may 11, 2011 (OMG!)

today is day three of my detox. eating veggies, drinking water, getting the occasional banana and oats when i feel it's too much. but, overall, it's going much better than the first round of detox last year. that was a crazy one though! maple syrup, pepper, lime and tea. yea, i lasted one day for that one.

yesterday i recieved some GREAT news! i got FUNDING for my cocinas mejoradas project! yay! awesome! so, now i don't only have a list of families to participate and giving the preliminary presentations, but i can actually buy materials and go through with the project. it's now time to make sure the municipality will help with their part, and the hospital. cross your fingers!

also! the primary schools have SUCCESSFULLY had contact between the lady picking up recycling and what they have saved. AMAZING! i tried 3 times last year and it never worked, so this year i got another woman and its' going great. they schools raised about S/.45 each (mas o menos $15). we're going to keep it up this entire year, and the plan is that at the end they are going ot have a celebration with the money that is raised, or buy some balls for sports.

what else...well, last week i was running and tripped and scratched up my leg. i felt like a 10 year old, but i guess that still happens. my legs are getting better and my hands, but they were really banged up. i had to use two huge bandaids to cove up one, and another big one for the other. for my hands, i had to cover tehm up and not to laundry for a week or they would get irriated. now i have looots of laundry backed up...i should look into paying someone to wash for me.

oh, and it's getting chilly here in palpa. winter time has come. (YES!) so, it gets to profound lows in temperatures, and at times you can actually see your breat! omg! hah. yesterday there was a rainbow in palpa because it rained - both things that hardly ever happen. and the rainbow part has never ever happened...the entire town was talking about it and what it means.

today i'm off to plan out some recycling project for the secondary schools and working out details for teh cocinas project. tonight i have to give a presentation to one of the 4 villages participating.

cheeeeerio!

to chelsea

i am impressed, it{s still march and i have a second blog post. incredible! i think the last time i was updating at such fequency were the first few months in site.

okay, current events -

yesterday was a PLAYASO. playaso = chillin down by the rio grande + the rest of the town + beer + music from teh band. amazing. super fun. i could only be there for a bit, but it was great! was sittin in the river drinkin some chelas and trying to keep beto{s host brother{s dog off of me by splashing water at his face. he{s a laberador and obsessed with water. i just realized how dumb those dogs are! haha, but cute.

then, we grabbed a pollo a la brasa and ended the night with beto yelling from his paradero, peruvian style, to get other people to get in the car. [sube, sube, rio, rio, rio, suuuube!] in the deep, mechancical sounding tone. very peruvian. then, pat joined in trying to get people to get in the car so they could go. it realy ended up with loads of laughter from me and the confused peruvians walking by who never expected to see gringos yelling as peruvians! proved to work because it only took a few minutes for them to fill the car and get going.

aside from the festivities, i have started teaching english in the schools and, surprisingly, love it! teaching to the kids is suuuch a reward! when i got to site 1.5 years ago and went to the schools i was totally turned off by the idea of teachign english because i felt overwhelmed with kids and how much they wanted to talk with me, play games with me, and stare at me. i wasn{t ready to be the center of attention. but now, wow! they are a captive audiance that will listen to you (for the most part) and you can do little projects almost immediately! animating kids is also a great way to ensure your name has a good reputation around town which then makes the parents (some who work in the hospital or health posts or other institutions) want to work with you...great for projects! it{s quite interesting to observe how my perspective has changed.

currently my stomache is grumbling, so i think it{s time to head home and eat whatever my host dad has cooked up!

the hot hot sun

it´s hot. i am reminded of this when i turn off the fan in my room. when i feel the sweat drenching my shirt. when i stand up from sitting down and my pants are stuck to my legs/butt. when my water bottle just so happens to be empty because i just finished drinking it all. when i am too hot to eat, which would make my temperature go up ever so slightly that i feel on fire. when i stand in the shade and still feel hot.

but, what´s new!

there is still some water in the rivier - awesome! nikki (my santa cruz site mate) and i went in the river last week and played carnevales against eachother. we had a mud bath and did mud faces and mud legs. i think that is when one of the funniest things happened to me. i turned around and a lady who had been washing her clothes was standing up and just blatently looking at us! haha! i hadn´t ever seen her before, so i think she was new. and we probably looked like the oooooddest thing to her. two white girls, playing in the stream and putting mud on themselves. i would be staring too! hah! so funny.

school is starting up next week, which means the house will be empty most of the day. i will start help with teaching english, and continue the tooth brushing/hand washing/recycling charlas that i was doing last year. only this year i am going to team up with the health posts.

sigh. life is going well. i can´t believe hoooow quickly the past few months have flown by. i feel like i am hardly in my site, and when i am here i also feel there is hardly enough time to do all i want to. such is it.

excited for my parents to come visit!

smiles

this was another fabulous day...because it rained in palpa. it was actually wonderful to be getting back to site with the rain, because after being in lima for a week i was getting used to the convenient life with options, variety, the ability to blend in, and was regretting a little that i had to go back. but, rain changed it all! I was in lima for the one year med checks. i checked out all fine. mouth is healthy, heart, body, mind, spirit. so, í guess i cleared for the next year! crazy! crazy, crazy, crazy to think one year in site has gone by! and i am here, doing some little projects, apparently the new seniors in site since the peace corps 12ers are leaving in these days (or already have). i am so proud of the pcv watsanners down here with me for all of us sticking together. it´s had hard moments that made me wonder if some would go home, and incredible moments that i never wanted to end. my first year has been an experience for myself that has been about palpa, myself, friends, endurance, discipline, flexibility, understanding, confusion, innovation, pain, and much, much, more. i wouldn´t say i would trade it for anything.

so...i got back to palpa and walked into my house with my older of the younger brothers listening to ¨baby gets back!¨ on his sterio. hah! he just loves to listen to music. he will sit on the sofa with his sterio and usb stick plugged in listening to whatever goes on. mostly they are songs in english and he doesn´t know the lyrics, but that´s what i come in. and translating things like ¨junk in the trunk¨ and ¨she caught me red handed...¨ don´t translate exactly the same. hah! but he laughs when i try to explain it, or i just make up something else for what they are trying to say. then i went over to my grandmothers house where my mom is (because she is still split with my dad chillin there). i played volleyball and soccer with my little brother and some neighbors girlfriends of his. now, the rain has stopped and i am heading back to my house to make some wallets. since i am leaving in two weeks to go home, i have to try and prepare presents for my friends here and the states these coming weeks! along with that, i have to wrap up a recycling project that is going on in 3 schools, an HIV/AIDs awareness campaign and see where the canal project is at.

the hardest thing about leaving site for these mandatory meetings that feel like they happen all the time is leaving the canal project. it is an on going project that always seems to be at a critical moment, and if i can´t be around to help it along i feel like i am fallaring (failing) the project. but, it feels so good to get a break from the craziness of it at times as well. there are a lot of political turns it takes, reasons for why we can´t get money for the project which are coruption issues, and difficulties motivating the people at times.

so, that´s life right now. i am on a computer that is going to kick me off in 6 minutes. i am gunna go home and do laundry in the dark because i ran out of clean underwear, do some yoga, and hopefully the wallet stuff if there is still time. oh, and hang out with my puppy who i haven´t seen for a week. :) i hope life where ever you are at is well! :) oh! and put your shoes out tonight - it´s St. Nicholas Day tomorrow!!!

moda de reciclaje...

today it was a fabulous day. it rained. and yesterday fabulous, it was thanksgiving. i celebrated it desert style with pcvs in ica eating pachamanca topping it off with 7 pies (thanks a million kate, teigan, and karen!). in true american style, i stuffed myself into a food coma which turned into a 2 hour snooze when i got back to the hostel. we went around and shared what we gave thanks to during the year - my peace corps family, my real family, laughter, surviving a year in peru, music for when i am frustrated, art for when i am stressed, the kids in my site which have so much energy, my friends back home, for being alive right now...we had a wonderful time chilling with the peace corps together. i met new friends who had served in the north, and said goodbye to friends who were finishing their service. it made me feel nostalgic. i feel like i can put into a new perspective my time here, how fast it is going, and how much it is affecting me.

one of the realizations i have had here is that i experience all of my emotions with more frequency than i ever did in the states - happiness, frustration, joy, anger, motivation, depression, boredom, overworked. here in peru i have learned that i love creativity. in peru i have learned that the energy children have is what makes this world full of colors. i have learned that it´s hard to teach older people to change their life-long habits. i have learned that you can´t force anything to happen. i have learned that people can surprise you. i have learned that things can change. i have learned that things will probably not go the way they have been planned. i have learned that i am still learning...


today was fabulous because it rained. it was also fabulous because on my way back to my site i felt like i was coming back to friends and my neighborhood. i felt comfortable. comfortable like i was in my house at cherry lane. at least, the closest to that feel than i have been during my time here. i was a judge today for the 3 time during my time here. this was a fashion show at the secondary school i am doing a recycling project at. it was a fashion show made all of recycled materials. i was flabergasted! the clothes they made were sooo incredible! they were made from plastic bags, plastic table clothes, newspapers, paper sugar bags, the silver lining of chip bags, cds, plastic bottle caps...and the creativity they used in designing the clothing was amazing! i will put pictures up on facebook soon for everyone to see. at the end of the fashion show the students gave some words at to the importance of recycling for the environment. and they are going to have a parade this week and all of the clothing that was made will be featured. they want to show the community what they are doing, and that they are a school recycling.

sooo many things were accomplished by this fashion show that makes me incredibly prowd of the students and the school! first off, they are recycling. also, they have changed the celebration they have done the past 24 years to include this new theme and topic of recycling. this is HUGE! because straying from the normal and expected in latin american just isn´t done. if someone dresses differently, does something in a different way, they are immediately labled as wierd and shunned. because no one wants that, they allll conform. so, it was huge that they even thought to do this fashion show and could get over the mental thought that they were wearing ´trash´. also, the creativity. VIVA CREATIVIDAD! there is none of it here. in art classes at school, the professors will make the art projects for the kids to take home for their parents. why? because if the parents see that the kids are ´making´ pretty things in school they will think they are learning something and want their kids to keep going ot school. now, it has the opposite efect, because the professors make all the art projects. or, if the students are assigned to do drawings they will pay an artists to draw it, make it perfect, and turn it in as their own. so, that the kids made their clothes for the show is amazing. a lot of them also seeked the help of their amily and parents, therefore teaching them what it means to recycle. :) also, it will be publicized on the tv station tonight, showing all of palpa that this school did this for their anniversary and that it turned out well. because this school is known as having hte best anniversay celebrations, it will be listened too, and i believe their rival school and most all the other schools will now want to start recycling. and to focus on teaching recylcing.

then, in the evening there was a beautiful sunset, i talked with my parents, and i bought a present for my little brothers birthday, which is sunday. hugs and love to all!

the sand globe of palpa

i was sitting today under a straw awning on a tree trunk bench with several other women in their big hats and dresses and market bags, waiting for a truck with 20 people to come and pick me up. i was heading up the huanchaco in rio grande to do the canal work for this week. it started blowing sand everywhere with the wind, so the book i was reading got covered in a thin film of sand. what's new? i began thinking, it's like i live in one of those snow globes you see with the snowmen in them, only it's filled with sand. one thing i learned early on is that you can't hate the sand. it will always win. so, to succumb to pages that get a film of grimy sand, or the sand in the clothes, or the sand that enters the house and gets all over everything just becomes normal. it just makes washing your face and hair at the end of the nice that much better, because you really appreciate being clean. i also like to think of it as a natural exfoliation.

so, the truck never came to pick me up. i called up agustin, the coordinator in santa cruz for the people, and he said there were only 8 people this week who were going to come. well, that is just a number that is unexceptable. they know that i will not go up there unless there are aroudn 20, because otherwise we will just never get the work done. we will see if they can get 20 people for tomorrow so we can head out and get back to work. it is a little frustraiting when the people can't simply organize themselve to get out there and do work...they even are getting paid for it! the frustraiting part is that this is a project that will help them, we aren't charging, and who doesn't want water!? all they have to do is put the man de obra. we'll see how it develops.

so, i went over to beto's house, my site mate, and chilled. there is a circus in his town right now. it's actually the circus that was in my town for about a month, and was in palpa like 5 months earlier as well. i call it the circo pobre. it's just that. the enterance is tattered, the clothes they wear are old, the music is scratched from years of use, the animals look tired, the actresses are either very young (like 8) or really old, and in total there are like 6 that change roles throughout the show because there just aren't enough people otherwise! the reason the circus is here, is because they didn't make enough money in palpa to support their transportation to another spot, so they moved next door to the even smaller rio grande. i doubt if they will get like 10 people to go from here! i wonder how long i will hear the circus music that starts at 6 when i come to visit beto's house? months...

lovely life in lima

here i am, in the office, dedicating three days to helping the PCVC finish the end of the year report for our project group. it was apparently a nightmare last year, but this year it has been a breeze, and honestly i haven´t needed to do too much of the report because he had finished so much before i got here. this is now my last day here, and then it´s back to the district of Palpa. the other day i went to play ultimate frisbee at the embassy. amazing! the first real game i had played in months. within the walls of the embassy with those 16 other americans, i felt like i had transported back to the field at city park and was playing during the tuesday and thursday night pick ups, only this time with shoes and without beer. one of the players there happened to go to college with a highschool friend, abe graber. he was wearing a carelton hat and said they had played frisbee together...small world! the others were either studying, working at the embassy, some working with health NGOs, and some just looking to live there to improve their spanish. sweet!

i have also really enjoyed the variety of food here in lima, as i always do. whenever i get the chance to come up here i am always excited about the middle eastern food, the mcdonalds (yea, i just said that), sushi and the starbucks. this time i tried out indian food at a place called Guru´s. WOW! probably better than any of the other food that i have had here. will definitely be going back. it´s a switch up from the pollo a la brasa (though one night i was looking for just that but decided to take advantage of the options while here), papa de la guancaina, cevichi, and chaufa.

i have also really enjoyed the opportunity to run in lima without feeling like a million people are watching me. it´s normal here! usually i get around to doing some yoga as well, catching up with those friend, but this time i didn´t get the chance. i am still targeting out some musiums i want to visit, but that will happen on another visit.

when i head back to site i am going to be heading back to the moutain to continue work on the canal. it´s currenlty a sunday night to wednesday night job. then i get back and have to start up my HIV-AIDs prevention project with some doctors in my site to try and finish that before december. and i am finally starting up the ecology club! yay! my school is excited, i am excited, and i just need to buy the trashcans. it´s taken quite some time in the planning, but before i get frustrated at thinking about that, i remember that i am in peru. and that´s the way it is.

well, it looks like it rained a little last night, so i am gunna take a walk along the beach and soak up some of those water dropplets. it will be rain than i have had in palpa during the past year. then, later on to some amazing restaurant before heading down under again...