Hey Everyone!

Well, I have been VERY busy here. I organized Camp ALMA, a leadership camp for girls for the weekend. 18 girls from different communities went, and learned about self-esteem, women leaders and their obstacles, sexual health, the girl scouts in peru, and how to organize small projects in their communities. It went very well! Though I was surprised in how unreliable the other peace corps volunteers were. Some decided to cancel out at the last minute without even telling me. Which is entirely more irritating than peruvians. Mostly because I feel like other peace corps volunteers are the only things I can rely on. But that was proven wrong. But the camp went well, and everyone had a great time. Now its just time for me to clean up the budget and return the unused money, my least favorite part of the camp. Next year, I am sure that we will do the camps again, though I dont want to be the only one organizing it. I need to teach the new volunteers how to do it too!

After ALMA, we had a behavior change barrier analysis in my site. Peace corps volunteers from other communities came to my site to do surveys about trash burning and the trash collection system. The idea is that we, as volunteers, can give as many talks and presentations as we want on trash burning and how its bad, and some people will never change their habit. They will always burn trash. Why is that? Well, with this barrier analisis, we can figure out the key components that are keeping them from changing their behavior, target those components, and then they will change their behavior! Its actually a pretty complex idea. I could write a master´s thesis on this theme and its results! (in fact its a common thesis in sociology and phsycology) But the results came out well, and we´ll start the changing habits in a few weeks here.

Besides that, I still have my recycling project in the school system to do, and latrine project in a community that I havent started yet. We are also waiting for money from PEPFAR, my AIDS and HIV project! So its all work for me! Though I do find time to play a bit of guitar and read some books. My goal is to read 30 books through my service in peace corps. I´m up to 11 so far.

Besdes stressing about projects, nothing else is new. I started working out consistantly after a 1 year hiatus of not lifting a single finger. Lets just say ouch! In a good way. I definitely feel alot happier and energized. Now I dont need coffee in the morning, nor as much sleep as before. Why is that?

Happy travels!

Teigan