This Peruvian Life: Lots of Laughs: The Highs and Lows of FBT

This morning I returned to Lima from my Field Based Training trip in La Libertad. We took a Super VIP bus from Trujilo to Lima, seriously the best 8 hours of transportation I've experienced -better than first class on a plane because the seats recline all the way back! FBT was an fun, stressful, inspiring, pride-making, eye-opening experience! There was 9 us of in the group along with Ana Maria (tech trainer), Claudia (language facilitatior), and Britt (current PC volunteer). I feel really lucky too because over the week I got a lot closer with some really great people in the training group!!!

When we got to Trujilo on Sunday we met up with a bunch of current volunteers basically just Q&A style. The volunteers made me feel better about my Spanish, I’m pretty nervous about it, but like most things it’ll get easier with time

Hopefully ya’ll won’t get bored with my super long post but a lot went down this last week! Below I broke it down into days of the week, the site and in parenthesis is the name of the volunteer and a brief thing about the day in case you don’t want to read the whole paragraph but if you were a true friend you would :p jk…but really.

Monday-Belle Horizante (Ian) Self-esteem charla with Betty

We had our first facilitation of the week-def my least favorite facilitation of the week only because the kids didn’t seem too responsive but afterwards we got to see Ian’s house which was the first time we saw a volunteer’s house in site so that was cool.

Tuesday-San Pedro (Sue) –Anorexia/Bulimia charla with Brittany

Brittany and I facilitated the session 2 times each at an all-girls school. At the end of each session we did a self-esteem building activity with the girls-they all drew a picture of themselves on a piece of paper and then they passed the paper around the classroom to the other girls to write nice things on it so at the end they had a paper that said at the top: (girl’s name) es bonita porque… and then all over the paper reasons why they are pretty (inside and out) the girls really liked it and felt really good to be in that classroom JThen we visited Sue’s home which was a super nice house; I doubt I’ll get that lucky.

Wednesday- Guadalupe (Amanda) Handwashing and Friendship charlas with Erin at a caserio

This day was a little stressful because we didn’t plan too much for our sessions but nonetheless I really enjoyed seeing the kids. We read aloud a children’s book (Stelaluna) to the class and every time it was my turn to read it was a long page (by children’s book standards anyway) and I had no idea what the words meant. :x Oh well I think they enjoyed it anyway. We visited Amanda’s house which was really interesting because she had moved out of her original host family’s home into this home that she basically had built for her because she got along with this other family better! So I guess if I don’t get along with my first host family and find another family who I get along with but their house doesn’t fit PC standards than I can get help the family build me a room!

Thursday-Guadalupe again-Alcoholism charla

Thursday was my last solo facilitation for the week. I was nervous because it was a class full of teenage boys but it went really well. Near the end of my session I asked if they had any questions one asked if I had a boyfriend and I answered-“yes I’m married”. I figured that would stop them from whistling at me- when the class was over they were asking me if I had pictures of this fictional person and I just pretended like I didn’t understand them :x Also I’ve had a few Peruvians tell me I look like Velma from Scooby Doo it must be the glasses.

Friday we did a few dinamicas with some kids at a monthly event called “Red Ambiental” which is like an environmental awareness group. Then we went to Britt’s meeting of English teachers. The title of this blog is dedicated to our awesome PCVC Evan because during this meeting one teacher asked the meaning of LOL and when to use it, Evan says seriously-"I know what that means: lots of laughs" maybe you had to be there but we all burst out laughing and even know I as type I'm chuckling. After we went to one life changing little restaurant se llama San Augustine- the sandwiches were so amazing that we went Thursday and Friday night- def best thing I’ve put in my mouth since being in Peru.

Saturday we went to El Cultural in Trujilo to talk to the English classes. It was nice to talk in front of a class in English and then we got to chat one on one with some of the students in English and in Spanish so we could both practice J After that we traveled to Huanchaco which is now my favorite city in Peru-granted I haven’t visited many places but still it’s awesome. The beach had big beautiful waves and nice boardwalk with cute shops and restaurants. Great way to end the trip! I honestly felt a little sad when we were all sitting on the beach together talking about the week because I probably won’t get to spend time with these people in such a setting again. It was an incredible week that I won’t forget.

Here are my pictures from FBT and few pics are prior to FBT, sorry there isn't more, there was a lot of others taking pics so I plan to steal them once they get posted!

this is how we found out about our regional assignments, on the back of our pictures they wrote "Costa o Sierra" and then we put the pictures up on these posters

Carlhey's birthday pinata

Carlhey and Jess

Group at Municipalidad en San Pedro

My girl Brittany and I

playa en Pacasmayo

Erin and I sitting in the bedof the security pick up truck taking us to the caserio

dinamica with the kiddins

handwashing-yay!

super nice hostal we stayed at in Pacasmayo

Brittany and I did a foot comparison because I found out my feet are HUGE by Peruvian standards hers are pretty small though

this is a video of the longest left wave in the world (well that's what I was told anyway) don't know much about surfing but I thought maybe people would be interested, I have to say though it's cooler in person

playa, these are little boat like things that tourists go in looks fun but I didn't get a chance to try it out

beautiful beach in Huanchaco

Betty, Jess and I, love these girls

there were a bunch of jellyfish that got washed up on the beach, poor Brittany and Kallan got stung I wasn't with them when it happened but if I was I would have stepped up as Chandler did, if you get my reference then we are truly friends