A Peace Corps Pisco Finale

Standing on the summit of Pisco, eye to eye with the other snow-covered giants, I no longer felt cold, or tired, even though we had been hiking since midnight and the sun was just beginning to rise over the Cordillera Blanca. Instead, I felt weightless and powerful as I relished the fact that I had just climbed a mountain.

I can't honestly say I did it with much style. Although this was one of the "easy" mountains to climb, by the last hour my head was reeling, my stomach was churning, my nose was running, and I was dropping to my knees after every two dozen steps. Each time I stopped, the guide waited patiently while I counted ten deep breaths, struggled to my feet, and resumed my painstaking uphill shuffle, counting out each set of steps - one, two, one, two, one, two.

Throughout my Peace Corps service, I asked myself almost every day how I would ever be able to make it through two years; the answer was always the same - one step at a time. And again, I won't claim it was always pretty. There were tears, illnesses, meltdowns, and a fair share of failures, and I wouldn't hesitate for a second to call my entire experience in Peru an uphill shuffle. More than once I found myself getting bogged down in frustrations and forgetting the bigger picture about why I was here in the first place.

But in spite of everything, eventually I looked up from the snow beneath my boots and realized I was only ten steps away from the top - and only ten weeks away from completing my Peace Corps service - and it really didn't matter anymore how much I had struggled along the way. Every step I had taken in the past two years, no matter how painful, no matter how small, had carried me up to that point, 5,800 meters above the sea, and from way up there, it's hard not to see the big picture.

Whatever kind of magical brain-freeze I experienced on top of Pisco, I came down the other side with a profound sense of peace about the past two years. I had my share of struggles and failures, and certainly there are things that I wish I could have done better, but I have also been successful in many ways. Now, with only a few short weeks before I move on to the next adventure, I feel complete knowing that no matter how many times I fell on my knees throughout the journey, I always got back up and kept going, one step at a time.

Thank you for all of your support over the past two years, and I hope you have enjoyed sharing some of my experiences through my blog. I'm not sure yet what comes next, but I have every reason to expect something great.

A final farewell from Peru,

Callie

Condors and Cattle and Bears... oh my!

I feel like lately I've had to start every blog entry with an apology for a long absence. A lot has happened since April, undoubtedly, but the deeper I get into this Peace Corps business, the less motivated I feel to write about any of it. I guess what used to seem like madness has become the norm. Which makes me wonder if, in four months when I'm back in Boston, what used to be normal will leave my head spinning...

So starting where I left off, in April Diana came to visit and I showed her the meaning of Peruvian hospitality by taking her out into the deep Amazon jungle to spend a week with no electricity, sweltering heat, and an abundance of creepy-crawlies. One highlight of the trip was zip-lining through the canopy.

Diana and I getting ready to zip-line

May brought Camp ALMA, a leadership camp for teenage girls that the volunteers in Ancash organized and ran. After a weekend of crafts, skits, discussions, and yoga (which I taught in Spanish), I was more than ready for a vacation with the Manzos in the beautiful colonial city of Arequipa. We toured the Colca Canyon, where we soaked in hot springs and saw Andean condors soar directly overhead. The best part of the whole trip though was that while going over a pass at 5,000 m above sea level, I got to touch SNOW for the first time in over 2 years!! I made a 6-inch snowman.

Noreen and I at Colca

June was a whole mess of travel for various work activities, but I found time to learn how to make tamales with my host family, do some prep work for an upcoming mural project, and hike up into the mountains to help my sitemate Erica build a fence and plant the first trees in her tourist-based reforestation project. We planted 25 Quenual seedlings on the first day, and left crossing our fingers that the fence would hold out against the mob of cows who hovered hungrily outside.Wrapping tamales in corn husks

The preschoolers on parade for Flag Day

Planting Quenual trees with some tourists

The 4th of July brought the anniversary parade for Huascaran National Park, and one of the highlights of my service - I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

After the parade. I'm the bear on the left.

This next week I'll be frantically preparing for the arrival of a group of students from Scotland, who will be spending 5 days working on projects in Tzactza, including painting a mural and building a tree nursery in the school. Hopefully 5 liters of lemon-fresh cleaning solution will be enough to tackle the school bathrooms. Now, though, it's time to forget about work for a few hours and watch the world cup.

Easter in the Andes

Only in the Andes does one celebrate Holy Week by slaughtering hundreds of the Easter Bunny's close cousins. Guinea pigs hide in your cages, because one of the traditions of Semana Santa is to prepare a feast of potatoes, rice, and tender rodent meat and invite the entire town to come share. The hosts, who alternate every year, also cook massive vats of masamora, or pudding made from rice, sweet potatoes, and bright orange squash. Everyone brings their own pots to take home a sampling of each different dish. It's kind of like trick-or-treating for guinea pig.

This year I felt highly honored to receive my own personal invitation to partake in the festivities, so on Holy Thursday I grabbed my little cooking pot and headed down the street to "apikur" - a new Quechua word I learned which means, as far as I can tell, "take a pot to get masamora during Holy Week." Of course, I knew that I would be something of a spectacle, but I hadn't anticipated the crowds that were hanging around the street outside of the host's house. I was still a hundred meters away when they noticed my approach, my pot swinging conspicuously by my side, and started laughing and calling my name. Grinning sheepishly, I greeted the hostess and held out my pot.

It's nothing new for me to be the object of attention when I walk down the street. After all, I'm a foot taller than everyone else, among other notable differences. Even in my house, I often feel like an animal in the zoo when my four-year-old sister Mayeli parades half of the preschool past my bedroom door for "show and tell" with the gringa. I've had an especially peculiar complex since one of my first weeks in Tzactza when my other sister, six-year-old Yeraldina, started pointing and giggling at me while I swept my floor. It's not a very dignified process, since the broom is only about two feet long, but it's how everyone does it. Since that moment, I have wondered every time I sweep my floor, which is almost every day, what exactly is so different about the way I sweep that made it so funny to her.

But a few weeks ago, after over a year of self-conscious sweeping, I had an epiphany; I'm not sweeping differently, I'm sweeping the same, and that is precisely what tickles people here so much. It would be like going to the zoo and giggling at the monkey who peels a banana just like a human. Except that here, I am the monkey - one who has learned some entertaining people tricks. Who wouldn't laugh?

So I didn't take it personally when everyone giggled at me walking home with a pot of rice pudding and a heaping plate of guinea pig and potatoes. I was actually glad to provide some silly entertainment for the neighbors, and in the end it's just one more monkey moment to add to the ever-expanding list.

Wrapping up

Sorry about the lack of updates in the past month. I am so happy to say that we are finally done with our bathrooms! Here are some pics of the final stage of construction and of course the finished products. I promise there will be a real blog post soon.

Construction on the base of a bathroom.

More installation of pipes

One of the girls who will have a new bathroom in her home.

The first family to finish construction!

Making progress

After many months of planning, we have finally begun to build! On January 12th, my counterparts and I borrowed the municipality's truck to pick up our materials and move them up the mountain. It was a rough day, and for me it ended at the doctor's getting shots of anesthesia to remove a toothpick-sized splinter from my hand, but we eventually made it safely home with our load of materials.

Loading materials in Caraz. If only that back door had opened...

Our storage room full of cement, pipes, and wood.

The next day we had our first training session with Eliseo, the plumber, to teach each family how to install their pipes. Some families are still choosing to pay the "maestro" to do it for them, which was not part of the original plan, but in the end I am glad as it will generate some income for Eliseo, who has helped me incalculably with this project. While the men paid close attention to the training, the women prepared a huge lunch of pasta and (surprise!) potatoes, and after lunch each family departed with cement and pipes. Of the 20 participating families, only one family dropped out of the project. All of the remaining 19 families met the requirements and I was pleased to be able to give each and every family

Breaking ground at the training. Note that I am only pretending to be helping. After the embarrassing splinter incident the night before, it was decided that the 'senorita' should leave the real work to the farmers.

Reviewing the instructions as we go.

One of the ladies presides over massive pasta pots.

Explaining how the pipe layout works to prevent undesirable odors.

As much of the group as we could get in one place at one time.

So now each family is on their own until Feb 3rd to finish installation, although I plan to start pestering them a week before that. On that date we will have the second training session where each family will learn how to put together the exterior of the bathroom. Everyone who has successfully installed their pipes and cement floor will receive wood and aluminum siding after the session. Of the 20 participating families, only one family dropped out of the project early on. All of the remaining 19 families have met the requirements to date, and I was thrilled to be able to give each and every family the first half of their materials. I am very hopeful that with a bit of gentle pressure, and the reward of an electric shower for the best bathroom completed on time, all of the families will at least come close to meeting our project deadline at the end of February.

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.

Oh wow, it's been a month already...

Sorry to leave you all hanging for so long. It's been a busy month here in Ancash and there has been little time for blogging. We played host to 40 trainees from Lima who came to do field-based training in Ancash at the end of October, and then on top of that had to focus on getting our costumes together for a legendary halloween party. Yes, we still have some fun in the Peace Corps.

As far as my work goes, I've been working hard to get my eco-club off the ground. We meet twice a week to talk about environmental themes, do art projects, and play games. The kids love it, but the problem has been coordinating with the school about using a classroom. They can't seem to wrap their minds around the concept of every Monday and every Wednesday. We're working on it, but for now it means that class is usually outside, often in the rain, and is open to invasion by toddlers, dogs, and chickens. Minor complications in the grand scheme of things, although it does get a bit dangerous for everyone when you throw a chicken and a bull into a game of freeze tag.

The Eco-kids holding trees we planted for "el dia del arbol" on Nov. 5

The bathrooms project continues to advance. We are finished with our fundraising, so thank you all for your generous donations! We hope to purchase our materials before the holidays, and move into the construction phase at the beginning of the new year.

Mostly though I am looking forward to having a nice break for the holidays. Only two more weeks until Seany arrives, and my folks are coming a few days later. After a full year in the mountains, I can't wait to see my family and spend a few days on the beach to get rested and rejuvenated for the year ahead.

A happy Thanksgiving to everyone! This year I am grateful to James Tvrdy's grandmother for sending us stuffing mix. Wouldn't be Thanksgiving without it!

Bathrooms Update

We're rolling right along with our bathrooms project. Friday we had a session with the health post about hand-washing and household hygiene, and Saturday morning we held a town clean-up with the twenty participants of the project. Here are a few pictures to introduce you to our project!




Thank you to everyone who has already donated to our project. We are already half way to our goal!

Bathrooms!

Hi everyone! I am back in Peru after a lovely ten day vacation in Boston. It was wonderful to speak english, ride the T, eat pizza and bagels, watch the Twins make an amazing comeback (and then flop in the playoffs), and of course to catch up with so many of my friends. I only wish it could have lasted a bit longer. But here in Peru there is business to be taken care of, and I am hitting the ground running with a new project that I am VERY excited about. Please take a moment to read about our project, because we can't do it without your help.

Through conversations with my community partners, we have decided that one of the most pressing health hazards in our town is the lack of bathrooms. Surveys have shown that approximately 70% of households in town have no form of bathroom whatsoever, and that families must take care of their necessities "al aire libre," as we say here- "in the open air." This leads to contamination of public spaces, waterways, and the fields where families grow their food. Needless to say, this human waste contamination is one of the primary causes of diarrhea and intestinal infections, especially among children. Unfortunately, many families lack the financial resources to construct bathrooms in their homes.

In order to combat the health hazards associated with human waste contamination, we have decided to initiate a project to construct bathrooms and promote hygienic practices. Through our project, 20 participating families will attend workshops to learn about the health hazards associated with poor sanitation and about how they can improve hygiene within their own homes. Families will also participate in two clean-ups to help reduce existing contamination in town, and the male participants will attend technical trainings to learn how to install pipes, cement floors, and construct modules for the exteriors of their bathrooms. Each family that completes these requirements will then receive materials, including pipes, cement, wood, and aluminum siding, to complete construction of a bathroom within their own home.

We need your help to make this project possible! Through the Peace Corps Partnership Program we are hoping to raise $2,800 dollars to purchase all the necessary materials to construct 20 bathrooms. If you are interested in making a donation, please visit the link below:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=527-010

All donations go directly towards my project, and every little bit helps. A donation of just $20 provides the floor of a bathroom, so please take a moment to check it out!

1 year down, 1 year to go

Peace Corps life is like a bowl of tomato soup- a bowl of soup that you tried to cook from scratch using two separate recipes and without all the right ingredients, in the dark, over a flaming pile of firewood, and without the blender that both recipes mandated. In other words, it's not quite as smooth as you'd like it to be. But you learn to lower your standards and enjoy it anyway.

This week I decided that after nine months, it was about time I made a legitimate effort to get my ecoclub started with the school kids. I talked to the school director, who made an announcement in front of the entire school, but neglected to tell me that Wednesday, the day of the first meeting, the entire school was going to the next town over for a fiesta. So at 3PM I went out to wait in the plaza with my book, pretty certain that no one would show up, but around 3:30 a couple of kids appeared in the plaza and came to hover around my bench. Not daring to believe it, I tried to sound totally casual as I asked, "Sooo... what are you guys here for?" They looked at me as if I were a total idiot. Um, duh, that thing you told us about? So against ALL odds, the ecoclub meeting actually happened, and I held their attention for at least 20 minutes before the boys decided that the hot potato circle was really better as a wrestling ring.

Some of my girls on a visit to the nearby pre-Incan ruins

Work at the recycling center has taken a turn away from my interests. After bringing one of the workers to a workshop in Chiclayo about planting Tara trees, we were both totally stoked to plant some native species. When we got back, however, we found out that the mayor had sudden plans to plant 20,000 invasive, nutrient-sucking Eucalyptus trees. So I watched with growing despair as the little black bags full of dirt multiplied over and over to fill every empty space in the tree nursery. It's taken me 9 months to plant 200 trees because no one sees the importance of planting native species, but with one word from the mayor 20,000 seeds are planted practically overnight. It's amazing how quickly things can get done, and makes it all the more frustrating to see my own projects develop so slowly.

Even with the little stuff, you can't count on things to go the way you expect. For example, I wanted to do laundry yesterday, but it's kind of tough when there's a 200lb dead pig on top of the sink. Turns out yesterday was pig-slaughtering day. Fortunately when it comes to killing and cooking a pig, I am only slightly more useful than the 4-year-old, so I mostly got to watch and shell peas and I was TOTALLY ok with that. Anyway, that's why I'm wearing a dirty t-shirt. I swear it's not my fault.

My host dad with the pig.

In other news, the trip to Cusco with my parents was amazing. If you want all the details, don't be afraid to ask them. They seem to love talking about it. For me, the best part was when they came to visit me at my home. The host fam got a kick out of my dad's moustache, especially when it turned orange while eating guinea pig. My sisters still giggle about it. So thanks for the laughs, pops.

Gringos in the kitchen

Now I'm off to dinner with my friends to celebrate the our 1-year-in-country anniversary. One year ago today, I was having a heart attack in Washington DC wondering if I was somehow deranged for actually choosing to move to Peru. Now I know that yes, indeed, I am a little crazy. But I'm ok with that too. Hasta la proxima...

Me and host sister Mayeli

Time passes in funny splurts. One day I am complaining that the month of June seems to stretch eternally in front of me, with loads of empty days to somehow fill, and then suddenly it is the middle of July and I am over 6 weeks behind on my blog. My apologies, but I swear I don't know where all that time went.

To recap June, in many ways it was a letdown after the busy month of May. After taking a trip to the northern part of Peru for a Peace Corps workshop the first week of June, I came back to site to find that all my work opportunities had pretty much fallen flat while I was gone, through circumstances outside my control. The school was celebrating its anniversary, which meant a lot of parties and not a lot of class, and construction at the recycling center had ground to a halt in the absence of the engineer in charge. Fortunately I could look forward to another trip to Lima with the WID/GAD committee. We put together presentations for both PC staff and the trainees, and the stress of throwing together two presentations in one day was a welcome break from the slow pace of life in the mountains. I guess I am programmed to feel more useful when I am stressed and strung out on Starbucks.

My beautiful recycling center, if only it were operational

Thus far July has brought a few exciting events- my secondary school kids won first place in a district dance competition, and I taught my very first environmental class at the school and helped the kids make a compost heap. This was huge for me, since environmental education is one of my program's goals and I have been working very hard to get my foot in the door at the school.

The boys before the dance competition

Other than that, I spend a lot of time reading and eating cookies. I find that inactivity is a powerful trigger for my sweet-tooth. Intending to use them as a reward for kids who helped with a garbage clean-up (which never happened because of more school parties) I purchased an 18-pack of fiestachip cookies, 4 cookies to a pack, and over the course of about 4 days, I somehow managed to eat every last crumb. You do the math. It's ok, though, because I recently learned that I am eating for two (or perhaps two thousand). I think of it as a test of character... of all the challenges to be faced as a volunteer, I had still been living in fear of the prospect of getting a stomach worm, or worms. Well the day arrived, about two weeks ago, when I found irrefutable evidence of having at least one little friend. I'll spare you all the details, and the pictures, but I'll just say that when all was said and done, I handled it with much more composure than I had thought I would. I passed the test, and I am now pretty confident I can handle anything the Peace Corps can throw at me.

Anyway... I am now looking forward to my folks arriving in less than 2 weeks. Get ready mom and dad, you're gonna eat guinea pig!

Just in case...

If any of you incoming Peru 13-ers have found my blog in an anxious attempt to find out anything and everything possible about Peru in the next three days, here are a few tidbits to help with last minute packing:

1. You CAN buy peanut butter in Peru. It's expensive, but always worth it. You can also buy Oreos, which go great with PB and are fun to eat in bed at night. But be sure to brush your teeth afterward, or you might get a cavity (like me)

2. Other things you CAN buy here: snickers bars, ramen noodles, shampoo, facewash, macaroni and cheese (kraft, nonetheless), batteries, baby wipes, sunglasses, ritz crackers, cheap movies, listerine and colgate toothpaste

3. Some things I am REALLY glad I packed: My yoga mat (good for all sorts of exercise, and great as a rug when it's not in use), yoga pants/sweatpants (I almost never wear jeans in site), lots of tampons (they're really expensive here), comfy hiking shoes, my teddy bear

4. Don't worry too much about packing dress clothes- you'll only need them a couple of times- and think durable rather than super classy.

5. And last but not least, don't stress too much because we all end up wearing the same four t-shirts every day for two years anyway, and no one here is judging.

There Are No Llamas Here

I'm not sure that I've actually clarified that yet- in spite of my blog address, the only llama that I have met in Peru is one that hangs out in the plaza in Huaraz wearing sunglasses and a hat. And I haven't even really met that llama, since you have to pay to take a picture with him. There are LOTS of donkeys, though, and dogs, sheep, and pigs. The donkeys make horrible noises, the dogs have fleas, the sheep hang out in the middle of the road and always cause delays, and the pigs bust through the front door a dozen times a day and proceed to trash the kitchen looking for food. I guess I'm not much of an animal person here. But I have pretty much mastered the art of yelling at animals in Quechua. Mostly you just say their names. To make a donkey get out of your way, for example, you just say "ashnu," kind of like sneezing, and it will immediately start to move. Not too hard. Getting the pigs out of the house is a little more complicated- you yell "kuchi," but it is much more effective if you give them a kick in the tail at the same time. I can't wait to eat porkchops. And yes, swine flu has arrived in Peru which makes it even more fun to see their dirty little noses rummaging through the breakfast dishes.

I have had quite the series of adventures the past two months. Diana came to visit in April, bringing a precious block of cheese and a box of Lucky Charms. In exchange I offered her the unique opportunity to sit on a sheep and to swim in a glacial lake. I think I got the better deal.

Me, Diana, some huaino singer lady, and Erica at Campo Santo, the site of a 1970 landslide that buried the town of Old Yungay

A few weeks later I took my first hike up into the mountains to the spectacular Lake 69 (no joke, that's its name) with the other volunteers, and last weekend a group of us went on an overnight trail clean with the tourist association with which Erica and I work. We covered about 40km in two days, climbing from 3,000m to 4,300m altitude and then back down. To say that I was exhausted doesn't even begin to do it justice, but it was well worth the trek.

The volunteers on our way back from Lake 69

The next day, Erica and I led our first workshop on garbage management and recycling, which went surprisingly well. We were anticipating the worst- that after all the work that went into brining the garbage off of the trail, someone would end up burning it before we could get our hands on it- and I was about ready to sleep on top of the garbage bags to make sure that didn't happen. But against all odds, we were able to present our chat on the day for which it was scheduled the garbage was still there, and we got three dozen men to sort out the recycling and throw the rest into a mini landfill.

Some arrieros (donkey drivers) with their recycling

It is a small step towards our bigger goals, but if I have learned anything in the Peace Corps, it is to appreciate ever step that takes you in the right direction, no matter how small.

Hotel Hangover

I had a nice run of work-related travel, which was definitely more like vacation, starting with Quechua training, then a trip to Lima, and finally a nice stay on the beach to cap it all off. After three weeks of hot showers, sunshine, and speaking English, heading back to site was like jumping into a cold lake- I was totally dreading the return to Quechua, mud, rain, bucket baths, and isolation. And the first days back were tough, especially going home to find all my belongings, including my pillows, covered in mold. But just like jumping into that lake, after the initial shock you realize the water isn't so bad after all. It's nice to be back in my own bed, even if it does smell like flea spray. And as slow as life in the campo can feel, it is never boring. There is no shortage of random craziness to keep life interesting. Like Monday, when the adobe wall of our house fell on my sister. She's OK- just a sprained foot and a broken backpack- but a bed-ridden 3-year-old is actually more irritating than one who can follow you around. I try to be patient with her endless stream of wailing demands, though, since I feel a bit responsible for her injury. After all, I was closest to her when the wall collapsed, and I might have been able to grab her if my self-preservation instinct hadn't kicked in before my maternal one. I was already half-way across the patio before I thought to try to save her. Oops. So much for playing the hero.

At Lake Llanganuco, in Ancash, with Tyler and Shannon

Trying to get started with some real work has also provided plenty of opportunity for me to reflect on how absurd my life is these days, although I am making some progress. I have agreed with the new school director (the third one in three months) to work with the Environmental Ed. teacher, and reluctantly agreed to work with the English teacher as well. I was going to start the very next day, but the teacher didn't show up. I played volleyball and football with all the other teachers instead, in the middle of the school day, while the kids were supposed to be "working independently" (which is as ineffective in Peru as in any other country). But it was fun, and I definitely earned my place on the football team. Volleyball is pending. I need to work on a more consistent serve.

A trip to the municipality to talk to the mayor was also more exciting than expected- not only did Erica and I get a lot of good information, which almost never happens, but we also got surprised by a radio show host who wanted to interview us about the Peace Corps. The mayor didn't ever show up, but it was still an above-average day for being productive. So things are looking pretty good in Tzactza right now, and with a little help from my friend Hershey's (thanks dbrad) I am recovering well from my hotel hangover.

Getting ready for a cold jump into Lake Llanganuco, an Ancash PCV tradition

A taste of normality

The other day I went to the US for coffee. Then I walked back out onto the street into Peru again. This magical space warp is commonly known as Starbucks. And I actually went more than once. More like three times in three days during a shocking dip into urban life last week. I made my first trip back to Lima after three months in the mountains, and although I absolutely love the easy-going Andean lifestyle, Lima was a refreshing return to "normal" life.

In the short but busy trip, I started each morning with a grande coffee from Starbucks, which feels exactly like a US Starbucks except that the menu is in Spanish. Then I was off to the Peace Corps office for a 9 to 5 day of meetings. I am working with the Women in Development / Gender and Development (WID/GAD) committee, which is a 5 member team in charge of developing gender-related training programs and resources for Peace Corps staff and volunteers. It is a relatively new committee, and we spent almost two full days working on mission statements and developing a set of objectives to direct future WID/GAD activities in Peru. It was a lot of nitty-gritty work, and by the end of the three days, I was tired, a bit frantic, and totally strung out on coffee. In other words, the most normal I have felt in months. I also got to meet a bunch of new volunteers, eat good food, and get updated on all the Peru gossip. All in all, a very successful first business trip.

Now I am back in Huaraz, but things haven't slowed down much. I catch another night bus tomorrow to go to reconnect in Pacasmayo, where all the Peru 12ers will be together for the first time since November. It's going to be a crazy time on the coast, mixed with official business of course. Sorry to all of you who are still battling the last days of winter, but I'm off to the beach!

A few life observations:

1. I don't understand Carnaval. It is a seemingly endless celebration that starts in January and lasts through the beginning of March, and for the entire stretch you have to watch out for kids with squirt guns, water balloons, and buckets. I've tried several techniques including intimidation (yelling and running directly at the offenders), the classic Peruvian finger shake that means 'no way,' and even pleading (por favor, soy una pobre gringa), all with very little success. And whatever you do, DON'T sit by an open window in a car or bus, because you will get drenched. And then sometimes the woman next to you will decide to change her entire outfit right there in the back seat of the car where you are squeezed in with 5 other people.

Carnaval is also a festival that involves lots of drunk men trying to raise a full tree in the plaza using ropes and ladders. Then more drunk men with axes cut it down. Highly entertaining, but watch from a safe distance.

2. Crayons are God's gift to teachers everywhere. I made it through 6 weeks of English classes which included students aged 5 through 15, a smattering of baby brothers and sisters, several regular dogs, and even a chicken on one occasion. And who would have guessed it, but the 15-year-old boys love coloring just as much as the 3-year-old.


3. I am currently living every 7-year-old child's dream: I get to eat french fries for dinner all the time!! Just french fries, sometimes with white rice. Whenever I am wishing I could have just a little something green on my plate, I remind myself that as a kid I would have been in heaven.

4. I always planned to spend my golden birthday somewhere really cool. As a first-grader, I was thinking something more like Hawaii, but if you had told me that my 23rd birthday would involve an adobe hut and a pot of chocolate pudding, I think I would have liked that.

The rainy season has set in here in Sacsa, and although it has been abnormally dry according to my neighbors, we still get plenty of damp and chill. Pretty much every day, the clouds come creeping down the mountains and settle into town, shutting out the spectacular scenery and sometimes even the house across the street. The clothes don't dry, all my pants are spattered with muck, and there isn't much to do in the rain besides sit in my room. There is an undeniable coziness, however, to bundling up with a cup of tea at the kitchen table and watching bits of cloud wander through the patio.

The town plaza on a sunny day

On the homefront, the bathroom is finally progressing, my siblings often remind me after breakfast that we have to brush our teeth, and I have a brand new cement floor! My host family is always a trip, with the three kids behaving just like like siblings anywhere, picking on each other, fighting over the small spoon and the seat near the fire (mom, read: the window seat and the piggy glass), and playing together like angels when they think no one is looking. Those are the things that make me feel most at home- the 14-year-old boys stealing hats and shawls from the teenage girls (seany, I think of you every time), a bunch of farmers giving the NGO representative bunny ears in our group photo. And the other night I followed a tremendous ruckus to its source and found my entire family in a monkey pile on the bed, my siblings piled on top of my dad and my host mom on top of everyone. Of course, like all family fun, it ended with someone crying.

My front door

My daily activities have expanded a bit. I have been attending quite a few community meetings, gathering information, and working on lesson plans for English classes, which I am now teaching twice a week. My first class started slowly, almost an hour late, with only eight kids, but more kept showing up. At the end of the second class, there were 24 kids, two babies, and a dog, with four more kids peering in the windows. I had to kick everyone out at lunch time because everyone wanted to stay and color more.

The view down my street on a cloudy evening

My new favorite activity, though, or call it an obsession, is looking for cactus fruits called tunas. Erica and I conquered our first cactus together and harvested five fruits. Three had worms. But we thoroughly enjoyed the other two. Somehow that, more than anything, made me feel accomplished.

Erica working on picking a tuna, trying not to get covered in spines

Enjoy!

Happy Holidays!

Happy New Year!! Everyone have their yellow underwear on for good luck? Or is that just a Peruvian thing? The markets switched from red and green garlands to a sea of yellow ribbons, necklaces, glasses, and of course, yellow underwear of every imaginable variety and level of indecency. I settled for a moderate pair, no lace. Hope they bring me luck this year. I certainly am going to need it.

Although life in site has been pretty smooth so far, the first month in Sacsa has still been a real challenge. There is a lot to get adjusted to, most of all the incredibly slow pace of life. The first three months or so are dedicated to getting to know the community, rather than starting any projects, which means I spend a lot of time wandering around aimlessly or sitting on a log outside my house reading a book. This strategy actually works pretty well for starting conversations with the neighbors, since everyone is very curious about the fact that I actually read for FUN. People always ask if I am working, and since I started reading "The Ground Beneath Her Feet," which is thick and hard-covered, several people have asked if they could borrow my Bible.

Christmas was also an interesting experience. There were a few parties in town, but mostly on the days between Christmas and New Year's. On Christmas itself there was a bit of dancing (and a lot of drinking) at the school, and I got my first chance to embarrass myself dancing in front of half the town. Then we ate some paneton, which is like an oversized, super dry muffin studded with red and green candied fruit and raisins. Not my favorite holiday treat, and I have eaten it either for breakfast or dinner or both every day for the past two weeks. Reason #1 I am glad the holidays are over. I am looking forward to moving into my second month in Sacsa without the pressure of the holidays hanging over my head, and hopefully getting started with some little projects to keep me busy. My current initiative involves encouraging my little sisters to brush their teeth. Starting small.

Happy holidays to everyone!

Welcome to Sacsa

It has been a while, and so much has happened in the past three weeks. All 47 volunteers in my training group swore in as PC volunteers on November 28th, and from there we all went our separate ways. I moved up to Ancash with 8 other volunteers from Peru 12, and we did all our pre-site shopping in the capital city of Huaraz, buying mattresses, sheets, and other necessities. Then on December 2nd, Erica and I hired a taxi for the three hour journey to our sites. I can only imagine what people must have thought about the two strange white girls driving around with two mattresses on top of a stationwagon. But we made it, and have managed to settle into our respective homes in towns about 20 minutes apart from each other.

So about life in Sacsa- things are pretty calm in a town of perhaps 500 people, and my main responsibilities right now involve smiling and saying "buenos dias" to everyone and trying to remember names and faces. I spend a lot of time hanging out at the kitchen table, which is in an open-air patio in my adobe house, talking to my host parents and my two little host sisters, who are 5 and 3 and love to chat. They have been a big help in introducing me to the kids in town, and now I can't even walk out the front door without some kid yelling my name from down the street. I also read in the plaza a lot, just trying to get myself out there. If there's one thing I have learned in the past two weeks, it is that you never know what will happen once you set foot outside. On Thursday, for example, I took the ten minute hike out to the hilltop where I get cell phone reception, thinking I would just make a quick call and then walk to Erica's house for a relaxing evening with her host family. Instead, I walked past the school and ended up getting pulled into the primary school's graduation party and sitting with a family I had never met and then eating soup and guinea pig at a table with the 12-yr-old graduates in front of the entire gathering. I am really bad at eating guinea pig. There is definitely an art to it that I have NOT mastered. Something to work on in order to fit in better, I guess.

My first three months in site will be dedicated to these sorts of awkward activities- meeting the important figures in town, starting to develop relationships with the various organizations with which I hope to work, and just figuring out how to survive in general. So far, so good. The people of Sacsa have been so friendly (an older woman approached me in the plaza to give me cookies and I could have cried I felt so welcomed) and the landscape is absolutely stunning. On a clear day, I can see the tips of six snow-capped mountains from my cell phone rock.

Me talking on the phone with the nevados in the background.
And with my neighbor, Erica, taking advantage of the cell reception.

I will also need to start learning Quechua, since most of the adults in my town converse with one another in the Andean tongue, and I would like to know exactly what people are saying about me when they converse with each other in Quechua, glancing at me and throwing in key spanish phrases like "cuerpo de paz" and "estados unidos." But one step at a time.

New mailing address

Hey hey everyone! I am only five days away from becoming a REAL volunteer, and as such, I will be moving to the very very very small town of Sacsa in the department of Ancash. If you are looking for it on a map, you probably won't find it. But if you look just to the north and east of the city of Caraz, I am in that general area. I got the chance to visit two weeks ago and see my new home and meet my new family. So while I am totally scared out of my mind, at least I know what I am in for. I leave for the department capital city, Huaraz, with a group of other Ancash volunteers on Saturday night, and from there I am on my own as I head to my site, probably on the 2nd of December. I will put up some pics and a more detailed post once I get to Huaraz, but for now I just wanted to call attention to my new mailing address, which is posted on the right, just in case...