A quick update!

Hello from the world of no internet! It’s been awhile, though not because we’ve been avoiding writing on the blog or because we haven’t wanted to. We are one of the lucky few volunteers in Peru that serve in a site without internet service and without a strong wireless connection through our cell phones. It’s been hard at times and liberating at others. But every once in awhile, we’re able to get to a nearby city where there’s wifi we can connect to and hopefully update this blog at least once a month.

Since a single, or even multiple, blog posts would take up good chunk of time, here is what I hope is a brief, digestible summary of the last two months of our lives.

• On November 9, 2017, we officially became Peace Corps volunteers! It was an exciting moment for us that we were able to share with the U.S. ambassador to Peru, our host family in Lima (whom we’ve written about before), and all of our fellow volunteers/friends that we’ve grown close with. It was a day full of emotion as it was the culmination of three months of training, but also the day we had to say goodbye to everyone assigned to other regions.
• We were very lucky to have been assigned to a region of Peru with some of the people we’ve grown closest to. We still don’t get to see them quite as often as we would like, but we try to schedule phone dates here and there, and we do get to see them once every couple of months.
• We are now living in a small town in the northern regions of Peru, relatively close to the Ecuadorian border. As I mentioned before, there’s no real internet service at site and cell phone service is spotty at best. The word I’ve heard most often used to describe this little town is “tranquilo” or calm, relaxed, chilled out, which I think sums it up pretty well. It’s fairly isolated as far as Peruvian Peace Corps sites go, which is unfortunate since we need to travel about an hour for any kind of market and close to three hours for a city where we can buy other necessities. But we’re learning to adapt.
• For a couple of weeks we lived with a family consisting of a mother, father, and two daughters. They were wonderful people, but due to some misunderstandings, we had to switch host families at the end of November. We continue to wish them well and are grateful for our time with them.
• We are now living with a family that consists of an older woman involved in the world of education in the rural villages around our town and her longtime friend/housekeeper. For me personally, it’s made me realize that, as a couple in our thirties, the traditional host family dynamic where we are seen as part of the “child” group as opposed to the “adult” group isn’t where we were going to thrive. In our current situation, we are lucky to have greater independence in our daily lives, more flexibility with our meals, and people who are closer to what we would consider friends than host parents. We have already learned a lot living here with these two ladies and we look forward to learning a lot more.
• Work has been interesting for us here. It’s been an adaptation process moving from the style of work in the U.S. to not only the style that exists here in Peru, but also the manner of work we’re undertaking. The job itself is much more independent that anything either of us has done before, and for that, we’re still working on finding that balance between pushing ourselves too much and not pushing hard enough. I’m sure that balance will come eventually, especially once we understand more about what expectations are in our respective places of work and how to achieve our goals with the people there.
• The weather here in town is pretty fantastic. We were a little worried about being in a place that was very cold, especially after learning that the elevation of our town is about 7000 feet, but I think being so close to the coast and the equator help to create a climate closer to a coastal town in California than what you might think of when you think of an Andean village. From the middle of the night to early afternoon, temperatures rarely deviate from a range between 50-80 degrees. While it tends to get foggy (and by foggy I mean you can’t see a thing because the clouds have enveloped the town) in the afternoons, we’ve had more than a few days that could be described as darn near perfect.
• It being a small town, integration into the local community was bound to be fast. While you can measure integration a lot of ways, my personal take is that it’s the amount of time it takes for you to no longer be stared at when walking down the street. I’d say we’re just about there, a few stragglers aside. Most people at least know now that there are a couple of gringos living in town, and even though they may not be aware of why we’re here, questions about how many kids we have and what religion we follow frequently seem to be more urgent.
• So what do we do with our time? We try to plan for our work, we visit our respective primary work locations (the secondary school for me (Chris) and the health center for Angelica), we read a lot, we talk, we knit, we go for walks, we play cards, we are slowly decorating our room to make it a bit more comfortable and we daydream about life back in the States. We try to avoid watching movies or tv shows I’ve collected on a hard drive, but it’s unavoidable sometimes. With the small site, there’s a lot less going on, which means we have a lot more free time. All in all, it’s been good, almost relaxing if it weren’t for the fact that we’re trying to figure out how to live and function in a new culture.

I think this generally sums up our experience here for the first couple of months. We’re hoping to put together a few more posts about some specifics that may or may not get posted at the same time as this post. If you don’t see more today, then hold tight. We’ll be traveling to Lima in mid-February for some trainings and hope to have some solid internet access during that time.

We hope you’re all doing well back home. Take care and don’t forget to give us some updates when you get a chance too!