to carry out different community diagnostic tools.  I’ll talk more about what exactly is a community diagnostic in another post, but basically it’s all about gathering information about a town.  Each of us will have to create a community diagnostic for the first three months at site, so it was nice to have a little practice.  We all gathered out information and went back to Kelsi’s house where her family was waiting to meet us and feed us copious amounts of delicious pineapple.  If ever there was a perfect host family, this was it.  They were so kind and welcoming and just wanted to sit and talk to all of us and learn about us.  After about an hour of sharing and touring the house we grabbed our stuff and headed back to Trujillo for our last night of FBT.  Basically the entire afternoon was free time, so we just chilled and took some time to relax.  For dinner some of us decided to venture off to an Italian restaurant that is apparently known all over La Libertad for its pizza.  The pizza was delicious, to say the least!  This was essentially the end of the night for me, except for a little free internet time before bed.

Day 6, Saturday, July 23, 2011:  The last day of FBT was a fun one.  We headed back to Bello Horizonte (Ian’s town) to paint a mural with some of his youth.  The purpose of the mural was to signify the importance of taking care of the environment.  The kids had already painted trash cans to place around the community in an earlier project , so we helped them distribute those as well.  I didn’t get to participate in the entire project because I actually went back to Poroto with another girl because she thought she has left her jacket there the night before and she needed someone to possibly help her with her Spanish.  So we took the 30 minute combi back to the hostel only to find out that her jacket wasn’t there.  We searched everywhere, talked with the owner, questioned the cleaning lady, and came up with nothing.  Disappointed, we headed back to help finish the mural.  After completing as much of the mural as we could we ate some lunch and went back to Trujillo.  The rest of the afternoon was free time except for a slight excursion that we had planned to surprise Ian and Kelsi.  Basically, we all met up in the lobby of the hostel, blindfolded Ian and Kelsi, and kidnapped them for a little bit.  We taxied them out to the mall and treated them to Starbucks (which is incredibly expensive here) and gave them some certificates that we had made them to thank them for planning such a great week for us.  After this we did some shopping and spent the rest of the afternoon being lazy around the hostel.  At the last minute Lindsay, Richard, and I decided to taxi ourselves out to Huanchaco, the beach town about 30 minutes away, to try these famous mango burgers everyone was talking about.  Definitely worth the trip because they were delicious!  However, there were some bad parts to our little impromptu trip.  I’m almost positive we were about to get robbed while sitting on the outside patio of the restaurant.  These two Peruvian boys came to deliver eggs to the restaurant, and every time they walked by they blatantly stared at my purse.  Had they not been so obvious about it, they might have actually succeeded in robbing us.  We all noticed the excessive staring so we became more aware of them.  After the eggs had all been delivered the two of them stood behind their moto-taxi talking and pointing at us.  When we noticed that they hadn’t left we decided to move ourselves inside quickly.  It’s a good thing we got up when we did because they had started approaching us at the exact same time.  I’m almost 90% sure that one of both of them had a weapon of some sort and were planning on using it as a threat to rob us.  As soon as we went inside they turned around, got in their moto-taxi, and drove away.  Thank goodness we were being observant or I would be without a cell phone, camera, passport, credit card, and money.  Then on our way home we missed the bus stop and ended up in some town outside of Trujillo in an area that wasn’t exactly the safest one around.  We found a safe taxi and got ourselves back to the hostel with enough time to grab our suitcases and head to the bus station!  Definitely an interesting way to end FBT, but it makes for some good stories so I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Most memorable quotes/memories/Spanish blunders from the week:

·         Dance Party 2011, or 2001, whichever one you prefer

·         “Such a blast it was from the past!”

·         “Thank you for your happy.”  In place of, “Thank you for being so happy.”

·         “Congratulations on the rest of your lives.”  No idea what was supposed to be said here.

·         Trying guinea pig for the first time!

·         Finding the love of my life- churros

·         Being called a princess

·         Making Peruvian youth laugh

·         “More expensive, please.”  In place of, “That’s really expensive.”

·         “Speak like fire, please.”  In place of, “Use a stronger voice, please.”

·         Seeing the life of a Volunteer

·         Visiting different sites and seeing more of Peru

·         Devil children jumping on desks during class

·         Throwing trash at kids

·         Farting on my tech trainer

·         Joining a boy bad (dance party 2011)

·         “Touch the man.”  In place of, “Touch the shoulders.”

·         “There is NO way we can fit all 16 of us on that combi!”  And then proceeding to do so.

Well, that about sums up FBT!  To make a long story short, I absolutely loved La Libertad and am so glad I had the opportunity to see what being a Volunteer is all about!