¡Lo Máximo!

I am not even sure where to start with blogging right now, but it seems I had best do it today, before even more accumulates in the fields of the strange and the awesome.

I spent the last two and a half months without my family. At first, this was great, but the charm eventually wore off – my Spanish wasn't improving and my nights and weekends were excruciatingly boring. They finally got back this last weekend and life became almost immediately amazing again. I had only spent a few weeks with them before they left and they are even more fantastic than I remember. My 13 year old brother and are having a brilliant time playing Uno and wandering the town together and me and my mom cook epically. She is talking about the three of us taking a trip to Macchu Picchu together late in the summer.

Also, I promised her I would announce to every older single male I know in the States that she is single and an amazing cook if, ya know, you need a wife. So – done there.

It's been Carnaval season. Yunzas. There is a party called a Yunza almost every night in my town, since the beginning of February. Since Carnaval peaked last weekend and Lent began, I thought the Yunzas would stop but, no, I went two of the three that were going last night. Apparently they will continue through March as well. A Yunza – It's kind of like a maypole, a Christmas tree, and a piñata combined. Every street has a Yunza and many have more than one throughout Yunza-time. What they do is they cut down a really tall tree – a deciduous tree without leaves, where the branches start very high up. The pick axe a hole in the middle of the street and set the tree up in it. Before the launch it up there, they fill the branches with presents. Weird things – blankets and t-shirts. Packages of cookies and bottles of beer. Then they drink and dance around the tree all night long, until nine or ten the next morning. They drink HARD and they dance HARD. In the morning, the drunken survivors take turns chopping at the tree with a machete til they chop it down. When it falls, everyone dives into the branches snatching at the gifts. The trick here is, whoever actually knocks the thing down, has to fund next year's Yunza. This is almost half my monthly stipend – WAY out of my budget. These are spendy parties. And man do they love to hand me that machete and, after a full night of drinking and dancing, man do I want to chop that thing down. I have shown incredible restraint.

I couldn't make this shit up. But to get to the even crazier part...

I spent the height of Carnaval in Cajamarca City. Caja City is considered the capital of Carnaval in Perú. Volunteers came in from all over the country for the weekend. I am a local department volunteer so I fortunately didn't even have to take vacation – just a weekend in my capital! But in the language here, you don't GO to Carnaval – you PLAY Carnaval. ¿Vas a jugar carnavales? I had no idea what to expect, I just knew that it involved paint fights and that I needed to bring clothes or a costume that I didn't mind destroying. It was a hundred times more wild than I expected. The paint fight part of it was HUGE. Small armies were roaming the streets with buckets, water balloons, and knock off supersoakers full of paint in wildly various colors. Armies were organized by barrio. Except us. We were the straight up Gringo Army and everyone sure did love to soak us with paint. These armies eventually congregated into a march at least a few miles long – thousands upon thousands. Everyone was drinking, banging on their buckets, and SINGING at the top of their lungs. I think the Carnaval song will be stuck in the back of my skull for a long, long time. It was mostly just, ¡JUGAMOS CARNAVALES! ¡LOS LOCOS CARNAVALES!

At night the plaza filled up with these thousands upon thousands. Again, all standing in groups of 10-20 and still singing at the tops of their lungs and drinking. But they all have drums and trumpets and everything else in the plaza at night. It's a noise like I'd never heard. Fantastic. It was impossible to get back to the hotel before dawn each night and bars and clubs were a hundred percent unnecessary. During the days, there were parades with the most beautiful and fantastical costumes I have EVER seen. Crazy stuff. I have no words.

None of the above words even some close to justifying the things I have seen and participated in over the last couple of months. Also, I absolutely love my life. Cool job, I've got.

A few random things:

- The other day I was eating lunch and randomly heard a twenty minute radio news story about myself.

- The 13ers Close-of-Service is coming in a few months and I am already sad. There is no way the 17ers will replace them effectively.

- This means that I am getting a chunk into my service. Time goes so fast I don't even know how I feel about where I am at right now. Things are going great – I will leave it at that.

- I went to an English Teaching course in Lima with a friend from site who is an English Profesor at the Institute here, so him and I will be working on some projects to teach teachers some new skills

- I went to an awesome Superbowl party last month in Chiclayo. Go Packers.

- I have one fully functioning Community Bank with 20 members and another two that are still in the initial stages. About 70 adult members. It's a pretty great project. The one group calls me “La Gringa Mágica and insist that I can do things like heal a broken bone by putting my hands on it. I tell them that yeah, I can, but not today.

- I am picking up some Peruvian sign language. There are 4 or 5 deaf people that live on my block and a couple are good friends of the family. Super different than ASL. Involves full body hilarity and running around the room. No alphabet – but you can write things out on your forearm. It will be a one hundred percent useless skill in about 18 months.

- Tomorrow my courses start at the Colegio. Vocational Orientation for all the first year students, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4-6pm and Youth Entrepenuership for the fourth and fifth year students, Mondays and Wednesdays, 4-6pm. This'll keep me a bit busy. I am keeping on with my one English class with my seven year olds on Thursday mornings.

- I have moved into the initial stages of a library project, which will also be part children's science museum and writing tutoring center. And we are going to build that damn telescope to keep there. This may be overly ambitious and I am going to recruit help from Eugene when I am ready.

- I had a million other things but I don't remember them now.

I stole pictures from others as I never take any.

A Yunza photo, for reference, stolen from Ashley:

One parade pic, also yoinked from Ash:

The rest are Carnaval paint fight photos stolen from Mario.  We marched for HOURS.  Only he and Biz had waterproof cameras:

Christie got really sunburnt.

There's me!

Never ending.

John, Mario and Tim.  I love this guys.  All the way from Arequipa.

Well, that is all for now.  Chau.

Aprovechando y Confianzura

In this world, sometimes you get guts in your hair. Every time I go and buy meat, my butcher likes to come out and hug me and pet my hair. Nobody here thinks twice about blood and raw meat chunks getting all over things. Her hands are covered in it. She deals with my change like this too – digs around in her apron pocket, just dripping gore, counting coins and crinkled, damp bills. She cuts my chunks of meat literally off of a whole cow that is hanging upside down on hooks behind her.  I can never figure out how to take the change from her. I take it with my finger tips; I try not to cringe too much; I smile; I spend it within the next minute, even if there is nothing else that I need.

It's moments like this that make me stop trying to pinpoint what gets me sick. I am a little bit sick at least once a week. I think most of us are. This country is simply poisonous to us. I have to assume that all money has been through this treatment a million times, that every one of the hundred hands I shake every day, and by proxy the cheeks I kiss every ten minutes, are covered in vicious and uncaring little microbes, planning my next tiny bathroom apocalypse. I know that every time I unconsciously touch my own face, I throw miniature Molotov cocktails into my immune system. My poor white blood cells are simply exhausted.

A little over a week ago, I got as sick as I have been, maybe ever. I did find a likely culprit, but there are obviously no guarantees. It was an amazing burger – the best I have had in Peru. After that, I had nothing but half a box of Gato Negro and one roasted marshmallow. When I woke up at 2am, puking my guts out, my first thought was, “No way did I drink enough wine to make me sick.” I was probably another hour, another violent purging and burning of my esophagus, and about 4 trips to the toilet later that I realized I was actually sick.

I was up all night, miserable, and quickly losing all bodily fluids. I was at a training with a bunch of other volunteers, so I was fortunately at a hotel, and within shouting distance of Doc Jorge, our nationwide Cipro dealer and regular savior of volunteers. I stumbled out of my room, gross and haggard and in my pj's, at first light. I found a couple of volunteers but no one knew what room the Doc was in. I left them a message to send him to my room at first sight and went and curled back up on my bathroom floor.

When Doc Jorge arrived with my friend Tim in tow, who looking pretty awful himself, I immediately figured it was the burgers. Tim and I had eaten dinner together the night before. Jorge immediately put some Cipro in me and sat and waited. That Cipro, along with all of the water I had been trying to replenish myself with, promptly came back up.

This was most of the day for me. A very long day. Jorge sat with me for most all of it. I got ridiculous in my thinking, angry and sad with myself every time I couldn't keep down my medicine, and really just pathetic and whiny all around. I remember deciding we were all crazy and trying to explain it to someone – to join Peace Corps: to go to a place that is poison in world-form, that seems to be trying to kill us – is this an overblown sense of altruism that has even surpassed our millenia-old instinct for self-preservation? I decided at one point that Ineeded a psychiatrist more than I needed Cipro. I was wrong, I definitely just needed the Cipro.

Eventually, with the help of something to take down my fever and something to stop my stomach from cramping up, I was able to get the much needed antibiotics to stay in – a true drug cocktail. By mid-afternoon, I was in the process of rehydrating. I was ever so weak feeling, not able to do more than take the tiniest of sips for fear it would all come back up, but finally happy to be able to lay on the floor and not have to get up to go to the bathroom any more.

That night, I got in three or maybe even four bites of dinner and crashed hard. The next day I ate my entire breakfast, still pretty shaky, but by midday I was ravenous. I spent a bus ride drinking about a gallon of water. I got off the bus and proceeded to eat for the entire afternoon – probably four meals in four hours. By nightfall I was one hundred percent and having fun with the volunteers in the next department over.

It's truly a roller coaster ride.

Side note: In Spanish, asistir is “to attend,” and atender is “to assist.” Most. Annoying. Thing. Ever.

Do you see what I just did there?

I don't remember what I last blogged about, but I am on a bus, not tired, sin dramamine, and figure this is as good a time to write as any. Bus rides are spectacular. In my part of Peru, our bus rides are super atrocious in many ways – our buses are old, rusty, falling apart clunkers. Even if you sit all the way back in your seat, your knees are painfully shoved into the seat in front of you. The bus drivers are often drunk. I am five hours from the nearest paved road, so it's VERY bumpy. The roads up here are silly levels of windy. At least every fifth person on the bus is throwing up into a plastic bag. They play the same screechy wayno music at top volume the whole way. It's too hot, or else it's too cold. The person in the next seat inevitably thinks that open windows make you sick, or some other unlucky thing, and you have to close it. It constantly looks like you are definitely about to plunge about a half mile down the steep mountainsides. On this trip, my window has been hit three times by water balloons thrown by random little kids in the middle of nowhere (because of Canivale coming) and one of the times, my window was open, so now I am wet. Actually, putting it all together like this, maybe the open window theory has something to it...

On the other hand, it's on these bus rides, when you are too nauseous to do anything but look out the window that you are like, HOLY CRAP I LIVE IN THE NORTHERN PERUVIAN ANDES. It is spectacularly beautiful. I pay some price for being way further in the middle of nowhere than most volunteers, but I get the better bonus. Up in these mountains, everything is so green and lush and dramatically gorgeous. And if I am on this bus at night, there are more stars than anyone would ever possibly believe. I also get to be two steps further into the experience of cultural strangeness. The further out you go, the less “normal” everything gets. Even my Peruvian friends from the coast make fun of how out there the mountain folk are. I love it.

Another part of living so far out is that I get to be a free agent as far as my capital city goes. All volunteers have a capital city, depending on your department. The volunteers in La Libertad hang out in Trujillo; those in Lamabyeque hang out in Chiclayo; in Ancash, it's Huaraz; I think in Arequipa they hang out in Arequipa City and in Chivay too. Santa Cruz is in the department of Cajamarca, so really my capital city should be Cajamarca City, or Caja City as I like to call it (bad Peruvian slang joke?) Thing is, out where I am, I am called a “Chota-area Volunteer.” We are the forgotten bunch, tossed off the map. Chota is a town of maybe 30,000, about 6 hours north of Cajamarca City. It's little, but it's ours. There are a dozen of us or so situated anywhere from 20 minutes to 4 hours out of Chota, in all directions. So that is kind of our capital city. We have our own separate meetings there, without the rest of the Cajamarca group – the Southern Caja team.

Thing is, Chota can't fairly be counted as a capital city. When a volunteer anywhere heads in, they get paved roads, real variety of shopping and activities, all kinds of familiar things. You can't even rightly get mail in Chota, because there is no customs office – you always end up having to run into the bigger cities anyways. Really there is nothing in Chota. So, I am four hours from Chota. I am five hours from Chiclayo. Takes me ten to get to Caja City. Hell, I can even randomly get to Trujillo in less time than it takes me to get to Caja. So, I go where I want – pretty much just rotating between Chota and Chiclayo, heading down to Caja only for large events.. It's nice. I am getting to know a lot of different crews of volunteers. I am getting to hear a lot of stories about a lot of places. Yet another bonus of my extreme middle-of-nowhere-ness.

You know that the moon is upside down here? You cup it in your left hand when it's waxing, your right when waning. Confused the hell out of me for the longest time. I was seriously considering building myself a model of the universe to try and figure out why this ones. Randomly hit me one day – it was just too simple to see up close. I AM STANDING UPSIDE DOWN. Ha. I think I am going to build that model of the universe anyways. Maybe with the kids I am building the telescope with. Also, part of the upside down here – totally summer right now... Silly Southern Hemisphere.

Have I mentioned that I have been training my town in everything American and Awesome? So far, I have got people coming up to me and yelling “Top Gun!” and top gun high fiving me. Also, everyone in Santa Cruz is a Ducks fan – we had a party at a restaurant to watch the BCS Championship game. I didn't even try to explain the rules, but everyone eventually figured out when to get excited and were bitterly disappointed when we lost. I am thinking of really organizing up a Superbowl party at that same restaurant – with wings and beer and whatever. Get the whole town to come. So fun.

I am on my way back home right now. I have been at a week of In Service Training in Huanchaco, this touristy little beach place. It was super fun to get to see everyone from training again for a week. Also, we got some absolutely awesome trainings and I hope to be jumping into some more good projects this week. And Chris Heather taught us all how to think. So that was friggin' key. Don't know what we would do without that guy. By the way, this isn't sarcasm. This guy is a rockstar.

I am starting a series of children's picture books about my experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I need some good graphic manipulation software. So far, I've got “Where's Jorge?,” “The Little Duck Who Died,” and a whole series of “[Insert name here] and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Charla.”

Ok, gaining altitude and windiness now. Keep typing and I am gonna barf. Así, ciao.

GO DUCKS

My world is chaotic. In pretty much every part of my life here of my life here, things are going as well as humanly possible. In so many ways, my site is more than I could have hoped for. I may be the luckiest volunteer in Perú. Life's great. 

On the amazing front lines, OH MY GOSH did I strike gold with the new Municipalidad. Their first day was last Monday and I went in to meet them on Tuesday. The mayor seemed a little confused about my role (aren't we all?) but a guy sitting behind him, the gerente, stepped forward enthusiastically and started clarifying. Wait, you're here to do all sorts of projects to better the community? For free? And you have ideas? Great. He told the mayor to give me the next office over.

So now I am set up. I have a space to work and people enthusiastic to work with me. Getting in right at the beginning like this, they are taking project suggestions from me. I am going in and saying here's something I want to work on. Then I go back to my office and a little while later, someone has been called in who is good for that project and they are sent in to meet with me. I am giving assignments to City Councilors and shit. I am getting whatever support I need. Today, they are looking over my Community Diagnostic for me. It's amazing.

Even better than that, the gerente and his partner are brilliant, so far not corrupt, and actually want to get a lot of good work done. I have walked into his office in the past week with vague ideas and we have awesome brainstorm-y conversations to figure out what we can do with them. I feel like I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. But in the meantime, I have collected a ton of new socios in the past week. I am almost overwhelmed. I am the shadow government. Ha!

My friendships here are spectacular and a half as well. Most of us that are in the sierra don't get to get really good friends at site. We just come from a completely different world than the campo people and there isn't that much to talk about. You get a bunch of friends, but I mean real friends, like friends you would have back home. I have found that. One guy in particular, a Peruvian from the city who is a bit lost out here as well, and all of his friends that I am getting to know, who are smart and mellow and kind.

Tonight, these lovely friends have found me a place to watch the BCS National Championship tonight! We are having a little football party! I am absurdly excited for this. I sat up last night making green and gold bracelets for everyone. Actually, that may have been taking it a bit too far, but I had been planning to learn to make those things yesterday, so it just sort of happened on its own. Go Ducks!

I suck at making bracelet these things. They are seriously ugly. I am gonna practice a little more. I am gonna use this to teach my little sombra. There is a little dude that follows me around everywhere, maybe 7 years old, and I just call him “Sombra,” or shadow. He is a sweet kid but possibly one of the poorest and hungriest I have around. When I get too bored, I can always go sit on the church steps or in the bakery and my sombra will find me in a matter of minutes. I am gonna teach him to make bracelets and show him how to save up for more string. He can sell these in the market, or to the other little ones. Right now, he spends his evening walking around scrounging for scraps and begging for change. I think this will be a little better, and hopefully my first new little entrepreneur in the Peace Corps. I like the Sombra.

I don't really think I have anything else to say. We have our Early In-Service Training (IST) starting on Sunday in Trujillo. I am gonna head there via Cajamarca to see some good friends and have some Peace Corps style Olympic events called the Cajalympics. Won't say much about that here – but it should be a blast. And me and Biz are representing Israel (I'm Jewish and he is Palestinian.) Should be thoroughly inappropriate.

IST is on community banks, which I initially thought sounded like the most boring thing they could possibly make us learn to build. But then my Muni gave me a pretty awesome socio for it. He has ideas and plans and is excited as hell to come to Trujillo with me. Today, he even brought me some more people to my office who want to help. We haven't even had the training yet. Dude is gung-ho.

I will be there for a week, coming back via the Chiclayo route (faster and holds my mail) the next weekend, on the 21^st or 22^nd. When I come back, I plan to be in full swing with a lot of my new project ideas and it will also be time to start planning the presentation of my Diagnostic to my community. When am I going to stop finding this job intimidating?

I fell in the mud today. There was no electricity and a lot of cows. My town has been flooded the last couple of days. I think it will spend much of the next couple of months this way. I like all of these things.

Courtney

Esperando a Papá Noel

Christmas time is so different here. It pretty much just started two days ago. People finally threw up lights on a few buildings, trees in a couple of windows, and started singing Christmas songs left and right. Also, hot chocolate. So much hot chocolate. A Christmas party here is called a “Chocolatada” and consists of barrels of hot chocolate and mountains of these fruitcake-like desserts called Panetón. I am drinking hot chocolate as I write this. The best hot chocolate on earth - made with fresh cacao from the jungle.  Happy Christmas Eve. It's a hot one out today.

I have been told that phones won't work well right around now, due to overload, and that international is practically impossible. They say even Skype will be pretty unreliable. So I write my blog to say hi and happy holidays and I miss you and everything else.

I have been having a pretty fantastic time. I got a deck of Uno cards in our volunteer White Elephant gift exchange in Chota last weekend and now my family is thoroughly addicted. Also, we have really taken up cooking together – the really do like stew, though they think it is INSANE to ever leave skins on potatoes, and chocolate chip cookies are a hit, even if there was no butter in the market that day and the margarine made them melt everywhere. So we are spending a ton of time together, which is great.

I am learning jerga (slang) now and also a lot of Peruvian jokes. And seriously, the jokes here are worse than the ones my father tells at home. I think I have finally crossed a line on my Spanish and am able to speak pretty easily with most people. I am getting more friends quickly now.

Jose: How do you say frijol?

Me: Bean.

Jose: How do you call a bean with a capa?

Me: With a cape?

Jose: Yeah.

Me: A superbean?

Jose: (Laughing HYSTERICALLY) How did you know that???

I am still not sure what happened in that conversation. I think it was a joke that somehow crossed the space-time-translation barrier.

Pretty much all of my plans for summer classes got canceled, so for a minute there I had absolutely nothing to do for the next three months. When they kept telling me that almost everyone moves to Chiclayo for the rainy season, they meant it. My town is about to go ghost town for a while. Makes it hard to teach kids when they are just not here... And even my artisans don't work for the break season. Just no one does. So I am using the fantastic old Peace Corps fallback of clubs. People do like clubs and I can always use the clubs to get things done. Hiking club, running club, and youth business club first. And it would be great if anyone wanted to send me a hackysack, Or three. Then I could combine hackysack and juggling. That would be a huge hit.

I have one big idea, largely dependent on the coolness levels of the new mayor who starts January first. I have my hopes high for an awesome relationship with the new Municipalidad team, with full expectation for a crushing. But I am developing proposals of community-wide projects we can work on together. Fingers crossed. Then, I really hit a lucky break when my best friend, Jose, who is a one of the big shot docs around here, was approached by a woman looking to start a non-profit and wanting him to be the head doc. He – it turns out – knows a local gringa with a degree in Non-Profit Management, an extreme surplus of time, and who will work for FREE! So, hopefully, I will be helping these nice people write business plans and set up an ONG here in Santa Cruz. Finally, something that sounds interesting and fun, with cool people, that also covers the Peace Corps strange desire to have me work in business. I am just not a business-y person. But I am most definitely a non-profit-y person. I went to college to learn exactly how to not make money and have proven extremely successful in my field so far.

The other night, I was hanging out with the kids from the Fiscalia (I am unsure as to what would be the American equivalent, but it was essentially a bunch of District Attorneys and Forensic Medics) and they were preparing their skit for the Fiscalia Xmas party. It was a song a dance routine to a rap version of a Peruvian Christmas song. I then went with Jose to the internet to try and help him download it for them to play in the background. It turns out there are very few people in the world currently seeding any rap versions of any Peruvian Christmas songs - actually, zero. Shocker. Anyways, I did find it on YouTube. So this is my Christmas present to you. And this is what my friends were half-drunkenly dancing around and learning. They are awesome.  And I have had this stuck in my head for DAYS.  Si me ven, si me ven...

I love you and miss you all. Feliz Navidad. Today, cooking all day – I slept in and missed my chance to kill the turkey (tears). Then Christmas starts at midnight. At midnight, we eat and open presents and everything else. It's just like what we always tried to talk our folks into when we were little. Looks like in Peru, the ingenious plan of every child has won. Tomorrow everyone just keeps partying. At any hour of the day, today and tomorrow, everyone is rotating between attending mass and drinking and dancing in the plaza. Oh, Peru.

(Oh, and I tried, but they were right. Internet sucks right now, no photos for you.)

¡Eres La Muerta!

I am referring to my new life as Host Family Plus. I think it barely counts as Peace Corps anymore. I have running water all day every day. There are even rumors of hot water, though I have yet to encounter it. My bathroom floor is TILED (not dirt). I have a real gas stove and oven and even a REFRIGERATOR. So friggin' high end here.

I think I mentioned that I had to move, as my host family was moving. I ran into the mother of one of the friends I had made during the town fiesta – Robinson, who used to live in San Francisco and spoke pretty good English. His mom, Laura saw me one day and invited me over to lunch. I explained to her my situation and boom. Just like that. Whole new family, in super amazing house.

It is just Laura, who is a profesora of very little kids in a caserio, and her 13 year old son, Adrian. Robinson lives in Lima. He is coming to visit on Friday – but only I know that. Family surprise! Beyond the family though, she rents out other rooms here. So I have a bunch of roomies, all about my age. There is a doctor, a lawyer, a judge, and a cop. I am always hanging with the law and order crowd here, it seems.

It is very fun living with all of these people. The place is huge, so there is plenty of room for everyone. Everyone is super nice and friendly and including me in all sorts of activities. My new mom even hooked me up with a PIANO in my room to take my lessons on. My cop roomie, Edir, has been teaching me some crazy words from some far out jungle language, out where he is from. My mom and little brother regularly need to be explained to, that no thank you, I actually can't borrow the motorcycle to run my errands, but thank you for the offer, again. The judge does some excellent 3m drunken singing.

Besides that, my work has steadily been increasing in pace. Well, not very steadily. I did go ahead and make a lot of recycled paper with little kids and I am still plugging away at getting my summer courses ready. This week, I was supposed to spend 4 hours each afternoon helping in some adult literacy and vocational orientation courses, but that all has been canceled except for two hours on Thursday. My class with the little ones this morning was canceled (without prior knowledge of course) as was my meeting with the Colegio Director... that was supposed to be yesterday and then twice today but I still have yet to see him.

So this is pretty standard. The more I get scheduled, the more gets canceled. Luckily I am double booked for tomorrow morning – maybe I will actually have some work! It is an uphill climb, but I am slowly gaining more with each little slide back. Poco a poco...

I busted my camera. Just a little. It is still usable, I just can't see what I am taking photos of. But nevertheless, because of this I have gotten a little out of the habit of taking them. I will try to fix that, and start saving for a new one. I heard good rumors of deals in Lima.

I went to Chiclayo last weekend and finally obtained my bicycle! Why, yes, I do have my own transportation now! This is very exciting. While there, I also made a few new volunteer friends and got to meet the family of one of my site friends. I am starting to more quickly get friends at site. I am bored a lot less often now. It's amazing. Also, one of my new volunteer buddies – turns out we have a mutual friend at home. That was pretty random and shocking.

I really don't have anything very exciting to put in here. It's almost Christmas, I suppose, but you can't really tell here. I miss crappy Christmas music and lights displays.

Love you.

¿Huelga? No se por que no.

First thing being first – NOTE THE ADDRESS CHANGE IN THE SIDEBAR. It's just easier to go to the city than to little Chota-town. And if things are going to keep getting caught in the Chiclayo customs office anyways...

Today, at the elementary school I work at sometimes, a clown came. The very first thing he did was start breathing tons of giant balls of fire, completely filling the classroom with thick, nasty, block smoke, as everyone clapped and cheered. I wanted to jump up and give a Cocinas Mejoradas-type charla right then and there. Instead, I laughed and clapped. One thing at a time...

We had Thanksgiving. The best Thanksgiving ever. A few of us discussed that we had been worried, that this was it, when homesickness would finally start to kick our asses, Thanksgiving with no family. Instead, we OWNED this Turkey Day, even without any actual turkeys.

First, we rented an apartment for the night, on the beach in Pimantel. Beautiful, gorgeous, amazing place. And absolutely stellar apartment – fifth floor, beach front, actual comfortable furniture, and amazing views. Only 6 of us could stay there – myself, Rob, Mallory, the Cobbs, and Chris Boston – and the rest stayed at the nearby hostel run by the same folks who own the apartment.

We did our shopping early that morning in Chiclayo, in the outrageously large outdoor market, and cabbed all the supplies out to Pimantel. Shopping there was pretty insane, but the market folk were infinitely helpful and, I believe, infinitely amused. We had our haphazard list of supplies, which was really just a half-assed attempt at a menu that I scribbled down in the hostel that morning. We all stood in the market yelling out things we needed, and then quadrupling the quantities. “3 kilos of sweet potatoes! No, lemme see that... 5! No, give us 10! 10 kilos!” A few market people ran around gathering it all into piles for us and keeping a tally of the money. We bought people out. We bought everything. We bought so much we could barely carry it all between 8 people. And we had spent less than half our budget.

We immediately headed for the beach. It was one pm and we hadn't started cooking Thanksgiving. I started to have a moment of concern. I quickly brushed it off, grabbed a glass of wine, and started putting people to work. It took awhile to gather everyone together off the beach, but once I did, we found every available knife in the world and people started peeling and chopping potatoes and everything else. I won't go through all the details, but I spent the entire time coordinating this out-of-hand undertaking. Everyone pitched in. Everyone but me kept boozing it up. Finally, at about 7pm, people started screaming for food. We had gotten out one tray of about 40 deviled eggs a few hours earlier, which had been immediately inhaled, and besides that no one had eaten a thing. But they had had a beer or nine...

So Rob and I rushed out on the bird mission. We had decided at the market not to buy a turkey. Everyone doubted my abilities. While I still think I could have pulled it off just fine, maybe just had to spatchcock that bad boy, the back-up plan I must admit was a hundred times easier. Rob and I found the only Polleria in town and proceeded to buy all of their chickens. We bought 5 pre-cooked, cut into eighths, beautiful hot roasted chickens. This cost the entire rest of the budget, almost exactly. Perfect. By the time we returned, everyone had already forgotten how hyperbolic their hunger had been and they were back to having their own little apartment dance party. But a few soldiers had stayed in the kitchen, following the detailed instructions I had left almost an hour earlier, and dinner was almost ready.

Omar and Jeff turned into a table-moving, place-setting, food-scooping machine, and very soon we were all jammed in. The menu: Pollo a la brasa, garlic rosemary mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole (with marshmallows), stuffing, nutritional yest gravy, pureed squash soup, massive salad with an amazing avocado dressing, rolls, and apricot bars for dessert. I can't believe we pulled it off. With a few leftovers that were scooped around scrambled eggs and some not-very-good homefries I made for breafast. Mallory gave us a few words to set it off (Yay to Mallory for arranging the entire trip!) and we all went around and said what we were thankful for. 

The rest of the night was just all of us enjoying seeing each other again, dancing and laughing and running around on the beach. We saw a beautiful sunset and were joined by a handful of Perú 12, 13, and 14 volunteers.

In the morning, as I mentioned, we had a quick breakfast ( I don't know how I stumbled from bed straight back into the kitchen) and then we cleaned up and moved out of the apartment. Ellen and I went to the market and bought them all out of coconuts and the rest of the day was spent sunning on the beach, our biggest concerns for the day after Thanksgiving only involving whether of not there was enough rum in our coconuts and whether or not we were going to stand up and join the football game.

Eventually, most everyone wandered off to a cevicheria, but Heather, Jimbo, Marina, and I just held down the beach. Eventually it cooled down and we moved back to the hostel. Supposedly, everyone else was out eating, but it turned out that was all a lie. They had actually met some kind South African and were partying at his flat. This apparently turned into some sort of disaster of epic proportions, with repercussions still reverberating throughout our country of service. I will just say I am glad I for once found myself in the mellow squadron.

All in all, it was a beautiful weekend. I got to see a lot of people I hadn't seen since training and that was just spectacular. I was however, happy to head back to site. When I left I had been mightily frustrated. Between parties and strikes, we were looking at a seven day work month. While I love chilling out as much as the next gringa, I love being able to work when I want to as well. I had even had to leave my site a day early for the weekend vacation, as there was a strike starting the next day that they were supposedly barricading the roads for. Pparently, they even slacked off at ever doing that.

This week though, has been one of my most productive yet. I have finally gotten myself up to a real-life full work week. I am doing some ginormous preparations for a 6 week course that I am teaching on Youth Entrepreneurship over the summer break that starts after Christmas. I am also getting ready to start courses for the English teachers here – as they are teaching some mighty poor English at the moment. I am starting a computer course for the teachers, as they have a computer lab that is sitting unused as NO ONE know how to use them and therefore cannot teach the children. Next week I am starting a group of kids on making recycled paper Christmas cards. Making the paper will translate into some half-baked enviro lesson and I hope to teach the kids some organizing skills to market out their cards.

I dunno. I think I found my new house and will move this weekend. I will share more on that later, as this is now plenty.  Also, I didn't take any of those pictures.  And there were some other cool ones, but it was taking UNGODLY LONG to upload (two hours for those few) so I am off.

Cheerio.