Site Visit

After a year of waiting I finally made it to site. I am so pleased. It is beautiful and the people are motivated. I spent the week meeting as many people in possisions to help me as possible. I am living about 3-5 km outside of a city. My house does not have electricity, for now. I am going to rig up a car battery when I get there to power my computer. It has running water once and a while, but it is only used for cooking and my grandmother's showers. This is my shower, the first picture, it was a little interesting using it the first time. Especially since the house worker watched me. I am telling my self it was because she knew how confused I was. I had seen the shower in the house, but I had a feeling I was not supposed to use it. So I asked my grandma where I should bathe. She has had three spinal surgeries so she does not walk very well. With that said she just told me to go out back, and that there are two showers "very nice" out there. I went out there and did not see anything. So I went to the organic garden, no shower. I went to the rice field, no shower. I went to the mango grove, no shower. I went back into the house and ask where the bath was. After a awkward stare, like how could I not find it, the house worker showed me. She took me to the stream and pointed to picture 1 and said, "Here it is. Don't worry it has a concrete bottom." Believe you me it having a concrete bottom was the least of my worries. She left me be and I took time to soak up Peru. I realiezed that when I was bathing I would be visible to anyone that passed on the road, and then I came to a very important conclution. When in Rome.....

I was not joking when I said my site was beautiful. Picture two is a sunset from my back yard/ mango grove. If I walk about 30 feet I run into a canal. The canal was constructed by a group of German enginiers some years back. It empties in to the Tirijones resivor, picture 3. I do not know how well the picture shows up on other computer screnes, but there the most beuatiful bird of prey in flight right in the middle of the screne. I will have more to talk about my work once I get in to it.

I hope every one had a great Thanksgiving. I was thankful for a lot this year. The Peace Corps Peru 10 had a celebration here also. We had what you call a Panchamanca. It is a quechua word for earth cooking. You heat stones untill they are really hot and the put them in a hole in the ground. Then put the food on it and coverit with earth. The food was really good. We have some chefs in our group. A couple of volunteers made desserts. They were amazing. I got my pumkin pie! One of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving with new people is that you get new kinds of food. It was almost all new to me this year and I liked it. That reminds me that I have to get a turkey when I move up north to start fattening for next year.