Amashca

Hola todos,
Tomorrow I head out to visit my future home for a few days, then it´s back to Yanacoto for a week to get ready, swear in and then we´re outta here. Man, it really feels good to be at this point. Training as they say, is long and arduous, at times strait up flabergasting with all the charlas and powerpoints and papelotes (flip charts), you just want to get going and put your knowledge to use. My site is a gem, I will be in the mountains of Ancash in the Cordillera Blanca in northern Peru. I´m relatively close to the highest mountain in the world´s tropics, Huascaran. My site is not as high of course, I think I´ll be at about 7,000 feet, but that´s a bit of a jump from Eugene and here in Chaclacayo. The community I´ll be living in is the district capital of a small area about 4,000 total habitants, in my town there are about 1,200. There is Quechua spoken in this area, but I´ll also be using my Spanish. From our group there are six of us going to this region, we are all Youth Development volunteers, it´s a good group.
I just finished checking out another Ancashian PCV´s blog, so if you want to check it out to get more info on Ancash it´s sophiedila.blogspot.com, she has just finished her two years of service and is going on to complete a third year as the PCVL (Peace Corps Volunteer Leader) in Ancash. We haven´t met yet, but she´s on the roster of super volunteers, so I can consider myself lucky to have her as a support.
Please check back in next week, I will certainly have more info regarding my site visit and my new family! I can´t wait to meet them.
Elke