In Peru!

Hi everyone,

Well, after over a year of applying and waiting, I am finally in Peru. So far it is wonderful. We arrived in Lima on Friday night (well, Saturday morning) at around 2am. From there we went to a retreat center for a quick one-day orientation before meeting with our host families on Sunday.

My host family is wonderful. I live in a nice house in Huascaran, a neighborhood very close to Chaclacayo, where the Peace Corps training center is. It´s a 15 minute walk for me to get there in the mornings. I have a host mom, a host dad, two host brothers (24 and 19) and a host sister (14). They are all extremely nice and like to chat with me. They have had four Peace Corps volunteers previously, so they are very accostomed to our schedule and to the ¨weird¨ things that we americanos sometimes do. They are also amazed that I speak Spanish as well as I do, which is nice. My Spanish has actually been holding up very well, and I can feel it improving every day. Sometimes I speak so quickly now that I startle even myself!

Six days a week we have training at the Peace Corps training center. Generally, we receive language and culture training the mornings, and technical training the afternoons. I placed into the highest language class, and so my language class is mostly culture and research, which I enjoy. Training is fairly taxing because we are in class from 8am-5pm and then we have homework at night when we are with our host families. It is difficult to make time for excersize, maintaining contacts back home, or generally keeping sane. In the end it´ll be worth it though because we are learning so much.

So, so far so good from Peru. I hope you all are doing well, and I´d love to hear from you. Oh! And I have a new address. The old one will still work, but this one goes directly to the training center:

Sarah Walker
Cuerpo de Paz
Calle los Cedros 647
Chaclacayo
Lima 8, Peru, S.A.

Chau!