Random events

Hello!

It is Friday, and I've just completed my first week at University of Guyana actually teaching! I can't say I actually taught a full week as I started Tuesday with meetings and Thursday was a holiday. Apparently, Guyanese celebrate major holidays associated with Hindu, Muslim and Christian religions. This particular holiday on Thursday is called Eid-UI-Azha (Feast of Sacrifice). It is a Muslim holiday where they will sacrifice a lamb or cow (in my landlords' case they sacrificed a cow).

My landlords are awesome! They gave me a lot of beef from this holiday and a whole fish!. With my limited cooking appliances, I did stir-fry the beef with garlic, ginger, soy sauce and bok choy this evening!

On holiday (Thursday), I was invited over to a fellow PCRV's home. She lives in a part of Georgetown called Kitty. I've asked several people how the neighborhood names come about, but no one has yet been able to tell me. She is one of the last PCRV's to be placed in Georgetown proper. From her rooftop she has an amazing view! 

I was able to watch the sunset from her roof and saw these small birds dive bomb eagles. I guess the little birds do that to keep the birds of prey away from their eggs. I wasn't able to take a picture of those birds dive bombing others, but believe it it was pretty fun to watch! Here is a Guyana sunset though!

I'm not the best photographer, so I probably did not do that sunset justice. Around 5-6pm, the parrots come back to their nests too. Ramona (the PCRV that invited me over) said she's noticed 2 regular pair of parrots that hang out in the trees around her place. See if you can spot the parrots!

Because it was a holiday, pretty much everything is closed so we were not able to explore too much. She did take me to the Marriott hotel, and we can see how the wealthy people live. The Marriott here is pretty nice, they even had white sand shipped in for the beach! Here are a few pictures, I'm definitely not part of the wealthy here, barely even working class here. :)

Fancy bar when you walk into the lobby

White sand!

There are two fancy hotels here, the Marriott and the Pegasus which is in this above picture.

At the Marriott, I got to see THE famous fastest women's runner in Guyana. 

We also wandered around the very few markets stands that were open, they sell some pretty huge squash! I wouldn't know what to do with all that squash.

Anyway, Ramona had invited me over for dinner and she made us a pizza :) It consisted of actual pizza sauce (not ketchup, although Guyanese love their ketchup), onions, bell peppers, spam and cheese! She also makes her own crust. It was quite delicious.

Her kitchen is a lot more equipped than mine. She has an oven. It's one that needs manual lighting, but she has one! She also has a washing machine within her complex. It is a portable washing machine, so it's quite small. It also costs a lot to use, $1000 ($5) per load, and it doesn't hold much!

It would be better to hand wash clothes- which is something that I do now every Saturday morning. I get up about 5am daily, so I might as well do something productive with my time, plus my clothes would be dry before the day's end!

So, in my earlier post, I posted the picture of the supposed tallest free standing wooden structure in the world: St. George's Cathedral. Well, today I was able to go inside. The church is on it's 4th replica. It has influences of dutch style and gothic style.

I was also able to visit the museum today, unfortunately they do not allow photography, however I did find a picture of their Giant Sloth exhibit. So, about 10,000 years ago, there was this animal called the Giant Sloth. Guyana appears to like to be known for it's giant creatures, like the giant anacondas, giant otters, harpy eagles. But this is the Giant Sloth!

Anyways, I'm planning on visiting the zoo here. It's nothing like the zoos we have in the States. It's mainly comprised of rescued animals. From what I understand they have a bunch of leopards right now, manatee, tapir...so more to come with animals! Hopefully I can take pictures there.

Speaking of animals, I have a pet gecko and periodic frog. Frogs are everywhere, and it's so sad to see them flattened in the road, but of course I had to get a picture of one :)

 Flattened frog :(

This is my gecko friend. I leave him be, as he's good at eating bugs too. Luckily, I've not had many bites as my first day here. Helps with a mosquito net. The mosquitos are supposed to get bad during rainy seasons; but when speaking with one of the taxi drivers, it's not nearly been as rainy in the past few seasons as it normally is. Rainy season here is to start in December, so we'll see! Must get rain boots before then I suppose.

I did start teaching this week, as I mentioned earlier. I currently have 7 students who are taking an accelerated track in learning about Speech Language Pathology. The accelerated track means I teach a different class every 3 weeks with creating a final after each class. Definitely keeps me busy! I'm hoping to make some connections with some of the private and public schools in the area to let my students observe and screen some of their students for practice. There's apparently a lot of ideas on how to direct this program, and a lot of chains of command to cross to get things done- so we'll see what actually gets done.

That is all for now!

Orientation is now over

"The comments made in this blog are personal opinions and do not represent or have any relation to the Peace Corps or US government."

September 19, 2015

I have now completed my orientation with the Peace Corps and have been sworn in as a Peace Corps Response Volunteer! I have also almost been here a week. There has been so much to take in and process, some overwhelming and some exciting! For most of the week I have been staying at a hotel in Georgetown while going through orientation. On Thursday, I officially moved into my studio apartment. This apartment is a very nice apartment here. The landlords live above me and have been extremely nice and helpful.

 I've now covered my bed with a mosquito net as my first night here, I got 8 bites on my face.

The kitchen has a 2 burner stove, like a camping stove and I use a propane tank to get going. Propane tanks cost $3500 in Guyanese which equates to about $17 in US. You cannot see in this picture, but the Peace Corps also gave us a filter to filter water which I've set up next to my sink and use that to wash my fruits and vegetables and contacts! Our water here is pretty safe especially since our landlords collect rainwater. Supposedly, the system of obtaining water will be going toward how our utilities are paid- it's prepaid or pay as you go. With collecting rain water, especially in the rainy season, then means you don't have to buy as much water! Also, there is no hot or cold water, there is just the water temperature of how to sun heats it. So showers in the morning are a bit colder than midday.

I was greeted by this frog when I walked into the bedroom. He was sitting on the bed.

It's been an interesting experience attempting to learn the currency and living essentially as how a working class Guyanese lives. I feel I've been so spoiled in the US in what we consider working class vs working class here. The Peace Corps gives us a living allowance each month. Every month we get about $110,000 which is $550 in US. Half of this is my rent: $55,000 ($275). Utilities, I'm told, if I don't use AC ranges about $3500-4000 ($17-20). I'm told I'll probably spend about $25,000 ($125) on food each month for groceries. Today I spent $4000 ($20) on groceries without any meat. Transportation would be my only other consistent cost which depending on where I'm going can cost $60-100 ($0.30-$.50) on a minibus each direction. Taxis cost more about $700 ($3.50) give or take. So there goes my monthly allowance!

As I mentioned I did go grocery shopping today. Here people go to the market, which is more like a farmer's market type, for produce. People go to the grocery store for more processed ingredients such as boxed milk, flour, sugar, etc.

I've actually enjoyed the market, and the produce here is wonderful! Today I got cucumbers, pears (which are avocados), bok choy, tomatoes, mangos, fresh thyme, bora (which is part of the green bean family), eggplant, black eyed peas and eggs. I have to be inventive when it comes to cooking as I can only use a stove, no oven. So this should last me the week! Eggs here are not refrigerated as they do not go through the same washing process the eggs in the US go through that then need to be refrigerated. I bought 36 eggs (a tray) for $850 ($4.25) which I split with another volunteer living 2 doors down from me.

 So in order to wash my produce appropriately, I fill a basin with filtered water and put a bit of bleach in it and soak the produce for 30 minutes or so before rinsing again with filtered water.

Kind of a process.

I've experienced the minibus today.

So, as you're walking down the road, and you need to take a bus, you flag one down like a taxi. If they flash their lights at you it means they're full and they cannot pick you up. I'm learning there are general areas in which certain buses run. I've not yet taken the bus during the week. Supposedly they have set routes, but today when taking the bus it seemed pretty arbitrary. They have a beginning and an end point, but it seems they drive around in-between looking to pick up or drop off depending where patrons want to go. A minibus fits 10 passengers and a driver. Like I said earlier, it costs 60-100 one direction. You pay when you get off. There's a bus that I can take right on the University of Guyana Campus that would take me into town and that would cost $100 ($.50), but there's another bus I can take that takes me right outside of campus, maybe a half mile walk from my place that will take me to town for closer to $60 ($.30). 

These buses are intimidating for me, but in time I hopefully will get the hang of it. The driving here is pretty crazy. Because of British influence, people drive on the left. Almost no one pays attention to traffic signs. When driving (thankfully I'm not allowed to), you have to avoid people walking on the street as there is no sidewalk, avoid stray animals such as dogs, sometimes goats and cow, avoid horse drawn carts, bicyclists, motorists, and oncoming traffic as generally people drive into oncoming traffic.

I have not yet started working at the University. I will start on Tuesday and start teaching my first class on wednesday. Since they've had no instructor for a class the students are just "on-call" until the coordinator calls them and says there's class now. So apparently, I can tell the coordinator what time I want to teach and they'll just show up Wednesday. Here's the entrance of University of Guyana (UG). 

It's literally across the street from my apartment, however because there's this moat, river thing in the middle so I'm unable to just run across the street. I have to walk down and follow the water until i reach a bridge, cross it, and walk back toward the entrance.

Also across from UG is a small cemetery.

The tombs are above ground, as there's a lot of flooding here so as I was told, bodies can float up but not go anywhere.

Here's one of those horse drawn carts I mentioned earlier.

This is Seawall

Sea wall opens to the Atlantic Ocean. It's pretty cloudy and dirty for the first 2 miles from the beach and then supposedly it turns clear and blue. There's just a lot of sediment and stuff. No one goes to this beach to go into the water. 

Well, that's all for now. Will post more later.