A Week Through My Eyes

This past week was kind of a crazy week. Well, to be perfectly honest, every week in Peace Corps is kind of a crazy week in some way or another. However, I still think you guys will find this last week interesting. Thus, to give you an idea of what my life is like here, I'm going to share some pictures/stories from the week. This past week I...

• Prepared and planted 300 tara tree seeds with my secondary and primary students
• Had a meeting with my secondary school teachers
• Got to see Mike(this unfortunately does not happen every week)
• Traveled to the mountains of La Libertad to learn how to install a biodigester
• Helped a fellow volunteer install half a biodigester in a super cool community with a yogurt/cheese factory
• By the way! we filled the biodigester using the wind instead of a pump. It was super neat and I included photos!
• Uninstalled half a biodigester (mala suerte- bad luck!)
• Rode in the bed of a truck for 2+ hours as it flew down some scary mountain roads while dust blew in our faces and then we got rained on
• Got sick yet again
• Celebrated Mike and I's 9-monthiversary with sushi where we got an awesome discount from our new friend, the sushi chef!
• Came home to find a little lizard hanging out in my room
• Checked on a few stores in my town to make sure they had hung my "take care of our beaches" posters
• Cooked dinner with Mike for my host family 
• Got fleas from my favorite Peruvian street dog! 
• Had my weekly radio program with my site neighbor
• & Organized my most successful beach cleanup yet despite not having bags/gloves at the beginning!

The week was a very typical Peace Corps week where not everything went according to plan; some plans fell through, and others while looking like they were about to fall through unexpectedly succeeded. This experience is filled with frustrations, occasional tears, exhaustion and more. But, it is also filled with little surprises, small wins, and some adventures that I will never forget. Today was an especially hard day for me because I found out that of the 200 trees we planted at my primary school, ~60 survived the weekend. Some 4 year old terrors had emptied all of the dirt/seeds from the bags and we now have to replant next week. While this was an incredibly frustrating experience, now that I'm finally settling into my site, I am learning not to dwell on these experiences but to focus on and appreciate the small wins. These little wins can be anything from one of my students excitedly bringing me an article on zooplankton a week after I taught him about it, or another student bragging to her teacher about how much we cleaned up (22 giant garbage bags by the way!) or students stealing some of my seeds and excitedly informing me they sprouted over the weekend.  I realize that the successes feel greater because of all these difficulties, and so, I am learning to appreciate these frustrating experiences in their own way.

Digging up some dirt and filling the bags

The little ones doing the same thing

The beautiful mountains of Otuzco

The wonderful DeeDee Duvuyst teaching us all about biodigesters

Hilary helping the socios staple down the insulating sheet

We filled the biodigester au-natural using the wind! It was superrr chevre (cool)

Filling the biodigester

Lining the trench with straw to insulate the biodigester

Digging trenches for the PVC piping that will funnel the gas to the farm's kitchen

Our delicious lunch of mountain trout!

Hanging out after lunch

Hands down one of the coolest communities I have ever met. They all work together as a collective on every project.

Mike and I enjoying some little Peruvian potatoes from our favorite papitas lady in Otuzco

Our delicious 9 monthiversary feast! Green tea, miso soup, and rolls.

My new roommate. He is pretty adorable

Super excited my town's pizza place has hung this! This place is always crowded,  it will be great publicity for my campaign.

The kiddos cleaning under the pier

These garbage bags were HUGE

and we filled 22 of them!!

Science Rules!

One of my activities in site has been doing GLOBE experiments with my students. GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) is a scientific and practical educational program, whose work is based on primary and secondary schools around the world. The program was announced in 1994, and began operations on Earth Day 1995. Today GLOBE works in more than 110 coutries, with more than 40,000 professors in 20,000 schools. GLOBE students have contributed more than 18 million measurements to the database of the program, to be used in scientific research projects. With my students, we recently did a GLOBE experiment I learned during training about soil types. They really enjoyed the experiment and I look forward to doing many more with them. It was pretty crazy how excited they got over the experiment. It made me feel like Bill Nye the Science Guy! So in the words of Bill, SCIENCE RULES!

Just for fun, she is in here. She waits for me everyday. When I come home, she waddles over to me and then stops about 2 ft away from me. Then she rolls on the ground and wiggles till I rub her belly. She is adorableee!!!!!

 

Cleaning Up Pacasmayo!

So to anyone who is subscribed to my blog, sorry for the huge influx of posts this week. I'm trying to get caught up on everything that has been going on lately. I know that lately I've been posting a lot about vacations/workshops but I swear I'm doing real work also!!! My current main activities are teaching lots of Environmental Education classes, teaching English to moms, trying to figure out how to install wind powered and solar powered water pumps at my schools, running an environmental youth group, turning my schools into ecoefficient schools, doing a weekly radio program, planting trees, and monthly beach cleanups with my students. In my spare time, I'm still working on turning plastic bags into yarn to make things like bags, hackeysacks, planters, keychains etc. Also the Municipality is hoping to start up its tree nursery project again and wants to start a recycling program so I've agreed to help them with that. Anyways, this blogpost is about the beach cleanup my students and I recently did. It was a successful cleanup but there is definitely a lot more to do! Even though my municipality did not provide the materials they promised, we cleaned up a ton and the municipality was kind enough to bring the trash to the dump for us. During the cleanup, I got interviewed by a news program called ATV. I was not expecting this and looked pretty gross (no shower+covered in garbage (typical Peace Corps me.)) My Spanish was pretty rough but it was cool hearing from people in my town that they saw me on TV! The cleanup was fun though. The kids kept trying to put malaguas (basically jellyfish) in the bags and I kept having to explain we just want the garbage. They were trying to prevent beach patrons from stepping on the malaguas though, so it was a sweet thought. Anyways, projects are going well. In the next few months I will be starting my own mini-tree nursery, hopefully starting a TV program, installing wind and or solar powered water pumps, initiating the plastic bags project, and continuing with the above projects. Thanks for reading!

Good group of kids!

All I want is a goat farm by the sea....

I recently attended another ECPA (Energy and Climate Partnership of Americas) workshop in Goyo's site, Cañete. We got to learn about all things Green at a goat farm right next to the ocean! It was beautiful. I definitely have a little site envy. Maybe I'll live on a goat farm by the sea someday... To the workshop, I brought one of my socios from the Municpality, Regidor Quiroz. He was AWESOME. He was hands down, the workshop's MVP. He was super interested in all of the projects, asked tons of great questions, and helped explain things to other socios. It was truly a pleasure attending this workshop with him. At the workshop, we looked at Goyo's biodigestor, his improved cook stove, his solar water pump, learned how to size solar systems, constructed solar ovens, constructed a solar fruit dehydrator, and learned tons about other renewable energy projects. Mike (who is on the ECPA committee) did a fantastic job teaching all of us how to size solar systems. It is such a hard topic to teach and especially hard in another language. I am so proud of him. He truly did an amazing job. The workshop was fantastic. I learned a ton and am super excited to start my projects! In this blogpost, you will also find tons of cute pictures of the farm's puppies!

Puppies!!!!!!!!

Building the top of the improved solar oven

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Goat farm by the ocean!

My favorite puppy! He had the cutest chubby puppy belly

The solar water pump

Kail explaining the pump

The pump

The system

Goyo took us to an old graveyard... I did not really enjoy this part of the workshop to be honest

My socio and I!!!!!

Constructing our solar oven

Our beautiful solar oven!

Our solar fruit dehydrator

Mike teaching

Goyo explaining biodigesters

Kail and some rugrats

Goyo's biodigester

Goyo, Mike, Martin (Mike's socio), and Sara

Goyo, Me, Regidor Quiroz, and Sara!