Frog Juice for Thanksgiving

I am sitting here with a little bit of a cold choking on the smoke that my host mom just spread through the house to bring in the good and chase away the bad. I find these rituals very interesting and I love participating in them but I had to laugh when my asthmatic host mom and sister say that jello induces their asthma and not filling the house with smoke twice a week. There are many Peruvian beliefs that we volunteers appreciate but tend to joke around about amongst each other. The strongest of these beliefs is that cold food and drinks, breezes, and jello are almost always the reason of the common cold. My host mom gave me jello for lunch in the 90-degree heat and at 6 PM as I begin sneezing and coughing; she tells me that the "cold" jello is what made me sick and then tries to smoke out my room. Now I was very excited to be a part of this custom but when she asked if she could go in my tiny room and fill it with smoke, I couldn't help but think of the itchy eyes and the smell of all my stuff for the next month so I declined. I made the mistake of admitting to feeling sick and now my host mom will be watching my every move throughout the next week to make sure that I don't eat anything they consider "cold" (I still don't understand how foods get this designation as it ranges from obviously cold foods to things like popsicles to random things like the aforementioned jello and even papaya).
The real reason for my cold is that I was recently on a big vacation of the colonial mountain city of Arequipa (the white city because its buildings are made from a white volcanic stone called sillar) with other Peace Corps volunteers who I haven't seen in a while. This vacation consisted of a lot of exploring, artisan shopping, hiking, and our fair share of happy hours but very little sleep. The first day my friend and I went up to Lake Titicaca to see the floating islands that are still home to the Uros people. These people have lived on these man-made reed islands for hundreds of years and are constantly adding more reeds to keep themselves afloat. The concept that these people live like this is incredible although the presentation brings to mind the "It's a Small World" ride at Disneyland as you paddle around in boats and the residents decked out in impeccable traditional costumes dance and sing for you. After living within a foreign culture for so long I can't help but being a little cynical when someone's life is presented in such a kitschy way. Overall, the lake is incredible and the mere existence of the civilizations on both the floating and natural islands is something to be admired. The artisanry was also incredible and I had to resist buying much because this was my first day of vacation and I didn't want to spend my entire very limited souvenir budget.
Directly from our full day boat tour my friend and I boarded a bus to continue our whirlwind tour of the southern Andes. We arrived at our hostel in Arequipa and were put in a room with three sleeping strangers. When we woke up we realized that these strangers were actually Peace Corps volunteers also taking their Thanksgiving vacation in Arequipa. As it turns out, we picked a hot vacation spot as we seemed to run into volunteers everywhere we went. With Peace Corps Peru now at above 250 volunteers, it is a safe bet that you will run into volunteers at the destination spots over our free travel weekends (Thanksgiving and Fourth of July). During our trip we were trying to come up with a list o how to distinguish PCVs from ordinary travelers. The best identifying characteristics we came up with after observing ourselves were:

1. Often talking on cell phones, sometimes in Spanish
2. Constant haggling over prices of everything
3. Using laptops at every opportunity
4. Splurging on ethnic food (other than Peruvian). While other travelers try to save money and get to know the local culture by eating traditional foods, we search tirelessly and spend good amounts of money to get Mexican food, crepes, Pasta, falafel, etc. in order to take a break from Peruvian food. I ate all the aforementioned foods while in Arequipa this trip.
5. We tend to be somewhat obnoxious as all of our politeness and cultural sensitivity gets used up at our sites.

On Thanksgiving day, five more volunteers from our group showed up to take advantage of the weekend off that Peace Corps gives us to celebrate our American heritage (and the indigenous cultures of our own country…?). Our first stop as a group was the frog juice lady. This is exactly what it sounds like and you can check out the facebook album for the photographic documentation of what went down. We had heard of this from other volunteers so we decided to suck it up (pun intended) and give it a try. The frog shake is supposed to relieve any ailment with a focus on stress relief. I felt very stressed while watching the frog juice be made but the amount of laughter that went on as the seven of us passed around our frog shake definitely made me feel good about life. The woman who made us the shake obviously had A LOT of practice. She grabbed the live frog out of the tank, smashed it against the table, and skinned and gutted it all before we knew what was going on. After that, she boiled it and threw it in a blender with other ingredients including milk, honey, pollen, quail eggs, and some supposedly healthy plant products. It all reminded me of a witches brew. She blended this up which brought to mind the joke "what's red and green and goes vrrmmm vrrmmm? A frog in a blender." After straining out the frog bits, she poured it in a cup and we took turns drinking it. It actually tasted mostly like milk, honey, and an Andean tuber called maca. I didn't taste the frog but just knowing it was in there grossed me out a bit. This was an excellent way to start Thanksgiving Day.
The rest of our day consisted of hunting down the famous Arequipeña cheese ice cream, which turned out to be just hand made vanilla ice cream that was traditional cut into cheese-like wedges. It was delicious but I was slightly disappointed not to have another bizarre food experience after the frog shake. Our goal was to find a place to eat a big traditional Arequipeña meal for Thanksgiving but this proved more difficult than we anticipated because these foods are actually lunch foods. After heading out to a highly recommended traditional restaurant only to find it occupied by a bible study group and no fellow eaters, we jumped on a combi to head back to central Arequipa and one of my friends pulled dried cranberries out of his pocket to get us in the Thanksgiving spirit. We had a good laugh over our non-traditional Thanksgiving. Once we got to the center of town we found a traditional restaurant that was willing to stay open for such a fun group as ourselves and ate like gluttons in order to feel more at home.
That night we went to the casino where I came out the big winner in the slot machine with 18 soles ($6) and then we went to bed in order to get up at 3 for our trek into the Colca Canyon. The people who live in this area claim that the Colca is the deepest canyon in the world but this is debated by the people who live at another nearby canyon. Regardless, after a night of eating and gambling, we woke up as the rest of the hostel guests were returning from their nights on the town to get to the trailhead. On the way we stopped to see the famous Andean Condors soaring above the deepest part of the canyon. We took a long route down into the canyon past villages only accessible by foot or mule and beautiful natural scenery. That evening we arrived at "The Oasis," a rustic hotel with natural pools for swimming and good food. The next morning we hiked straight up hill for three hours in order to get out of the canyon. Many people who live in the canyon wait with their mules as struggling tourists pass by and take advantage of their wimpyness to charge whatever they want for a ride out of the canyon. I toughed it out and made it up on my own two feet but even 5 days later I can feel the burn even when I take a small step up onto a curb. The hike was well worth the physical pain for the exposure to a whole isolated culture. This site has become incredibly touristy but the people that live there still bring everything in on foot or by mule. We even say a man carrying a 20 foot long, 6 inch pvc pipe down the trail and moving much more quickly than ourselves. I would recommend this trek to anyone coming to Peru. I only regret not making time to do the three day version that allows time for playing in hot springs and waterfalls along the way.
Although I am looking forward to spending Thanksgiving at home with family next year, this was one of my favorite vacations that I have ever taken and I can't think of a better way to celebrate the quintessential American holiday than goofing around and seeing incredible sights with a bunch of friends.

Women In Development Conference

The Peace Corps experience is determined mostly by the specific site in which a volunteer works but my recent work with the Women in Development committee gave me a chance to mix up my projects by doing some work that reaches out to all communities where the Peace Corps works. This past week the committee released a calendar featuring twelve women from all the departments of Peru where Peace Corps operates who were nominated by the volunteers they work with. In order to celebrate the women featured in the calendar we held a conference at the U.S. Embassy, which turned out to be an excellent way to recognize these twelve women and show appreciation for the work that they do. The embassy is a fortress surrounded by high walls and the entrance consists of multiple metal detectors and eight inch thick doors. I was grateful that the embassy staff was so willing to help us put on this event and lend us not only their venue, but their expertise in event planning. I can definitely say that I learned a lot about paying attention to detail and coordinating between many people from this experience.
Even though the event achieved the goals that we aimed to accomplish, there were a few glitches along the way. The embassy was an impressive and exciting venue for our conference but the high security created a few obstacles. The day started with a workshop on legal rights put on by a prestigious Lima law firm. We didn't warn the lawyers that they wouldn't be able to bring electronics into the embassy so they had to do about an hour of their presentation without powerpoints until we were able to solve the problem. Despite this oversight on my part, the workshop turned out to benefit both the women and the lawyers. The women were completely engaged and asked many questions regarding their legal rights and the process they can follow to ensure that their rights are not compromised. The lawyers seemed to be surprised by the diversity of the women present and learned a lot about the types of challenges people face in the small communities of Peru. We caught them off guard when we asked them to minimize the lawyer jargon because one of our women spoke mainly Quechua and only simple Spanish. Despite a language barrier, this particular woman from the Andes turned out to be the highlight of my conference experience. On this trip to Lima, she got to see the ocean for the first time in her life and at the end of the conference she even stood up and made an incredibly heartfelt speech in broken Spanish about her experience working with the Peace Corps volunteer who invited her. This speech was the perfect culmination for a successful event because it encompassed everything the calendar stands for. I am looking forward to putting on an even better event next year because now I know what details I need to think of ahead of time. This whole process has definitely been a learning experience and I have an incredible respect for those people who plan events for a living.
As it turned out, the man who helped us secure the support of the embassy, the use of the conference room, and the keynote speaker for our event was helping to coordinate a conference for women entrepreneurs for the two days immediately following our event. By working with him, I got invited to the much larger conference that he was putting on at the Lima Country Club and hotel. After struggling to work out the details for our tiny endeavor, I was amazed at the coordination and logistical planning that must have gone into putting on their event. Their speakers included the U.S. ambassador (who had cancelled her talk at our event), the mayor elect of Lima, the head of the Latin American division of the International Trade Commission in Geneva, and many other very impressive female leaders. The other people invited to attend mainly consisted of artisans and small business owners from all over Latin America. My favorite were the artisans from the Lake Titicaca region of Peru who charged the stage after each speaker to get a photo with each of them. I was sitting directly behind these women the entire time and they provided constant entertainment. The one downside was that they were in full traditional dress including hats making it very difficult for me to see the speakers. This conference was an excellent networking opportunity and I even got invited to the (giant) house of the president of the Association of Women Entrepreneurs of Peru the next day for coffee. The connections I made and the inspiration that I got by attending this conference will benefit not only my own work but, hopefully, will help to advance the efforts of the Women in Development Committee in general.