and I´m off

Today I am headed to my site 1.5 hours outside of beautiful Cajamarca City. I leave a mind full of worries and wonders, but a heart overflowing with faith and confidence...

the words from Deuteronomy ring crisp and clear...
"Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the LORD your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you." 31:6

Graduation!

Tomorrow is the day that my official title evolves from a Aspirante... to a Volunteer!

This week has been pretty relaxed. We have just been wrapping up our medical, technical and language sessions and setting our eyes on the big move to our sites. In a few hours our host families will arrive at the training center for our Host Family Celebration... were going to have a bit of fun and eat some major cake...
Most volunteers plan on using the rest of the day to pack their things (which seems like a nearly impossible task) and we will head over to our buddy Ryans to have a little going away celebration.

Tomorrow, after graduation, we head to Lima where we will have one last night together as Peru 11 before we head to our cites for GOOD. Ill be traveling to Cajamarca on Sat. and will arrive at my final site on Sun. or Mon. We are finally getting equiped with our own cell phones tomorrow! Ill be sure to get it to those of you who want to give me a hollar! Also... I dont have my new mailing address just yet, but once I get a P.O. box settled, Ill send it your way!
Much love to you all! thanks for coming along on my trip! See you in Cajamarca
James

site vizit

This week at the training center has been interesting. Upon returning from site visits many volunteers have shown extreme excitement about their future sites, while others are more apprehensive and not quite ready to leave the "comfortalbe" confines of Lima, Peru.
I find myself right in the middle, sometimes bursting with excitement to get out and see what Peace Corps is really all about, and fearing that I'm not quite ready for the sierra campo life. Honestly it has been a bit of an emotional rollorcoaster for alot of poeple, myslef included.
Our three months here in Lima have been planned and structured to the max... sometimes its been hard to even get a day to ourselves. It's been somewhat hard to keep up with all the info thats put forth in training, but the trainers and staff have been a great blessing. I'm very thankful for these 3 months of training, they have really helped us 'acostumbrar' to the living conditions and culture of Peru.
Whats going to be crazy is the rapid shift from a very structured schedule/life to an unstructured one at our sites. This shift is bound to be one of the most difficult challenges of this entire experiance. I pray we will all be well prepared for the change...

Site visit went very well. My town is tiny! 1,050 people! The schools were on vacation and it seemed like alot of people ditched the town for a vacation of some sort.
My experiance with my host family was a good one. They are extremely talented people, as well as deticated hard workers. It was really cool and interesting to watch them spin their ceramics wheels throughout the entire day.
Alot of my time in site was spent walking around and getting to know the community a bit... talking with the poeple in the street, meeting the guys from the cuy association, the municipality and the health post. I also spent alot of time playing the guitar with the family! One night I even played almost 4 hours of consecutive guitar with different family members. I was teaching them two of their very own cultural songs... 'condor pasa' and 'adios pueblo de ayacucho'
The scenery around my site is beautiful, I'm surrounded by green mountains (they call them hills). Many people in the community have their farms and lately deticate much of their days to reaping their harvests. Others in the community are deticated to artisian, and carpentry work...
I had the chance to walk down to another volunteers site, and found out it is only 20 minutes by foot... my site has neither internet nor direct cell phone service, so its nice to know that I can head down the street for those things.
I've got plenty of other things to say about the site, but I've got 2 years to do so!
I hope your all doing well! I really love hearing from some of you through e-mail or comments
We will all swear into official Peace Corps service next friday and head out to our permanent sites on the sunday following the ceremony.

Much love through Christ

James OOO

2 years in CAJAMARCA!

Today was the biggest day of them all... we found out our location and assigments for the next two years of our lives. We had all been waiting for this moment since the day we got to Peru.

I have been assigned to a pueblo in Cajamarca

It is a small city located in the green green mountains of Cajamarca (very similar to the site I went to for FBT)

I will be working alongside two associations... 1. which works with the wholesale of live cuy (guinie pig) and 2. an association of ceramists!

I will be working closley with the head of the ceramics association who actually happens to be my host dad!

The house I will live in is the studio in which the ceramists do most of their work, Kiln and all!

some of the youth volunteers visited this very site for their FBT experiance. I am fortunate enough to have some picutres of my site handy! also some picutres of the house/studio in which I will live...

there is also a town about 30 minutes outside of Chacay where there is a guitar workshop in which I look forward to doing some work with as well!

all of this sounds too good to be true in all actuality, but its happening! I feel as if I could not have chosen a better site. I am rediculoulsy excited to search out the posibilities in the site...

I leave for a week long site visit this Sunday. I´ll return next Sunday and am excited to fill you all in on even more about the town! Thanks for your comments, thoughts, emails and prayers!

God is good,

James