Back From Vacation

Hello once again folks!  I´m back from vacation and ready to start writing again.  Ok, I wasn´t actually on vacation for a couple of months; I just never got around to updating this site.  Whoops!  So, here´s one big update to bring you up to speed on what I´ve been up to.

Work:  The work that I have been completing over the past few months at the Instituto Chaminade Marianistas has been moving along slowly but surely.  If you recall, the big project that I am developing is to create an information system accessible via the Internet in order to help the school better maintain the information they have about their students.  The specific goal of the project is to give the marketing group at the school a better way of tracking prospective students as they proceed through the matriculation process to become students.

This project has been a huge challenge for me from the get go.  I have had to teach myself how to use three new technologies in order to make the final product, which has given me more than a few headaches along the way.  I´ve also been designing and developing everything by myself, which has made the project take much longer than I though it would.  But, the good news is that I´m pretty much done with everything and will be submitting my work for review next week!

Life In Peru:  Apart from the work that I´m doing, I have been having a great time living here in Peru.  It does have it´s difficult moments at times, but overall I am very happy with the experience thus far.  When I´m not working, I´m usually hanging out with my host family at their house, or visiting different places nearby in Callao or Lima.  I´ve also been participating in a few extracurricular activities with students at the school, including a guitar class and a dance class.  Yes, that´s right, a dance class.  Dancing is a very big part of Peruvian culture, so I figured that I might as well learn somthing so that I can at least act like I know what I´m doing.

I´ve had the opportunity to meet a ton of new people here, including people from the U.S. as well.  There was a group of students that visited us from St. Mary´s University in Texas.  I met a medical student with ties to the University of Dayton who was working and studying in a nearby hospital for about a month.  Currently, I am living and working with Ken, a fellow UD student who is participating in the ETHOS program as a volunteer like I did last year.  We´ve been having a great time together, and I´ve been helping him out in getting adjusted to life in Peru.

My host family has been treating me great as always.  It´s been really nice getting to know them better during the past months, and they always seem to be giving me a hard time about something.  A special shout-out goes to Cintya since she tells me that she actually reads what I write here and has been giving me a hard time for not writing anything for so long.

Travel:  I have mananged to find a little bit of time to do some traveling in Peru while I´ve been here.  I traveled to the northern part of the country for about a week to visit a small town in the mountains.  While there, I stayed with a group of people who work at a Marianist mission and who serve the rural mountain communities with teaching about faith formation.  I got to stay in one of these communities for three days, which was a really humbling experience.  While up north, I also visited two sites that have ancient ruins as well as a beautiful beach.

In a little over a week, Ken and I will be heading with a group from the Instituto on a week-long mission trip into the mountains nearby Lima.  We will be helping out with different faith formation activities as well as just getting to know and spending time with the people who live in these small villages.  I´ve heard that this trip will be especially difficult, so I´ll be sure to share my experiences when I get back.  Ken and I are also thinking about trying to travel to Machu Picchu and possibly the rain forest sometime in July, which would definitely be a great experience.

Well, that´s about it for now.  I apologize again for the long break between posts and also the lack of pictures.  I´ll try to keep things updated a little better during the next month-and-a-half that I have left here in Peru.

Chau!!!

I’m Still Here

Seeing as how this is my first post in the month of March, you can probably guess that I’ve been pretty busy lately. My work at the school has been keeping me busy as always. I have also been helping a group of students who are studying English. Aside from that, occasional trips into Lima and other events have occupied my free time.

One of the things that is very different from life in the U.S. is my schedule.  During the week, I work at the school from 8:30 AM until 1:30 PM.  I then go back to my house to eat lunch and usually return to the school in the afternoon at around 3:30 or 4 PM.  I help out the group of English students twice a week, and I am also participating in a couple of other activities with students at the school.  I usually don’t go home until about 8 or 9 PM, which means that I eat dinner around 9:30 or 10 PM.  My schedule keeps me very busy during the week, which is nice since I always have something to do, but sometimes it can be very tiring!

Challenges of Living in Peru

Hello again readers of my blog.  Once again, it’s hard to believe that another month is coming to a close.  My work and other activities have continued keeping me very busy throughout the week.  Recently, I started leading a discussion group for students who are studying English at the school.  That is a lot of fun, but also difficult at times to try and explain why we say things the way we do in English.

Seeing as how I am living in a country other than my own, there are certainly some challenges that go along with this experience of living in Peru.  I want to share a few of those so you can get a better idea of what life is like for me.

• Spanish:  That’s a pretty obvious one, isn’t it?  I think I am doing much better with Spanish during this trip to Peru compared to my trip last year.  The biggest thing that has helped me is just having confidence in my abilities and trying to do the best I can when communicating.  There are always times when I don’t completely understand what another person is saying or when I don’t know how to say something in Spanish.  People usually appreciate that I am making the effort to try and speak with them, so I usually don’t have too much trouble.  Although, at times it is very frustrating not being able to express myself like I would be able to in English.
• Water:  This one might surprise you if you’ve never traveled outside the U.S. before.  Here in Callao where I am living, there is no hot water that comes from a tap.  This is generally the case throughout the entire country, unless you have a gas water heater.  So, this means that every day I get to take cold showers!  Another interesting point related to water is that all tap water is shut off at 10 PM every night until the following morning.  Meaning, that if I try to turn on the faucet at 10:01 PM, nothing comes out.  The local government does this to try and conserve water because Peruvians in the past were known for severely wasting water.
• Noise:  Maybe it’s just me, but it always seems like my surroundings are very loud.  Here’s a few of the noises that I typically hear on a daily basis: children yelling and playing in the street, radios playing music, cars honking their horns, street vendors advertising their products by talking over loudspeakers, the song “My Heart Will Go On” (the theme song from Titanic).  A quick explanation about that last one:  there is a street vending company that sells ice cream here that rides through the city on bicycles and plays “My Heart Will Go On” on a loudspeaker so that you know they are approaching where you are…it drives me nuts!!!  Why, of all songs, the theme song from Titanic?

Hopefully you have a better understanding of some of the quirks and challenges of living in Peru.  There are, of course, many others, but those are some of the most prominent ones.  Enjoy the final days of February!

Photos!!!

I finally got around to updating the photo gallery with some new pictures.  There are a couple of pictures from my birthday celebration back in January as well as some pictures from my trip to Lunahuana to go river rafting.  You can look at those photos by going to the photo gallery, or you can click here to go directly to the pictures.

This week has flown by fast.  I have been very busy with my work at the school.  Recently, I submitted an analysis report that I wrote (all in Spanish!) for the computer system that I am designing for the school.  Lately, I have been focusing primarily on technical support work while the school’s staff is in the process of reviewing my report.

Have a good weekend!

Nature Doesn’t Like Me

Well folks, I think Mother Nature is out to get me.  After getting sunburned two weekends ago, I managed to get eaten up by bugs this past weekend.  I went with my host family to go river rafting in a town called Lunahuana.  I remembered, of course, to put on sunscreen, and I actually managed not to get sunburned!  However, little did I know that I would be attacked by bugs.  I didn’t even realize that I had numerous bug bites on my legs until we got back to the house that night.  Two of the other kids in my host family also had the same misfortune as me, so at least I didn’t feel as bad this time.  Maybe this weekend I should just stay in the house and not go anywhere!

I hope to put up some pictures soon from my first few weeks in Peru, so come back soon to check them out.

Welcome to the Month of Water

Part of the fun in travelling abroad is that you get the opportunity to experience a culture other than your own.  Sometimes things are more-or-less the same between the two cultures.  Other times, things are dramatically different.  From my experience living in Peru, I really hadn’t come across anything that would seem off-the-wall to a person from the U.S. until this past weekend.

During the month of February in Peru (remember, it is currently summer here), people play something called “carnavales”.  Simply put, carnavales just means that you are outside having fun and playing with water.  Seems harmless, right?  Well, there’s more.  On Saturdays and Sundays during this month, it is completely socially acceptable to stand on your roof and throw water balloons at or dump buckets of water on random strangers walking by your house.  It’s pretty much an all-out water fight.  For example, I left the house with my host family on Sunday to go to the beach (again!!!), and as we were walking down the road, people were throwing water balloons at us.  It was one of the craziest things I’ve seen.  There are a few rules to this game.  It is unacceptable to throw water at an elderly person, a woman who is pregnant, or anyone walking with a young child.  Anyone else, however, is fair game.

I have no idea how carnavales came about, but I do know that this month I will be walking down the streets with my eyes scanning the rooftops just in case!

Ventimiglia Visits Ventanilla

Try saying that three times fast.  This past weekend I went to the beach in the nearby city of Ventanilla with my host family and some of their extended family.  Going to the beach was fun, but unfortunately I got sunburn, which never makes things fun.  Apparently the sun in Peru just doesn’t like light-skinned Americans, because everyone else who went to the beach with me did just fine with little or no sunblock.

It’s hard to believe that the end of January is almost here.  The summer in Peru continues to be hot and humid, and I’m told that it will probably be hotter in February, which I guess is no consolation for those of you experiencing the cold and snow of winter in the Midwest!

Thoughts of the Day

It’s been a little over a week since I arrived in Peru, and I am more-or-less readjusted to life here in Callao. The family continues to treat me well as always. My work at the school is also going very well. In addition to technical support work, I am starting to work on a project to develop a computerized system that will allow the school to better maintain the information it has about its students. The project will certainly be a big challenge for me, but hopefully it will produce a usable product for the school.

Some other random thoughts:

• The weather in Callao continues to be sunny and hot with highs in the upper 70s everyday.  That might sound like ideal weather, but the humidity remains around 70% all day, every day, which makes it even hotter and usually more unpleasant.  And no, there is no air conditioning.
• Living in summer-like weather during January is just plain weird.
• My host family bought a turkey last week to eat for dinner.  At the time I thought this would be a nice change from the steady diet of chicken.  Little did I know that I would be eating turkey for lunch, dinner, and yes, even breakfast, for the next four days.  There might have been one or two meals that didn’t include turkey during that time, but all I can remember eating is turkey.
• Time for a really random thought:  The printer and copier paper that people use here is not the standard 8.5″ x 11″ size that we use in the U.S.  Their paper is not quite as wide and about an inch longer.  It’s just one of those things that I’ve always found strange and slightly awkward for some reason.
• FYI for those of you who travel outside the country:  It is possible to use Skype to make free telephone calls to toll-free numbers in the U.S.  Oh, the things that you learn while traveling abroad.

Until next time, ciao!

I’m Back in Peru!

As you probably guessed from the title, I have in fact returned to Callao, Peru. I graduated from the University of Dayton this past December and decided to serve as a volunteer for a little while following my graduation. That decision eventually led me back to Peru and the Instituto Chaminade Marianistas. I will again be working at the school and helping out in the area of technical support. I will also be working on some larger projects along the way, which should keep me very busy. I will be in Peru until the start of August, about 7 months total, which should be very interesting since I’ve never been away from my family or outside the United States for that length of time.

I am again living with the same host family that I lived with during my ETHOS trip in the summer of 2008, which has made the transition to life in Peru much easier. So far, things have been going well. Today was my first day back working in the school, so we are in the process of deciding what tasks I will be working on while I am here. The biggest change for me has been the weather. Since Peru is located south of the equator, it is currently summer here. It was quite a change going from 20-degree temperatures and snow to 70-degree temperatures and high humidity, but I can’t say that I miss the cold!

I hope to update this blog more often than I did last summer. I’ll try to keep the posts fairly short since I usually don’t have a lot of time to just sit down and type. I updated the photo gallery with pictures from my trip to Peru last summer. I’ll be sure to post new pictures occasionally. That’s all for now. Ciao!

ETHOS Peru Update

In case anyone is continuing to check this blog for updates, I thought I would go ahead and share some exciting news that I received today.  The donated computers from UD’s School of Engineering have finally arrived at the Instituto Chaminade Marianistas in Peru.  I can now officially say that this computer donation project has come to a successful conclusion.  It’s hard to believe that we had been working on this thing for almost a year now, but I was certainly excited to hear that the computers had made it.  Hopefully, they will be of good use to the school, and from my experiences there, I think they will be.  If I receive any pictures from Peru, I will be sure to share them.

Thanks again for your continued interest in my work and ETHOS in general.  If this ends up being the last post from me, then I hope you have enjoyed learning about my journey.  I know that I sure have enjoyed the ride.