Welcome chickens

These are Cajamarca's four new 22ers, and those are their welcome chickens. Beginning with the last group of volunteers, the Cajamarca PCVs started a tradition of welcoming our newbies with their own personal live poultry. The chickens are presented in a ceremony in the middle of the plaza - which of course attracts many curious Peruvian spectators - and are accompanied by speeches full of pearls of wisdom like "this chicken represents your life in Peace Corps: you'll be handed something you have absolutely no idea what to do with, and you'll just have to figure it out."

To complement the chickens, we also give each volunteer a goodie-bag filled with things we know they'll need in site (laundry detergent, a tupperware, toilet paper, etc.), and we make sure most of us are in the city for some bienvenida social activities on the new group's first weekend.

Eventually these little things add up to a close-knit Cajamarca family. What's weird is that we 19ers are now the "seniors" of that family. At any given time there are four full groups of volunteers in Peru - e.g., right now there's Peru 19, Peru 20, 21, and 22. The metaphor naturally emerges: seniors, juniors, sophmores, freshmen. It's strange to think that we're now the old and wise ones, and even stranger to realize that means we'll be ending our service in just about eight months. Time flies!