All Kinds of Tranquilo

I am loving life down here in Peru. I really have the perfect set-up. My site rocks, my family rocks, my community partner rocks, and all the other volunteers rock. Everything's just pretty much rockin' right now. So here are some of the rockin' things I've been doing since my last update.

I helped give some more charlas (classes) on teen pregnancy. Then on Friday I didn't have anything to do so I went for a long walk along the beach. The beach is about a 10 minute walk from my house and it is one of the most stunning, wild beaches I have ever seen. It's totally untamed and practically deserted. During the winter, which we are in down here in the good ol' SoHe (that's my cool abbreviation for Souther Hemisphere), no one goes there except for a few fisherman. So my beach starts out as a pretty normal sandy beach (that is once I pass the gnarly sand dunes and ruins of 200 year old church). Then I come across a bunch of colorful, wooden fishing boats scattered along the sand. These sit in front of Puerto Eten, the smaller town by my city and where lives another volunteer. After the boats, the beach turns into these giant cliffs. I walked along the edge of the cliffs and stared out into the vast ocean. From the top of the cliffs I could see for miles and miles. If Sarah Palin where with me should could have probably pointed out Russia.

After walking along the cliffs for a while, I came to a secluded section of beach walled-off by the cliffs. I found a little trail down to the beach and sat there and read for about an hour. Then I got hungry and returned home. I can't remember what I ate for lunch, but I'm sure it was delicious seeing as how my mom is a fantastic cook. Peruvian food is actually really good. They have just about every ingredient imaginable. Potatoes and Tomatoes were actually first grown in Peru in the Andes near the border with Ecuador.

So that was a fun day. Today I had a really productive meeting with my counterparts. I met with my counterpart the obstetrician, her staff of two nurses who are about my age, and a woman from an organization that supports abused mothers and children. We planned out a meeting that we are going to have with about 50 parents from the community. We are going to use it as a way to introduce a myself and a broader series of classes on parenting that we will be hosting. My dad, the librarian, is going to let us hold it in the town library and we are going to borrow a projector from the municipality to show a movie on family values. I'm really excited about it.

Not being a parent myself, I'm a bit worried that the parents won't listen to me, but I know if I present myself professionally and sound like I know what I'm talking about, it will work. So I'm going to study up on what I want to say to them and prepare myself well. I even bought some business cards to further my professional image.

Well that's all I have for now. Suerte a todo.

Chau!