It is Brett's turn to write this week but he's sick today so he stayed at the base to sleep. I think he probably has parasites. Not fun at all for him, poor guy! But he started parasite medicine today so hopefully he'll be better in a few days. It stinks that he is sick on our day off though. I wasn't feeling well this week either but I'm feeling better now. They say it is impossible to come here without getting parasites at least once. When we leave we are supposed to take some medicine that will get rid of potential parasites that aren't showing symptoms yet. Anyway, enough about worms.
This week went by pretty quickly for the most part. I had a smaller and more managable group for VBS so it was a lot easier. We did a week of Moses and had a lot of fun weaving baskets with the kids and writing out the 10 Commandments. I have a good group of kids every night for English lessons. They all bring their notebooks and dutifully repeat everything I say.
The community I am in is an invasion community. People want to live closer to the city so they pack as much as they can into taxis and literally take over a new area. Most people have only been here for 3 months so they are still trying to get money to build their houses. Right now everybody is living in shacks while they work on building their houses. My job title is Community Ambassador and so I'm supposed to figure out what would benefit the community the most and then try and do whatever that is. This week my parter Mike and I talked to the president of the 17 de septiembre (the name of the community) about building a garden and playground for the kids. I figured that since it is such a new community and there are so many kids it would be something that would really benefit this place. So I will be working on the garden in the mornings and doing the VBS and English classes in the afternoon and evening from now on. We're also going to get fruit trees and give one to each kid to plant next to their house.
I'll be here until about March 15 and then we are having a medical clinic for 2 weeks about 4 km from where I live now. And then after that we are going on several short medical trips. So I'll get to have some medical experience afterall! I'm excited about that. Anyway, my time is about to run out. More next week.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Week 3
In some ways it is hard to believe that we have already been here for 3 weeks, but in other ways it feels like we have been here forever! This week was my first week with the kids and it started off pretty chaotically. Mike and I weren´t sure what to expect. We spent last week going around advertising and had a lot of people say that they were interested in coming, but we weren´t sure if they would actually show up.
Brett and the manual labor people came Monday morning to put up the tent for us to have the vacation bible school in. The genuis who made the tent made it so that there was only one way for the pieces to fit together but none of the parts were marked and they all looked exactly the same. Needless to say, the tent was not finished by the time the kids started showing up at 1:00 so Mike and I were stuck with about 60 kids and no place to put them all. We started out by teaching them some songs and then told them the story of Creation. None of these kids have ever heard Bible stories before and it was a bit shocking to me when we were met with silence after asking them how many days it took God to create the world. Definitely not what we were expecting! But was kind of cool to be the first ones to tell them the stories. This week we did Creation, Noah and the Ark, Joseph, David and Goliath, and Jonah. After the story, we did an activity with them and then handed out crayons and coloring books. That kept them busy for at least 30 minutes. Peruvian kids are extremely demanding and parents here definitely don´t emphasize manners. I don´t think I´ve heard one kid say please or thank you yet. All I hear is "Dame! Dame! Dame!" (Give me!)
The games that we had planned for the first day did not go very well to day the least. More and more kids kept showing up and since we were in a field it was impossible to get them to listen to instructions. After the first day things went a lot smoother though. Having the tent helped a lot. We taught them the colors red, yellow, and green in English and then played Red light/Green light with them, taught them the body parts and played Simon says, taught them animal names and played Sharks and Minnows and Duck, Duck, Goose. The kids are constantly following me around and climbing on me to touch my hair and hold my hands. I have about 5 favorites but I like them all for the most part. I definitely do not want to go into teaching though! That is for sure. I think that 6 weeks of this will be plenty for me.
In the evenings I have been teaching a group of teenagers English and tutoring math to some younger kids. They are on summer vacation right now but Peruvian kids are kind of strange and want to learn instead of play games. One afternoon when Mike and I gave them the option of playing a game or learning English we had 2 kids vote for the game and about 68 vote for English lessons. It´s pretty strange... Teaching English has made me feel a lot better about my Spanish though. I constantly feel like I´m slaughtering the spanish words, but then I hear them try to say the english words and it makes me realize that I´m not that bad! No matter how hard I try I cannot get them to say the sounds "ssss" or "tuh". To them "sky" is "esky" and "tree" is "chree." It´s pretty funny.
While I was running around after kids all day, Brett worked on putting up a fence around the base. Every three meters he has to dig a hole a meter deep, put a pole in it, and put barbed wire up. Better him than me! Their next big project is an enormous fish pond. They rented a huge tractor and are in the process of digging a pond that is 100 meters x 300 meters x 2 meters. In the middle there are two islands that they are going to put monkies and hammocks on and build a bridge out to them. The guy that is in charge of the project thinks that it will be a good way of generating income. They are going to fill the pond with fish and sell the fish or something like that...I´m not really sure. They seem to think that it will be pretty easy but I have a hard time believing that it is just a matter of digging an enormous hole, filling it with water, and throwing some fish in there. I could be wrong though. I guess we´ll see!
I went back to the base on Friday afternoon and stayed the weekend. Brett gave the sermon at his church so I got to hear him. He did a really good job. His sermon was about being willing to die for Christ and he told a story and related it to Shadrack, Miseac, and Abendnigo (spelling??). The kids actually paid attention the whole time and liked his story a lot. The church he is in charge of is in the back of this lady´s house and there are about 30 or 40 memebers, mostly kids. There are animals running around everywhere. Definitely not your normal church, but it´s a lot of fun to go to. He´s in charge of Friday night vespers there too and runs the Sabbath school class with another guy for the teenagers. It´s a lot of work for him but I think he´ll do a good job there. He´s scheduled to preach again on March 20th.
Well, that´s about it for this week. Bye!
Brett and the manual labor people came Monday morning to put up the tent for us to have the vacation bible school in. The genuis who made the tent made it so that there was only one way for the pieces to fit together but none of the parts were marked and they all looked exactly the same. Needless to say, the tent was not finished by the time the kids started showing up at 1:00 so Mike and I were stuck with about 60 kids and no place to put them all. We started out by teaching them some songs and then told them the story of Creation. None of these kids have ever heard Bible stories before and it was a bit shocking to me when we were met with silence after asking them how many days it took God to create the world. Definitely not what we were expecting! But was kind of cool to be the first ones to tell them the stories. This week we did Creation, Noah and the Ark, Joseph, David and Goliath, and Jonah. After the story, we did an activity with them and then handed out crayons and coloring books. That kept them busy for at least 30 minutes. Peruvian kids are extremely demanding and parents here definitely don´t emphasize manners. I don´t think I´ve heard one kid say please or thank you yet. All I hear is "Dame! Dame! Dame!" (Give me!)
The games that we had planned for the first day did not go very well to day the least. More and more kids kept showing up and since we were in a field it was impossible to get them to listen to instructions. After the first day things went a lot smoother though. Having the tent helped a lot. We taught them the colors red, yellow, and green in English and then played Red light/Green light with them, taught them the body parts and played Simon says, taught them animal names and played Sharks and Minnows and Duck, Duck, Goose. The kids are constantly following me around and climbing on me to touch my hair and hold my hands. I have about 5 favorites but I like them all for the most part. I definitely do not want to go into teaching though! That is for sure. I think that 6 weeks of this will be plenty for me.
In the evenings I have been teaching a group of teenagers English and tutoring math to some younger kids. They are on summer vacation right now but Peruvian kids are kind of strange and want to learn instead of play games. One afternoon when Mike and I gave them the option of playing a game or learning English we had 2 kids vote for the game and about 68 vote for English lessons. It´s pretty strange... Teaching English has made me feel a lot better about my Spanish though. I constantly feel like I´m slaughtering the spanish words, but then I hear them try to say the english words and it makes me realize that I´m not that bad! No matter how hard I try I cannot get them to say the sounds "ssss" or "tuh". To them "sky" is "esky" and "tree" is "chree." It´s pretty funny.
While I was running around after kids all day, Brett worked on putting up a fence around the base. Every three meters he has to dig a hole a meter deep, put a pole in it, and put barbed wire up. Better him than me! Their next big project is an enormous fish pond. They rented a huge tractor and are in the process of digging a pond that is 100 meters x 300 meters x 2 meters. In the middle there are two islands that they are going to put monkies and hammocks on and build a bridge out to them. The guy that is in charge of the project thinks that it will be a good way of generating income. They are going to fill the pond with fish and sell the fish or something like that...I´m not really sure. They seem to think that it will be pretty easy but I have a hard time believing that it is just a matter of digging an enormous hole, filling it with water, and throwing some fish in there. I could be wrong though. I guess we´ll see!
I went back to the base on Friday afternoon and stayed the weekend. Brett gave the sermon at his church so I got to hear him. He did a really good job. His sermon was about being willing to die for Christ and he told a story and related it to Shadrack, Miseac, and Abendnigo (spelling??). The kids actually paid attention the whole time and liked his story a lot. The church he is in charge of is in the back of this lady´s house and there are about 30 or 40 memebers, mostly kids. There are animals running around everywhere. Definitely not your normal church, but it´s a lot of fun to go to. He´s in charge of Friday night vespers there too and runs the Sabbath school class with another guy for the teenagers. It´s a lot of work for him but I think he´ll do a good job there. He´s scheduled to preach again on March 20th.
Well, that´s about it for this week. Bye!
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Week 2
This week we started to get into the swing of things around here. The first 3 days of the week I (Brett) finished building the church at 17 de septiembre where the medical clinic and the new location of the travel team will be for the next 7 weeks. Building is quite fun, chatting with the peruvians and joking around. However, the sun is scorching hot and the humidity here is absolutely ridiculous. You sweat so much water out of your skin, you wouldn´t even believe it. I drink close to a gallon of water a day and pee literally only once a day in the mornings.
Julie is going to be staying with the travel team at 17 de septiembre and teach a Vacation Bible School thing to different age groups everyweek. This first week that begins tomorrow, her and her partner Michael will have over a 100 kids to handle. I feel no sympathy though, haha. This group of kids is going to be from the ages of 5 to 8. It's going to be pretty amusing with Julie's limited amount of spanish. At least her partner speaks spanish so that'll be nice help. Julie and the other members of the travel team are living now in the church that we built for the area. Julie has a pretty sweet set up in the corner with her hammock and sheet hanging, she pretty much has her own room there while everyone else is in tents. Apparently she can hammer pretty well, at least that´s what she says. She made herself some shelves for the her clothes and nailed up some racks for towells and clothes.
On thursday, I hit the fields pretty hard at the base in 38. Man, that work is so terribly hard. There were two teams of us. On Thursday my team went to work on the fence. We're building a fence that encircles our entire base. I didn´t realize it, but our property is 3 and half kilometers long. And we have to put in fence posts and barbed wire around this entire property. And that was even the easy day! On Friday it was my turn to clean the lemon trees. This job is absolutely the worst job I've ever heard of. I had to take a machete and hack a 2 meter cirle around each lemon tree down the dirt. These trees are in the middle of the jungle surrounded by tons of plants, and grass, and weeds. It was so hot and humid, it was the hardest thing I've ever done. Luckily the two peruvians i work with are pretty chill and are down to take many breaks and just chat about life. However, we have the next two months to completely finish the fence and clear all the lemon trees, so...that´ll be fun.
I am now in charge of running the sabbath school for the teenagers at the church I attend and will be preaching next weeks sermon. I will be teaching an english class every Monday and Wednesday night as well as doing a vespers every Friday night. I will be kept very busy here, but it has been a lot of fun so far. All of the peruvian workers are really fun to hang out with and it's good practice for my spanish. I seem to be picking up the way they speak quite rapidly. The peruvians have a very distinct singsong way of speaking and I've noticed myself starting to do that as well when I'm talking, haha. So...we'll see how I sound in 4 months.
Julie went into the selva on Tuesday with a couple of local kids to look for fruit. She went in with only shorts and a tanktop, not good planning. She came back with some pretty gnarly rashes and had to take some shots and pills before she literally scratched her skin off. The rashes looked pretty bad and she was definitely uncomfortable for a couple of days. I got to give her her last shot and did pretty well. It was not that hard though.
Julie came back the base friday afternoon to do some planning for her vacation bible school, but she didn't do any of course. We just hung out in the hammock and read a litttle. The weekends here are pretty relaxing and they go by pretty slowly. It´s nice to be able to see Julie once a week at least, I´m glad she´s not too far. We both got cell phones and can receieve phone calls for free at anytime, so if anyone wants to call or text us. Julie´s numbers is 0051061961549625 and mine is the same with a 4 substituted as the last number. It´s been fun so far, Julie is learning spanish very quickly and hopefully she´ll keep learning at this rapid rate. She'll be forced to learn with a 100 kids talking to her all at once. Julie's nickname is barbie, and mine is pollogordito (chubby chicken) for some reason. Not really sure what they're talking about.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Week 1
Well, we have survived our first week in Peru. Getting here was an adventure. To save money we decided to sleep in the Lima airport rather than get a hostel for our 9 hour layover. Bad idea! After going through customs, finding out we had been ripped off on the exchange rate in Houston, and walking around aimlessly for a few minutes, we found the "perfect" place to put our stuff down and sleep. We got our sleeping bags and pillows out and were settling down to sleep when this Peruvian family comes and stands literally 1 foot away from us, talking loudly and pointing at the airplanes. We had mistakenly set up camp in front of a big window looking out over the tarmak and for the next 3 hours, various people came and stared out of the window for 30+ minutes. They were all so excited to see the airplanes take off. And these weren´t just kids. Grown men were giggling like little girls and counting the windows on the plane. Not only was it strange, but it was also extremely annoying at 4 in the morning. Finally we were able to check into our next flight around 5 am and we went through security where it was much more quiet.
We landed in Pucallpa and were picked up and immediately driven to the clinic site and put to work. I went to the clinic and Brett went to the work site to help dig a hole for the foundation of the church. The community we are in is extremely primitive. No running water or electricity whatsoever. I´ll be living here for the next 2 months teaching English and doing Vacation Bible School with the kids and doing community outreach programs with them. Brett spent his days outside in the 95+ degree weather (not including humidity!) doing manual labor. He seems to be enjoying himself though.
I slept at the clinic site in a tent while Brett was shuttled back and forth from the worksite to the base camp (38 as they call it here because it is 38 km from Pucallpa) every morning at 7. He along with the 8 other manual labor workers are squashed in the back and on top of this tiny pickup truck (aka the camioneta) and they drive the 34 km to the worksite like this. It is actually a lot of fun! I got to ride on the top of the truck on the way back to 38 this weekend.
Brett has been assigned a church near the base camp and he will take turns preaching at the church on Sabbath. The church was pretty cool though. About three quarters of the people are kids so the service is quite fun. In the afternoon we put on a program for the kids and got to know them a little bit. I haven´t really started my job yet. The clinic part lasts a week and then we stay in the community and put on various programs for the people there. I´m looking forward to getting started though. So far we have been having a good time despite the rustic conditions and millions of bugs. The people here are really nice and have made us feel like part of the group already. It´s going to be a great semester.
Brett has been assigned a church near the base camp and he will take turns preaching at the church on Sabbath. The church was pretty cool though. About three quarters of the people are kids so the service is quite fun. In the afternoon we put on a program for the kids and got to know them a little bit. I haven´t really started my job yet. The clinic part lasts a week and then we stay in the community and put on various programs for the people there. I´m looking forward to getting started though. So far we have been having a good time despite the rustic conditions and millions of bugs. The people here are really nice and have made us feel like part of the group already. It´s going to be a great semester.
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