So November has been flying by. I have about 2 weeks to finish and turn in a draft of my diagnostic and then another week to turn in the final copy. December is looking to be rather full as well! Pretty much everyday there is something booked and for about a week I'll be out of site.

One of the other volunteers working in Special Ed is organizing a conference in her site about Disability and we'll each bring people from our site to participate. The following day, we're having a meeting among volunteers to work on best practices manuals and starting to organize the Disability Committee. THEN I leave that night for our Early IST which is our meeting after 4 months. It'll be the first time in 4 months I'll be seeing most of the youth volunteers and I'll also have to present my community diagnostic and turn in my final draft. I'm going to stay a couple days to visit my training host family.

I'm currently "gestionar-ing" or organizing for a group from the US to come to my site and help our youth out with hearing aids! It all started with a comment from the Deaf-Mute class teacher about wanting hearing aids for her students. I did some research and sent an email for more information and they wrote back asking about transport and how many people etc. It's still up in the air, but they are coordinating with one of their team members who has connections to Peru to see when his next trip to Lima is planned. (!!!!) All crossable parts of my body are crossed that it ends up working out.

My town was recently invaded by 14 gringos and 34 more Peruvians from Trujillo. My community's Disability Association coordinated with a group from Trujillo (Corazones Unidos con Personas con Discapacidad) and a group from the US (Joni and Friends: Wheels for the World) to come and donate wheelchairs, walkers, and crutches to a ton of people from Cayalti and the area. I have mixed opinions on it. The people did great things for my town's people with disability, but one in particular was less than open to my presence. I was talking to a 12 year old boy who was getting a wheelchair and his grandmother to find out if he goes to the Special School and to introduce myself (do my job... get to know community and those I'm serving) and he told me I couldn't be in that area "so as not to interrupt the job they are doing". The effect of the assistive devices continues after they leave as does the person's life. They were there 4 days, I'll be here 2 years. These are the people I'll be working with and it helps my job to be able to know their situations. Unfortunately, this one person (not gringo!) made what should have been a joyous event be a rather unpleasant memory. (AND the grandma brought her grandson the next week to school and there I was able to continue talking with her and building a relationship!)

I haven't put many pictures up recently (though I did just find a post that had pictures that was saved but never published and published it) but I've been working on a video to show before I present my diagnostic to my community. Seeing as Peruvians are notoriously late to meetings, I figured I'd aprovechar (take advantage) of it to show a video of pictures of my past 3 months in site and some of the things the youth are doing. I'll be adding more to it up until I have to present, but here's the sneak peek!