Happy belated holidays to everyone! This year the Schwartz-McDermott family decided to skip the snow and spend Christmas in the sand on the coast of Peru. We started off with a visit to my home town in the Andes, where we were invited to a lunch of guinea pig and played some tag with my small neighborhood friends. Then we headed south to the National Reserve of Paracas and the spectacular dunes of Ica, where we spent Christmas day flying down mountains of sand on snowboards, starting a new family tradition of X-treme sports. Other highlights were visits to two glacial lakes in the Andes, and taking a tour of the wineries in Ica and seeing dad forced to take shots of the traditional Peruvian Pisco prepared by hand (and foot) and aged in clay casks.

Sean meets some of my friends. They may be small, but there are a lot of them.

Dad tries to stay focused during a tour of the oldest winery in Ica (after his 7th shot of pisco)

The trip was also memorable for some of the most spectacular come-from-behind victories in the history of the game of Hand and Foot, a card game that has pitted father and daughter against mother and son for almost 10 years. My host family will also never forget how my dad explained why they arrived late for lunch one day. What Brian meant to say was that there was a giant truck, or camion, blocking the road. What he actually said was that there was a giant camaron in the road, which would look something like this:

But now it's back to work in 2010. January is shaping up to be a busy month- we are getting ready to start construction with my bathrooms project, and I have been kept on my toes trying to get all the details in order. This week, we have our first training session to learn how to install the tubes and cement floors for the bathrooms, and then each family will begin construction on their own bathroom. I'll probably be pulling my hair out for the next few weeks as there are endless details to keep track of, but I know that the project will be just as rewarding for me as it is for the 20 families who will have a bathroom for the first time. Much of the work we do as volunteers involves slow change and awareness-raising, and does not have such immediately tangible results, which can be discouraging at times. Fortunately I have lots of things to look forward to this year - finishing my bathrooms, hiking, camping, visitors from the States, trying out my new rock-climbing shoes, and soon enough I'll be planning my return home! Not that I'm excited about that or anything...

2010 has brought a new addition to my Peruvian family: a kitten that we call Chicken and who likes to shred my socks and pounce on my face while I'm trying to do yoga.