Like I said, I've been doing a lot of picture taking recently. Here are a collection of some of my shots. Please check out my Flickr and 500px profiles as well!

 

My Travels in Peru: Part 3

Bit of a delay with getting these last pictures up, apologies.

So for the last part of my journey, and the reason for having traveled to Peru, was to do a five day four night hike starting just outside of Cusco and finishing at Machu Picchu. For about $500, we got meals, tents, hotel for the last night, entrance to Machu Picchu, men to carry our bags, a guide, and other things I'm currently forgetting. It was well worth it I must say.

Getting ready to start hiking.

Mint leaves. If I recall correctly, when smelled, smelled helped with respiration at such high altitudes.

There were beautiful plants everywhere.

Here is a well maintained aqueduct that was originally installed by the Incas.

Resting after the first day.

Hot Girl Seat

Apologies for dragging my feet with posts as of recently. I've been occupied with my photography as of late and haven't had the energy out of site to make blog posts as well. I'll follow up soon with some of my photography.

This post was inspired because I found myself sitting in the hot girl seat on my way home from Panama city. What is the hot girl seat you ask? It's one of the many peculiarities of the country I've called home for over a year now. I'd like to take the time to introduce a few of my favorites.

Hot girl seat: There are many types of public transportation offered in Panama, several of these have a seat next to the driver. This seat is typically surrounded by the only windows of a vehicle that haven't been tinted so that outsiders can still see in. Who better to put here than the hot girl to keep the driver company, or show her off as a trophy, or use her as a siren to lure men in. I'm still not exactly sure why this happens. Every so often I end up sitting here, because others don't seem to want it and I enjoy the spaciousness it offers. One time, the driver opened up the passenger side door of the pickup-truck-with-seats-in-the-back style transportation and beckoned my girlfriend and me to sit up front, probably due to the fact that, besides she's hot, I was decked out in Panamanian clothes, rocking my sombrero. Damn it feels to be invited to hot girl seat.

Forever lonely on the bus: If I'm not sitting hot girl seat, I'm usually sitting in the back of the bus where there is not enough space for how big I am. Luckily, for whatever reason, Panamanians refuse to sit next to me until the bus is completely full. Luckily, I'm not a leper or something and this happens to many other volunteers as well.

There are no Walmarts or Starbucks in Panama. The former is probably due to the fact that the former president owned the largest would-be competitor to Walmart.

Water quality: Surprisingly, for all the warnings I've been given about water quality and drinking untreated water, it's really not that bad. I've been to several volunteers' communities and never had an issue with the water. Nowadays, I'm actually more worried about treated city water which in one city is found to have chemicals that cause infertility, and I recently read about some place in Louisiana finding a brain eating amoeba in their water. As a final note, think about where all those medicines, cleaners, vitamins, etc. you pour down the drain end up? Not all of it gets filtered out.

Sunday not so Funday: What a clever rhyme. Keep it in mind if you ever think of doing anything besides relaxing on a Sunday. Just about everything is closed.

Panamanian Hour: Set all your watches an hour ahead so that you'll always show up an hour late to meetings. But it's cool, because Panamanians living outside of the city will typically arrive an hour late as well.

All Asian people are Chinese: If you're Asian, you're going to be called Chinese. My hypothesis for this one is that Panamanians do not know that all Asians are not Chinese (or they're racist). If I was to make a guess, outside of people I've met in hostels or through Peace Corps, I've yet to see a non Chinese Asian person in Panama.

My first year in Peace Corps in 20 Photos

1. Heading off for our first adventure into the countryside of Panama to do a week of technical training in a volunteer's site.

2. This was my third day in my community. Several community members were preparing sugar cane to be made into a drink.

 3. This is where I spent a lot of my first 3 months, on my host family's porch, studying Spanish at my desk or working on my sombrero.

4. This is the view of where I used to get cell phone service for the first few months. Beautiful views pop up all the time.

5. This is the moment when all the work I put into making my GPS map came together and I finished. Lots of slow goings on but when everything comes together it's amazing.

365 Días

Today is officially one year in country! Crazy to think about. Instead of continuing on my recent trend of 1,600 word long posts about whether I should be here or not, I opted to write a lighter post today that I've been randomly jotting down in my notebook for some time. Enjoy my collection of stuff I'll miss, won't miss, never got used to, and finally adjusted to here in Panama. Some of it is a litttle bit conflicting since at times my opinions on certain matters will sway from one direction to the other. 

I'm not sure I'll ever adjust to... 

- Too much free time 

- Panama hour in which it's the norm to show up an hour late to a meeting 

- Ticks, ants, and spiders... surprisingly as I write this I've grown to be pretty cool with spiders. Except for one type that haunts me and I will use my machete if it ever finds its way into my house. As far as ticks, without exaggeration I've probably pulled about 300 off of me and been bitten times. 

- Tropical Diseases... I'll save you the nightmares 

- Peace Corps Acronyms... Off the top of my head I've managed to write down PTS, PST, APCD, CD, RL, SSC, MST, ET, COS, PCV, RPCV, IST, PML, CEC, TE, EH, CED, SAS, VAC, GAD, UWB, PCMO, VRF, VICA, TOT, COS, RM. 

- Cold Showers... Almost every time I leave site I enjoy hot showers and AC. Every first shower back in site is so cold. 

- Having conversations without Wikipedia at the ready... So much wasted knowledge! 

- Burning Trash... mmm burning plastic 

I've gotten used to and generally don't mind... 

- Latrines 

- Hand washing laundry 

- 20 minute walk and 20 minute bus ride to the closest Internet cafe and food store. 

- No refrigerator 

- 3 hours a day of electricity 

- Almost no cell signal 

- Lack of Reddit, Facebook, etc 

- Setting my own schedule 

I miss... 

- Good beer... Thankfully there is a brewery in the city 

- Being able to fully express myself when talking... Spanish is tough 

- American Food... I refuse to think more on the subject 

- Microwavable foods 

- Leftovers 

I'll miss... 

- Nature 

- My dogs roaming about freely 

- Fruit fresh off the trees 

- Coffee fresh off the trees 

- Hammocks everywhere 

- Saril (See my previous blog post) 

- Fresh juice 

- Fondas... Basically restaurant/cafeteria hybrids 

- Bistec Picado... Roasted beef 

- A great group of coworkers 

- Falling asleep to chirping insects at night 

- 24/7 Spanish 

- View from my house/desk 

My Travels in: Peru Part 2

I adopted the motto "the more you try and plan a vacation, the less control you have over it" after finishing my first back packing trip. I applied this to my adventure in Peru, hopped onto a friend's hiking plan, and left it at that.

After my first day walking around Cusco, which was actually part of my "plan" since I needed to adjust to the altitude, it began to dawn on me just how far I'd gone in the opposite direction on the planning scale. While I spent weeks preparing for South East Asia, I had five days planned out of my two week stay in Cusco, which were planned by other people! To remedy the situation, I came to both a long and short term solution. Long term being, screw my motto, short term, find a tourism agency and get myself some day trips planned.

On my walk back to the hotel on the second day, I popped into a random tourism agency and sat down to discuss my options for the day and a half free that I had until my friends arrived. Ten minutes later I walked out with a full day tour of the Sacred Valley including Pisac, Ollantaytambo, and Chinchero, and a half day tour of Moray and the Salineras.

Around 10am the next morning we rolled into Pisac. Rolling in with us came the rain. I talked with my tour guide and he said it was a coin flip whether the weather would be bright and sunny or icy cold rain. It appeared we'd lost the coin flip. As much as I try and have a positive outlook, sight seeing on a cold rainy day where clouds blanket everything there is to see sucks.

We huddled in our rain jackets as our guide quickly explained the historical site Pisac. He asked if we'd like to spend time exploring the area but everyone opted to head  back to the bus. Luckily, this was the lowest point in the entire trip, and the weather improved immensely from that point forward.

  

The tour consisted of lunch and the place we stopped at was charging almost $17! I knew there had to be somewhere else to eat so I walked back out the door, across the street, and got a three course meal for less than $2. One of the great perks of speaking Spanish.

The rain continued but at a continuously decreasing pace. People were still walking  around with their ridiculous plastic ponchos as we headed into Ollantaytombo.

 This is one of the many amazing things that the Incas did. This is a food storage place that's high up in the mountains where it's cold and the food can be preserved.

The One Year Mark

I've been debating for some time how I'd like to "celebrate" my one year abroad mark on this blog. Originally, I thought I'd post a collection of my favorite pictures throughout the year, but since I already post my favorite pictures on here, I figured that wouldn't quite cut it. I got inspiration about what to post while vacationing in Peru these last two weeks. I was with some friends and they originally opened up with questions such as "How is Peace Corps?" and I find that in such moments it’s hard to capture 12 months in a country into a few short sentences, especially when Peace Corps is a sum of all of its highs in lows. Instead, I'm going to propose a question to myself and answer it, in hopes of explaining to others, and in doing so, discovering myself, the answer.

Would I do it again?

Originally upon proposing this question, I wrote a good 250 words, deemed them inadequate, scratched them, wrote another 600 words, and did the same. I hope that this time around, I’ve captured the answer to the best of my writing abilities.

Before answering the question however, I would like to point out a few things that make coming to a conclusion a bit more complicated than it already is, and it already is rather complicated.

Your job is 24/7. When explaining my job on a good day, it sounds like I have the easiest work in the world. I get to walk in the mountains, get my hands dirty, work 4 to 8 hours a week and relax the rest of the time. But my job also includes visiting neighbors, playing baseball, and working on a sombrero. For the first 3 months of service, my only job was to do those activities. You'll begin to notice the fine line between work and personal life begins to blur. It gets further complicated by the fact that people are always watching and your personal preferences about religion, alcohol, dating, etc. could have an impact on your work and success within the community.

Your service is what you make of it. Outside of four visits during the first year, three trainings, and three submitted reports a year, my bosses have almost no involvement in my life unless I request it. This means, if I wanted to I could just make my service a two year vacation. Of course that's not the path I've chosen but it is something that could happen. What I really wanted to say about this point is that if you don't take initiative, you could inadvertently wind up vacationing. That was my life for the first few months and it was a rather tortuous period of time. Due to various reasons, I didn't quite make connections when I first move in and resorted to activities that didn't require much interaction: studying Spanish, reading, and drawing. Eventually I got myself together and started meetings and work days but it took a bit of struggling in the beginning. 

Every volunteer's service is unique. While I was struggling through my "vacation" I continuously compared myself to other volunteers. In one example, I compared myself to a friend who was having meetings and work days long before I did. Eventually I realized that she had a farmer's group of 14 guys ready to work from day one while my community needed a bit more time to get organized. This is just one of the many examples of how one person’s service and the service of someone twenty minutes, walking, down the road, can be completely different.

Peace Corps is a roller coaster of ups and downs. Week to week, day to day, highs and lows can drastically alter the answer to that question. The answer after my first successful meeting as compared to my first meeting with zero attendees would be completely different. But then there's the issue, but your service isn't over, how can you answer? I believe that after a year of ups and downs, I'm finally getting to the point where I have experienced enough of the roller coaster that is Peace Corps service to understand them better and be prepared for the fact that neither highs nor lows are permanent.

Now that I’ve introduced some of the factors clouding the answer, I’ll continue on.

I remember reading one time that in the game of poker; it is much easier to recall bad beats compared to wins. The big wins for whatever reason seem to slip from mind much more quickly. For a time, during my service, I was writing down the wins so that I wouldn't forget them when faced with one bad beat after another. I think it is best then, to layout the next section in terms of the overwhelming negativity before delving more into the subject.

You'll have more free time than you know what to do with. The first two months in country consists of training. I had four hours each of Spanish and technical skills training each day. Thrown in are several day and week long trips to different volunteer communities, scavenger hunts to practice Spanish and familiarize ourselves with the country, and other similar activities. After two months of this, we disperse to our communities where we are faced with a blank schedule that goes on indefinitely. For me, my worst times have been school vacations in which I have months of free time. I wasn't looking forward to so much free time. For a good period, maybe a few weeks, I suffered due to the lack of structure.

However, realizing from the start that this would be a challenge, I set about actively searching solutions. It took a few attempts but finally I was able to bring stability to my daily routine. How magnificent it was. I studied Spanish, learned to make a sombrero, started a garden and ate some fresh tomatoes, learned to juggle, read books about many different topics, introduced myself to statistics, decided to give painting and drawing another shot, took out my DSLR camera and finally got around to learning how to use it, wrote a bunch of blog posts, tried to make origami, and the list goes on and on.

Besides the immense free time to start and cultivate my hobbies, I was given a chance to look inside. What did I figure out? A friend put it well in that Peace Corps breaks you down to your very core and builds you back up again. I’ve had a whole lot of time to analyze my faults and strengths. I’ve been able to conquer my faults and further develop my strengths. Of course this isn’t an easy feat and at times, most of the time actually; there isn’t really an option besides facing yourself head on. As Cheryl Strayed puts it in Wild, “The thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer – and yet also, like most things so very simple – was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay.”

Alone or lonely? I remember writing in my journal one day that is was bizarre to be lonely when surrounded by so many people. I tricked myself into thinking that jumping the cultural barrier would be a piece of cake after integrating in China. Except I realized there is a vast difference between integrating in the most international city in China and rural Panama. Loneliness was a big issue for some time. Being unable to connect with my community members or even my host family was frustrating. But the thing about it is, nothing lasts forever, change is inevitable, no matter how slow it is. It’s taken me longer than most but I’ve finally found myself friends with several community members, have played baseball in my free time, and feel more comfortable where I am. The change isn’t complete and at times I still feel loneliness creeping up but relative to where I was just a few months ago, I feel much better.

Development work is a beast. I had helped Engineers without Borders (EWB) with a project in one of the indigenous areas for some time. I asked a volunteer for some help with basic greetings in the language and as we got to talking he asked me about the community and said he’d never heard of it. A week later I got a call from him saying I should get permission from my boss since there was an issue back in 2011 about a volunteer being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I decided it was best to bring it up to him, and within a minute of beginning the conversation, I was forbidden to join EWB on their trip. I called up my sister in frustration and she told me how recently her friend had a development project in country X. Overnight, a coup occurred within the country, funding dried up, and her friend lost her job. These problems are neither the exception, nor the rule but somewhere in between, life happens, and development work gets caught in the crossfire.

Food, latrines, lack of electricity, no AC, no English, bugs, snakes, spiders, no refrigeration, no internet, bad phone signal, the rainy season, laundry by hand, etc., etc. I can’t say any of this bothers me anymore. I’ve come to realize I’m perfectly fine dealing with or living without many of the comforts that we are afforded in America. There’s something satisfying about trekking through the rain to get somewhere, washing clothes by hand, and being comfortable with spiders that have freaked me out my entire life.

To end things, hopefully I’ve answered the question you’ve theoretically asked me. If not, I’ve definitely answered it for myself.

Would I do it again?

Fuck yes.