The lengthy ramblings of Cam Poulter

Ma' knee

2011-05-11T12:08:00.003-06:00

A return to my blog?? I can understand your doubts. Obviously, much has happened in the last...um...two years since I posted. And maybe I'll get to catching up about some of that. But for now, I'm posting about my knee injury! Cause then I won't have to repeat myself quite as many times. :)

For those of you that haven’t heard the initial explanation, I injured my knee last Tuesday evening while playing softball. The weird thing was that we had an hour-long practice just before the game that evening, and I batted and fielded just fine; in fact, I felt quite pleased with my performance (hitting the ball to the fence multiple times), and I was looking forward to the game. So, game-time: We were up to bat first, and I batted third. On my first swing, I felt my right knee pop and it buckled under me. On the ground, I grabbed my leg and straightened it, and heard/felt things popping back into place. But I was out for the game, and I just iced it as I watched. Thursday morning, a knee doctor told me that none of the 4 main ligaments were torn, but beyond that, he didn’t know what was wrong. The X-ray showed that there might be some cartilage missing from the back of my kneecap. He ordered an MRI for a better look at the soft tissues.

Today, the doctor confirmed from the MRI that I did indeed gauge out some cartilage from the back of my kneecap (with my tibia, I think), and that I have two pieces of cartilage floating around in my knee. This happened when my kneecap dislocated to the outside of my knee. As it moved outside, I tore my medial patellofemoral ligament, which attaches the kneecap to the femur on the inside of the leg. I’ll go in for surgery on Monday and they’ll remove the loose pieces of cartilage from my knee (possibly put them back into place), and possibly reattach the ligament (or otherwise let it heal on its own).

If you would like to injure your knee in a similar fashion, I’ll show you how to twist your body in the right way!

Lost

2009-03-09T21:38:00.002-06:00

Today around 2:30 I was sitting in the JFSB front atrium, and typing away on my computer. I should've been working on a paper or a diagnostic test, but I was definitely being distracted by something else. There was a guy sitting in the chair in front of me, working on his computer as well. He packed up and left a few minutes later, and after he was gone, I noticed that there was a wallet on the ground next to the chair. I went and picked it up...hopefully no one thought I was stealing it or something. I looked at the driver's license and recognized the face of the kid that had been in front of me. So I looked his name up on the BYU directory and called the phone number he had listed. He wasn't home, so I left a message with my name and number.

I had a class at 3:00, and I turned off my phone and went to it. After my class, no one had called, so I called the house back. This time, the guy was home, and I told him I had his wallet. Since he was coming back to campus, we set up a time and place to meet. So I gave him his wallet back right after I got out of Men's Chorus today.

Something similar happened a month or two ago. I was walking into the BYU library and saw a phone on the ground. I quite nearly stepped on it, actually. So I picked it up and called 'Dad' on the phone. When he answered, I explained that I had found a phone and was calling 'Dad'. He said his daughter had recently gotten married, and it was probably her phone. So I left my number with him, and he called his son-in-law. Then I got a call from the son-in-law, and he said they'd come meet me at the library (I guess they weren't extremely far away). So, they came and picked it up.

I don't mean to say anything to show off my goodness or anything; there are plenty of things I need to improve on. But I just want to share how satisfying it is to give something back to somebody that, if lost, would kind of send them up the creek without a paddle. If I lost my wallet or my phone, I'd be bummed for days. In both cases, the people said thanks and that was about it. I'm certain that neither party even remembered my name 15 minutes after the fact. But it felt good to give them their stuff. Why would I cheapen myself and try to gain anything from people who had accidentally left something behind?

I suppose that what goes around comes around - I lost my laptop charger a week or two ago, and didn't realize it until several hours later, when I remembered where I had taken it out of my backpack and left it on the floor. I couldn't find it, but the next day I went to the Lost and Found on BYU's campus and lo and behold, it was there. I recognized it because of the way I had wound the cords around it, though I hadn't marked my name. But I was really grateful to get my possession back. Being without a cord for a day was unfortunate, and having to buy a new cord would have been an annoying setback.

Background Details

2009-02-26T14:52:00.002-07:00

I continue to sit here on my couch, somehow not getting around to that paper that I was supposed to have done already. Nevermind the fact that it just isn't that hard of a paper. But I think people can empathize.

I've had something on my mind lately. Yes, it's serious. Prepare yourself. I look around at other people's blogs, and I keep thinking to myself, "Self, your blog ain't that pretty."

Which leads to more thoughts. "Self, you should get a different blog background."

"But how, self? Where?"

"Self, 'tis a good question."

You see, I just don't know if there are good blog backgrounds/designs for men. I've mentioned this to a few girls, and they subsequently launched on some searches to find me blog backgrounds for men. But a bunch of them are all "sporty," and I don't consider myself a big enough fan or follower of baseball or football to have a blog background that displays some sort of ball flying through the screen or showcases some particular team. Well, there are others. But quite honestly, they just begin looking so doctored that they seem to cry, "My wife/girlfriend/female acquaintance made this blog background for me!" Or perhaps, "Yeah, she put so much work into it for me, I felt bad not using it. Yeah, I know it's 'cute'." And I just can't have it. My blog must be me. And currently, it seems that I am several different shades of green and some arrows and stuff.

Can I be fewer than one person?

2009-02-26T14:11:00.004-07:00

I thought this was interesting. I ran into it on someone else's blog, and so I took it for a whirl myself, and here's the result. I do, however, think that it is actually wrong. Upon Google-ing myself in the past, I'm rather certain that there is another Cameron Poulter that lives in Chicago, and works for some sort of print company. Which makes two of us. He must be a great guy.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are
1
or fewer people with my name in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

Plans? What plans?

2009-02-24T00:09:00.005-07:00

This is intended to be a long-deserved note to my readers about the current status of my life and the plans that I've made, am making, and will make. Ok, that sentence was meant to be really deep or something, and I don't think it was. I also kind of think that I no longer have any readers, since I've only posted a couple of things in the last several months. But if you find yourself reading this, I claim that to be headway.

"Are you graduating in April?" "Yeah." "Oh, wow. What are you going to do?" And my usual response is, "Isn't that a good question?" 'Cause let's face it, it is. In my previous post, I made a couple of references to what I'm doing now to plan for the future. Now, I'm following up.

At the beginning of the semester, I was seriously looking at options of postponing my graduation in order to complete a second BA in Communication Disorders. I've been tentatively planning on going on to complete an MA in Speech Pathology for about a year and a half now, and the headway I've made in that direction has been the completion of my minor in Linguistics, and several of the classes that people have to take to complete a BA in Communication Disorders. I've enjoyed all of it. I say, I've profusely enjoyed my entire college career, which I realize as I reflect back on it, myself now steadily moving toward the end of it. I've loved continuing to study Spanish and all the aspects of it: the grammar, the linguistic properties, the cultures, the art forms, etc. And I've loved being a Spanish Translation major and having my mind opened to what our minds are doing when we begin transferring meaning from one code to another. It's been enchanting to study Linguistics. And so I repeat, my undergraduate career has been enjoyable and has opened my mind in so many ways that I can't count them.

So I've taken a few steps toward an MA in Speech Pathology, although I discovered at the end of last semester that I was quite as close as I had thought I was to beginning it, because there are quite a few pre-requisites that I hadn't sufficiently researched prior to that point. That gave rise to my consideration throughout the two-week semester break of several options. One was to postpone my graduation for a year and complete a second BA in Communication Disorders at BYU. I looked at the requirements, and saw it as plausible to do. (Besides, it would've given me the opportunity to be in a BYU choir again, which I've thoroughly been pleased with being for three years.) Another option was to go ahead and graduate, and then complete an online program for a 2nd BA in Communication Disorders through Utah State. I probably would've continued living in Provo as I did that. And a third option was to just go ahead and apply to MA programs, and complete the pre-requisites before I started on the core of the degree.

After correspondence with professors from a few different schools, I ended up applying to the University of Utah for an MA in Speech Pathology. It was one of the projects I worked on through January; getting the materials sent to them, taking the GRE, and getting professors to write letters of recommendation for me.

Throughout the semester, I've continued receiving e-mails from BYU's career center and from my college and my organizations, and new options have surfaced. After a visit with a representative from MIIS, the Monterey Institute of International Studies, I came to the conclusion that I needed to apply there as well for a Master's Degree. They are home to one of the (if the THE) best translation and interpretation schools in the world. I heard talk of the school here and there in my two years of translation classes at BYU, but didn't feel incredibly inclined to graduate school at those moments. Anyway, I decided to apply. I also found out about opportunities to go teach English in Korea, Japan, or China, and began thinking about that possibility. Additionally, I found out about a job opportunity to be a Team Leader for an organization that does youth leadership conferences for high school and middle school students. As they have international conferences, I immediately became interested.

Anywho, the point of the current rambling is to say that as things now stand, I've finished my application to the University of Utah for an MA in Speech Pathology. I'm a good portion of the way through my application to the Monterey Institute of International Studies for an MA in Translation, and will be done soon. For both of those, I think I'll have a month or so to sit and wait to hear back.

As for the summer, I've applied for the job with Lead-America, and hope to be hired to work a couple of their international Ambassador Abroad programs. If that goes according to my hope, I'll be working for them all through July and will go to Costa Rica for two weeks and Europe for two weeks. And last week, Freedom from Hunger contacted me (and the team from last summer) and gave us the first right of refusal to another internship opportunity this summer. It would be shorter, just 6-8 weeks, and would take place in Chiapas, Mexico. Needless to say, I'm extremely interested. My eventual decision will depend on the time they decide. And personal finances. And other stuff. (That became a less and less definite statement. Oh well.) And I'm also probably going to apply to be an EFY counselor for a few weeks of the summer to fill up some of the other weeks that I don't have planned yet. Ideally, all three of those options will work out. But practically, it's a bit of a long shot that they will. But for now, I just need to wait to hear more from these opportunities.

And who knows, really...I may end up with quite a different future than any of my options predict at the moment. But most likely, come fall, I'll either be back close to home in SLC and attending the U of U, or I'll be in Monterey, CA, Latinizing myself at a pace that I may have never reached before. And hopefully, I'll have had an exciting summer!

I'm looking forward to the rest of this current semester as one of the best that I've had here at BYU academically, and I also plan to continue building friendships and having a really great time.

Christmas card? Er sumpin...

2009-02-23T17:46:00.001-07:00

It occurs to me that I guess I'm old enough to where I can start sending out that Christmas card that gives the run-down of my past year. So along with that idea, I'll try to give some of my shpiel, despite the fact that I missed Christmas by two months.

2008 saw some great times. I spent the first four months of the year at BYU, in my third-to-last semester. Many of my classmates were actually in the last semester, and we were all working on our senior projects, which were 5000 word translations. (That was a step up from the usually 200-ish word translations that we were accustomed to doing.) I actually really enjoyed my project, and I translated the first two chapters of a manual of Hispanic phonetics, written by a professor who teaches here at BYU. I chose that book because I had taken a few linguistics classes by that point, and had declared a minor in Linguistics. I had also recently declared a minor in Music, but that doesn't have much to do with the present story. So, I turned out enjoying my project quite a bit. That semester, I also spent a good amount of time preparing for my upcoming trip to Peru. I had two prep classes in swing beginning the second half of the semester, one being a more general cultural-awareness prep class and the other being a more specific class in which we studied public health topics in preparation for our internship.

For you see, the internship that I had secured the previous November and December was a public health internship. It was an internship program run through the Kennedy Center, BYU's Center for International Studies. And if I may insert my opinion, its a pretty great center, as evidenced by BYU's numerous study abroad programs, internship programs, and field study programs. As many know, the original plan was to go to Bolivia. And in fact, of our small group of 12, 8 did go to Bolivia. The other 4 of us, including our field supervisor Cam Nelson, chose to do our internships with Freedom from Hunger, a non-profit organization who sent us to Peru to work with some of their partners down there. And that was what took up my time from May 12 to August 13. Anyone interested in details can, of course, go back and read previous entries in this very blog. Which you probably know, since if you're reading this, you probably read those entries.

I came back in August, and immediately picked my job back up with Wells Fargo Bank, for whom I had worked from April 2007 to May 2008. I was very fortunate to get my job back there, and it was great to jump right back in and start working for a few weeks before school started. I also spent time finding a new place to live in Provo, and chose it along with Matt Manwaring a good friend and roommate.

When school started, things didn't work out with Wells Fargo and I ended up needing to find different employment, which I found within a month with BYU, working at the Global Service Desk, which provided technical support to the Church; to leaders, employees, members, and non-members. I worked that job from the beginning of October to the last day of the year, and it was an interesting and beneficial experience. I won't say it was my favorite job ever...but it was suitable and again, beneficial to me.

More importantly, I continued my studies in my penultimate semester at BYU, and enjoyed a Historical-Comparative Linguistics class, a Spanish Literature class, a Statistics class, an intro class to Communication Disorders, a Church History class especially, and also a new semester in Men's Chorus. Along with work, this semester turned out to be a pretty busy one. The Linguistics class and the Spanish class obviously were for my major (oh, and I also took a government Oral Proficiency Exam in Spanish and scored an Advanced High, next only to Superior. I was pleased, and also recognize places for improvement), while the statistics class and ComD class were in preparation for doing a Master's Degree in Speech Pathology. More about that in the next post, I think. My Church History class was fantastically interesting, and I felt my testimony in Joseph Smith and the Church grow immensely. I gained a much deeper appreciation of our heritage as a Church.

As for my social/dating life throughout the year, I dated a couple of girls at the beginning of the year during Winter semester, although not too seriously. I definitely thought about getting more serious, but just couldn't find it in myself to truly want that. When it came to Peru, it was close-quarters with the two girls on my team, but we were asked as part of the rules to not date - either with people in our group or with native people of the countries we went to, even members. It may seem like a controlling rule, but there was a lot of benefit to just focus on what we went to to, as well as not have to deal with any cultural issues that might've surfaced. And anyway, our team was so busy and traveled so much that we were pretty distracted with what we were doing. The last four months of my year saw a good amount of dating. I found myself interested in a lot of girls, and in a lot of circles where I could get to know new people. I think I did a good amount of dating. In fact, I found myself more interested in a girl than I have been in a long time. Unfortunately, it turned out that she had recently gotten out of a relationship that had been going for a long time. However, it was still a good experience, and it was refreshing to feel that way. I continued pursuing other interests, and getting to know lots of people.

The year ended with some good time spent with my family at Christmas and New Year's.

And the new year began, with enrollment in my last semester of undergraduate study at BYU! Actually, there was some debate going on in my head at the beginning of the semester whether I'd really graduate, or whether I might postpone, but by now I've decided to go ahead and graduate. I'll go into more detail in that in my next post. For now, I've started the last semester with two Linguistics classes, Phonology/Morphology and Syntax, an Acoustic Physics class, a Persuasive Writing class (my last general!), Men's Chorus, and another Church History class that I felt inspired to take after my excellent experience in my previous one. I opted not to work this semester because of my schedule, and because of the many things I want to accomplish as I prepare to graduate. I feel it was the correct decision, and so far my semester has been going very well.

Dating articles

2008-12-16T21:08:00.002-07:00

I thought this was interesting. I had more to say about it when I read it a while back, but can't remember without reading it again, which I don't have time to do right at this moment. However, it was interesting.

The Demise of Dating: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/opinion/13blow.html?em

Just for fun, I'm also posting the link to Elder Dallin H. Oaks' CES Fireside, "The Dedication of a Lifetime," the second half of which was oriented towards the topic of dating.

http://lds.org/library/display/0,4945,538-1-3100-1,00.html

Signs of the Times

2008-11-06T00:39:00.004-07:00

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I believe our leaders are inspired. I believe they see dangers before they are imminent, and I believe they have answers that will help us navigate the straits of our times.

In light of the recent political struggles, one of which being Prop 8, and of many battles that I expect will come, I thought that this message written by Neal A. Maxwell in 1979 (29 years ago) was very interesting and enlightening. Elder Maxwell was at the time a member of the Presidency of the First Quorum of the Seventy, and later became an Apostle of the Church. The message strengthens my testimony of the divine inspiration which they receive, and it is still quite relevant to us today. Following are excerpts, and the link to the message in full is found at the bottom:
____________________________________________________________

Make no mistake about it, brothers and sisters, in the months and years ahead, events are likely to require each member to decide whether or not he will follow the First Presidency. Members will find it more difficult to halt longer between two opinions. (See 1 Kgs. 18:21.)

President Marion G. Romney said, many years ago, that he had “never hesitated to follow the counsel of the Authorities of the Church even though it crossed my social, professional or political life” (in Conference Report, Apr. 1941, p. 123). This is a hard doctrine, but it is a particularly vital doctrine in a society which is becoming more wicked. In short, brothers and sisters, not being ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ includes not being ashamed of the prophets of Jesus Christ!

We are now entering a time of incredible ironies. Let us cite but one of these ironies which is yet in its subtle stages: We will see a maximum, if indirect, effort made to establish irreligion as the state religion. It is actually a new form of paganism which uses the carefully preserved and cultivated freedoms of western civilization to shrink freedom, even as it rejects the value essence of our rich Judeo-Christian heritage.

M. J. Sobran wrote recently:

“The Framers of the Constitution … forbade the Congress to make any law ‘respecting’ the establishment of religion, thus leaving the states free to do so (as several of them did); and they explicitly forbade the Congress to abridge ‘the free exercise’ of religion, thus giving actual religious observance a rhetorical emphasis that fully accords with the special concern we know they had for religion. It takes a special ingenuity to wring out of this a governmental indifference to religion, let alone an aggressive secularism. Yet there are those who insist that the First Amendment actually proscribes governmental partiality not only to any single religion, but to religion as such; so that tax exemption for churches is now thought to be unconstitutional. It is startling to consider that a clause clearly protecting religion can be construed as requiring that it be denied a status routinely granted to educational and charitable enterprises, which have no overt constitutional protection. Far from equalizing unbelief, secularism has succeeded in virtually establishing it. …

“What the secularists are increasingly demanding, in their disingenuous way, is that religious people, when they act politically, act only on secularist grounds. They are trying to equate acting on religion with establishing religion. And—I repeat—the consequence of such logic is really to establish secularism. It is in fact, to force the religious to internalize the major premise of secularism: that religion has no proper bearing on public affairs.” (Human Life Review, Summer 1978, pp. 51–52, 60–61.)

Brothers and sisters, irreligion as the state religion would be the worst of all combinations. Its orthodoxy would be insistent and its inquisitors inevitable. Its paid ministry would be numerous beyond belief. Its Caesars would be insufferably condescending. Its majorities—when faced with clear alternatives—will make the Barabbas choice, as did a mob centuries ago when Pilate confronted them with the need to decide.

Your discipleship may see the time when such religious convictions are discounted. M. J. Sobran also said, “A religious conviction is now a second-class conviction, expected to step deferentially to the back of the secular bus, and not to get uppity about it” (Human Life Review, Summer 1978, pp. 58–59).

This new irreligious imperialism seeks to disallow certain opinions simply because those opinions grow out of religious convictions. Resistance to abortion will be seen as primitive. Concern over the institution of the family will be viewed as untrendy and unenlightened.

In its mildest form, irreligion will merely be condescending toward those who hold to traditional Judeo-Christian values. In its more harsh forms, as is always the case with those whose dogmatism is blinding, the secular church will do what it can to reduce the influence of those who still worry over standards such as those in the Ten Commandments. It is always such an easy step from dogmatism to unfair play—especially so when the dogmatists believe themselves to be dealing with primitive people who do not know what is best for them—the secular bureaucrats’ burden, you see.
...
If people, however, are not permitted to advocate, to assert, and to bring to bear, in every legitimate way, the opinions and views they hold which grow out of their religious convictions, what manner of men and women would we be?

Our founding fathers did not wish to have a state church established nor to have a particular religion favored by government. They wanted religion to be free to make its own way. But neither did they intend to have irreligion made into a favored state church.

Notice the terrible irony if this trend were to continue. When the secular church goes after its heretics, where are the sanctuaries? To what landfalls and Plymouth Rocks can future pilgrims go?
...
If the challenge of the secular church becomes very real, let us, as in all other relationships, be principled but pleasant. Let us be perceptive without being pompous. Let us have integrity and not write checks with our tongues which our conduct cannot cash.

Before the ultimate victory of the forces of righteousness, some skirmishes will be lost. Even in these, however, let us leave a record so that the choices are clear, letting others do as they will in the face of prophetic counsel.

There will also be times, happily, when a minor defeat seems probable, but others will step forward, having been rallied to rightness by what we do. We will know the joy, on occasion, of having awakened a slumbering majority of the decent people of all races and creeds which was, till then, unconscious of itself.

Jesus said that when the fig trees put forth their leaves, “summer is nigh” (Matt. 24:32). Thus warned that summer is upon us, let us not then complain of the heat!
...
So should we regard the dispensation of the fulness of time—even when we face stern challenges and circumstances. “These are great days”! Our hearts need not fail us. We can be equal to our challenges, including the aforementioned challenge of the secular church!

http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=1846d0640b96b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&hideNav=1
_____________________________________________________

This message seemed very pertinent to me. I couldn't help but feel that it was from an inspired man. Some may not like part of it, some may disagree very much. We are all certainly entitled to our opinions. Here, I share that I will align mine with men that I strongly believe are inspired by a Creator who I know to be a living, loving, personal God. We live in challenging times - I don't know how anybody could ever try to face them without the help of such a benevolent Being.

I pray God's blessings on all of you, my friends.

My last week in Arequipa

2008-08-03T23:25:00.002-06:00

Last Sunday night Chelsea and I boarded a bus and came back to Arequipa, and then spent two days working hard on a report for FONDESURCO. On Wednesday, I spent a good portion of the day translating the report for PRISMA, the first organization that we worked for. Cam Nelson wrote it in English, and I translated it into Spanish. After we finished with that, we finally let off some steam and spent some hours just relaxing. That is, if you can call trying to figure out how to buy tickets for everything in Cusco relaxing!

The major battle this week was obtaining train tickets from Cuzco to Aguas Calientes, the small city in the valley below Machu Picchu, where all the tourists arrive and stay. There's only one train company, PeruRail. And so I spent some time looking at the times and prices online, and decided which days I wanted to go and return. So on Friday (9 days ago), click, click, click, enter personal information and #'s, click, click...denied. I'm not super surprised, my credit card wasn't accepted before when I tried to purchase bus tickets with a Peruvian bus company. So the two girls of our group each tried their credit and debit cards, and nothing. Then Carly e-mailed her dad, who was at the time still in the US, and he tried several cards to no avail. (I guess our American credit cards just aren't good enough for them?) So I did what any sensible person would do, and called customer service.

"Hello," I say, "I'm having trouble reserving and paying for my train tickets online, it won't accept my credit card."

"Oh, ok, let me help you with that."

"Thanks. I would like to reserve my tickets for two weeks from now, (etc., etc.)."

"I'm sorry sir, we don't make reservations on the phone."

"...uh..."

"The only way to make reservations without buying your tickets online is by sending us an e-mail," she says.

"Ok, I guess I'll do that."

So I did. On Friday, 9 days ago. And since it is the high tourist season, (we sure planned that well...not. Next time you spend three months in Peru, don't choose to do your tourism in the same month that all the European tourists, as well as plenty of Americans, do theirs!) I decided to keep trying to reserve tickets another way in the meantime. Carly's dad arrived last weekend in Lima, and they went to the PeruRail office in Lima to try and reserve tickets. It turns out that the office in Lima is purely for freight and cargo, nothing for tourists. Chelsea and I, meanwhile, tried to visit the PeruRail office here in Arequipa. Yeah, you guessed it, it's only freight there as well. So where can you reserve tickets? Only in Cusco, of course! I mean, why on earth would tourists want to reserve their tickets any longer than a day or two before their journey, especially during high tourist season? Agh. So on Thursday, I called a number that the office here in Arequipa gave me to make reservations. Which happened to be the same number I called before.

"No, I'm sorry sir, we don't make reservations on the phone. You must send us an e-mail."

"I sent you an e-mail last Friday and you haven't responded. I'm worried that by the time you make me a reservation, there won't be any tickets available."

"The employee that reads the e-mails and makes the reservations only comes in every other day. Please wait until tomorrow, and if you still haven't received an e-mail, call us back."

"Uh, ok..." And then I'm thinking, "the only train company that services the, arguably, most well-known tourist site in all of South America only has one employee that receives the e-mails and makes reservations, even during the peak tourist season? I don't get it."

Well, later that afternoon, I finally got a confirmation e-mail. Yay! However, Chelsea did not, and I sent our requests in the same e-mail. That one is still a work in progress. Sometimes I just don't get the Peruvian systems...but whaddaya do?

The rest of the week we worked on this and that, and relaxed. On Friday, we received some great news from our supervisor at Freedom from Hunger that we should take whatever money we had left from the advances, which money we could only use for hotels and travel that had to do with the work, and apply the rest of it to personal expenses, as long as we recorded what we spent it on so that they knew where the expenses went. That was some fantastic news. After applying it to costs I had personally incurred, it turns out that I haven't had to pay for any hotels, any taxis or buses, or any of the internet booth costs from when I arrived in Peru to when I leave for Cusco to spend a week touring! That was a great blessing.

And on Saturday, Chelsea and I had another great blessing. We went out to lunch with one of the FONDESURCO workers that we got to know during our work, named David Álvarez. Chelsea had had a discussion or two about the Church with him before, and he came to church with us two weeks ago. While we ate lunch, we talked about several things, but we also talked about LDS beliefs for quite some time, probably an hour and a half. He is interested and curious, although not ready to think about converting. But he likes the ideas of eternal families, and he wants to come to church every week. A fortunate coincidence is that one of the members of the ward knew him back in high school, and we hope that that will provide some fellowship for him. He was going to come to church today, but in the end couldn't because of a family commitment. But it was an enjoyable discussion, and we've passed his information onto the member he knows, as well as the missionaries. We'll try to stay in contact with him.

Today we went to church and received several warm goodbyes from the members, as we told them that it was our last Sunday here in Arequipa. We've been fortunate enough to attend the same ward for 7 of the last 9 weeks. Chelsea and I watched a movie to help the afternoon pass a little more quickly, and then I repacked all of my things, and left at 9:45 pm to catch my bus to Cusco at 20:30 horas. You know...10:30 pm. Er...wait. You'd think that after thinking in 24 hour time since I've been in Peru, I would've caught that. However, I didn't - I looked at the time on the ticket earlier this week, thought it was 10:30 pm, and never looked again. So, lesson learned! Check your ticket and your military time calculations twice! I had to buy a whole new ticket, because the first was missed and wasted. They wouldn't apply any of the money I had already spent to the new ticket. Oh well...at least they had one more ticket for tomorrow. It was really fortunate for me.

So now I'm back at the Hostal Ginza, where we've been every weekend for the past 7 weeks or so, and during the weekdays of two weeks as well. It's kind of like our pseudo-home, as they've become our friends here, and even gave us fridge space and kitchen privileges long ago. And tonight I'll sleep here for the last time...for the second time.

I'm looking forward to an interesting week in Cusco and Machu Picchu, and will, of course, send along a long-winded report on my experience afterwards!

Laughing

2008-07-29T18:19:00.002-06:00

While reading my sister-in-law's blog, I was highly amused at some of the experiences that she wrote, and laughed pretty hard. As I commented on her blog, I started to say that it was the first good, hard laugh that I had had in a while, but realized that I actually had a pretty good laugh last Saturday as well, while watching Ice Age 2. So I thought that I'd write a post asking people to leave a comment with the last three times that they laughed hard, had a good belly laugh. I think it could serve as a good reminder to us all that we need to laugh often.

Mine:
1. Today while reading about the adventures of my sister-in-law (usually having to do with her crazy, cute children) on her blog. I love my niece and nephew.
2. Last Saturday while watching Ice Age 2, in particular the scene when the sloth gets kidnapped by other colorful, mini sloths, and they imitate his every move before trying to sacrifice him. (By the way, what the heck does this have to do with the storyline? Oh well, it's my favorite part.)
3. Earlier that week when playing pranks on my fellow students, or while listening to my friend Cam Nelson try to speak to Delta representatives through a Skype phone connection in which they kept sending him to new representatives.

Ready, go.

A trip down memory lane...

2008-07-29T18:03:00.002-06:00

I saw this on my sister-in-law's blog and was thus inclined to write my own post about it. I have high hopes for good memories and/or good laughs.

1. As a comment on my blog, leave a memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you know me a little or a lot, anything you remember.

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses.

3. Remember, if you can't say something nice, don't say nothin' at all ☺

4. Consider this a Tag: if you've read it, you have to do it!

Food bag

2008-07-29T17:15:00.004-06:00

I have one. And in-between the candy that I put in my food bag, I also eat meals. (Actually, I've really been trying to cut down my candy intake, but anyone who knows me also knows that I enjoy some sugar here and there.) Inspired by a comment that my cousin left on my blog earlier this month, I thought I'd leave some of my opinions on Peruvian food before I leave here and forget all about it. I wish I'd taken photos of the meals that I'll describe...maybe I'll find some and put 'em in later. And note that the exchange rate that we've had during our 3-month stay has varied from S/.2.68 to S/.2.95, being on average 2.8 Nuevo Soles per dollar. We'll start with some of the most traditional dishes.

Lomo saltado: This was definitely my favorite dish soon after we arrived to Peru. It is a plate of strips of beef, fried potatoes, onion, tomato, green onions, and probably some other stuff that I can't think of at the moment. It's a bit greasy, but it's pretty good, especially with some salsa de ají (hot sauce). Sometimes they even include a portion of white rice. I found it as cheap as $2, but in nicer restaurants it ran from $4-8.

Ají de gallina: A thick yellow sauce made from...well, I don't know, but I assume there's some ají (hot pepper) in there, the sauce is cooked with shreds of chicken. A good portion of this sauce is served with mashed potatoes or rice, or both. It's pretty good! We haven't had it for a while, come to think of it... Again, we found some cheaper plates for $2 or $3, but as expensive as $8.

Pollo a la brasa: Some good rotisserie chicken! A normal-sized portion is a 1/4 de pollo (a leg or wing with part of the breast), served with fatty french fries and sometimes a small salad of lettuce, tomato, and cucumber. We found some for less than $1.50, but if you're willing to spend $3 to $3.50, it's worth it.

Pollo con arroz: I'm cheating; they have so many ways of cooking chicken and different sauces that they cook it in or add to it that this is far from one plate. But they always add rice, mashed potatoes, or fries. These usually end up being $1.50 to $2.50.

Bisteck a la plancha: A big, thin slab of meat. Always served with rice or french fries, or occasionally mashed potatoes. Surprisingly simple, it usually has a pretty good flavor. Bisteck apanado is the same thing with the meat having been fried with bread crumbs. And bisteck a lo pobre is the same yet again, but with a larger portion of rice or potatoes and a fried egg on top, sometimes including a small salad. Prices vary from $2.50 to $7.

Pollo a la plancha: A chicken filet with fries or rice on the side. As with the bisteck, it usually has a good flavor despite not looking like much. With both dishes, I always liked to smother it in ají or rocoto, both being hot sauces made from the pepper that they're named for. I can't handle spicy extremely well, but I keep trying. They're tears of joy... Pollo a la plancha itself is usually $2 to $3. If you want pollo a la milanesa, in which the chicken has been breaded and fried, you'll pay a couple dollars more.

Pollo al limón: This little discovery at a restaurant up the street from our hotel in Arequipa was a gratifying one. I could've included it in the above paragraph with the other chicken dishes, but it was so good that I thought it needed it's own recognition, despite being cooked in the same manner and served the same way. It's cooked in a lime sauce, and it is soooo rich... I love lime. I pay $6 for it at El Royal.

Ceviche: Speaking of lime, we have to talk about ceviche. I've also seen it spelled cebiche, seviche, and sebiche. (The reason behind this is because there is no phonetic difference between the /s/ and the /z/ and the 'c' followed by 'e' or 'i', nor between the /b/ and the /v/ in Spanish. Some, however, depending on which Spanish-speaking country you're in, may tell you that there really is a slight distinction in the pronunciation, but as a general statement, there is not. The 'y' and the 'll' have the same problem. Anyway, if you want to talk phonetics and pronunciation, I'd love to have a linguistic conversation with you another time. Back to szebviche.) Raw fish marinated in lime juice with cilantro. Oh, I do love lime and cilantro, and for that reason Mexican food will always hold a special place in my heart. Ceviche is good, but not too much. There is, of course, the risk of getting sick from the raw fish. Peruvians keep telling us that it is 'cooked' by the lime juice, but I just can't bring myself to believe them. Lime or lemon juice doesn't 'cook' other foods, they flavor them. For me, ceviche is good in small quantities, like an appetizer shared by a few people. And often, it is served as an appetizer.

Salteñas: Actually a Bolivian creation, a salteña is a fist-sized, hard-baked bread with vegetables and meat inside, usually beef. And usually, they're juicy. I've had some mediocre ones, as well as some really amazing ones at La Salteñita, a small shop in Arequipa.

Empanadas: A similar idea as the salteña, but more well-known, empanadas are also bread baked. Inside is usually meat with spices, but sometimes some vegetables as well. There are also cheese empanadas. I think most people know what an empanada is, actually. Nod your head in agreement. My favorite thing is that their name is literally "something inside bread." I bet the original name was "carne empanada" - "meat baked inside bread," which was later shortened to just "empanada." That, however, would be a personal assumption, based off of the feminine ending of the word empanada. How many times did I just say empanada? Say it that many times, fast.

Papas a la huancayina: Meaning "potatoes served in a style invented by women from Huancayo," they're boiled potatoes served with a yellow sauce made of mayonaise, ají sauce, crackers (smashed), and something else I can't recall. These are good, although not amazing. I just think they deserve mention because Chelsea and I made them a few weeks ago as part of a cultural assignment.

El menú: Also deserving mention not because it was my favorite, but because we ate them so often, is the menú. We actually got some strange stares from people before we figured out what the menú was, because we'd go into restaurants wanting to see their menu and calling it a 'menú'. While in nicer restaurants a 'menú' is a menu, it is more often called a 'carta.' Menú refers to the 'meal of the day.' And that doesn't mean a special, it means whatever is being cooked in mass quantity, and always included two courses; a caldo (soup) and a segundo, or main dish. The soup was usually a broth with rice or small pasta (fideos), potatoes and sometimes other veggies like a piece of corn, and a piece of meat, while the main course was a serving of chicken or beef cooked in some sort of sauce served with a portion of...you guessed it, rice or french fries. Or sometimes mashed potatoes. We have eaten dozens of menús, sometimes not so great and other times amazingly flavorful. Prices are always low, from $1 (careful with those ones) to $2.50 (that's an expensive menú). The price is so low because it is cooked in mass quantity, with enough servings for dozens of people for lunch or dinner.

Somewhere along the line of describing all these foods, I realize I've begun to sound like a tourist guidebook. Maybe that's due to the fact that I've been reading one quite a bit lately? Oh well. Hopefully you haven't given up reading yet. How 'bout some drinks!

Inca Kola: Mentioning Peru without mentioning drinking a lot of Inca Kola would be something akin to blasphemous, I suppose. It's as common here as Coca-cola in America. It's a highliter-yellow soft drink that reminds one of drinking bubble gum. In fact, I've heard friends back home call it the "bubble gum drink." I like the stuff, really. I'll try to bring some home for my family.

Chicha morada: Another drink that's as old as Peru, and another thing Chelsea and I made that night of cooking. It's not hard to make, you just boil chicha (purple corn) for half an hour, pour out the water, and then boil the corn again for a minute, and add the new water to the old. Then you add sugar and lime juice to taste. We also added apple skins and pineapple shell (skin?) to the pot we boiled water and chicha in. It's hard to describe the taste of chicha, since there is no purple corn in the States (at least, not to my knowledge). Chicha morada is pretty good, though not my favorite. I assume it is somewhat of an acquired taste, since some people are really enthralled with it. Possibly the same as horchata española and jamón serrano were for me in Spain.

Now for a few desserts and pastries.

Leche asada: This was one of the first pastries I bought, and I bought it in Pampas. I don't think I've had many since, but it was really quite good. It was a cup made of...pastry bread, or whatever you call that hard, sweet bread...with fried milk in the middle. It was the texture of a flan, or thereabouts.

Tarta de manzana: I told one of my fellow students that I had the best apple tart of my life after eating one from a bakery up the street from our hotel in Arequipa. I don't know why it was so good, it seemed really simple - flaky pastry bread baked with some apple mash in the middle.

Flan: I may have had the best flan of my life in a restaurant in Nazca. Maybe not, cause I had quite a few flans in Spain, but the one in Nazca was really scrumptious. It was an egg flan, but not too egg-y. Maybe it was a hybrid egg-vanilla flan.

Alfajores: My description just wouldn't be complete without mentioning these. They're cookies, I guess, or maybe a sandwich...two layers of what I'd call a shortbread with manjar (dulce de leche or caramel) in the middle, with coconut or powdered sugar (or both) stuck around the outside. They seem pretty classic around here, and we had some famous ones in the Valle de Tambo, the diameter of a softball, or even a little bigger. Others are the diameter of a baseball. They're all right, though I'm not in love.

This ended up being quite the blog post!

Garbage cans

2008-07-27T20:41:00.004-06:00

Well, I have just made a long-overdue update to my blog, finishing the posts about each week since we've been working for FONDESURCO. I figured it would be a good time to do so, since we're about to finish up our internship this coming week! At the moment, though, they still lack pictures.

I also wanted to note down an observation I've made here in Peru, one that has been somewhat exasperating to me...there are almost never any garbage cans available! I make this observation that there are rarely garbage cans in the streets or even in the town squares, and also that in the many hotels in which we have stayed (the number must be around 20 by now), I can only remember one having a garbage can in the room. There's always a garbage can in the bathroom, (because that's where you put your used toilet paper), but it's always rather small. And you don't want to fill that one with other garbage, disallowing the putting of your toilet paper in there. So my question is, WHERE ARE WE SUPPOSED TO PUT THE GARBAGE!? We always put it in a plastic grocery bag, but I still haven't figured out what other hotel guests do with theirs. Floor? Corner? Under the bed?

Other cultures are always an adventure!

Acarí and Nazca; the last leg of field work

2008-07-27T19:02:00.006-06:00

On Monday of this past week, we boarded a bus to Acarí at 5:30 (not leaving till 6), a small town which took us 10 hours to get to. So I spent the first part of Monday driving down to the bus station to pay for our tickets before the reservation ran out of time, and then I went with one of the girls of our group to the house of a member family here in Arequipa, where we helped (a little) make lunch and then ate. It was really quite good, we made mashed potatoes and a chicken...dish... It was a sauce made out of tomatoes, a little bit of onion, peas, and a few other things into which we put the chicken and then let it boil for 30 minutes. I'd love to say I figured out how we really did it, but I missed out on some details. It was, however, very good. We had an interesting conversation with the family, who actually lived in Salt Lake for about a decade.

After lunch we went back to the hotel, packed up our things, and went to the bus station again to head off. It got dark as we rode, and after watching a really strange karate movie about a Chinese guy that gets exiled to somewhere in Europe, I tried to fall asleep, which proved fairly difficult in that bus. A long while later, we arrived in Acarí at 4 am, found the hotel where we had a reservation, and crashed into bed. I got up at 10:45, and we met at the FONDESURCO office at 11, and went straight to work. I ended up only doing one survey that day, but the girls on their rounds found quite a few more. I worked on our report of the market study, (which is due this coming week), for about 11 hours that day. Don't anybody do the math for my activities that day! I and the 2 girls also went to a Catholic mass with our FONDESURCO fellow employees in the evening, the organization was recognized in the prayer that was given. I guess that particular church recognizes certain families or companies every so often, because we were one of 3 companies/organizations that were prayed for. The mass was interesting, and the priest also had a powerpoint lesson about one of the 10 commandments. Afterwards, FONDESURCO provided hot chocolate.

I found some orange corn this time.Hey.
Cotton fields...I was surprised.
Wednesday morning the girls finished the rest of the surveys while Cam and I worked on the report some more, and then we took off from Acarí at 10 am in a car to head to Nazca, about 1.5 hours north. It's an interesting, very touristy town. Probably about 30,000 people, we spent a few days here working on reports and also doing a few touristy things ourselves. We saw a movie about the Nazca lines, and then went to a metal tower from which you can see a few of the lines. The Nazca lines are mysterious lines and figures in the desert just northwest of the city, which were made by moving the dark rocks of this rocky desert to the side, exposing the white ground underneath. It is believed that they were made somewhere between 300 BC and 600 AD, and they are still existent, despite their simple and fragile nature, due to the extremely dry climate here, claimed to be one of the driest climates in the world. I recommend reading the Wikipedia article about the lines if you'd like to learn more. The lines are still considered a mystery today, because no one knows really who made them or why, nor how, since the lines can only really be seen from above, by airplane. So they are something of an enigma. We also visited some ruins outside the city, and some extremely old wells that access an underground water spring. On Saturday, Carly and Cam boarded a bus to Lima, because Carly is meeting up with her Dad, who is coming down to accompany his daughter for the last week when we visit Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Cam is actually heading home on July 31, so he's going to work in Lima till he flies out. Chelsea and I are still in Nazca, but we take an overnight bus tonight to head back to Arequipa, where we will finish up the work for FONDESURCO, coordinating with Cam and Carly over the internet.

Carly and Chelsea, waiting to order some food.Ruins near Nazca. Possibly Incan.
A really, really old well.
Yesterday, Chelsea and I went sandboarding. We took off at 7 am, riding a taxi for 30 minutes to the tallest sand dune in the world, and then followed our guide on a 2.5 hour hike up some mountains and then up the dune. It was pretty hot! It's kind of random, the dune, because there's only the one. But it is monstrous! So we hiked to the top, and then sandboarded down. It is the same idea as snowboarding, but is rather different to try to do in the sand. (So said Chelsea, she is a snowboarder while I have never tried it.) We had to scrape wax on the bottom of the boards every so often, and truthfully, it was really rather tiring to head down the mountain on a board, and it was a hard workout on the legs! It was an interesting experience. After we went as far down as you can go, we hiked off the dune and back out to the nearest part of the road for about an hour, where our taxi picked us back up. I don't know if I'd go again, but it was something to try!It was an eventful week. We only have a few more days of work for FONDESURCO, and then we'll be done. I still have some cultural assignments for school to do, and then it's tourism in Cuzco and Machu Picchu until the end! I'm a little in disbelief that there are only 2 weeks left. It has been a wonderful experience, and also a lot of hard work.

New areas: Puquina and Omate

2008-07-20T18:07:00.005-06:00

I can't really believe that another week has flown by. We worked on reports and such things on Monday, and then Tuesday we took a 3 hour bus ride to a town called Puquina. An interesting thing occurred when the bus stopped, a national policeman got on board, and took everyone's fruit. They don't allow anything but bananas and one other fruit (pineapple?) past that point because they don't have any fruit flies and they don't want fruit flies getting in. I was reminded of the stations you stop at when entering California by car, and having them take some of our fruit on past family vacations. My teammates were all confused and didn't understand it. One in particular was very sad about the loss of her orange.When we arrived in Puquina, it was absolutely gorgeous. The whole valley of mountainsides had been terraced for farming, and I went a little crazy taking pictures. They'll probably all look the same when I look at them later, but I was really fascinated. I couldn't stop thinking about how much work must've gone into them. The people said the terraces have been there for a long time, they didn't know how much time. They just farmed on them. We finished the client satisfaction survey there the next morning. The biggest hitch we ran into was that we split up Wed. morning to cover more ground, and when Cam Nelson and I got to the area we had planned, we found that neither of us had brought the list of names we were supposed to search for. Going back was out of the question, because it had taken nearly 1.5 hours to get there and if we went back, we'd lose the morning, when people were still home. So we just found random Fondesurco clients and interviewed them, hoping we might happen upon some of the ones who were on our list, and then substitute others if necessary. The most important thing, we believe, is to get a random sample of the clients in the community, and we tried to get that.

Oh, gorgeous terracing...
Some houses.
Bright and early.
Cute little girl that hid her face when I pulled out my camera.
Wednesday afternoon we boarded a bus for the 2 hour ride to Omate, another small town where there is a Fondesurco office. We arrived and started working that afternoon, finding a few of the clients on our list. I'll mention that our lists have people from several different towns on them. Puquina happened to be easier to find the clients, but Omate was something of the opposite. The clients that had been randomly selected were from at least 10 different towns, and the towns were more spread out than other areas that we'd worked in. Thursday morning we worked really hard to find them and went to many different towns. Cam and I were together again, and went to the furthest town, only to find the the only client we were looking for had ironically gone to Omate to make his Fondesurco payment in the office. It was a rough morning for us, but the girls had more success on their run, and we still were able to get all the surveys done that we needed.

Here are some guys making adobe bricks.A woman who we got directions from. She was nice, and gave me some of her citrus fruit. It wasn't an orange or a lemon...it was just...in between. Kind of had no taste.
Cool white volcanic ash deposits against a red rock background.
Friday morning we boarded a bus back to Arequipa, which was full when we set off, and which stopped about three times in the next hour or two to pick up more passengers. They filled the entire aisle, and it was crowded. Gotta love the smell of way too many human bodies packed together on a hot, dusty bus, right? The 5-hour bus ride was almost entirely on dirt roads. I think the most enjoyable moment (with a somewhat satiric tone) was when we stopped for a lunch break, but while waiting for people to start squeezing out of the bus, a boy threw up 2 times before his mother could get him off the bus. It didn't smell fantastic, but fortunately the bus staff cleaned it up before we got going again. Another moment, more amusing, was when we were just outside of Arequipa and the bus suddenly stopped and everyone standing in the aisles had to get off quickly. It is illegal to have people standing in the aisles, and there was a police roadblock a little bit further on the road. So we passed the checkpoint and picked up all the people again further down, after the road looped. I say it was amusing because I chuckled, but it is also very sad to me that for one, that was probably the only bus that the people could take to Arequipa and so it was their only choice to crowd on in such a manner, and for two, people are made to be so desperate to make enough money that they ignore laws and make the ride more uncomfortable for all involved. It was an interesting ride, and I'm not in a hurry to take another one.

Heading back: Tambo and Colca

2008-07-20T18:02:00.001-06:00

(PICTURES FORTHCOMING)

After the week of working on the information for the market study, we headed back out to begin the next stage of our work for FONDESURCO, which is a client satisfaction survey. This is really similar to what we did for PRISMA, in that we are looking for a list of existing clients to survey. For PRISMA, it was a food security survey to know what kind of hunger they face, but this one with FONDESURCO is interviewing them to find out their level of satisfaction with the loans and services offered. It is rather easy to administer, but the trick is finding the people that we are looking for. We have a list of 38 people, and we need to find 19 of them. So far, the clients have been spread out in 5-8 different cities in each area, and coordinating travel can be tricky, hand in hand with the difficulty of actually finding the people when they are home.

We headed back out to the Valle de Tambo to begin the survey on Monday, July 7, and got to work immediately. (Cam Nelson wasn't with us, because the previous Friday he had gone to Cuzco to help 2 students out there settle in with some organizations to do internships for about a month. They were part of the group of students that had gone to Bolivia, but their internships had struggled and in the end fallen through, so those two had come to Cuzco to work with other organizations that Cam had contacted.) So we worked that day and got a few done. Tuesday morning we were woken up in our hotel rooms by a small earthquake at 4:10 am. I woke up and just thought that it was kind of neat and exciting. It lasted 15-20 seconds, at least to my recollection. Later, we learned that at the epicenter it measured more than 6 on the Richter scale, and that it even made news in the US. On Tuesday, we went back out and worked on finding people and giving them the survey. Cam arrived at some point and joined us. We worked in the afternoon, and by 7 pm or so had found all that we needed to find. I went back to the hotel to meet up with the other 3 students, and when they found that I had gotten the rest, we made a lightning decision to head out that night and try and catch the bus to Arequipa. It was late, but we did this because the next day was some sort of national strike, and there wasn't going to be any way to travel to Arequipa. It was kind of exciting, leaving on such an unexpected decision. So we were able to finish up all the surveys in two days.

Wednesday was spent in Arequipa, resting and working on the report of the market study for FONDESURCO.

Thursday morning we left in the truck once again, this time with David Álvarez, one of the analysts working in Colca. He had become our friend the first time we went there, and he was very helpful this second time around as well. All of the Colca staff were, really, and we were able to finish everything up by Friday afternoon and drive back to Arequipa. One interesting experience I had was going to Tuti in a small minivan bus (called a combi here), a small town an hour away, looking for a client on our list. Fortunately, I found the client almost immediately. On the way back, in the same combi, I chatted with a young boy doing a word search as part of his homework, and with some young girls who were also heading home from school. They all thought it was interesting to talk to a gringo. At one point of the hour-long ride, we passed a group white tourists, and I called out "Gringos!" because a lot of the Peruvians in the bus were looking at them out the window. They all laughed at my joke, (my pointing out the fact and terming them gringos, when I myself am a gringo), and I was pleased. Another funny story from our efforts here in Colca was when Carly, Chelsea, and I were sitting in the truck waiting for David to do some business of his own, and we saw an older Peruvian man leading his donkey off to work, but the donkey wasn't in a cooperative mood and kept stopping. Each time this happened, the man would desasperatedly yell "Burro!" We knew it must have been frustrating for him, but it was funny to hear him call out "burro" so many times.

So that was our first week of the client satisfaction survey work, and we're glad that we were able to get it done quickly in each area so far.

On Saturday the 12th of June, back in Arequipa, we did some work and also went and played soccer with the FONDESURCO staff, which was enjoyable. It was also refreshed in my mind how much better Latin Americans are at soccer than us silly gringos!

A week in Arequipa

2008-07-20T18:01:00.005-06:00

We spent a week in Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru, compiling information, analyzing it, and writing reports. On Monday, June 30, we did some touring around Arequipa as a group, along with Kirk Dearden. We saw a few sights and learned about the 3 volcanoes that surround the valley. The most famous one is El Misti. None of the volcanoes are active.In the Plaza de Armas.
El Misti.
Llamas!
El Misti.
Chelsea, Carly, and Cam Nelson.
The rest of the week, like I said, was a lot of work on the information that we'd compiled with the previous 3 weeks of focus groups discussions. We also found out what information we still lacked and got an idea of how much work we had to do in order to write up the big report for FONDESURCO.

Highlights from this week? One night we went to dinner with Luís García, eating pizza. Not really a highlight, but noteworthy, I got sick this week and on Friday slept until 3 in the afternoon. It was...not the funnest! But I still found the energy that evening to go out to dinner with the girls, Luís, and his 2 daughters ages 10 and 12, if I remember right.

Anyway, a week of a lot of work but also with enjoyable moments. As a group, we all came to an agreement that Arequipa was a very beautiful city, and we enjoyed having it as something of a home that we returned to each weekend so far, as well as the entire past week here.

Colca

2008-07-20T18:00:00.009-06:00

We headed up to Colca, a valley about 2.5 hours northeast of Arequipa, on Monday, June 23 in the evening. We rode in the same truck, but with a different employee named Modesto. He works in the Colca agency, which is located in Chivay. We stayed in Chivay most of the week, travelling to the cities each day where we carried out our focus groups. The 4 days that we worked here were very similar to the 4 that we worked in Tambo the previous week. On Tuesday we held our discussion in a large communal building of Chivay. Wednesday, we travelled 2 hours to a small city named Callalli, holding our discussion and then heading back to Chivay. On Thursday we drove to a town called Cabanaconde, two hours along a steep canyon road, with beautiful scenery on the valley hills. About 30 minutes before arriving at Cabanaconde, we stopped and took pictures at the Cañón del Colca, claimed to be the deepest canyon in the world. It certainly was deep and steep. We stayed that night in Cabanaconde, and then drove the next day to Huambo, our last city for doing focus groups.

Aren't we good looking?
Terraced farmland.
Looking down into the Cañón.
Pretty cool terraced farmland.
Highlights from Colca include two trips to two different hot springs. There are a lot of hot springs in the area because of the volcanic activity (obviously, I guess), and they were enjoyable. The first was on the evening of the day we got there, and the second trip was on Saturday morning, when Cam Nelson, Kirk Dearden, (a friend of ours, former BYU professor in charge of this very internship, and current Boston University professor doing research in Lima), and I all woke up at 4:30 am to head to the hot springs. It was early, but we got to see the stars and then watch the sky get brighter and brighter with the sunrise. Then, later that morning, we took another visit to the Cañón de Colca so that Kirk could see it. I don't know about the deepest canyon in the world, though... They say that from the top of the mountain next to it down to the bottom of the canyon is a 3,500 foot drop or so. They say it's twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.
A condor, definitely one of the symbols of the culture there.
Hey, corn!
After hiking partway down the canyon.
This week in Colca was interesting, and somewhat joyous for us in the sense of being able to finish up all the focus group discussions we had planned. I said in an earlier post that they were great tools, but required a lot of work. I stick with that! So it was a good experience to spend three weeks doing them, but it certainly was a lot of work carrying them out and then expanding our notes on them afterwards. We did 48 focus group discussions total.

After visiting the Cañón, we took an afternoon bus back to Arequipa and spent the night there with Kirk. On Sunday, June 29, we attended church, and in the evening watched a movie called "Something the Lord Made" (I think), about the first open heart surgeries to help "blue babies." It was also the story of the assistant of the doctor who became famous for the surgeries, who (the assistant) was black and not allowed to become a doctor himself. It took place in the 1950's, I believe. It was a very interesting movie.

Valle del Tambo

2008-07-20T15:24:00.005-06:00

We arrived back from Juliaca on Monday, June 16, in the early afternoon. After spending a few hours in the FONDESURCO main office, we headed out at about 6 pm in a truck owned by FONDESURCO, driven by one of the credit analysts who works in the Valle de Tambo agency. I slept part of that ride without even meaning to fall asleep.

We arrived in Cocachacra, a small city in the Valle de Tambo where the FONDESURCO agency is located, around 8:30 pm, and stayed in this city all week as we did the work. Here in the Valle de Tambo, we had a bit of a changeup in how we did our work. The instructions on how we wanted our focus groups with the people set up got a little mixed up somewhere along the way, and the manner in which the employees in the Valle de Tambo office set it up was to have one large gathering each evening at 5 or 6 after the work day was over, to which 60-100 women showed up, and then each of us 4 students took a part of the group and did a discussion with them. They gathered the women by announcing the meeting earlier in the day with a loudspeaker strapped to the truck. This new way of working was tricky for us because we were used to having 2 of us working with 10-15 participants, but we were forced to work alone with a group of 20-30 women. It was a little out of hand! But we just did the best that we could with what we ended up with, and that is how we did the work for four evenings. The first evening we worked in a town called El Arenal, the second evening in Cocachacra (where the FONDESURCO agency is located), the third in Alto Ensenada, and the fourth in Punta de Bombón. Each evening after we students had finished our discussions, the FONDESURCO employees held a drawing, giving out several pots and a grand prize of a portable cooking stove. They usually had us draw the numbers in the drawing, because the people liked it. It was fun and interesting, although we students later agreed it was a little awkward to be the focus of a publicity stunt for FONDESURCO in that way. Each night after the discussions and drawings, the employees signed new clients up for loans.

Highlights from this week's visit to the Valle de Tambo include an experience that I had with Henderson, a Peruvian from Lima that was working in that area and staying in the same hotel. He'd already been there for several weeks, and had several more to go. He is an archeologist, and works for a firm in Lima. Their main work is getting hired by the government or by companies who are building things, and they identify archealogical sites that shouldn't be destroyed. There is a surprising amount of archealogical evidence here in Peru. Anyway, I met him the second night we were there, and we chatted for quite a long time. We talked about many things in Peru and archealogical sites of interest, and I asked him what I should visit when I go to Cuzco at the end of our trip. We also shared details about our work, as well as our families and personal lives, and I talked to him a little bit about the Church. A couple nights later, I had a longer talk with him about the Church, and talked about the Restoration and more of our beliefs. He was very friendly, and maybe in the future will have more interest. I would've given him a Book of Mormon, but didn't have one to give away at that moment.

Another highlight of Tambo was on Thursday, when we saw bats flying around in Alto Ensenada, and on Friday of that week Luís Urquizo, one of the FONDESURCO workers, took us around the valley in their truck, and showed us some sights. He also took us to the beach, where we took pictures and touched the water, but didn't go swimming. It's too cold! This was a neat place, I liked it here.

Here's some ají pepper.And here are some of the sights.
And the beach.
We headed back to Arequipa with Luís in the truck on Saturday morning, and spent the weekend there.

Hoolee-aca

2008-07-14T20:27:00.007-06:00

We had a great week in Juliaca - by great I mean that it was pretty effecient. It was also quite tiring, actually! We arrived Tuesday afternoon and settled into our hotel. Because the Royal Inn (that is really the name) didn't have two rooms with two twin beds, Cam Nelson and I took the one that they had and the girls got a matrimonial suite. They had a king-size bed and a bathroom with a jacuzzi. They were both pretty excited about that, and I think one of them tried to take a bath later but alas, there was no hot water, nor was there much water pressure. I can't say I'm surprised... :)
Wednesday and Thursday we went out to Cabana and Cabanillas, respectively, and in each of those communities we went out to smaller settlements of people and did 6 focus group discussions each day. We travelled together, but in each of the 3 smaller settlements we split into 2 partnerships of 2 and thus did two discussions in each place. It worked well, although it was a lot of work. One of the partners leads the discussion and digs for information from the people, while the other takes vigorous notes. Some of the discussions we also recorded with voice recorders (that sounds redundant?) and listened to them later to beef up our notes a little more. So we racked up 12 discussions in a short period of time. Although after the discussion, we needed to spend up to an hour per discussion going back through the notes and writing down anything we could remember we missed. So while good, it was an extensive process.

Here are some shots from the countryside.

Friday we had hoped for 6 more discussions, but the partner organization Fondesurco was working through said they didn't have enough notice and also it was a festival of some sort, so we got the day off. We took advantage of the time and took a bus down to Puno, a city sprawling up some hills next to the northwestern end of Lake Titicaca. The lake is the highest freshwater lake in the world, speaking about altitude. I guess there's not many other terms I could've really meant...the lake's not high on drugs... Anyway, it was quite pretty. The water was a deep, dark blue. Three of us decided to take a tourist boat ride out to the floating islands, which are islands that are made entirely out of reeds that grow profusely in the lake there. They also make their homes and boats out of the reeds. Almost everything, in short. It was interesting, although very touristy, and after they explained how the islands are made, and how they eat a part of the reeds and fish for food (and take a boat into town for most other things), they kept us in one little part of the island and tried to convince us to buy their souvenirs. Our boat wouldn't leave for nearly half an hour, and they even tried to tell us we had to spend even more money than what we had already paid to have them row us to another island on one of the boats made out of reeds. But we told them no, we'd already paid the fee for the motorboat. They didn't want to let us do that, but we didn't want to spend any more money. So the motorboat finally did leave, and took us to the other island anyway, where there was...more souvenirs and people trying to sell them to us! There was also a restaurant, but none of us three wanted to eat, so we sat down on the reed-ground or reed-benches and napped and read books for around an hour. When our boat finally departed and headed back to Puno, we met back up with Chelsea, who had stayed there waiting. We all thought it would be an hour and a half or so, but we arrived back a little more than 3 hours later. She, meanwhile, had had an interesting experience with an evangelical minister talking to her about all sorts of things and condemning her for her religion for much longer than she wanted, considering she didn't even ask him to talk to her - he had just seen her reading her scriptures. Anyway, it was an interesting and fun experience to spend part of the day in Puno and on the floating Islas de los Uros.

Saturday we conducted a few more focus group discussions in Santa Lucía, another city near Juliaca. Sunday, we headed off to the church in Juliaca, or at least one of them. There we met a pair of sister missionaries, and one of them was from Salt Lake. So Cam and I (as we're both from SLC) had a fun chat with her playing the name game, finding out what friends we had in common. Then she and her companion invited us to their lunch with the member family that cooks all their meals for them. The sister was really quite energetic, and told a lot of funny stories, including one about when she (being rather taller than the average Peruvian) ran into a doorway while in a hurry, and fell backward and blacked out. That's not the funny part, I'm not that cruel - but when she woke back up and having a bruise and a goose egg on her forehead, she and her companion put on a little more make-up to make it look like they had been in a fight, and went to their next meal with the member family, acting like they were mad at each other. Anyway, I thought it was clever and amusing, and a good way of making the best of what was probably quite a painful injury.

All in all, we had an enjoyable time in Juliaca, and on Monday morning we headed back to Arequipa, making the 8-hour trip on a bus, once again.

Aaaaand...Arequipa! Beginning with FONDESURCO:

2008-07-14T19:50:00.009-06:00

So, we arrived in Arequipa. It wasn't a really long stay, only a couple of days. We arrived Sunday morning, June 8, around 10 am. After arriving at our hotel, we freshened up a bit, got ready for church, and headed out to find a ward. A taxi driver knew where one was, and we got there at 11. I thought we'd probably make it right on time for a ward, but it turns out the ward started at 10, so we had missed sacrament meeting. But we were able to make it for the rest of the meeting.
On Monday, we met with Luís García, the Freedom from Hunger employee here in Peru, and we headed over to the FONDESURCO office. FONDESURCO is a non-governmental organization based here in Arequipa that provides loans to people with less requirements than many other institutions, and has fairly competitive rates compared with others. FONDESURCO is not yet a partner of Freedom from Hunger, as PRISMA was, and so we are doing a market research study so that they can expand their client base and know more about the communities that they serve. There at their office, we laid out a plan for the next few weeks: we were heading out to Juliaca for the rest of that week, then coming back to Arequipa to meet with FONDESURCO staff to head out to Valle de Tambo for a week, and the week after that we'd head to the Valle de Colca. So we made some more plans about how we were going to carry out the market research study that we had planned. In each area, we were going to do 24 focus groups (later reduced to 16, since we realized that we had overplanned) in various cities of the community. It was a little bit staggering when I realized how many we were to do, since in about two weeks with PRISMA we had only done 10 focus groups total, and I had only been present for a little over half of them. Focus groups are great tools, but require a lot of work to talk about everything. So we were planning on 24 in four days, three different times. The focus groups that we had planned were different from the ones I described with PRISMA. Those two were Seasonality and Well-Being Pile Sorting, the first of which was a calendar of when they experienced shortages of food, seasons of sickness, seasons of savings, and of migration in or out of their communities, and the second of which had them divide the people in their community into classes, and then describe each class according to their relative wealth and status, as well as type of food, type of work, etc. The three we had planned for the market study with FONDESURCO are a Seasonality calendar (different), a Financial Services Matrix, and an Analysis of Incomes and Expenditures in the home. The first is a more extensive calendar of the seasonality of their expenditures, income, migration, loans, and money sent home from members living in other parts. The calendar helps us understand the reality and the lives of the people in each community. The second tool is a matrix of what financial services are available in each area, and what kinds of people have access to those services. And the third tool helps us understand what kinds of work are available in each area and who (between men and women) does the work for each kind of work, and then an analysis of what kind of expenditures they have during their year and who in the family is responsible for saving for each kind of expenditure, and who takes charge of what expense. So, with these three tools, we boarded a bus on Tuesday morning and headed out towards Juliaca.

The drive, as we climbed into the Andes mountains once again, was really beautiful. The climate was quite dry looking, but it was still very interesting.

Lima, Numbah 2

2008-07-01T17:21:00.003-06:00

As I said in the last post, we spent a week in Lima. We spent the first few days compiling findings and then presented a preliminary report on Thursday to PRISMA. They were interested in what we had found about their clients.

While we were in Lima, Cam Nelson took a trip to Bolivia to visit the other 8 students there. So It was Carly, Chelsea, and myself that hung out together in Lima for the week. I can't say that Lima is one of my favorite cities...I think it's rather dirty, to be honest. And it's so big that I had a hard time trying to find things. I was able to get my general bearings, but I just don't like cities that are so big that the ends just aren't in sight. They're fun to look at, but I don't think I'd want to live in one.

To entertain ourselves, we went to two movies that week. We saw Indiana Jones: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Narnia: Prince Caspian. The former we saw in English, because they showed it in both languages, depending on the time. The latter we watched in Spanish, because certain of us didn't want to wait for the later time when it would be in English. Agreed, sitting around for more than an hour isn't too fun. Nor is getting lost in a city while the boy of the group thinks he knows how to get back to the hotel (no, I'm not referring to my own experience...). But I still hold that I'd rather watch a movie for the first time in English, cause I'd rather hear the real voices of the people and be able to understand all the nuances. I speak Spanish just fine, and understood the movie just fine, but there's something about watching a movie in your own language that just makes it more...palatable. Or some other more fitting word. Even so, seeing the movies was fun. Also, we bought Papa John's pizza twice that week. Delicious.

On Saturday, we were to board a bus to Arequipa at 7 pm. Having all day, we met up with a woman that we met the first time we were in Lima 3 weeks before, who was an acquaintance of Cam Nelson. Her name is Charo (Rosario), and she is super nice. She walked around the city with us and we took a tour bus to a lookout called the Cerro de San Cristobal. (It wasn't a very clear day and the picture doesn't do any sort of justice to what Lima looks like. Except that there is a lot of smog...very often...).She also took us to her house and fed us lunch, which was really good rotisserie chicken. Granted, she didn't cook it, but she did cook the rice that she brought out, and I'll never understand how South Americans can make their rice so good. Maybe it's the rice. Or the water they use. But I ate a lot of their rice.

So, Lima was great. Saturday night, June 7, we boarded a bus for Arequipa.

La Merced

2008-07-01T14:08:00.006-06:00

Strangely, despite how long winded I can be when I try to recount stories, I have found it difficult to sit down and wind out these stories here on my blog. And thus, I find myself 4 weeks behind! So let's get some catching up done today, shall we?

After our adventures in Jauja, Chelsea and I met up with Cam and Carly in La Merced, a city about 3 hours north of where we were, and in the jungle. The area wasn't rural as everywhere previous had been, so it was exciting to see something different.We arrived on a Friday, and spent the evening catching up with our partners, who we hadn't seen for about 9 days, and then on Saturday we took the day off from work (we had finished everything needed!) and slept in a little. In the afternoon we took a trip out to see some waterfalls, which was beautiful. On our way there, we got some gas from a local "gas station." It took about an hour to get to the small town where you change directions and head to the waterfalls, and when there, we began walking. We must've passed 7 or 8 people who said that we'd need to take rides, but we kept on a-walkin'. Then, about 10 minutes up the road (and past the toll station, who also told us we'd need to take taxis), we finally decided that we really wouldn't make it with enough time to spare (it was about 3 pm and it gets dark from 5:30 to 6 pm), so Cam Nelson ran back and found 2 mototaxis to take us up. Meanwhile Chelsea, Carly, and I kept walking on the trail. Chelsea got hungry, and despite me pointing out real fruit, she couldn't wait.Cam and the mototaxis finally caught up with us, and it did take a while to drive to the waterfalls. The mototaxi that Chelsea and I were riding wasn't doing so well, the chain was falling off the gear. But we finally arrived, and had about an hour and a half to look at the waterfalls. Before we walked up to the first one, I noticed an older woman in a hut with some items to sell. Even more, I noticed that she had a parrot on each shoulder. So I walked over to her to take a picture and then noticed that additionally, she was missing an eye. I still wanted the picture, so I bought some cookies from her, thinking that it would be more likely that she'd say yes. Well, failure. I guess understandably so. She probably gets asked by a lot of people. But we thought it was cool that we met a "pirate." In the jungle. That has probably never been on the ocean. Anywho, we then walked up to the first "cataratas" (isn't that a fun word?), and they were pretty.
Chelsea, Carly, and I got in the water and swam around a bit, though Cam stayed aloof. Thankfully, I haven't yet contracted any tropical diseases. I think.
Then we went on down to the lower waterfall, called the Velo de la Novia, or Bridal Veil Falls. I thought that was great, since we're students that live in Provo, and Bridal Veil Falls is just up the canyon. The light was fading, and so my camera wanted to take pictures with flash, but they were no good. So here's the best shot that I took with my oh-so-steady hands.
All in all, it was a good trip into the jungle. First time for me, really. On Sunday, we attended church in La Merced and then had a quiet afternoon in the hotel. I also got to call my family on Skype, and it was great to talk to them. Monday morning, we hopped on a bus and headed back to Lima, where we spent the next few days compiling a preliminary report on our findings for PRISMA.

Por fin...

2008-06-11T20:24:00.003-06:00

I have recently been able to get my pictures off my camera and uploaded here to my blog, so I added them to my previous posts. Check 'em out! Also, here are the 4 of us on the team. This picture was taken in front of the Lima Temple the first week we were here in Peru. From left to right: Carly Chambers, Chelsea Brothers, myself, and Cameron Nelson.

Jauja

2008-06-01T16:33:00.008-06:00

We started on Jauja, our third city, on Monday, May 26 during the day. It's about 45 minutes north of Huancayo. We returned to Huancayo to finish that evening, then moved up to Jauja on Tuesday to stay for a few days. Jauja was interesting...the work has progressed just fine, but we've had a couple of interesting experiences, especially Wednesday night and Thursday. First, our hotel (if we want to call it that) said it had hot water, but we found it to be a lucky moment if the water was turned on at all. Second of all, the shower had no curtain and was rather ghetto looking to begin with. I just won't let anyone in on the fact that I didn't shower for two days because of that... I took a video with my camera...

This is a picture of my door at our second hotel. So, different hotel, but amusing just the same.

Some of our typical transportation in the city.

Or outside the city. They're both motorcycles, or at least the front half. The back part has a seat for 2 (or 3, squished).

Our adventures continued when we went out to a city about 30 minutes away last night, and didn't find the woman because she wasn't home. And this is after we hiked out into the countryside for 15 minutes. So we trekked back and then went to a city on the way back to Jauja called Huertas, and began looking for a woman there. (It was dark by the time we got there, and usually we try to finish up by dark, though it's tricky since they don't do daylight savings time here and it's dark by 6:00 pm.) No one in the small city plaza knew who it was, but one man volunteered to take us to look for her and her street. After walking about 20 minutes away from the main road, we arrived at a smaller plaza where there were some more people. No one there knew who the woman was that we were looking for either, but our friend rode his bike off the the home of someone in the community who knew most everyone. Meanwhile, I called our PRISMA contact in Jauja to ask, and he said, "Oh, you'll never find her by yourselves." I then wondered why on earth he told me earlier that day that I could find her that afternoon... When our friend came back, he still didn't have information about the woman, but said that there was someone else by the same last name, so we could check there. So after another 10 minutes of walking (away from the main road), we knocked on the house, and it so happened that the woman that answered was the one we were looking for! So it was a stroke of good luck. After we finished the survey, however, we realized how dark it was at 7:40 there, and we were also startled by a man who began approaching us. It turned out that he was really only going to the house that we had just left, but we hurried down the street anyway, watching our backs. After wandering in the direction of the main road, but only finding roads darker than we wanted, we changed directions and walked until we found a small store. The woman there gave us directions to the main road, where we could grab a car back to Jauja. I asked her if there was any danger to walking there at 8 pm, and she said, "No, not until at least 9 or 10." My slight worry was not soothed... But in the end, we did make it back to the road and then to Jauja without a problem. In Jauja I dropped the dozen or so rocks that I had put into my sweatshirt pocket just in case of something unexpected. :)

The next adventure I shall mention is simply that my partner Chelsea didn't feel all so well on Thursday, and ended up losing her lunch (actually, the one from the day before) while we were interviewing a PRISMA client. Fortunately, he was very understanding and helpful!

We were able to finish up Jauja Friday morning. Which reminds me of one more story I could mention: our PRISMA contact in Jauja, while very nice, was also a bit of a flake with time. Thursday, we were supposed to meet at 6:30 am at our hotel to head out to 3 cities, where we had a food security survey (15 min) in one and an in-depth interview (45 min) in each of the others, and José (the contact) had said himself that we should get there early in order to catch them before they went out to their chacras (fields). Well, at 6:40, I called José and he said he was on his way. At 7:15, he rolls up and asks if we're ready to go. "Yes, quite," we think to ourselves. So we headed out. We ended up only finding two of the clients and only having time to do the short survey with each of them. One of them said, "If you had come earlier, I would've had plenty of time for the interview!" Yeah, I know. We didn't find the other man we were looking for because he had already left for his chacra. Such is life! But the story continues. We invited José to eat lunch three times: once Wednesday and twice on Thursday, and he skipped out each time either to play soccer or eat somewhere else. Oh well, his loss! And lastly, we were to meet at the PRISMA office in Jauja at 9:45 am on Friday to go meet a group of clients at 10:00 and do our last focus group for the Jauja area. José was a no show. So we got the city location and the names of the clients from the receptionist, and headed off on our own. We found the city, and fortunately the group as well, without too much trouble. We introduced ourselves and asked them if we could have a discussion with them as they waited for José, who was already 30 minutes late. They were happy to start. We had a wonderful discussion and then shared some refreshments with them, and then said goodbye and good luck at 11:45. José's whereabouts were still unknown. If anyone knows exactly how Peruvian time works, do let me know! Though the client group seemed to like the "on-time" idea...

Anyway, that's it for Jauja. Here are a couple of pictures.
The first is of the church in the main square of Jauja. To the right you can see a yellow sign. That was our first hotel.
Here is some landscape a little ways outside of Jauja, but a typical small town in rural Peru, and a typical plant of the area.

This is a pile of charcoal burning, and they cook a food called Pachamanca in there. I never actually tried it, but people said it was great.

Huancayo

2008-06-01T15:39:00.003-06:00

Thursday (May 22) morning we made our way back to Huancayo, and then that day we split into teams of two. Chelsea and I stayed in Huancayo while Cam and Carly headed out to Tarma, about two hours north. And the work continued. Things went really well for us in Huancayo, and we got a good deal done very quickly. Also, our professor Roger Dixon arrived Thursday and was with us for about two days. He accompanied us while we surveyed and interviewed people on Friday afternoon, and was able to make it to a focus group the next morning as well.

We nearly finished by Saturday around noon, so we took the rest of the day to rest and went and did some shopping in a nearby artisan market. I got a beanie and gloves with llamas on them! Also, a nice colorful scarf. Monday we coordinated with the PRISMA director of the Huancayo area, and were able to finish everyone we needed that evening. Probably the most interesting experience we had here was eating guinea pig on Sunday... One of the women that we interviewed asked us to come eat dinner at her house, so we did. She had a small farm and raised, among other things, cuy (guinea pigs). It tasted a bit like rabbit, which I had occasionally in Spain in paellas.

Also, we made good friends with a taxi driver, because we used him 4 days in a row, and some of the trips were several hours. I told him he was officially a PRISMA expert, or at least an expert at looking for people that are difficult to find! We did a few more interviews on Monday evening, after we had spent the afternoon in the next city, Jauja, getting a jump start there. Overall, things went fairly smoothly and we learned a good deal. Here's a photo of some landscape of the Valle de Mantaro, where Huancayo is situated.

Pampas

2008-06-01T15:33:00.003-06:00

Pampas is a smaller town situated in a small valley in the northern part of the Huancavelica province. We arrived on Monday morning, May 19, and got to work right away and found a few of the short surveys in the afternoon. In the evening, we travelled to a small town on the other side of the mountain range and did another one. We took these pictures on the way there. It was a steeeep mountainside!

The next day, we woke up at 4:00 am to travel to a couple of towns about 2 hours away where we had approximately 8 short surveys and 2 longer interviews. So we left at 4:30 and arrived at the first town around 6:15. We split into teams of two, and one of the girls and I went to survey one woman while the others went to another. After the survey, I walked a few feet away from the house and saw a vast valley in front of us filled with clouds, and the sun was just coming over the mountains opposite us. It was breathtaking. The picture doesn't do it justice...

After we had finished the surveys, we loaded back into the car and headed off to another town where we had 5 names. Unfortunately, when we got there, not a single one of the women was there! Despite the fact that we had gotten up so early to get there before they leave for their fields! Oh well. Since we had travelled so far, we ended up surveying several other women from the same village who had also taken out loans and were in the same group. We also did two longer interviews and a focus group as well! So it was productive, even though it didn't go as planned. And even though it isn't ideal, we will use the information we gathered there. After returning to Pampas (on crazy mountainside roads) we rested and then did some more work for the rest of the day.

The next morning, Chelsea and I woke up at 5 and travelled to a town about an hour away, and high high high in the mountains (4000 m) called Pacchapata. It was very small, only around 20 people, and it was cold. There was frost everywhere. But we found the people we were looking for, so it was great.

And for the rest of Wednesday, we tried to finish up in Pampas. It didn't end up being perfect, but we did our best and it was a good first run as we got our bearings and figured out what we needed to do. Wednesday night, we went up onto a mountainside looking for a woman in a smaller village, and she never ended up arriving. But we saw the stars, and there are way more than I've seen for a long time! There's not nearly as much light pollution here, high in the Andes, so it was a brilliant sight. I'm going to try and look at the stars some more while down here.

Job description for the first few weeks

2008-05-29T18:20:00.003-06:00

I think it would be beneficial for me to describe what it is we're doing. This applies till...tomorrow...while we're working for PRISMA. PRISMA is a Peruvian-based non-governmental organization that is a partner with Freedom from Hunger, who I'm doing my internship with along with my 3 partners: Cam Nelson, Carly Chambers, and Chelsea Brothers. PRISMA offers microcredit loans to people living in poverty so that they can use the money to start or improve their small businesses or use it for agricultural purposes. Or anything, really, but those are the main reasons. So we're out in the Junín province of Peru gathering information from these people, who are mainly women, but there are also a few men. We were asked to assess 5 cities.

What we have been doing in each city is this: we have a list of 19 women (and a few men), as well as 19 more as backups, and we are supposed to give each of them a 10 minute survey about how food-secure they are. We ask questions about if they worry about running out of food or if they've run out of food, or if they have times when they have to eat the same thing over and over or if they lose weight. Then we ask a few questions and have them describe their opinions on not having enough food and what they view in their communities about hunger and food. With four of the women, we are supposed to follow the survey with an interview that takes 20-45 minutes and is a more in-depth look at their lives. We ask them a lot of questions about things now and how things were for their mothers and what they think they'll be like for their children. We also discuss their experience as a member of PRISMA. Each of the women has already taken out a microcredit loan from PRISMA. (Honestly, there are also some men. But most of them are women.) Additionally, each woman belongs to a group, because they have to take the loan out as a group and pay it back as a group. And in each area, we need to get with two groups and do a 30-45 minute discussion with them about their community. One of the discussions talks about the different months of the year and the fluctuations of income, migration, food shortage, and illness. The other has the group members divide a pile of beans (or whatever we have) into groups representing the classes of people in their community, and then we talk about the kinds of lives the people in those groups lead.

After we visit each of the cities, we're going to review all of the information, write reports on it, and give it all to PRISMA. Our hope is that it will help improve the services currently offered and know where the needs are greatest and how to meet those needs more effectively.

Chairs

2008-05-29T18:15:00.002-06:00

I'm just going to take a moment and say that the chairs at the last few locutorios (internet and phone cafés) that I've been to have been extremely uncomfortable.

Here we are again

2008-05-27T20:19:00.002-06:00

The days got really short all of a sudden... I've been on the internet a few times, it's quite easy to find here. Which was a little surprising, since it's rather a poor country. But there are little internet stores everywhere. Really, everywhere. But even though they abound, time has been much shorter, and I've only been able to check my e-mail quick.

Last Sunday, Mau went really well. It was a big hit with my fellow students, and we played again the following night. I look forward to many more rounds! And anyone who may be interested in playing, do say so and I'll teach you. It's a game with a few basic rules and then every round another rule is added, and the confusion grows and the fun multiplies. It's great!

The work has been progressing well, although it is more challenging than I had expected. Most of the challenges have been the logistics of finding all the women that we are looking for. I love it, though. I'm a guy, so putting my map-reading skills to use is excellent fun! I'll write more specific details in a future post, but I need to get to bed soon since we're getting up at 5:30. Yeah, if my parent's knew I was getting up that early under my own power they might have health problems associated with shock!

A few details about what we're doing though: these first two weeks we'll be in 5 different cities (although only 3 each, because after the first city we split up into 2 partnerships) and in each city we have a list of 19 women we need to try and find. With each, we do a 10 minute survey about their food security in the household, such as how much hunger they face and their food situation. With four of the nineteen, we also do a more in-depth interview of 30-45 min. and talk about their life, the goal being to have a glimpse as to what their life has been like. And in each city, we also do 2 focus groups, getting together 5-10 women and talking for 30-45 min. about their community. All of these women are already clients of PRISMA, which is a partner of Freedom from Hunger based in Peru. It's a microfinancial institution, offering microcredit loans to women so that they can start or improve/expand businesses and get out of poverty. So it's a lot of information gathering, and then going over the information we gathered. Later, we'll write reports on it and give them to PRISMA. Our hope is to know in more detail the situations of the people and then be able to improve the services offered to better meet the needs of the people.

The food is quite good here. Not as much rice as one would think when one thinks of South America, but a fair amount. Here in the area where we've been working for the last week and a half there are a lot of potatoes, and they're pretty tasty. This past Sunday, my fellow student Chelsea and I were invited by one of the women we interviewed to eat at her house, a humble house in the outskirts of a small town, and we ate "cuy." Which is guinea pig. It was interesting...but not bad. It was similar to rabbit, which I ate in Spain. Chelsea couldn't finish hers - she had a guinea pig as a pet when she was younger, and it was getting to her! Especially since we were eating next to the place where they kept all the rest of the guinea pigs and they were squeaking. :)

All continues well so far, I hope to add more details on cities and experiences soon!

Return of the Prodigal Son...

2008-05-18T18:17:00.001-06:00

I really meant to write sooner than this, it's been about three weeks since my last post. For the two weeks following the previous posts, I was quite the vagabond. I spent about half of the nights at my parents' house, but I also spent several nights in Provo, a night at my brother's house in Riverton, and a night in San Francisco. I mean, why not, right? Just kidding. The night in San Francisco was actually because I went to a one day training with the organization that we're going to be working for here in Peru. I say here because here I am, I'm in Peru. We'll get back to that. The few days I spent in Provo were because I was finishing up a few days of work at my branch of Wells Fargo. They were good times there at that branch. We joked several times that we should've started a blog about "the 5th West Branch" and record all the funny/strange/awkward experiences that we had, because they were just about daily there.

So anyway, I'm in Peru now! I left on Monday, so come tomorrow it'll be a week since I've been here. Time for me has been rather more slowly than it did at home, but I suppose that is normal when someone has been adjusting to something new. It hasn't been a bad adjustment though, it's been pretty fun. I'll go ahead and give some of the main events of the days that we've been here, and give some of the highlights that I can remember. Oh, and I'm going to go backwards, since the blog format puts the newest on top. I'm all over things being in the same format! Go ahead and skip to the bottom and read upward by days if you want to follow in chronological order.

Today, Sunday, May 18: Today we were able to attend church in Huancayo at an LDS meetinghouse about 7 minutes from our hotel on foot. The meetings were great, and I enjoyed having them in Spanish once again. I was definitely reminded of how Hispanic people just don't sing the same as we Americans do in our meetings... And they like to make up their own melodies sometimes. After church, we took some time to rest. The two girls wanted to take a walk, so I'm taking advantage of one of their computers to write this. So, Peru is fun so far. I don't know what I expected, so I guess it's what I expected! The people are pretty nice, and I like the food. The driving is crazy. Lines are "more like guidelines," as Captain Barbosa said about the pirate code, and people take advantage of every inch that they can find. But I must say, they definitely know what's going on around their car, so in comparison to Utah drivers, they're much more attentive. I'm having a good time. Right now I'm off to play Mau with the girls, a card game in which we use Uno cards and add a bunch of rules. It was a favorite on my mission, and now that I'm in another country, I'm going to resurrect it!

Saturday, May 17: Again, the morning was used for training purposes, and then we headed off to a bus station and got on a bus at 1:30. The ride was almost 8 hours long and took us out of Lima and into the Andes Mountains. We went from sea level to around 12,000 feet in a couple of hours, and then back down to 9000 or so. It was interesting. The mountains were breathtakingly beautiful, and I got some pictures. When we arrived in Huancayo, it was dark so we got a taxi to our hotel, went to the store and got some food, and hit the sack.

Friday, May 16: In the morning, we spent a few hours training one of our team members, and then went to lunch. In the afternoon, we were able to go to the Lima temple and Cam and I attended a session. I always enjoy going to temples that I haven't been to before.

Thursday, May 15: We spent the working hours of the day meeting with our Freedom from Hunger contact, Luís García, as well as PRISMA, a partner organization that we'll be working for during the next three weeks. In the evening, Carly, Chelsea, and I went to a church party that we got invited to. It was a different chapel than the one that we found originally. We talked to a lot of people and played some foosball on a really weather-beaten table.

Wednesday, May 14: After sleeping in a bit, I got up and Cam and I had a relaxing morning checking our e-mail and such. We met up with Chelsea around 1:30 and we walked around Miraflores, the part of Lima where we were staying, and we found the LDS chapel there. We saw the beach, or what we could of it through the thick fog/mist that seemed to stay over Lima the whole time. Also, we played soccer with some of the kids at the church. I scored a goal and was pretty proud of myself until later on I stole the ball from a kid on my own team...oops.

Tuesday, May 13: Slept in till 9 am, yee ha! Jet lag? No, I just slept through my alarm, really. I got ready for the day, and then I knocked on the door of a girl who is one of my partners. She and I were the only ones there so far, with the other two planning on arriving Tuesday night (until we found out that the other girl missed her flight, so she'd be a day later). So she and I spent the day touring around a bit. We saw a large hill of adobe bricks called Huaca Pucllana, some pre-Incan ruins. Turns out that Tuesday is the only day of the week that they were closed, so we didn't get to take the tour. Oh well. Then we went and got some food. I got ceviche, a traditional Peruvian food of some sort of seafood in a sauce, heavy with lemon and cilantro. It was pretty good, but I was a little sick of fish by the end of it. I don't really know what kind of fish or seafood it was... Then Chelsea (my partner/colleage) and I went to downtown Lima and walked around a bit. We took a tour of the Iglesia de San Francisco, on which we went to the catacombs below the church and saw more human bones than I've ever seen in my life. There were over 25,000 people buried down there, and since then it has been dug out and arranged for tourists to see. Interesting. Then we returned to the guesthouse and played some games. Cam arrived around 11 and I picked him up with a professor that he knows, and I just met. Then I slept on a couch in the professor's apartment.

Monday, May 12: Woke up nice and early to make sure I got everything packed and also to put away as much of my stuff as possible. Slept in 30 minutes more. Woke up for real to make sure I got everything done. And then the majority of this day was spent flying. My mom dropped me off at the airport and helped me get checked in and ready to go, and then said goodbye. She's so great. My flight took off at 9:50 am and I had an hour layover in Atlanta, finally arriving in Lima, Peru at 10:51 pm. They're an hour ahead of Mountain Standard Time, so essentially it was only about 10 pm for me. The flights weren't bad. On both of them I slept for a while, and on both of them I watched a movie. The movies weren't really that great, though, I watched Jumper and The Golden Compass. Both had weak storylines, in my opinion. Or just weren't well done. Anyway, I arrived in Lima, went through immigration, got my luggage, changed some money into Soles, went through customs, and found the taxi driver that was waiting for me. It was about 25 minutes till we got to my hostal/guesthouse, and then I got in and the owner gave me my room key. I stayed up for a little while because of my excitement about being in Peru, but I finally went to bed.

Peru?

2008-04-28T09:52:00.002-06:00

So, Peru. "Why are you going to Peru?" has been the question on everyone's mind lately. Or at least, right after I tell them that I'm going to Peru this summer. I can't blame them, it's a little random.

I am going to Peru to do an internship with a health organization. It is a program through BYU, through the International Internships part of the Kennedy Center, BYU's Center for International Studies. The program is called the Bolivia/Peru Internship, and was originally designed for students to go down and work with health organizations to gain experience. The program has existed for a few years, and the students in the past have all gone to Bolivia. The "Peru" part of the title mostly referred to the Maccu Picchu trip that they take at the end of the program. This year, however, is the first year that students will also go to Peru to work with health organizations. Eight students are going to Bolivia, and four of us are going to Peru.

Students will work with a few different health organizations. This year some will work with ProMujer and some with ProSalud, both large health organizations. There's also the possibility of some other organizations. (It's not all set in stone yet.) The four of us going to Peru are going to be working with Freedom from Hunger (www.freedomfromhunger.org), which is a health organization based out of San Francisco. They do work in many countries around the world, dedicated to helping people (most especially women and children) to escape from extreme poverty and hunger and build better lives. They say that a little better on their website...go there and read the main page, and click on "About Us." It's informative.

We will be working for them and alongside some of their partner organizations, one of which is called PRISMA. Basically, we are going to be gathering information and taking surveys, assessing the efficacy of their current microcredit lending program called Credit for Education. We will also be helping start up a new program for them. I don't know much about that yet, but will learn more this Wednesday in a phone conference, and next Monday when I fly to San Francisco for a day-long training.

I'm excited about this opportunity to go somewhere. The two main reasons that I decided to go are first, be immersed in a Spanish-speaking culture again and regain the fluency and vocabulary that have been shrinking and gathering a bit of dust. And secondly, I look forward to working with people in something of a health setting. I am planning on obtaining a Masters Degree in Speech Pathology, and I think the experience will be invaluable.

I leave Monday, May 12, 2008 and return Wednesday, August 13. (Well, my return flight is actually on the 12, but I hope to extend it one more day, because it was mis-scheduled.) Of the 3 months I'll be there, I will be in Huancayo, Peru for half of it and Arequipa, Peru the second half.

A few other facts about my trip:
-I'll be gone for three months
-it's a volunteer internship, we will not be paid
-I will receive internship credit for school
-the internship is not particularly related to my major, but I think it will be a valuable experience to each of my fields of study

If I come up with any more details I find relevant, I'll definitely be writing about them. And if anyone has questions, as I'm sure they will, feel free to ask me in person or blog style. And by the way, it's only two weeks until I depart!

The beginning...

2008-04-25T23:34:00.000-06:00

And in the beginning, there was...a need to write something. So, this being my first blog post, I feel some sort of need to sum up my life up to this point. But 24 years is a ridiculously long time to sum up. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to let me know.

I was born and grew up in Salt Lake City and had a wonderful time. I attended Eastwood Elementary, Churchill Junior High, and Skyline High School. After graduating high school, I went on my LDS mission to Spain, came home, and have been attending Brigham Young University for the last three and a half years. I have a year left, (maybe a tad bit more, but we'll try to keep it to that), and will graduate with a Bachelors Degree in Spanish Translation (which I prefer to call Translation Theory, due to the focus that we had on theory in general). I am also doing two minors, Linguistics and Music. They are why it shall take me one more year to graduate.

I currently work at Wells Fargo Bank, and I enjoy my job. Sometimes I wonder why, because we have some rather stressing situations on a daily basis. But all in all, it's interesting and fun. I've also learned a lot of useful things about life and finances.

This summer, I am off to Peru to do an internship. I will include more details about that in another post.

I have been in the BYU 48th Ward for the last year, and have served as the Assistant Ward Clerk. I've really enjoyed it, because I get to put my organizational skills (or OCD) to use in keeping track of people's records.

As of today, April 25, 2008, I have moved from Provo back to my parent's house, which I still lovingly call home. I didn't know if I would ever "move home" again, because the room I occupied for many years had been re-done and given to my sister, but here I am. Although in reality, it'll be a short stay as I pack my stuff away in storage and prepare to move to Peru for 3 months, and when I get back I'll be off to Provo once more to finish school.

Anyway, life is good and I am content.