Thankfully I'm an official volunteer now!

This year Thanksgiving was surprisingly similar to the real deal in the USA.  I kicked it off by baking all the apple pies on wednesday night and I was up late babysitting the oven at my host family's house.  That felt familiar; the panicky night before cooking is a time old tradition at the Barrie household, to be short on oven space and time. Then on Thanksgiving day the staff at the training center prepared us a giant meal.  It was delicious!  Some things were a little different than usual, for example the stuffing had hot dog in it this year.  Although hot dog stuffing is not as good as my mom's stuffing it was pretty darn good.  Those Peruvians cooked some awesome Thanksgiving food and when we all sat down at the same table, with turkey hands that the other aspirantes had decorated, and said what we were thankful for I felt really happy.  I was so proud when I saw one of my tech trainers loosen her belt a little after that meal and it made it all feel more authentic.

That afternoon we threw a party for the host families.  There was food, a talent show, and dancing.  One of the language teachers had spent the last 2 weeks working with a group of us on a special dance routine.  The dance routine did involve a lot of jumping, but besides the slight nausea from post-gluttonous lunch-jumping I think our group danced very well.  My host brother Sting and I did a special duet for everyone.  I've attached a link to where I posted it on you tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSmBSqjSEPg&feature=feedu.  The song is in Spanish, but it'cute.  When I got home from class wednesday night Sting told me he wanted to do a solo act too, and his mom even rented him a special costume.  He's a little ham and was so excited to perform.  (P.S. we're lip syncing!)

On Friday we had the big official swearing in ceremony.  The ceremony was really nice.  The U.S. ambassador for Peru had a big entourage of security and a bunch of host families were locked out of the ceremony if they arrived after 3pm, because it was a security risk to leave the doors open while the ambassador was there.  After the ceremony I found out my host grandma waited outside the gates for the hour long ceremony-I felt kind of guilty about that since she caught a bus over to see a boring ceremony.

Yesterday and today I am in Lima with all my bags packed.  This evening the Cajamarca Super Chicas are busing it up north!  I got to see the U of M/ Ohio State game yesterday with some other alumni's in from my training group at a sports bar in Lima.  It was pretty surreal to watch American t.v. in Peru and on the streets the rest of the day in my Michigan gear I met quite a few fans.

Since I have access to high speed internet for the rest of day today I'll try to blog some more about Cajamarca and if anyone is available to skype I'll be looking out for people to call this afternoon.

-KB