Christmas traditions

(Christmas Dinner with Work Colleagues)

When my boss heard that I was going to be spending Christmas alone/on the internet talking on skype, she invited me to spend Christmas Eve with her family. Unlike in Canada, where Christmas centers around the 25th, in Peru the 24th is when all the magic happens. Family comes together for mass and then gathers at the family homestead to enjoy some longstanding traditions. So at 10:30 pm I made my way through the city and through the pop, pop, pop of fireworks to enjoy some family time.

At precisely midnight we popped the champagne and had a toast, wishing each other a Merry Christmas. We then went out to the park outside the house to light up our own fireworks and sparklers. I shared my families tradition of oohing and aahing over each individual firework and got my boss to write her name with the sparkler like my cousins and I used to do when we were kids.

After all that excitement we sat down to share a meal together. Here's where I found the little differences to be the most pronounced. When discussing Christmas traditions at work food came up all the time but we focused so much on the commonalities I thought that the only difference was going to be cranberry sauce vs. no cranberry sauce. Most Peruvians have turkey for their Christmas meal and my experience was no exception. However they paired it with slices of pineapple, rice, salad, candied yams and a spicy brown sauce. It was delicious!

Finally the gifts were opened and we all headed to our homes to fall happily into bed.

The next day I had a non-traditional feast of pizza and pisco sours with a friend from Argentina. The sun was shining and I may have gotten a bit of a sun-burnt. Definitely not like any other Christmas I've experienced!

Happy Holidays to all!

One-Monthaversary

Yesterday marked my one month mark here in Lima, Peru! I can hardly believe it! I've barely settled in and in just 11 months I'll be back in Canada... well I guess I shouldn't count on that if things go well there is always the opportunity to stay on in Peru or to move to another Latin American Country where CUSO-VSO works... Honduras or Jamaica sound nice!

Since it's my one-monthaversary I thought it's about time I get around to giving my first impressions of the city.

First it's massive. I have never lived in a city larger than 1-1.5 million people and Lima has 8 million. I am having the hardest time understanding how that works. I live and work in Miraflores and it is the most western section of Lima with big shopping malls, nice restaurants and North American housing prices. Miraflores is like a little city in itself. That much I understand... but then Miraflores is surrounded by other little cities that each have their own shopping centres, restaurants and economies. What I don't understand is how everything can be so separate yet so interconnected. I also have this sneaking suspicion that there must be some secret for finding the best spot for everything.

Second living in Miraflores you don't really get the sense of what Peru is all about. I don't mean that to sound dismissive because sometimes when travelling people do dismiss this place or that place as being "too western" or "too touristy" but those places are as much a part of the place as the so-called authentic places. What I mean is that Miraflores is only a small part of a much more diverse country. Peru has one of the most diverse collections of flora and fauna in the world with the Amazon, the Andes and the Pacific Coast. Each region has developed their individual cultures around the environment thus there is a great diversity of cultures as well. So what I have seen so far is only the tip of the iceburg. Good news is there may be some visits to CAPLAB's local offices in my future!

Finally, the people here have been warm, welcoming and very willing to help me with my problems. For example, yesterday I had to find Adobe Photoshop in order to view some files. My colleagues were more than willing to drop what they were doing to point me in the "right" direction or to offer possible solutions to my problem. Finally after a few hours of checking on various computers and consulting with people I was able to view it a the local internet cafe. Apparently there is one computer that has Photoshop here but it is nowhere to be found! ... well now there's two since I got it installed yesterday afternoon.

Today is our Christmas party at work! So more pictures will be coming soon!

Christmas Time!

I wanted to share with you the awesome mountain of gifts that my office has put together to send to a children´s organsation for Christmas. I added a few gifts to pile! Today is my birthday so I was pretty happy to spend some time thinking about how excited the kids will be seeing the presents after opening my own birthday presents! It´s nice to share the love this time of year.

UPDATE JAN 6TH: CAPLAB received a wonderful thank you letter from the sisters at Misericordia de la T.O.R. de San Francisco saying how much the children enjoyed the presents!

Pachacamac

Last week I went with CUSO-VSO Peru on their annual retreat. All of the volunteers from Cuzco were flown in to participate with the rest of us from Lima. It was a great opportunity for me - right off the bat - to meet, to learn from and to get to know the other volunteers here in Peru.

We stayed in this beautiful retreat in the area of Pachacamac called Attinchik. They specialize in corporate retreats so everything was set up nicely. The food was amazing and so pretty that I took pictures. They also had this huge garden set up all around us and all the plants were labelled with their Latin names. I woke up early on the first morning, took a stroll around the gardens and relaxed in one of the hammocks. While I was there this squirrel came up to me to check me out. I´m not going to lie - I felt a little like Snow White.

I took a walk through the mountains to the town with two of the other participants. They were real mountaineers and just charged right through while I struggled with vertigo. In Bolivia, I went on a hike with some friends and had to turn around I was so scared of spontaneously falling off the mountain. So it was a real accomplishment to make it to the peak! When we got to the town it was exactly what I expected Peru to be like (so nothing like Lima). It had this big beautiful town square with fantastic gardens. There were tiny corner shops and narrow, dusty streets with three-wheeled moto-taxis zipping all over the place.

We ended the day at the retreat with a grand fiesta - Pisco sours, guitars and dancing! So much fun! I wish I could have stayed there!

http://www.atinchik.com/casa_atinchik.htm

First Impressions

I arrived in Lima after a particularly long in-flight movie marathon on Monday and was greeted by CUSO-VSO in the airport. However, that did not end the whirlwind that I've been experiencing over the last few months! I was pulled directly into training where I spent the last four days learning about Lima and how the topics of Gender, HIV/AIDs, Child protection, Discrimination and Security apply in the Peruvian context. It was pretty awesome! We had guest speakers from other NGO's come in to talk to us and I got to learn a little bit about what's happening in the NGO community here.

One presenter told us about the Sierra Productivo which is an organisation that uses traditional methods of capacity building to improve farming techniques. The person who passes on technical information is called the Yachachiq. Farmers visit the Yachachiq to learn more about farming techniques in general and then they start implementing some of these ideas. Once they've had a chance to try out some of these ideas the Yachachiq visits their farm and helps them to fine-tune the process. What an awesome way to draw on local expertise and knowledge to produce sustainable results!

One theme that has come up over and over again the past few days from the Peruvian presenters is capacity building. The presenters were all really engaged with the idea of improving access to education opportunities and information for their specific topics. Perhaps the emphasis is due to the connection with CUSO-VSO values which are all about providing learning opportunities both for the volunteer and the organisation. However, I find this exciting because it means that there are local professionals who are engaged in the development process that I perhaps I can contact to solicit advise and expertise.

Seeing as I have spent my first days in the CUSO-VSO office I will save my first impressions of the city and culture for further posts! But let me just say that the food here is amazing and will need one or two entries of its own. Yum!

Check out the Sierra Productivo website (in Spanish) http://www.sierraproductiva.org/ or read the BBC profile on them (in English) http://www.theworldchallenge.co.uk/2010-finalists-project03.php

Goodbye - Part two

I leave tomorrow morning for Lima. I've been home for 10 days - just long enough to reconnect with my Nova Scotian roots. It's so beautiful in the Annapolis Valley. Tonight, I was driving into town to have one last dinner with my mom and the moon was rising as the sun was setting creating that harvest moon phenomenon where the moon looks 4times larger than it actually is. It was breathtaking. Then on the way home I saw a shooting star! I think that's a good sign for starting a new adventure!

Saying Goodbye to Ottawa

Ottawa has been my home for the past 2 years and leaving it has been tougher than expected. I've left many places in my life and I assumed this would just be one more. Of course life is always more complicated than that. It's funny how a place can really become a part of you without you even realizing it.

Doing all these last minute preparations for leaving one city and starting over in another has been quite an adventure in and of itself. There are so many little details to work out that it can become overwhelming very quickly... I'm so glad to have finished moving with the help of some amazing friends who helped me pack, drove me to the airport and sent me off in style! Thanks so much!

I'm now curled up on the sofa at my Dad's house preparing for round two of goodbyes in Nova Scotia. I've got 10 days here and I hope to see as many people as possible while still preparing for the new job in Lima! Luckily most of the packing is out of the way...

And the journey begins...

I was recently selected as a volunteer with CUSO-VSO. CUSO-VSO Canada is one of the best volunteer sending organisations in Canada. Their approach to international development is rooted in partnership building through sending skilled volunteers overseas to work with local organisations. They have a number of goal areas that they work on including "Secure Livelihoods" - which is the area I will be working in.

I am going to be a Social Communications Specialist at a non-governmental organisation called CAPLAB. Their programs are focused on women and youth. They offer opportunities for training to improve employment skills. They also offer microcredit to entrepreneurs. I'm really excited to see how this all works! Since I will be working on Web 2.0 technology I figured I'd better dive in and start this blog! It will hopefully give me the chance to try out what works and what doesn't. I invite feedback and discussion on any points of interest... after all that's what social media is about.

It's been a bit of a whirlwind for me. I had a super-fast-tracked process sped up by my willingness to pick up and leave, and the great fit between me and my placement. CUSO-VSO keeps reminding me to make sure I tell people that my case is unusual because the process can take up to a year to find the right fit. So if you're thinking about applying it can take six months to a year!

I spent all of last weekend in training with some fantastic people. I couldn't believe the wealth of expertise and experience in that training room. Most people had been overseas many times! In addition to meeting others in the same boat, I learned so much about myself this past weekend. We did a lot of hands on learning which is not really my preferred learning style since I always end up spending eons agonizing over what I did wrong. But it really gave me an opportunity to get to know myself a bit better and to learn about how to deal with a wide variety of cultural situations.

So here I am at the beginning with so many unknowns and so much still up in the air. Regardless of what happens I hope that you'll enjoy living vicariously through me and this blog!