Seriously?

I'm beginning to think that I'm not supposed to go back to site. So here's the story. Please don't judge me... I'm a little embarassed to say so, but I haven't been in site since the 24th of March. Wow! So all my out-of-sitedness has an explanation, which was discussed on the previous blog post up to my AIDS workshop which ended last Wednesday. After this I had made plans to go home the following day, as would be expected, but started feeling sick, so I stayed another day. I felt worse, so I stayed another day and started taking an antibiotic after talking with our doctor on the phone. Then I felt a little better and was more confident in not having a fun case of diarhea or vomiting during the 5 hour roller coaster ride back to site, so I decided to leave the following day. I was a little nervous about being weak because all I've eaten the last 3 days was like 6 Ritz crackers and a half a piece of Pizza (bad idea). But I was able to pack up all my stuff that I needed or picked up throughout my almost month-long excursion (which is a lot) and manage to get it to the bus terminal to head to site. I get there, have them put my stuff in the backage area, go to pick up my ticket that I reserved the previous day and realized the lady had forgotten to write my name down to reserve my seat. I could have stood for about half of the way, although I'm not sure I could have handled it today. Based on my options, I decided that another day of rest wouldn't hurt to get myself better, I could see my friends that are in town one last day, and just deal with lugging my stuff around one more day.

So here I am back in the hotel spending more money for another stay, still not in site, and feeling super guilty and like an unproductive Peace Corps volunteer. One day I will get back to site. I'm hoping that day is tomorrow.

It is evident by my 'mood' demonstrated in this blog that I am not super happy with the situation at hand (mainly due to guilt), but as I look as possible positives I see that this guilt may provide me with some extra drive to be a badass worker when I return. There you have it: Bad; and Good.

Instead of putting pics up of the hotel room that I stayed in for the last 3 days, which would be super boring, here are pics of other fun things over my month-long 'excursion'.

I'm a congrejo!

Out of Site Out of Mind

Man, I've been out of site a lot lately and have undergoing some feelings of guilt. Although many of these reasons have been Peace Corps related, and the others Peace Corps appproved, I am looking at going back to a whole new world in my site. After getting back from Reconnect, I had to head out again for something called PDM which is a project developement workshop to be attended with selected community members. I went ahead and attached a vacation trip to Ayacucho with a few awesome Peace Corps friends Frieda and Fletcher (aka Fletch City) to visit my sponsor child. He is a great kid and always had a smile on his face. I had brought him some gifts: a soccer uniform of Peru, a soccer ball, stickers, writting and drawing materials with colors, and some books. He seemed to really like them, which made me happy. We met in the NGO office along with the mom and members of the NGO and then headed to a park to play. The experience was great but went by fast. I was very glad I had that opportunity since it is so rare that sponsors have the opportunity to visit their sponsor kids.

After the PDM workshop, I felt much better about getting a good sustainable project started. Instead of spreading my work throughout several caserios, we felt that choosing one or two and doing a lot within those caserios would be more sustainable and overall a better idea. I can't wait to get the project plan together and start! I'm happy I have a project that I'm excited about now. Unfortunately, I won't be back in site until a few days after Easter because it wasn't really worth going back to site between my arrival from the PDM workshop in Lima and a regional meeting in my capital city. After the regional meeting, I had another couple-day period that I chose to spend visiting Eric's site near the regional capital. I loved his site (except the mosquitos) and realized how different the Peace Corps Peru atmosphere is for everyone. I went along with Matt and Mark and we helped a bit with the World Map project and a trial compost batch. Eric's host family was great. The mosquitos were not.

Now I'm back in the regional capital about to head out to the beach with other volunteers to celebrate our semana santa vacation. When I come back I have another workshop on AIDS and HIV through a US government initiative and then I finally get to go back to site. I've been gone for so long and feel pretty bad and guilty about it. I head that it is drying up and the sun us out, so it should be pretty different to see. I can't wait to start being outside and running again in site. This is a difficult season for the Sierra volunteers. I still think I like it better than the mosquitos though.

I hope everyone is well. Send questions if you have them! Have a happy Easter!