Teddy Dondanville
Rock Climbing Guide & Freelance Writer
Archives
In Peru, one of the most common ways to say goodbye to someone is “cuidate“. For a group of people, it would be “cuidense“. It comes from the verb cuidarse which means to take care of or to look after. After a while, I found myself saying this a lot. I would even step it up a notch and say “cuidate mucho” which doesn’t really make sense in English. You probably wouldn’t… Read More
My two years in Peru were surrounded by mountains. I lived in the Andes. Between the Cordillera Blanca and the Cordillera Negra. It was epically beautiful to have such towering mountains on all sides of me every single day. They were always the highest things. The sun and moon would always set and rise behind them. My horizon was greatly diminished in distance because of how close I was living to the… Read More
Since I have come to Perú my media intake has increased quite a bit. I find myself using my cell phone a lot more, and relying on my computer to entertain me. For some people I think this might sound like the opposite of the Peace Corps experience. In fact, I never would have predicted that my media intake in the Peace Corps would grow to be larger than it was when… Read More
In Peru there is a lot of waiting outside of doors. If you go to someone else’s house it is polite to wait for the host or hostess to invite you inside. Going to someone’s house and walking straight in would be really strange. This much is true for bedrooms also. When I lived with my host family, my host siblings would never just walk into my room. They would always be… Read More
It’s pretty bad. My attention span that is. I have noticed a big difference in my ability to stay focused since I became a volunteer. I think the change is easy for me to see because my lifestyle is so different than what it used to be. Going straight from being a graduate student in a Master’s program to a PC volunteer was not the easiest thing. As a student I was… Read More
Figuring out how to understand humor in Spanish took me a while. Understanding when to use it myself took even longer. Now I am able to joke amongst colleagues and friends like I would normally in English. I’ve got a better handle on what Peruvians think is funny and how/when to deliver jokes. I think it’s really hard to try and explain each individual good joke. There is so much that is… Read More
Teddy Dondanville 