Swearing-In and First Week at Site

Last Friday we had our swearing-in ceremony at the training center. The first-lady of Peru spoke but I honest-to-god don’t remember a single word she said because my legs were being demolished by viscous little insects that bit me so many times I wanted to cry. Surely you don’t find this very titillating but it’s significant because I had to show up in my community looking like I have some kind of highly contagious disease which is somehow localized to my lower legs.

After the ceremony, Peace Corps paid for a nice hotel in a ritzy part of Lima. Everyone opted for a nice dinner at a restaurant right on the ocean. We ended the night at a really fancy night club. Doesn’t really sound like Peace Corps does it?

Before finally arriving at our communities on the 4th of December, everyone spent a few days in their capitol cities. I should mention that when everyone left Lima it was pretty hard to say goodbye. I definitely cried with a few people. It is amazing how close I feel to the rest of the people in my training group after only 2½ months.

So far I’ve been in site for a little over a week. I don’t feel like my first week at site has been normal. Then again, I doubt there is such a thing as a normal first week of Peace Corps service. Within 30 minutes of my arrival I was talking to a “contractor” about putting in a concrete floor. They actually put it in today so I’m starting to feel like I’m getting things done too quickly. However, that makes is sound like the process was easier than it actually was. I was solely responsible for finding the materials and getting them to my house. For my room that was 7 bags of concrete, 2 bags of paint and a massive heap of sand and rock mixture. They sent me in search of some guy named Paco who lives “más allá.” In Spanish that means “somewhere that way.” Yes, it’s as vague as it sounds. Somehow I located Paco and I ended up visiting him twice because the supplies didn’t arrive the first time around. The concrete was transported down the Pan-American highway on the back of a rickshaw which barely moves even without being unevenly weighted down. The sand and rock mixture was more like sand and boulders so I’m not sure why they didn’t have me buy sand. Anyway, it ended up in a heap in the middle of the road in front of my house. Furthermore, I bought paint for walls instead of the floor so I had to buy more paint. I don’t want to waste the wall paint so I’ll probably end up with yellow-gold walls which unfortunately won’t come close to complementing any of the many other colors in my room. If anything it will distract from the Christmas theme which is currently going on with my red floor and green bed. To spice it up even more I purchased a lovely plastic wardrobe that is sporting a bucolic water scene replete with sail boats. Of course it’s bright blue.

Another purchase I made was a mattress. My mattress apparently has a name…Geraldine. Don’t worry, I haven’t named my mattress but I keep finding tags displaying its name. Someone decided to put a giant tag on every single side of the mattress. One would think that one tag would be sufficient but apparently 6 are better. At least Mattress Geraldine is better than the mattress I could have bought – Mattress Sex. Who thought that was a marketable name?!?

I bought an exercise mat which also has a great name…Happy Tourist. According to the tag it is “ideal for camping, hiking, mountaineering, exercising, lifesaving, and for picnics.” Basically if you don’t have one you should because this mat apparently does it all.