It´s going to be a long one....

So I left out a lot on the last entry because I was running out of time, but I should be able to write a little more now because my family has internet in their house! Can you believe it? I´m definitely going to be spoiled in these next 10 weeks because it´s very rare for them to have internet. We had a panel about host families yesterday and they told us we´d be spoiled here because our families are in a much better economic situation than our families at our sites will be. Before I tell you more about my family, I´ll back track a little bit.

Our first two nights in Lima were spent at a retreat center (where I wrote the other entry from) and we stayed in little bungalos of 5 or 6 people. It was a great way to get to know some of the other volunteers a little better. My roommate was Lindsay and we had a great time together. We bonded from the very beginning over our fear of what we thought was a huge cockroach on her pillow! It was our first night and we were all so tired, but there was no way we were going to bed with that thing in our bungalo. I was the only brave one who would try to get it, but we didn´t want to kill it because we thought we´d have bad karma. I caught it with a cup and put it outside. Next thing we know, it´s inside again! I guess I didn´t put it outside far enough away. We spent the next 20 minutes freaking out because we couldn´t catch it (by now there were 4 of us). I finally got it outside and ran far away with it before I let it out of the cup. It was really funny. Lindsay and I were then paranoid we´d find them everywhere in our room so we pushed our beds together so they´d be away from the walls! It was really funny, but it allowed us to bond and the next night we had a great talk! It´s nice to really feel like I have a friend now and someone (besides Hana) who knows a little bit more about me than just the surface stuff that everyone else knows.

After all of our interviews the next day, we finally had some down time before dinner. I think it was the first and last time we´ve had some down time since we got here. I spent a few hours talking with a few of the girls in my group and we had so much fun. It felt really good to laugh a lot! We hung out at the discoteca that night (that they opened just for us). One of the guys in our group is from El Salvador so he taught me how to do the merengue. I´m sure I looked hillarious, but it was really fun!

Yesterday we drove to the training center after breakfast. The area we drove through to get there didn´t seem very nice. It´s really dry here though and it was really overcast in the morning so I think that might have been part of the reason it looked so dirty. Because it´s so dry, it´s also really dusty everywhere so it makes everything look dirty. Anyway, we had some presentations and panels in the morning and after lunch, our host families came to pick us up. We were all standing on the basketball court waiting to be picked up - we felt like cattle. My host mom was the first to arrive and I left immediately. She is really cute and has two kids. Her name is Carmen and she is 39. The kids are Fernando, 9, and Naomi, 8. They are really cute and I love talking to them because they are usually much easier to understand. After thinking the neighbor who drove us home was my host dad, I found out my host dad is really in Spain working until December. At first I thought she said he was a chofer, but then she spent 20 minutes last night telling me about his whole work history and I got the impression he is in construction. However, Carmen´s mom (who we call "abuelita") also lives with us and she told me that he really is a chofer. I have no idea why he´s driving cars in Spain. My host mom thinks I understand a lot more than I really do so she speaks to me at the same speed she speaks to everyone else. I´m happy if I get 30% of the conversation. It´s hard to converse though when she´s talking so fast because I have to put all of my energy into concentrating on what she´s saying. Today I told her I want to speak as much as possible though and we´ve spoken together a lot tonight so I hope it continues that way. I like talking with abuelita too because she speaks more slowly.

My room is really nice and a decent size. I was excited because there is enough room for me to put my yoga mat down and do yoga. Three of the other volunteers (including Lindsay!) live on my street. It would be fun if Hana lived nearby, but I´m pretty sure she doesn´t. It´s good for us though because we´re trying really hard not to be buddy-buddy and branch out. Our neighborhood is crazy though. I think there must be some kind of celebrations going on this week because there are fireworks going off at all hours of the day and night. There was also really loud music, lots of horns honking, and a train going all night long, but I was so tired that I didn´t have any problem sleeping (besides the fact that I didn´t have a pillow and improvised by stuffing my fleece in the pillow case I brought from home). Last night everyone went to bed really early, but I feel like I´m already getting a better visit in tonight. My host sister is doing her homework in the same room as me right now. She likes to follow me around, but I love it because she helps correct my Spanish and I can understand her! So cute!

Well I have lots of reading to do and things to get ready for tomorrow. Based on our day today, it looks like training is going to be great, but really intense. We split up today into our different groups. There are 19 youth development volunteers and 18 small business (if I didn´t mention before, the gender split is 20 girls and 17 guys). Our youth development group is great because we all have very different experiences and all come to the table with something different. I´m really looking forward to working together during training and brainstorming new ideas. We also decided we would make a resource manual of our ideas that we can all take to our sites with us. That made me feel really good because at this point I keep thinking, what in the heck am I going to do?

I promise I´ll stop now because this is so long, but for those of you who wanted to know some details, here they are. I´ll try to post some photos one of these days too.

Keep the emails coming! Since I have internet in the house, it´s easy for me to check email and write back. I miss you all (but try not to think about it too much or I´ll drive myself crazy)!