meet my host dad Joel

This week went by a lot faster than I thought it would.  My mom is coming to visit next week and I thought it would take forever to get through this week.  I did find myself loosing my temper a little more easily than usual and being generally stressed out.  I spent the early part of the week finishing up with my first VRF or volunteer report form. 

On Wednesday I went with one of the nurses from the health post to do a demonstrative nutrition session with a group of moms in sector 8.  The moms are part of a government program called Juntos-I’ve written about it before in pervious posts.  There are a lot of sectors in San Juan, but sector 8 has kind of become it’s own independent entity.  While the rest of the Juntos moms from every other sector all meet together in a huge group of 180 women, the moms in sector 8 have their own meetings of 25. 

I was excited to attend my first demonstrative session and the understanding was that I would pretty much observe to get an idea for how they worked.  The meeting started at 9am and went on well past 2:30.  The first 3 ½ hours or so were spent preparing and assembling humas.  Humas are a typical dish for this time of year when the corn is ready to harvest.  If you know what tamales are like then you’ll have a good idea about humas.  The difference is that humas are made with fresh corn and sugar is added to the corn paste to sweeten it up. 

Humitas are very labor intensive; first you shuck the corn, then you remove the kernels by hand, grind the corn into a paste with a tool that attaches to the side of a table and reeling a handle to move the internal grinding parts, then stuff the corn paste into the husk again with some cheese pressed into the middle, and finally boil everything to cook the corn.  The result is sort of like a sweet corn noodle filled with cheese.  And for Peruvian food it’s pretty good.  The only trouble is that when you make humas it’s a lot of work, so people make a ton of them.  Then we eat them for a couple days, and there’s no refrigeration so they get all dried out and sometime they turn a funky color.  Hot out of the pot though they are delicious. 

On Thursday I did a charla or talk about dental hygiene with the elementary health promoters.  It was a lot of fun.  They are my favorite to work with.  In the afternoon I helped my high schooler health promoters cram for their first charla on sex ed.  The previous volunteer Annie, trained a group of high school kids in a sexual education course to get them ready to be peer youth educators.  So when I got here I had a ready made group of peer educators and this week they taught their first class with the 6^th graders from the elementary school.  It was awesome to see it all come together.  The goal is to eventually get these youth health promoters teaching in the high school regularly, but the director of the secondary school is not super into working with me-err dealing with me is how it feels when I am around him (he gets all huffy and is always checking his watch, that kinda stuff) ha!

At dinner on Thursday night I found out my host dad threatened to kick this guy’s ass for me a couple months ago.  In January around the time when the new mayor was sworn in I was invited to join a drinking circle one afternoon at the paradero in Bambamarca (where the cars pick up and drop off for my site).  I wrote about it in a blog post; how the mayor’s elderly uncle proposed marriage to me while drooling on himself and intermittently falling asleep.  I did not mention how one of the newly elected regidores of my community repeatedly showed me his DNI card (Documento Nacional de Identidad-his Peruvian ID) because it said that he was single.  He was really intoxicated and I wasn’t.  It made me uncomfortable since he was a community leader and at that point I thought I might have to work with him on projects.  I mentioned it to my host family and we all laughed about it, but later without my knowing my host dad Joel talked with that regidor.  Joel quoted himself as saying (well this is my translation) ‘watch yourself around my gringa or you’ll have to answer to me, and you call yourself a regidor of this town.’ 

I was completely surprised he did this, but it does explain how the last couple times I have seen that regidor guy he was really quiet around me.  Host dad Joel to my rescue!  Then another funny thing happened with host dad Joel; I caught him brushing his teeth with soap.  I immediately asked him what he was doing and he simply told me they had run out of tooth paste.  This was noteable for several reasons: 1. I have never ever seen anyone in my host family brush their teeth before, 2. that tooth brush is the one that sits out by the outdoor sink all the time and I have seen my brother use it to clean shoes among other things, 3. how long has he been brushing his teeth with soap???  It happened to be the day that I had taught the dental hygiene class and I told him that he could use salt or baking soda if he didn’t have tooth paste.  I tried to sound friendly concerned instead of disgusted and appalled.     

Anyhow, I feel really lucky to have a host family that cares that much.

Chau for now- and my American mom will be here in 4 days, my Peruvian mom and I are so excited for the visit!!!!!

kb

I split my english class into 2 teams to draw a person and label all the parts.

finished product: team 1

finished product: team 2

Peer educators at work!

after their first charla

the moms in sector 8 getting the fire started for cooking all those humas

kids playing while we wait for the nutrition session to start

grinding the fresh corn

this is what the corn paste looks like 

last Sunday I attempted to make a Mother's Day pizza in my new electric oven-it was a flop, but it looked pretty...

close encounters of a Peruvian kind

******Disclaimer*******  if you are at all offended or upset by the mention of poop, you should immediately close this webpage and return next week for the following post-this week's post will surely upset you....

On Wednesday I spent the day in Chota.  I mostly wanted to get a Jillian Michaels workout video from Hayden, but I also had some packages to pick up at Serpost.  I also sent some letters. 

I had an awesome exchange with this guy on the combe back to Bambamarca.  I met up with Ellie and her sister Laura who is visiting right now, to travel back to Bamba together.  When we got onto the combe this guy sat next to me and asked me if I was a Peace Corps volunteer.  It turned out he was from Tacabamba which is where another volunteer; Laura Olsen, is living.  This guy was super friendly and not the least bit deterred when Ellie, Laura, and I spoke in English.  He had his cell phone out and he wanted to play his American music for us.  He proudly told me that his favorite American music was ‘ochentas’ or eighties as well as heavy metal.  I told him I liked eighties music so he proceeded to play songs from his phone and ask me to translate the lyrics. 

So there I was on a van from Chota to Bambamarca translating the lyrics from Journey Don’t Stop Believing.  I even tried to sing my badly translated lyrics and play a little air guitar.  It was a surreal moment.  I was laughing so hard I cried.  After about 10 minutes or so it became clear that this guy wanted to spend the whole hour long ride having me badly translate lyrics for him.  So I quickly put my head phones on while he took a phone call. 

The head phones didn’t seem to deter him from talking to me-so I gave up and kept up the small talk.  It turned out he was a mechanical engineer and worked for a very famous mine in the area.  The mine is famous around here, because the people are fiercely protesting the progress of a certain project that will supposedly contaminate the entire water source for my district.  I say ‘supposedly’, because I try to keep in mind that the people who are preaching all the protests and strikes are uneducated and this is a political matter.  I don’t have any real sources of information on the subject.  I tend to lean towards the political beliefs of the local people in my area, but I know that there has to be another side to the story.  After all how could the president of Peru allow the sole water source for a whole district of Cajamarca be destroyed?  It has to be illegal.  Which leads me to believe that the accusations may be exaggerated. 

Anyhow, as soon as he told me he was a minero I was a little worried about talking with him.  I didn’t want the other people in the car to think that I was in favor of the mining projects.  It was interesting to hear him so casually defend the mines.  Around here the people vehemently protest anything to do with the mines.  It seems like such a horrible sacrifice to make for a gold mine.  As it turns out this particular gold mine is a significant money earner for the Peruvian government…perhaps, that is why the government which is centralized in Lima doesn’t want to quite the mining projects.  Any kind of contamination won’t be effecting the leaders in Lima-it’s over a 16 hour car ride away. 

It was a memorable combe ride today.  I am happy to have these kind of exchanges to remember my time in Peru.  I try to focus on the good ones instead of the bad ones. 

On Thursday I had a whole different kind of encounter.  Diamond, Jose Tarfur, and I met with the mayor of Bambamarca.  The line of people to talk with the mayor was very long.  Instead of having people make appointments, they just have people get time to talk with the mayor on a first come first serve basis.  So Diamond and I waited for about 2 hours to get into the Mayor’s office for a chat. 

The mayor was nice enough.  Wednesday night I made banana bread with the ulterior motive of taking some to our meeting with the mayor.  I figured it would be a good way to make an impression on him and who doesn’t respond well to baked goods I ask you?  In Peru it is customary to share any food that you have with the people around you.  While we waited in line for 2 hours I ran through the scenario of whipping out the banana bread and passing a bit to everyone, but I knew if I did it there wouldn’t be any left for the mayor.  I was so hungry by the end of our waiting time that I was almost ready to sneak into the bathroom and eat a slice-but I held it together. 

I would like to note that in the municipality waiting area they have a flat screen tv mounted on the wall so that people can watch as they wait.  For the entire time I was there the t.v. was on Animal Planet channel.  I thought it was kind of funny they didn’t have a news channel on and instead we watched a show about ‘Fuga Animales’ or ‘Escaped Animals’.  It was quite entertaining.

So the meeting with the Alcalde went pretty well I thought.  After that we said our goodbyes to Jose the regional coordinator for Cajamarca and headed off to the internet café.  Diamond skyped her world wise schools class in the states, which was adorable.  They are kindergarteners and had the cutest questions for her.  Although I’m not sure if any of their cute questions could out do ones that I received in a letter from my third graders in Dundee, MI.  Here are some of my favorite questions from the letters I received:

“I like to drink diet pepsi, how about you?” -9 ½ year old Kamran

“My class and I saw a video of you and some other people dancing, what was that?” – 9 year old Elena

“How do you find out what foods have parasites?” -9 y.o. Malia

“Is hamster good to eat?”- 9 y.o. Ty

“Have you watched Mrs. Dowfir?” (my interpretations was Mrs. Doubtfire the Robin Williams movie) – 9 y.o. Trenton

“Do they have tecnoligy there?- 9 y.o. Hannah

And my personal favorite, that was asked in many forms as I wrote to the class about how the homes are made of adobe,

“Dosent your hous kalaps when it rains and I hope you have a good time thear.” -9 y.o. Dustin

Later Diamond and got lunch and ran errands.  She is left Friday for the States.  She is going to her sister’s and her boyfriend’s college graduations.  I’m really excited for her to visit.  We went to the market to look for stuff for her to take home for her family and friends.  She found some sling shots that the campo kids use on angry dogs, little change purses with a long strap that women wear underneath their shirts to avoid getting pick pocketed, and a horrible huayno music video.  The huayno music videos are so funny I know her family will get a kick out of it and I am excited to share huayno with my family when I get back too.  Huayno is this local style of music here in the sierras that I can only describe as a very stylized annoying repetitive kind of music.  The music videos are great, because they are so badly made it’s quite funny to watch.  Also the dancing is great.

While we were out running errands I ran into several people from my town.  Each time we stopped greeted each other and I introduced Diamond.  In Peru people shake hands, but they also do the cheek kiss, which involves leaning in and pressing the right side of your face to the right side of someone else’s face while making a kiss sound.  The trouble with the cheek kiss is that here in the sierras it’s not so common and I am often unsure of when to go in for the kiss or not.  Today I made a bad judgment call and went in for the kiss with one of the conductors or drivers from my town.  He is always really friendly with me, I’ve met his wife and daughters, and he’s even my emergency contact for Peace Corps Emergency Action Plan.  However, I went in for the kiss and he wasn’t ready for it and it was really weird.  Diamond laughed at me a lot, we both laughed a lot after señor Cubas had left us.  The cheek kiss is one of the social niceties of Peru that I will probably never master.

Later after Diamond and I parted ways I new that something was wrong.  We ate lunch at the restaurant in the plaza de armas that has the best chicken sandwiches, but my stomach was in distress.  I knew I needed to find a bathroom or else I was in danger of loosing a bet.  I have a bet with a couple friends from home that every time I poop my pants I owe them a sole a piece and so far I haven’t pooped my pants.  Many many other volunteers have pooped their pants, but I’ve held it together so far.  Today I was so worried.  The thought of riding up the mountain with poopy pants in the crowded pickup truck sounded horrifying. 

I got to the paradero (the place in Bambamarca where the trucks drop off and pick up for my town) and there was a truck full of people waiting for 2 more passengers.  The seats inside the car cost 2 soles and the standing room in the bed of the truck is only 1 sole.  When the weather is nice the truck bed often fills up first and the drivers wait around until they can fill the rest of the seats.  So there was a truck full of people essentially waiting for me so they could get going on their way up the mountain back to San Juan.  However, I thought I was going to poop my pants so I insisted on being let into the nasty bathroom the drivers have a key to unlock at the paradero.  So I was safe, until I realized that those toilets don’t flush-they’re just for urine and there was no trash can to throw my poopy toilet paper.  No where in Peru is it allowed to flush the toilet paper.  The plumbing system is fragile and everyone throws toilet paper into little trash cans next to the toilet.

I was in a poopy pickle.  I decided to put my poopy paper into a plastic bag I had from my shopping and just get into the truck like nothing weird had happened.  I pretended not to be completely embarrassed that the group of men who drive the cars up and down the mountain from my town would soon find out that I had had a diarrhea attack in their bathroom that doesn’t flush.  I pretended that I didn’t have poopy toilet paper in my bag.  Luckily I sat next to this particularly greasy looking old man.  I could tell even without being able to smell that he did not bathe often.  I hoped that people would confuse the poopy smell coming from my stuff with his body odor and general lack of personal hygiene. 

I really lucked out when this guy didn’t get out of the truck until the last stop with me so that it truly was indecipherable whether or not the smell had been me or him.  No one will know-I hope-except for me and my readers.  So the moral of the story is: 1. the chicken sandwich was totally worth it delicious, 2. always carry toilet paper and hand sanitizer with you, and 3. never under appreciate the fact that the campesinos are always going to smell worse than you do!  OOH, and I still am winning the bet, haaha take that Ainz and Jason Fernandez!

Have a nice week and Chau for now!

kb

applications and project plans

Whew, it’s cinco de Mayo!  It’s my parents wedding anniversary…whoops, sorry I forgot to send a card mom and dad. 

This past Tuesday was Peruvian labor day; the health post and the schools were closed.  I took the opportunity to get some work done in Chota; a bigger town about an hour drive from Bambamarca that has a Serpost and internet.  Also this past Tuesday May 1^st was the first day that the AAMCAs application or medical school admissions application was opened for 2013 applicants, yikes!

After the training event that all of the Peru 18ers attended last week we’ve all got project plans, budgets, and vision statements on our minds.  So I spent Tuesday starting my med school application and writing up my vision statement, goals, and objectives for a Healthy Schools project.  We technically received training on how to write grants, but I would prefer to hit up the local government for project funding.  It’s way more sustainable after all.  Plus, there are all these health indicators that the municipality wants to report  they’ve improved and they’ve got a budget to pull it off.

So the rest of the week I spent mostly at the primary school, because the health post was way to busy to talk to me as usual.  I get so tired of it, because I am here to volunteer to help with them their jobs.  They are required to do a certain amount of health promotion, which they currently aren’t really doing.  They are currently short 2 employees, but they have been short 2 employees since December and I’m sick of waiting around for them.  I’m starting to see why the previous 2 volunteers didn’t work very much with the health post and focused more of their time on projects with the schools.  The director of the school is always really enthusiastic about having me do projects and activities with the students, while the health post is too busy to coordinate with me on ideas for projects let alone participate in actual activities.

Anyways, enough complaining!  On Wednesday I had the craziest English class, because both of the 6^th grade teachers didn’t show up for work.  I came in for my normal two 45 minute classes with the two 6^th grade classes.  Instead I got all the kids at once for an hour and a half.  I must have had 37 6^th graders all wound up from spending the entire morning in self-study since they don’t really have substitute teachers available in my town.  I’d like to report that I didn’t repeatedly have to yell ‘silencio’ and ‘callate’ (shut up!), but it may have happened a time or two. 

Even though English isn’t a Peace Corps health goal I really enjoy teaching.  The kids are always excited to see me and they participate.  I feel like they actually learn.  Whereas when I talk to moms, they just sit in silence avoiding eye contact and not responding to direct questions.  I’m not sure if it’s a I need to gain their trust/they’re uncomfortable around me thing, or if they just don’t really want to be there and have no interest thing.  Pretty much all of the settings in which I get to talk to moms they are required to attend for this social welfare program, so it’s show up or don’t get your money type situation.

It’s still really early on.  I’m sure once I get going on a project with a small group of moms things will feel different.  They’ll get to know me and I’ll get to know them.  After the training we had last week I have a rough draft of a Healthy Homes project, but I need the help of the health post to get it going.  I need help selecting the families and I also need help with my formal project plan in Spanish that I will need to present to the municipality.  At the post they’re too busy though, so I’ll guess it’s going to wait.

Last night after dinner I helped my host family with preparing some of the breads that they sell in their store.  Embarrassingly this is the first time I’ve ever offered to help with this job.  2 or 3 nights a week after dinner my host mom and brother make this sweet mixture to put inside 2 of the types of bread.  It’s kind of gross, because it’s just water, sugar, and water.  If you can get over the fact that it’s gross, it tastes pretty okay.  It was really nice to spend family time with them though.  It cuts in on my t.v. watching time; I have a gazillion downloaded t.v. shows and movies on my 500 GB external hard drive.

We just sat around joking, dancing-the kind when you are sitting but move around your butt and arms, singing along with the radio.  I’m really lucky to have such a great host family.  I don’t know how I’d get through this if I didn’t have an inappropriate loud family that liked to sing off key and dance badly.  My host brother Witman and my little cousin Eduar and I are going to start reading Harry Potter.  I found 2 of the books in a market when we were at our training thing last week.  They’re all out of order, but it doesn’t matter.  I am just so excited to get these boys reading for fun.  Books are expensive and kids around here do not read anything except their school books.  Harry Potter y el Cáliz de Fuego!!!!  Wish me luck converting them to readers!

Chau for now,

kb

My host mom Dalila and I.  I'm wearing the skirt I have been working on, but it's still  not quite finished.  It should be knee length like her's.

My neighbor and former host mom of the previous volunteer Adela asked me to come over to her house to take pictures of her turkeys.  Especially that all white turkey, she's pretty proud of that one.

Then I handed over the camera to her and she loves taking pictures.  

This week half of Peru 18 health volunteers attended In-service Training (IST) in Piura.  Piura is a departamento northwest of my department (Cajamarca) and although we are next door neighbors it took about 17 hours to travel to our destination.  During this particular training event each volunteer brought a socio comunitario with them; someone in their community who they plan on working with on projects.  The trip itself is a little stressful, but throw in the responsibility of making small talk with someone from your town and the awkwardness of them not wanting to eat breakfast for example because the prices seem very expensive compared to prices in the campo was hectic. 

Before we left I was really worried about so much time with my socio for the 3 days of training.  I brought a Rogerio; a man who is involved in Juntos in my town, with me to Piura.  I didn't know him very well before the training.  We sat together on the overnight bus and in the morning I found him sitting in a different seat.  He told me I was snoring to loud for him to sleep-that was a little embarrassing.  Then at breakfast the whole group of us 5 volunteers and 5 Peruvians got to know each other better.  We talked about food; which is a pretty easy topic generally speaking when I can't think of what to talk about with Peruvians food is my go to, and I told everyone about how my family in northern Michigan hunts and eats lots of different animals.  In Peru we eat guinea pig so I didn't think turtle soup would cause such a commotion, but Peruvians and Americans alike were disgusted and/or intrigued. 

Anyhow, now I feel like I can joke around with Rogerio or ask him for help with a project.  We bonded over 3 days of rural technologies trainings in the heat.  They split us up into small groups and in the groups we rotated each day on a different topic; gardens and small animal husbandry, latrines, and improved cook stoves. 

One of my favorite things we did was on the gardens/small animal husbandry day, we learned how to deparasite turkeys and chickens.  We had spent the morning making beds for a garden and two different types of compost in the yard of a local family and in the afternoon the instructors showed us a cheap anti-parasitic medicine for dunking the birds.  I'm not sure if turkeys lack the muscle lining in their esophagus or if it is just a nervous/stress response, but when I picked up a turkey it just began vomiting everywhere.  It was really gross and funny to see the turkey's continuous stream and the poor guy only had water and corn kernels in his stomach.  Then I had to dunk the poor guy into a basin of water, he was very unhappy by the end of his bath.

On the cook stove day was spent the morning talking about theories, but in the afternoon we built an entire stove.  We went to a family's home and they had prepared adobe bricks and mud.  I was surprised how fast the construction process was-it only took us about 3 hours to build a bricked wood burning stove.  The improved cook stoves are made out of adobe bricks, mud, and rocks.  The stove top is metal and there is a metal chimney too to funnel the smoke outside.  There is a big push in the Peruvian Ministry of Health for the construction of these stoves, because it reduces respiratory problems for women by making conditions less smokey and it burns more efficiently with less firewood.  

The whole event went really well.  In the evenings we would come back exhausted sweaty and sunburned.  The place where we stayed had a pool and a lot of the volunteers played in the water in the evenings for the 3 nights we were there.  On the last night Peace Corps presented each of the socios a diploma or certificate saying that they were trained in rural technologies and we took lots of pictures.  

The trainings were good, but more importantly the socios seemed to feel more confident in their abilities to lead projects back in the communities. A lot of the people who attended had never traveled outside of their departments before and I could see a really big change in my socio in the course of only 3 days.  By the last day he was raising his hand all the time contributing his thoughts and ideas.  He was generally more outgoing.  I am really happy I had the opportunity to spend some time this way with someone from my town.  It is difficult sometime for people in my town to really get to know me, because we don't have much in common and they don't really know why I'm here in Peru.  Rogerio got to really see what Peace Corps is about and meet a ton of other American volunteers.  I think it helped him understand me-errr my job a little better.  Also it made it more clear that any project I might do is NOT my project, it is in fact the community's project and I am merely a facilitator.  That is a really big deal that someone in my town knows that is how it all works.

The second half of the week we are in the city doing a training/workshop on how to plan and execute projects in our communities.  The socios went home, but we'll be here until Saturday.  This half of the training is more like theoretical behavior change, goal setting, project writing, and grant writing topics.  

I am looking forward to getting back to Cajamarca and getting out of this heat!  It is brutal here.  On the bright side this training is helping me to get my project plans organized and it feels a lot easier to work out ideas with a group of other volunteers than by myself in my town.  When I get back to Cajamarca I'll be able to get started on a planning a big scale health project and although I am nervous I also feel relieved to just get going with it all.

I have a lot of mail to send out-sorry I'm running behind.  I'm blowing through my paychecks pretty fast so I might email in response to some.  Also pictures below!

Chau for now,

kb

happy volunteers waiting for our combe (van) to take us out to do our construction projects

Katie H. brought her host mom as her socio comunitario

the town where we did the training is called La Union

the landscape is super different from Cajamarca

the municipality or city hall of the town where we worked had portraits hung up all over, we thought this one was funny-Peruvian Jeff Goldbloom

group shot with the cocina we built on the left

Rogerio receiving his certificate

Allison and Ellie talking with the kids at the home were we built the latrine

the baby's name is Lazarus, like from the Bible his older sister told us

the lone male volunteer Matt with baby Lazarus, there are several other guys in  Peru 18 but they have split us into two groups and they'll receive this training in May.

goofing off on the bus

Ready for May...

Last week I got back from a Semana Santa (Easter) vacation at the beach.  Volunteers had 4 days off, because Semana Santa is a federal holiday in Peru.  In order to get to the beach myself and 4 other volunteers from my area spent 3 hours in a combe to get to Cajamarca, from Cajamarca a 10 hour overnight bus to Chiclayo, from Chiclayo a 3 hour bus to Piura, and from Piura a 2 1/2ish hour van to Mancora.  Whew, it was a long trip.  Mancora is a very touristy beach town in far northern Peru.  It's pretty close to the border with Ecuador.

The hostel we stayed at was filled with thin, tanned, rich European 20-somethings year olds.  Most of whom came for the great surfing.  It was fun listening to all the accents.  The food is really good in Mancora, because it is so touristy.  We ate steak, swordfish, Thai food, salad,  diet coke, and most importantly BURRITOS!!!!  It was awesome.

After two days in Mancora we were all beached out and we went back into Piura city.  The heat on the coast was incredible.  The only time there was a bit of a break was at night, but even then it was hot enough to make it difficult to fall asleep.  Visiting the coast definitely made me appreciate living in the mountains yet again.  We may not have toilets or high speed internet, but the weather is so beautiful and so are the views.  On the coast it's nothing, but sand and scraggly trees (at least where we were-I don't want to bash the entire coastline of Peru, who knows what the rest of it is like).  In the big city we got to go to the movies....twice!  We saw The Hunger Games and This Means War.  I'm sure the predictable Reese Witherspoon romantic comedy would have been annoying if I was living in the states, but due to the extreme lack of American culture  in my diet I thought it was hilarious.  And we didn't even have to watch those movies dubbed, instead they had spanish subtitles.

We made the 20 hour trip back to Cajamarca Monday through Tuesday.  I made it back to my site Tuesday mid-morning, because the overnight buses pull in at around 5 am.  On Tuesday afternoon I gave my first official charla or talk to a group of moms and the topic was early childhood stimulation.  I thought the charla went okay.  That is until the nurse from the health post apologized to all the women for how bad my spanish is, telling them that I was still learning and they needed to give me more time.  I was pretty upset.  I guess I deserved it for not practicing more or looking over my materials while I was on vacation.  So if I had any doubts before about whether my spanish was improving, it is very clear now that I need to get to work in my grammar books.

The rest of the week was pretty slow.  There was another strike in my department against the mines that are contaminating the water.  During the strikes they close down health posts, schools, and sometimes even block the roads.  On the day of the strike I hung out around my house.  In the afternoon a group of people slaughtered a cow in the Plaza de Armas.  I watched the process with a group of kids and dogs that had gathered around the men and women.  It was quite gory.  I have pictures to post below-but if you do not like blood please skip my pictures this post.  

The cow was slaughtered for another town party.  This time in honor of a new transportation business that will begin serving my town; bringing people to and from Bambamarca (the bigger town down the mountain, that has a market and for me internet!).  Everyone is very excited for these new cars, because it will mean more mobility for the people and possibly lower prices.  

On Thursday a group of probably 30 women cooked the beef, rice, and potatoes in large cast iron pots in the street over little fires.  There was enough food for lunch and dinner for anyone that showed up in the plaza to claim their plate.  At night there was dancing again, but I skipped it this time.  Since the last party everyone in my town (people I know and strangers on the street) have been commenting about how I danced last time.  I also heard some men making fun of Grisero (the man I danced with before) for dancing with the gringa.  I was a little miffed at the whole group of them for teasing me when they were too embarrassed to even dance themselves.  It really bothers me that they like to pressure me to dance only to laugh at me.  Sometimes it's no big deal being the silly gringa and getting a laugh out of everyone, but playing that part tires me out other times.

Friday was my english teaching day and I was teaching the kids colors.  When I could tell I had lost their attention I called them all outside to try to play color-tag.  However, either due to my bad spanish or possibly kids don't play the same kinds of games in Peru, they could not understand how to play.  I tried acting it out and some kids picked it up, but the majority of the class just stood there and didn't run or ran away from the school instead of the other side of the playing field.  I finally gave up and asked them to draw me pictures and label the colors they used.  

In the afternoon on Friday was my first youth group meeting and it didn't have a very good turn out.  I suppose it was my fault for not advertising more at the high school.  I put up a poster with information for the time and place.  Also I went to the two 4th grade (equivalent to high school sophomores, around 15 or 16 years old) classrooms and invited those students.  Only 5 kids showed up, and they were all the kids that had participated in the previous volunteer's youth group.  I was disappointed in not getting any new interest, but the kids that did show up seemed really enthusiastic and genuinely interested in being health promoters.

This weekend I came into Chota with the other Peru 18ers and other health volunteers.  I went to the post office and I had soo much mail.  Thank you everyone for the letters and packages (Aunt Jenny, Sesame x 2, Mom, Ainsley, Babu and Beepa, Cherny, Annie, and Mrs. Moran).  The jealousy among the other volunteers at how much mail I receive is now a running joke. 

I have some interesting photos below.

Chau for now,

kb

Brunch at a cafe on the beach

My first solo charla.  Afterward the nurse apologized profusely for how bad my spanish was-sad day...

some of the rowdy noisy kids that disrupted my charla-they're pretty cute huh?

It's not a party until ya slaughter a cow in the plaza de armas!

this teenage boy joined in with the adults hacking the cow into manageable pieces with axes.

Can you see my favorite dog Messi across the way sitting on top of the crumbling wall of the church?

Eduar and I climbed around what's left of the catholic church in my town.  They are in the process of tearing it down right now to rebuild a new one out of 'materiales nobles' ie. cement or brick instead of adobe.

Here is a shot of what was the inside of the church, now filled with blocks of adobe bricks.  

Apparently the adobe is formed into bricks before it is covered over with more mud/straw mixture.

Here is what the front of the church looks like.

Handwashing charla at the primary school

two kids from each class were picked to be vigilantes-err at least I think that's what it translates to in english.  Either way this is my team of health promoters!