First Impressions

Hi again! We’ve been here for a few days now and are just beginning to get used to life here at Hogar. On Sunday, we went to a missionary alliance church. Courtney and I were pleasantly surprised by how much of the singing and preaching we could understand, and they even sang a song we knew. I found it ironic that the message of the sermon was to “leave Trujillo, leave Peru, go out and spread the gospel,” seeing as we had arrived here the day before to do just that IN Trujillo. The service lasted for over two and a half hours, so I felt sorry for four of the other volunteers who were there with us who don’t know much Spanish.

On Monday, we took a tour of the orphanage. Courtney will have her very own office (seeing as she’s awesome), and she’s quite excited that they just painted it a bright green—almost exactly the color that we had in our apartment in Grand Rapids. Courtney will spend her time here doing all sorts of things, including leading meetings, communicating with incoming short-term volunteers, doing room inspections, and just generally being the person that you find if there is a question or problem. Example from yesterday: Someone plugged and left on a sink in one of the houses, and it and the two inches of water on the floor of the bathroom, hallway, and part of the living area were later discovered. Courtney is the person who will have to deal with figuring out how to deal with it. She will also spend a couple hours each afternoon pulling kids out of group tutoring to work one on one with them.

My schedule is less hectic, but still involves a number of different things. Three mornings a week, I will be tree-hugging (aka tending to the very new nearly dead orchard we have here), gardening (er...has anyone seen a green thumb lying around that I could borrow?), and doing some maintenance work. During the other two mornings of the week, I will be working on getting the library in order, cleaning it, putting new books into it, etc. Every afternoon, I will hold open library hours, where the kids can come and get books and sometimes use the internet, as well as spending two hours with my tutor group composed of the oldest boys here at the orphanage.

The food here is pretty good...but there isn’t all that much of it. Yesterday, for example, our provided meals for the day were as follows: A couple rolls for breakfast, a rice dish and a chicken wing for lunch, and that same rice dish and a chicken wing for dinner. The chicken was actually very good—it was definitely a better tasting protein than the lentils from Monday, the gizzards from Monday, or the cow stomach soup that I heard they had last week. Also, the Peruvians don’t snack. Tragic, I know. So, Courtney and I got some groceries, and will be buying quite a bit more food each week than we had planned on doing. Other volunteers here have said that they’ve spent up to $300 a month on transportation costs and food. Assuming we spend the same amount for the two of us as they spend for only one of them, that puts us at about $2000 more than we planned on spending here. We didn’t end up having to pay any airport or baggage fees, which was excellent and saved us a couple hundred dollars each way each time, so that will help cover some of the added expense.

On a very exciting note, Courtney has not gotten sick! She did spend most of the first two or three days here asleep, but that appears to have been very helpful, along with the vitamins, pro-biotics(thanks mom—come to think of it, you gave us the vitamins too J), and anti-malarials that we take every day. As Courtney mentioned in the last post, it’s the dead of winter here, which I find quite balmy and very nice due to the lack of mosquitos and humidity. It’s mildly comical to see people wearing coats, hats, and gloves just because it is 60 degrees and cloudy. The other volunteers here are pretty awesome, and about half of them have excellent taste in movies (Courtney would argue that the other half is the one with good taste—the other night, half watched The Prince and Me –gross-, and the other half of us watch Band of Brothers –awesome-). Tragically, almost no one knows how to play euchre...most of them had never even heard of it. However, this is a problem Courtney and I plan on fixing.

We have only been able to spend a little bit of time with the kids so far, but it’s been good. We’re still in that beginning stage where the kids are testing us, seeing if we are actually nice and want to play with them, and seeing if we have a backbone and will assert authority or not. It’s mildly strange, because half the time they are excited that you’re there and want to talk with you, play with you, sit or jump on you, and the other half of the time they are deliberately being super naughty to see if they can walk all over you. This post is already super long, so you’ll just have to wait til we get to know the kids better before you hear more about them. Adios. -D