Home sweet home

So this last week was the big getting to know your new home week! (also known as site visits) My new home is a town of approximately 1300 people in the Colca Canyon of Arequipa. It's at the altitude of about 10,800 feet with beautiful, sunny days and right now the nights are really cold (just like it was for our field based training week). Arequipa in general gets a lot of tourists as its known for being one of the more attractive cities of Peru and is close to Cusco (the typical gringo path is through Cusco and then on to Machu Picchu and they may or may not swing through Arequipa too). Colca Canyon gets a lot of these tourists passing through Arequipa from being the world's first or second largest canyon, its natural beauty, richness in traditional culture, beautiful artesan goods and has some endangered condors that nest there.  The first picture is from an aunt's farm taken overlooking my town. It's dry now since it's winter here but it'll turn green once it gets to rainy season (January through March).

Since it's overall a nice place to see and can offer quite a bit of traditional culture to a traveler, over 150,000 people pass through Chivay (the nearby largest town) and then through the canyon in a given year. In the next coming months I'll have a better idea of specifically how I'll spend my time working but I anticipate working with tourism, the local schools (might be business classes or English classes), artesan groups and a probably also with a group of farmers. That part is going to take awhile to fully determine though so we'll see how it all shakes out. My family speaks Quechua so I'll be learning Quechua in addition to polishing up my Spanish.  The picture to the left is of me chilling in my town's main plaza. You might notice that there is not a single person in the background which is because they are all at the farm. Farming is a critical part of the town's economy and each family has land where they plant wheat, corn and other local crops that I don't know the name for in English as we really don't have them in the US.  During August and September planting for certain crops is completed so there are not very many people around in town during the day. It was almost like a ghost town in the afternoon but I guess school was on break too. We'll see what it's like next week...

This week will be the last hooray for all of our group to be together, we'll officially swear in as volunteers and end our training program and then ship out for good to our new homes. I'm both sad and looking forward to settling in in my new home.

FBT (Field Based Training)

During our first five weeks of training, we basically trained for one big sha-bang in the sixth week which we call FBT (field based training). It's the best example we get to see of what "real" life will look like for two years. FBT was really fun and hands on. There were 9 of us business volunteers that went together to Chivay in the department of Arequipa. The town is at over 12,000 feet in altitude and has about 5,000 inhabitants (big for a town that Peace Corps works in). Chivay was really charming. They are little, old ladies walking with their alpacas through the town square in their traditional dresses. You can see the Incan decendency in people's faces and many people still speak Quechua in addition to Spanish. It was beautifully sunny and close to 70 degrees in the days and as soon as the sun went down, the temperatures would drop down to around 20 and there was no heat. It was what I would have pictured as small town Perú, just beautiful.

We were there to work and work we did! In groups of three volunteers, we worked with groups of between 20-25 kids per class for about 4 hours a day. We taught the kids business classes for three days over marketing, accounting, business planning, pricing, product costing and then on the fourth day the kids took out a loan from the "Banco del Cuerpo de Paz" (Peace Corps Bank) and had 24 hours to complete their own business for a day. The kids had to return the loan after 24 hours with 2% interest but any profits were theirs to keep. We tailored most of the activities to their specific businesses to reinforce the concepts and also keep them motivated. Those kids were enthusiastic and did really well at their businesses! Our class had the winning group which made a profit of over 120% in one day. It was such a cool experience for the kids and for us.

In addition to the work, we were able to meander through the local market, meet nearby volunteers and see their sites, see pre-Incan terrazas, take a hike, see some condors, get in some real team volunteer bonding time and go to some nearby hot springs multiple times. It was a priceless week and I requested to live nearby since there are already two volunteers in that particular town. I find out tomorrow where my assignment is. Either way I am going to have a great time because this country is beautiful and this program is exceeding my expectations.