Día de Madre

Because I never post photos.

My mom and I, for Mother's Day, went out visiting family.  Visiting family is always quite the trek.  We took a combi for about forty minutes, to Mitapampa.  Then we start walking.  There are few paths and we trek for hours.  We hauled along with us a couple of big cakes, a pot full of chicken and yucca, a bag with about 50 little breads, and a three liter of warm jello water.  We stopped to give food to everyone we saw on the way, but the main goal was to get some cake out to the very elderly women in our family who live ever so far out.

My mom and a nice little old lady (Angelica from Huascaran's mother!)  We had some chicken and yucca and cake together under a tree.

This is my great aunt.  She is 98 years old and lives a good two hour hike from the nearest road.

My uncle doing some plowing.

My grandma's house.  It's about 150 years old.

We did some quinoa harvesting.

Yes, my mom made lots of jokes about the quinoa being phallic.

My uncle and aunt and cousin had us in for lunch.

The ladies and I - our Mother's Day photo shoot.  I am a giant.

My mom got pretty style-y about five hours into our hike.

Finally back to the road.

 Forty minutes later we miraculously find a mototaxi.  He was off to pick up some other people but my mom says she'll give him fifty centimos more to take us instead.  Nice one, Mom.

The rain here stopped just over a week ago and dry season hit with a vengeance.  We had been out on this hike a few times before, but on Mother's Day is was GRUELING.  It was super hot out, we hiked for a good six hours, and the BUGS.  There are never bugs in my site, it's too cold, so I am not in the habit of wearing bug spray.

I now have about 80 bug bites from mid-calf down.  Every centimeter.  Ugh.  I am glad dry season is only a few months here - you can bet that I will be thoroughly coated in bug spray between now and September.

Events of late:

• One of my banks ws planning a fundraiser the other day and they decided that they would have a raffle.  They decided they should raffle off their gringa.  They thought it was brilliant and were crushed when I had to shoot them down on pimping me out.  We switched to having a picaronada and I was the only one there who could rattle off the picaron recipe.  Weird.
• At bank meetings, I am still shocked every time just to see them all arriving at the correct time.  Banks are amazing.
• Easter weekend: Friday a guy climbed the hill in my town dragging a cross with some other guys pretending to whip him.  At the top they strung him up.  Saturday everyone wore all black and people were crying in the streets, mourning the death of Christ.  Sunday - party, of course.
• I made ravioli from scratch the other day, blowing my mom's mind.  It was a big hit, but of course my mom insisted we fry it all instead of boil it.  It was of course delicious, if extraordinarily unhealthy.

That's all for now - I have more but I am late for lunch!  Ciao!

Fideo con Albahaca, Ajo, y Queso

Thunder hits pretty reliably right as we sit down to lunch. I can tell time by weather pretty well here these days. If it's sunny, the sun has risen within the last couple of hours. If it's cool and cloudy and drizzling, the sun is about to set. If the streets are flooded and there is an absolute torrential, blinding, mind-bending downpour it's about 3:30 and I am canceling my classes, again. The night are clear and cold.

My classes are so smooth now that I find I need more projects again for the first time in a few months. Every afternoon, I teach class from 3:30 to 6, but all the class plans are well-developed, all the worksheets are made and printed and filed and easy to find, and I am comfortable enough that I can just walk in, put on the powerpoint, joke around, take questions, and get through the day. Over 60 kids have cycled through my courses now, even with the constant cancellations (two weeks for Easter, really?)

So, I decided it's time to really start fighting for that library project and it's time to hit the streets finding more groups to form into community banks. The library project has been oh-so sluggish. I have everything prepared. People at the Muni are calling it my “awesome project.” I have resources listed and grant applications ready to go, I am just having trouble with my committee. Finally got it all together just the other day – have names of the enthusiastically interested and a good solid workplan that people are getting on board with. Thing is, I don't want to align myself with the wrong crew again, so I may need to back off a little. Finally getting used to the scandalous nature of this country. I spent most of my time before working with the Gerente, or City Manager, who absconded with a bunch of bags of cement a few weeks back. Had to then work my way into new contacts, avoiding my previous affiliation with the now-detested figure of the cement-thief. And now the head of the library committee is the wife of the mayor. Once burned and I am holding back on further meetings while I wait to find out if they are actually going to impeach him...

My most-successful-bank has it's three-month meeting tomorrow. All is going so smoothly. Tomorrow I will tell them they are all grown up and graduated from needing me at all. This means it's time to really move on and bring in the half-formed nonsense banks scattered around and to follow up with the inquiries I have received from other potential start-ups. The bank project is so simple and effective. Everyone loves Micro-Finance. I am setting a public goal right now of having, within 3 more moths, 3 more functional banks with a total of at least 60 members. I think it's possible. Just gotta step up my game.

I spent all last week in Lima. Seem to have busted something in my back. Which is strange because it just hurts in my leg. I guess I have a pinched nerve. They put me on a TON of drugs for awhile – like muscle relaxers and pain killers three times a day. I am off those now and the pain is reduced substantially, but still there. So we are gonna do a little physical therapy. With how much the drugs helped, I think the physical therapy should do the trick. So, that'll mean quite a few trips to either Chiclayo or hopefully Chota. I don't like leaving site that much, but if I can just get this fixed, I will be pretty happy. I think it probably came from falling in holes. There are holes in the sidewalks everywhere in Peru – and I mean holes a few feet deep and just big enough for your foot to pass through. I fall in them a lot; I think spend too much time looking up. I am fortunate to have not broken a leg yet, and I plan to stop falling in holes now.

I have funny conversations a lot here. People are always asking me, about everything, “Do they have this in the US?” Yes, we have tomatoes. Yes, we have rice. No, we don't have lucuma. There is always complete surprise at the Yes answers and a knowing smugness at the No answers. My favorite though was the other day when someone asked me if I had any pizza while I was in Lima. I said, of course and they followed with the standard, “Is there pizza in the US?” I was a little surprised at this one and was like “Yes, of course, we eat a lot of pizza!” The woman was really shocked. “You have pizza there?!? Well, it's so much better in Peru, right?” I gave my standard lie and told her it was and she walked away happy. The pizza here is a pathetic excuse for pizza. Extraordinarily pathetic and doesn't quench even a tad of your craving for pizza.

Another fun part of conversation is just what is appropriate to say. When you need your waiter or waitress you just yell - “Joven!” if they're young, “Chino!” if they're Asian, or “Gorda!” or “Flaca!” pretty much the rest of the time, though the differentiation between fat and skinny is not always obvious and I get called both daily. I avoid the racial terms – I don't care if it's considered simply another identifying feature here, I'm not participating. Another one - if I pull out my laptop in public, I have to expect at least 10 people just to walk up to me and ask me how much it cost. Or anything else I own. How much did that cost? Can I have it? Can you get more from the US to sell here? WHY DIDN'T YOU BRING A BUNCH OF STUFF WITH YOU TO SELL? People are really upset about that sometimes. It's very strange.

Besides the obvious ones, food and family, the thing I realized quite awhile ago that I miss most is anonymity. I mean, I can't wander around Eugene all day without running into people I know. I don't mean that kind of anonymity; I don't mean being a stranger. I mean the more basic anonymity – that the people who don't know me, also don't notice me. That strangers have no interest in me and that people can't just find me anywhere in town just by asking where the white girl is to anyone on the street. I want people to stop asking me questions some days.

Then again, I am sure that when I get home, I will miss some of that.

Quiero Descansar

I am so tired. Really tired, right now. But it's time to get this done. Also, they are setting up a Yunza outside, so I know sleep is about to be taken off the table (Will the Yunzas never end? Are there such a thing as better earplugs?) A whole lot has been going on, as well.

Life is so good. I know I am parroting myself here, but what a cool job. It's time for the 13ers to decide whether or not they are staying a third year and it's funny to watch. There is a vast range of reactions. I know a large handful that are just saying, “I am going home immediately on the first day allowed.” There are a chunk almost as large saying, “Well, this is home. Why would I want to go to the States and get a way less cool job?” And then there are the variety pack, those signing on for just a few more months, and those who really haven't decided. I even had a conversation with a Volunteer I know currently in the middle of his fourth year. I asked, “Well, aren't you cut off soon? No one is allowed to sign up for a fifth year...” (Yes, Peace Corps has term limits, for staff too.) He replied, “But I can extend my fourth year.” Whatever kind of awesome bureaucratic loophole that is. If I had to pick right now, I wouldn't go anywhere. This is the life. But don't freak out yet, Mom, I swore I would come home after just two and I will.

TEACHING IS HARD. I have always had a lot of respect for teachers, but never like this. I don't know what I am doing! Teaching is crazy. Teaching in the wrong language is crazier. Doing it full time... I just got home from a Clausura – where I graduated 26 of my 11 year olds, with certificates, soda pop, and saltines. They completed their 2 week course on Planning Your Future (how strange is that?) The course was twice a week for two weeks. Two of the other days a week, I have my older kids, 15 and 16, for Youth Entrepreneurship. These classes are all two hours in the afternoon. Planning a two hour class takes a LONG time. Planning it well, takes practice. Turns out half the time that I can't get nearly the amount done that I thought and the other half that we are going to end up outside playing icebreakers and team building games because I didn't plan enough. Turns out I SUCK at discipline. Who wants to be that guy? I don't even want to talk about my morning classes teaching English to 7 year olds...

Really, though, we are all having fun and the learning curve is steep. I start this week with the next group of over two dozen 11 year olds. Each two week period I will move on to the next, until the kids in town have ideas beyond “tienda-owner” or “mototaxi-driver.” The older kids course is a 6 week session that I am currently planning on just doing twice in a row. These kids volunteer for this, while the younger ones are required to attend my short course. After my two six-week courses, I get to form a team of my best students to create a business plan for a national youth business plan competition. I plan on us winning. The kids can win the funding to actually start their business plan. Since I have seemingly been assigned to be the Human-Form Economic Stimulus Package for this community, I think I am gonna try and own this project. Win. Banks are still going well. Need to update my numbers on that tomorrow...

I have been out of town for a week again. Yet another Peace Corps training in Lima. I feel like they drag us out for these things sooo often. No more until I go in for the business plan competition in August however. So I get to hunker down for awhile. And tomorrow, I have more things to do than humanly possible – between the library project, the 2 business courses, the community banks, and the English courses, I am a nutcase. The funny thing is, it's not even that many hours, especially considering some jobs I have happily worked in the past. I don't know why it feels busier. Probably a mix of language barrier issues (which I am convinced never go away,) cultural frustration issues (as I am also convinced the norms of Peru were designed to make me crazy,) and the fact that everything is such a rollercoaster ride. In fact, speaking of rollercoasters, my mother has been back and cooking me her absolutely wonderful but almost pure starch food for just a month now and I am seeing that I already noticeably need to get back to my workout routine. Suck.

The big awesomeness: the library project. All I can say so far is that I have seen extreme enthusiasm and a mention of possible available community funds. I am having a big meeting about it tomorrow or the next day, so I will update very soon! I have looked deeply into grant resources, pitched the idea around town, and recruited some enthusiastic and brilliant young team members. Here we go, Children's Library-Tutoring-Center-Science-Museum! This is going to be awesome. I could obviously use help with a name.

Any suggestions?

¡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