Amazon Adventure and Request for Donations to Calendar Project

Link to donate to the Women´s Empowerment Calendar Project:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=527-067

I know it has been forever since I last posted a blog and I attribute this to a natural progression in my cultural integration. All of those hilarious and exciting experiences at the beginning still happen but they just seem normal. Today I was sitting at lunch with a volunteer who has been in his site for two weeks and a donkey ran down a main road of town right outside of our restaurant window. I didn't even flinch but when he started laughing I realized that the situation was hilarious. I will miss these quirky little experiences when I move back to a world where the only animals that pass by restaurant windows are well groomed dogs on Coach leather leashes. On my ride home I decided to do a little exercise to get back to the state of mind where everything is new and exciting. For 15 minutes I tried to look at things as a visitor from the US would. I saw chickens having sex along the main road, a man with a live goat hanging off his handlebars on the way to market, and a school bus sized vehicle driving down the road with its right wheels about 10 inches smaller than the left so that it slanted at a precarious angle. I need to make sure that I never forget how unique my experience here in Peru ha been.
One of the most memorable aspects of my time in Peru has been the travel. I was lucky enough to end up in a country with some of the most amazing natural and cultural history in the world and I have taken full advantage of the travel opportunities. Since we are not allowed to travel after our close of service conference, I took the last week before my conference to see the Amazon jungle by going on a tour that left from the “island city” of Iquitos. The city is only accessible by four day boat ride or by plane. Due to my lack of vacation time I opted for the plane. My tour consisted of four days of hiking and canoeing to look for wildlife. I ended up being the only one on my tour and the only guest at the second lodge which meant that I had a huge staff to myself. On paper this sounds great but it got a bit overwhelming when my two waiters were so eager to help that they kept snatching my dishes before I was finished eating. My guide and I shared candlelight dinners listening to bird calls on his mp3. Despite some moments that felt more like a date than a nature tour, there were tons of benefits to being alone. We were able to stay very quiet so I saw tons of new bird species including the elusive blue and gold macaw and four species of monkey! I caught and ate piranhas, took afternoon naps in hammocks overlooking the Amazon river, and tried to learn the calls of the hundreds of bird species surrounding me at any given time. After returning from the jungle lodges I had a day in the city that I was going to use for sampling local delicacies including lizard and grubs but I came across a sports bar owned by a Texan expat where I watched the US Open and ate the best pancake I have ever had. It also helped that the restaurant had ac and Iquitos is about 100 degrees with 100% humidity. Between the pygmy marmosets, one on one birdwatching tutorials, and Texan banana pancakes I am completely satisfied with my final vacation in Peru.
The last stop of my travels was a retreat center in Lima for my close of service conference. As I look back at how my perceptions of Peru have changed I realize how fast these last two years have gone. There have been hours that seem to go on for days and days that seem to go on for weeks but the months have flown by and all of a sudden I found myself at my close of service conference. I only have two months left so it was time for me to find out how to close my bank accounts, request my plane ticket home, and write my final report. The best part of the weekend by far was hanging out with my entire training class (those of us who made it for two years) and hearing what these people have been up to for two years! It was great to share experiences and hear about the exciting post Peace Corps plans people have.
My last big project as a Peace Corps volunteer is the “Peruanas Poderosas” calendar project. We started this project last year based on an idea that volunteers in Bolivia had before they were pulled out of the country. This calendar highlights twelve women who have proven to be invaluable community partners for volunteers all over the country. The women in this year's calendar will represent 8 departments and a variety of professions. The calendar is a perfect means to celebrate these strong women because every Peruvian house and business is decorated with calendars of naked women an white babies surrounded by floating dolphins. Why not try and replace some of these with motivational stories about women who have overcome adversity and are working to improve the communities in which they live? We will release the calendars at regional workshops on domestic violence and women's rights. Because of massive budget cuts, we need to fund this project through the Peace Corps Partnership Program, a program where people from the US can contribute to our projects through the secure Peace Corps website and have it be 100% tax deductible. I beg you all to get involved and help us recognize this group of women who are the foundations for our projects as Peace Corps volunteers and the key to sustainable development. This calendar is an excellent opportunity to recognize women who are not generally recognized for their amazing efforts. To get involved please visit the link below. Thank you so much for your support.

The link:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=527-067

I completed a marathon (albeit very slowly)

I haven't written in a very long time but my life has lately been filled with exciting events so I thought that I would update everyone back at home. I only have about 4 months left in the Peace Corps and then I will be returning home to Portland to figure out the rest of my life. That is all up in the air but it is still very exciting to daydream about all of the possibilities. Along with thinking about which law schools to apply to and drafting a personal statement that will hopefully get me into these law schools, I have spent the couple of months since my last blog running. I had to complete my intense marathon training schedule which means that I have run over 600 miles since January. The culmination of all this running was the fourth annual Pacasmayo marathon, a Peace Corps founded event that has since been continued by the municipality and other volunteers in the region. The event was relatively small with somewhat bleak surroundings meaning that the majority of the race I was by myself in the desert. Despite this, I got to run along the coast with some beautiful ocean views along the way and upon finishing (in a somewhat embarrassingly long time) I was rewarded with an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. I had a killer sunburn, a pretty massive headache, and was seriously fatigued but one of my first thoughts upon finishing is that I want to run another marathon next year only this time I will try and run it in a time I am proud of rather than just finish. Any sport that generally starts off with a pasta feed and ends up with an expo offering free massages, snacks, and gear is alright in my book.

The day after the marathon I headed to Lima for a Women in Development Committee meeting. After a long session of planning, we made significant progress on our calendar for 2012. For those of you who don't know about the calendar project, it is the second annual “Peruanas Poderosas” (Powerful Peruvians) calendar featuring women nominated by the volunteers they work with to be featured in a calendar. The success of last year's calendar in recognizing women who work diligently to improve their communities without any reward has made it a main priority of the committee to repeat the project. The calendar will be distributed to all volunteers, staff members, and important contacts, and we will hold regional ceremonies and leadership workshops for volunteers, the women selected for the calendar, and any woman who wishes to accompany them. We are currently writing the grant proposal which will be funded by generous donations from friends and family. I will definitely be hitting all of you up for contributions as soon as our grant and budget has been approved by Peace Corps. This is a great cause and all donations will be tax deductible so I urge all of you to get involved. I will post on my blog and on Facebook when we are ready to receive donations.

As I reach the final stretch of my Peace Corps service, I have found myself with many conflicting emotions. I am nostalgic, homesick, and excited about the future. Although it is increasingly difficult to motivate to start new projects, I am satisfied with the projects that I have underway and I am enjoying pulling everything that I have accomplished thus far together. The 2012 calendar will be a great way to end my service and, since the woman that I nominated was selected to appear, I will leave a beautiful finished product behind for my town to remember me by.

Running

This past weekend I put my recent marathon training to the test. There was a huge marathon/half-marathon/10k event in Lima sponsored by Adidas and the main cell phone company here. Since I am a little over half way done with my training, I decided to run the half marathon to see how fit I am. What I found out is that running 13.1 miles is very tough. I had run up to 15 miles successfully in training but the race was quite a bit more trying. During the first 10 miles of the race I felt pretty good and was running on the spirit, energy, and adrenaline of the event. The last three miles my main thought was "I just want this to be over and I have no idea how I will run twice this distance." I was inspired and a bit embarrassed when the elite marathoners (who had started their 26.2 mile race only an hour before us) came blowing by me to finish their race in not much more time than it took me to run half that distance. The satisfaction that I felt after the race was quite overwhelming and I determined that it was well worth the 3 or 4 miles of pain that I went through. The question now becomes am I willing to endure 13 miles of pain for an exponentially more satisfying accomplishment. I have heard about marathons my entire life but never had I realized how incredible of a feat just completing the entire race is let alone running 26.2 consecutive miles faster than I can hope to run even 1 mile. I like a good challenge but I am now getting seriously nervous about the challenge that I have signed up for in July. In the upcoming weeks my training runs will start kicking up a few notches and I will try my best not to blow out my shins, knees, back, and every other part of my body. Luckily two of my fellow volunteers are also preparing for the main event and we have made a tradition of having sleepovers before our super long runs and then following them up with good food and beers (after a few liters of water and Gatorade of course). I must say that, while I appreciate the sense of accomplishment and the therapeutic aspects of running, one of my favorite parts of marathon training is the carbo loading. I may be taking this a bit too far as I have not lost any weight even though I am running around 30 miles a week.
From here on I will be working hard to keep up the motivation to get up and run before my work. At the same time I am also jumping into some big projects. Thanks to all the donations from friends and family we have funded an environmentally themed leadership camp for adolescent boys and are in the planning phase. Aside from this, I am also working on planning the second annual calendar project recognizing women leaders in communities where volunteers are working. Last year's calendar was so successful that we are really looking forward to replicating the project. Since there have been major budget cuts for Peace Corps, we are making some changes in how the project is executed and we will have to raise funds from friends and family once again so keep an eye out for my email begging for your support. I find these larger scale projects to be very rewarding and I look forward to working on these in addition to the projects that take place in my site.
In site, I am working with a group of recycling promoters going house to house and giving everyone sacks to put their recycling in. This is pretty fun work because almost everyone we talk to is excited to start collecting recyclables to sell so that they can help clean up the town and earn a little money at the same time. I think many of them aren't so excited about recycling as they are to figure out what it is that I am doing here besides hanging out in the market eating the tasty street food. I think the door-to-door aspect of my project is something that I should have done earlier on in order to explain myself more thoroughly from the outset.
I am feeling pretty successful lately but I am still in a constant battle to avoid the perils of the Peace Corps. The most recent of these potential obstacles is a tropical disease called Dengue. I have talked about this before but now it is here in Pacora and even my host father got it. Dengue is transmitted by a particular mosquito and the symptoms include flu-like symptoms and body aches so severe one feels as if their bones are breaking. It only lasts a week and goes away on its own but I would still rather avoid anything that doctors refer to as "agonizing." I will be doing all I can by putting on repellent, sleeping under a net, and wearing long pants and sleeves but those mosquitoes are sneaky little buggers and I cannot be completely safe. Wish me luck!

Welcome to the Jungle

Since I work in a Catholic country I get a four-day weekend for Easter and I decided to go all out with my chosen vacation. Four friends and I headed south to the Manu Biosphere Reserve to look for the elusive national bird of Peru, the Cock of the Rock (obviously this caused never-ending innuendos which originally annoyed our guide but eventually he was the one making raunchy jokes). We flew into Cusco for some awesome touristy food and left before dawn the following morning for the drive to our first lodge. The drive that day was grueling to say the least. The first couple of hours were on paved roads and we got to stop at some picturesque villages along the way but when we pulled into the Manu national park, the roads got a bit treacherous. The Hyundai mini-van we were riding in was not made to wade through mud pits and ford streams. We ended up getting out of the car at the muddier spots so that the car could pass through. With about two hours left in the drive we came up on a long line of cars and went to investigate the holdup. What we encountered made the reality of our situation much scarier that the harmless adventure on rough roads we had thought it to be. The road ahead had collapsed under a lumber truck sending the truck sliding into a ravine. Luckily, no one was hurt and apparently this happens all the time, but it was incredibly nerve wracking to come across this scene. I had no faith in the estimate that we would be on our way again in about an hour but all I could do was wait. Amazingly enough, one bulldozer and one tractor was plenty to pull the truck out of the ravine relatively quickly (they had already been working at it about 4 hours when we showed up) and then carve a new road out of the side of the mountain. Luckily, there were a bunch of cars that had to pass over the new section of road before we did so the integrity had been well proven. Still, I waited on the far side of the collapse site and hopped in the van once I saw that it did not go sliding into the ravine.

After our harrowing 13-hour drive, I was thrilled to get to our little haven in the cloud forest, San Pedro Lodge. The lodge had big outdoor sitting areas with the noise of the river, the birds, and insects in the background. Although we were close to the little mud road we had ridden in on, there was not a car to be heard the entire night. I can't think of the last time that I found a place where there was no evidence of motor vehicles but this was it. The next morning after a successful bird walk where we spotted the cock of the rock and a few other beautiful species, we climbed back into our minivan and headed to our next activity, rafting. On the drive we spotted a pack of wooly monkeys, one of five species in the area. The next lodge was only accessible by boat so we rafted half way and then took a motorboat when the river got a bit bigger and flatter. The second part of our adventure took places at the Erika Lodge and began with a nature hike through the quicksand. In an effort to reach an enormous tree with a root so big it looked like a dinosaur trail, we had to move cross a patch of ground that sucked three of us in up to our knees before we found a spot solid enough to make a stick bridge and cross. I think it sounds so Indiana Jones to sink in quicksand so I am pretty proud of myself.

The next day we had to arrive at the clay lick before 6 am to watch flocks of amazing birds arrive for their morning feeding. The clay lick is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, a wall of clay where birds come to get their minerals. We ended up seeing four species of birds and a beautiful sunrise over a tributary of the Amazon River. After a breakfast of delicious pancakes, we hiked up to the zipline for a day of cruising through the canopy in harnesses. Our full day of activities continued with a typical jungle lunch cooked in banana leaves followed by a hike and paddle around a beautiful lake where we spotted the Hoatzin or "stinky bird" (called this because its digestive system operates like that of a cow complete with three stomachs). This bird looks like the archaeopteryx dinosaur with a feather Mohawk. We looked for the capybara (the world's largest rodent) but were not lucky enough to find it. Despite this, we did get a glimpse of our second species of monkey, the squirrel monkey. Overall, this was an amazing final activity for our trip.

The last day of our jungle experience did not disappoint on the adventure front. After a quick ride up the river we got back in our minivan for 13 hours of alternate riding and trudging through the mud. Late that night we got into Cuzco and headed straight for burgers and imported beer with the rest of the tourists. One of my favorite things about Cuzco is the amount of high quality pub type food. After an Easter Sunday that involved hiking up to the giant white Jesus overlooking Cuzco and spending lots of money on food, we headed back to our sites. Remembering these experiences makes me a little sad as I sit in my room watching episodes of House and planning my next trip to the jungle as mice literally scurry in under my door. Being a tourist is pretty awesome.

So you want to get involved with my projects? Read this!

I have never had an answer when someone asks me to recount my most embarrassing moment but I may have achieved just that at the regional 50th anniversary party that we held for Peace Corps recently in the municipality of my capitol city. We had been planning to celebrate President Kennedy's signing of the order to create Peace Corps for many months and had put together an elegant event with photo exhibitions of our work, testimonials from volunteers and counterparts, and words from the Peace Corps Peru director. There were quite a few authorities and important people present and my body thought that it was the perfect time to come down with the flu. I had been unable to eat much that morning so when it came time for snacks I went to town on the finger sandwiches and tiny empanadas. I approached the director of the national park that I live near to thank him for the support he had given the most recent reforestation effort that I have been working on. This man is pretty important in the Peruvian equivalent of our National Park Service. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into when I started a conversation with this man and how sick I was actually feeling. As he got increasingly excited about new ideas to save the forest and help the people who live off of it, I got increasingly woozy. My vision started to get blurry and my sampler of snacks started to make its presence known in my belly. Finally I interrupted a monologue about organic gardens that I would have been very excited about ordinarily and asked if I could sit down. As soon as we reached the trash can by the wall I started hurling everything in my stomach into said trash can in the middle of this elegant event. I was somewhat discreet but the VIP guest I had been talking to felt obligated to take care of me. He gave me toilet paper to wipe my face and a pill that he had from his recent illness. I called one of my friends over to help me out with a plastic bag so that I could get to the bathroom and relieve the park director of his duty. At least I had a hair tie so he didn't have to hold my hair back.
Going along with the theme of uncomfortable situations and bodily functions, I would like to describe what it is like going to the bathroom in my house. I have a real bathroom so I am ahead of many of my friends in terms of amenities and I am not complaining. Many people that I know have holes in the ground and I have heard about encounters with snakes, black widows, tarantulas, and other fun creatures in the bathroom. Luckily I only have to deal with roaches in the bathroom but I often have "why did I decide to do this?" moments when I walk into the bathroom. I usually take a deep breath, wave away the roaches so that they scurry off the toilet seat back into their holes, and then position myself on the cement toilet bowl that is less than comfortable to sit on. The funniest but most disgusting thing about using my bathroom is that it is so hot that I am usually dripping sweat. The sweat droplets are often an indistinguishable sensation from flies or roaches crawling on the skin. I know that this is all a serious overshare but the small stuff like going to the bathroom is so different from my life in the United States that I think it deserves to be explained. It helps to set the scene so that some of you at home can laugh at/with me about my experience.
Workwise, I am trying to train recycling promoters and coordinate a work plan for this school year. So far I have had a good amount of success with both goals thanks to the very active groups that already exist in Pacora. I am working with the women's organization, the university student's association, and the health promoters who I have been training in HIV/AIDS prevention. We are doing door to door training in recycling and giving each household a sack to put next to their garbage can. This strategy will require a lot of follow up but I think that executing this project will be a great way to keep busy until November when I finish my service. There is a lot of potential for me to finish strong as I enter the last third of my time here in Peru and I know it will fly by. Now it is a matter of me cutting back on my reading, movies, and podcasts in order to do some serious work.
Peace Corps funding has taken quite a hit due to budget cuts mandated from Washington. Because of this, some of our larger projects need to be funded through the "Peace Corps Partnership" program. We ask friends and family to donate to our projects through the Peace Corps website. I am starting two projects that we need to fund this way so PLEASE PLEASE help out. The first is a leadership camp for boys where we each invite outstanding young men from our sites who we will train in healthy habits, environmental consciousness, leadership, and other important topics. All of this learning will be mixed in with a soccer tournament and a cross-cultural lesson in s'more making. Last year's event was a huge success and we will need your help to make this year's equally successful. I will be getting the link to donate up as soon as possible and I will also be sending out an email with more details.
Along the same line, I am also working on a calendar recognizing powerful Peruvian female leaders who support volunteers in their work. We made this calendar last year and it has been a huge success in calling attention to the wonderful efforts of ordinary women in our sites. Last year we held a celebratory conference in Lima to which we invited all of the women featured in the calendar. This year we will hold conferences in each of the departments (Peruvian equivalent of states) that has a woman featured in the calendar. We hope that this will allow the women to celebrate their achievements among their own peers and keep our travel and lodging costs down. The calendar last year was the highlight of my Peace Corps experience so far and if you have more interest I can send you a PDF version. We will also be asking you for money for this project as well so expect to receive a link to the project on the Peace Corps website. All donations are tax deductable and these projects will undoubtedly cause a direct impact in many lives. Thank you very much for your support and I hope you will get involved. Tell your friends and family!

As I was posting this blog the project got posted! Please donate!

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=527-036

Poopy the Dog and Paint Covered Festivals

I finally got over my aversion to petting my dog puppy (pronounced poopy). His name comes from a brand of soap by the same name that had a puppy as a mascot. The Spanish pronunciation of the vowel "u" means that Peruvians pronounce this English word as poopy. The name is pretty fitting for my dog. This mangy little terrier is missing splotches of hair and is constantly covered in all manner of nasty bugs. For the longest time I never pet him because I don't want to catch any sort of mange, fleas, ticks, or other nasty critters. Little poopy is so friendly that I have recently given in and started to play with him. I do a daily tick check and pull off as many as I can before I play with him but I usually still end up with one crawling on my leg looking for a good place to latch on and suck my blood. Since I am the only person that will actually pet him, poopy follows me all around town and helps me with my tasks. It must be quite comical for the townspeople to see the tall white girl walking around followed by this splotchy little creature who has lost all the hair on his tail.

This past week I had to leave my little friend Poopy to go celebrate Carnaval in the beautiful Andean city of Cajamarca. Over 100 volunteers had showed up for this legendary three-day party. The highlight of the weekend was running around the streets with squirt guns and paint and taking part in epic battles between the various neighborhoods. Gangs made up of people of all ages run around the streets with buckets of paint, water balloons, squirt guns, and other weapons all the while beating on drums and chanting. I purchased my water gun and water balloons, dressed in my rattiest clothes and joined the fray. I was worried that I would hate the experience because of the strangers running up and rubbing paint all over me but as soon as the first person grabbed my face and rubbed paint all over it, I was hooked. I definitely got hit more than I was able to hit others but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Every so often I would take a dance break with one of the drummer gangs and then continue on my way. Around 1 pm the skies opened up in typical rainy season fashion adding to all of the chaos. By this time I was completely blue including my face (luckily I had worn old sunglasses) and the rain caused me to start shivering. I tried to tough it out but right as I was getting remotivated a group of kids with buckets started shoveling buckets of gutter water onto the group that I was with. I had seen men peeing in these same gutters all day long not to mention all the nasty stuff that runs off the streets and I couldn't take it. At this point I was soaked to the bone and shivering and decided to give up. The day had been awesome but I had reached my limit so I headed back to my hotel and indulged in a very long, hot shower. It took me at least two more showers to get the blue tint out of my skin and feel fresh and free of grime and urine but, I had an excellent and memorable carnaval. Now I feel ready to take on Rio and New Orleans in order to enjoy excess before lent. I am, however, not so sure that I am ready to give up chocolate for the next 40 days. I'll probably just take up caramel or vanilla.

After my weekend of delicious food, excellent volunteer company, and outrageous celebrations, it was time for me to get back to site. When I walked back into my house Poopy immediately started jumping around and wagging his little hairless rat tail. I reached down to pet him and was not surprised when a couple minutes later I looked down to find a tick crawling up my leg. I have found that the key to surviving this experience is laughing at the ridiculousness of everyday occurrences.

Am I really Killing Your Baby? Myths Versus Reality in Peru

Before starting in on this blog I need to set the scene a little bit so you can better understand some of the little things that affect my day-to-day life. I am sitting on my mattress without sheets because I was getting little bites all over my legs and even on my butt. After inspection, I found that my sheets are filled with biting ants and I know exactly how this infestation started. I washed my sheets a couple of days ago and hung them out to dry. During the process of drying outside, they filled with ants. One of my daily frustrations is that my clothes actually seem to come out dirtier after I wash them because as they dry, they fill with ants, dust, and leaves. As I look around, I realize that the ants have also infested my mattress and the only solution I think of at the moment is to make myself a nice little bed involving a sleeping bag and a yoga mat on my floor. Camping on my own floor almost sounds fun but in the long run I think I'm going to resort to spraying my mattress with some sort of chemical. Constant contact with the elements due to shoddy construction leaves me exposed to lots of critters and in the summer, when the insects come out, this exposure becomes almost unbearable. Maybe I'll end up sleeping on my floor until ant season is over, at least it is nice and cool close to the cement.

This weekend one of the hot cumbia bands of the moment came to my friend's site and, not having attended any concerts in a while, I decided to dance the night away. We assemble d a group of gringos and had a big night of Peruvian style fun. First, we invited the neighbors over who taught us to make pisco sours, the cocktail of Peru involving lime, sugar, and egg whites all whipped together and spiced up with a bit of pisco, the typical Peruvian liquor. When we got to the concert security helped us cut the line and then we took to the stage to dance with the band. It will be very strange to get back to America where I will not be treated like a VIP nor will I get away with stuff like jumping up on stage and demanding to dance with the band at concerts. Although I don't really like being watched all the time, it is nice to get away with whatever I want.

I recently had an incident in which I ended up taking on an entire van full of passengers in order to not suffocate in the sweltering heat. I got on the van in the hottest part of the day and opened my window. I considered this to be a completely normal thing to do but apparently the air that I was letting in was incredibly harmful to the baby in the seat behind me and as soon as we started moving the mother slid my window shut. I looked back at her and opened the window again. This action was met with an angry response by the mother about how the air was going to make her baby sick. Just so you have a clear picture in your head. It was about 100 degrees in the afternoon sun, the vehicle was a 15 passenger van crammed with 20 passengers, and the baby was swaddled in blankets. I refused to shut the window saying that the heat was more of a danger than the air only to be lashed out at by everyone in the van. I held my own and went about my business reading my book with my arm wedged in the window. My run in with this Peruvian belief gave me the idea to write a blog about some of the other seemingly irrational beliefs, fears, and superstitions that come up on a daily basis. Below are some of my favorite examples of advice I have received:

1. Don't go outside in a breeze if you aren't feeling well or if you are a baby. I mention this first because it comes up nearly every day and no matter how hot it is, people are terrified of "el aire." I have even heard some claims that particularly strong winds can paralyze you.
2. The other most common belief that I hear is that drinking cold beverages at night or when one is sick will make you very sick. If you eat too many popsicles, severe respiratory illnesses will ensue. A woman once told me that her daughter's respiratory problems resulted from eating too many popsicles during pregnancy.
3. Recently, my host family freaked out when I tried to go outside to go to the bathroom after eating hot soup because it would leave my mouth twisted to one side in a really awkward expression for the rest of my life. I found this particularly hilarious because, unlike the other superstitions I have heard, I can't come up with a rational explanation for the cause and effect at play.
4. In the same conversation about how cold air after hot food will twist your mouth, my family told me that they know someone who got their neck permanently twisted because they opened the refrigerator in the morning when their body was still warm from being under the covers in bed.
5. One belief common in the Andean regions of Peru is on the scarier side and has been known to affect the ability of volunteers to integrate into their communities. Many people believe in pishtacos, a demon in the service of the devil that kills people and sucks out their fat. These demons have light skin and hair, therefore some people have commented on their resemblance to male volunteers.

I generally find the beliefs and superstitions entertaining except when they threaten to keep me enclosed in a moving oven in the hot summer. I don't know if I handled my particular situation very well by confronting a bus-load of people about their deeply ingrained beliefs but standing up for myself has become instrumental in maintaining my sanity. I wonder what Peruvians would say if they knew that I sleep with a fan blowing on me…

Girls Empowerment and Maggotty Rats

This week I returned from one of the highlights of my Peace Corps experience to encounter one of the grossest moments of my experience thus far. The ALMA leadership camp for girls consisted of three days of workshops on entrepreneurship, leadership and self-esteem talks, reproductive health presentations, and condom relay races. I brought four very motivated girls from my town who I trust will help me bring this information to all the adolescents in town. We broke up the educational activities and lectures with volleyball games and water balloon fights. Many of these girls are forced into a premature adulthood of cooking, cleaning, and taking care of their younger siblings. The goal of this camp is to empower them enough to look for opportunities to continue their educations and avoid pregnancy long enough to pursue personal goals. I think these three days were among the most valuable in my service because they provided young girls with the knowledge and motivation to have a lasting impact in town. This type of intensive motivational and self-esteem building activities are required to facilitate true sustainability.

I returned home exhausted from three days of intensive activities and sleeping in tents to an awful stench in my room. Partially out of denial I attributed this scent to the avocado I had left in my room. After another day and a half the smell still hadn't gone away and my host mom mentioned that while I was gone she had put out rat poison and I should check my room for dead mice. I immediately knew that this was the source of the stench in my room and set out tearing the room apart to find the offending rodent. After pulling everything out from under my bed and searching amongst the random educational brochures, books, and art supplies that crowd my floor and shelves, I had almost given up thinking that the critter had died in my wall ( a potential but very probable disaster due to the cracks in the plaster and gaps in the adobe). I decided to pull out my clothes that were hanging up. I hadn't thought to do this because how could a rodent balance atop hanging clothing.? As I pulled out my first set of shirts a giant rat, approximately 8 inches long, plopped to the floor in front of me spraying maggots everywhere. The rat corpse was deep into the process of decomposition with the help of ants and maggots. I burst out of my room for fresh air as tears welled up in my eyes, my breath quickened almost to hyperventilation, and the gagging commenced. I still cannot understand how I managed to not puke but I know that I would have had I not gotten outside as quickly as I did. To make matters worse, there was no running water at the time and I had to get to a meeting in my capitol city so I threw all my maggot covered clothes in a tub and my host mom offered to wash them. Getting out of town for the rest of the day was necessary for me to minimize the scar left on my brain by the image of a maggot infested rat falling out of my personal belongings. This was just one of the worst experiences that I have had here in Peru and I have seen some pretty gnarly shit. This may make me some kind of freaky Peace Corps nerd but I often find myself appreciating the beauty of decomposition and nature's way to clean up after itself. I am grateful for the ants that eat and carry away the cockroaches in my bathroom every day and the vultures that land on my street to keep it clear of livestock and dog carcasses. I do not, however, feel the same way about the maggots that were attempting to help me do away with the rat that had fallen victim to the venom my family puts out to defeat them. Rats are my least favorite animal and after this experience I think that I will be even more horrified than ever at the sight of them.

Summer In The Zone

Summer where I live has its ups and downs. First of all, there is the fruit, which is absolutely amazing. Imagine a never-ending supply of avocadoes, mangoes, and many exotic fruits that I had never even heard of before coming here. People are so eager to introduce me to something special about Peru that they continually bring me fruit from their "chacras," the small agricultural plots the majority of my town relies upon for income. I have learned how to choose which guabas are fat enough to eat, how to peel the hard-shelled mamey in order to get to the thick, juicy fruit inside, how tamarinds taste like sour warheads and act as a natural laxative, and that lucuma makes an excellent ice cream but is pretty disgusting plain. In the Peace Corps we often refer to goals 2 and 3 to keep us motivated when our "real work" isn't going so well. These goals refer to teaching Americans about Peruvian culture and Peruvians about American culture. The fruit is definitely a good opportunity for cultural interchange since it allows me to complement Peruvians on something that is a huge source of pride for them. I sometimes even tell them that avocadoes and mangos sometimes cost $2 each to make them realize how special their products are. Even though I achieve this goal, I usually regret talking about money because it makes Americans seem super rich and spoiled, the exact stereotype I most want to dissolve.

With fruit season also comes the "rainy" season. Being from Portland, the monthly drizzle that makes up rainy season here leaves me a little disappointed. I often hope for rain just so that I don't have to carry buckets of water to the trees that I have planted. The infrastructure is not made to handle any rain, which means that even this slight bit causes flooding in all the streets. As soon as this rain comes, the snow in the mountains starts to melt and just enough makes it to my town. This is the signal for the rice-growing season to start because they are able to flood the chacras. I question this practice for a few reasons. First of all, growing rice here requires turning what is essentially a desert into a checkerboard of marshes. This does not seem like a very efficient use of resources. These human-made marshes attract that wonderful little marsh insect, the mosquito. I have been too lazy to hang up my mosquito net until now but I recognize it is necessary because Dengue fever season is starting up again and a particular breed of mosquito is the main vector. This disease can be fatal and is always incredibly painful so I fully intend to avoid it. After contracting this disease, any subsequent infection is much worse. These fears turn the mosquito from an annoying pest into a potential killer makes me even more bitter that rice is the main crop right now.

The less threatening but equally annoying insect that comes in waves with the summer moisture and heat is the ant. Ants are everywhere! I have lost two bags of oatmeal to ant infestation and countless plates of leftovers have become ant colonies. With so many critters everywhere it is an accepted fact that everyone will be eating lots of ants over the next couple of months. At my host mom's birthday party I happened to be in the kitchen when they were making the cocktails for the toast and I witnessed what we in the USA would consider an egregious party foul. The cocktail consisted of canned peaches and champagne blended into a sweet and bubbly drink, even if it is kind of syrupy. They opened the can of peaches and then left for about ten minutes to tend to the duck that was being cooked and when they got back it had filled with ants. They shrugged it off and dumped the can of ant infested peaches into the blender and no one had any idea. I was skeptical but took the black specs that I knew to be ant parts in my cocktail like a pro. This was just the most blatant example of ant eating that I have been a part of but even as I write this I am drinking a glass of water that had two ants floating in it before I started and now it is down to zero. This is the Peruvian village version of protein powder.

Another huge part of the summer months are the unending parties. I have started hiding from these parties because they are so exhausting. A simple birthday lunch almost unfailingly turns into sloppy debauchery and extends to dinner and then night time dancing, and then more snacks (usually some campo ceviche, raw salted fish chopped into bits and mixed with lime and onion). I usually duck out after a couple of hours. At one party I was at a few months ago, someone started asking me about my real name and, when I told them it was Sheridan they were amazed. They had me write it down and at a recent party I attended with the same group of people, I found out that they had liked the name so much that they recommended it to their cousin as a baby name and now there is a little baby Sheridan running around somewhere in Northern Peru. This was a huge honor for me and made me realize that what seems like somewhat silly inquiries into mundane details of my life to me can turns out to be more serious than anticipated. Hopefully one day I will get to meet this child who will probably be confused by her own name for the rest of her life (and hopefully a little proud to have been named after a gringa volunteer). And now I must go work on goals 2 and 3 by eating Peruvian food and most likely graciously accepting a glass of beer at a lunch party that I was invited to. I can't wait for winter when I don't have to be so social because people actually have stuff to do!

Religion and Murals

is no longer an infant in the manger, he has grown up. I only wish the priest would mandate that people stop playing Christmas music after Christmas because that is just annoying. It is Peruvian tradition to elect a godmother for every event. I got to be the godmother of setting up the nativity and now there was a new godmother for taking down the nativity scene. It was a very pretty ceremony involving candles and singing and a few prayers. It was an honor to be part of such a special ceremony but it brought back some of the my discomfort with religion here in Peru. When I am asked whether I am Catholic, I respond that I am Christian and celebrate Christian holidays but I am not Catholic. Part of my reasoning for doing this is to suggest that there are people who are not Catholic or super religious out there and part of it comes from my need to be at least partially honest about who I am. Individuality is not a commonly accepted feature in my town and I don't want to overdo it. Anyway, despite the fact that I took some offense hearing my best friends say that people without Jesus in their hearts are lost and in the dark and do not have the capacity to love, I enjoyed being included in the ceremony as a cultural event and I really enjoyed the chicken and garbanzo bean meal that got served afterwards. Religion has always been a point of stress for me in the process of community integration and in my acceptance of the Peruvian culture in general. The Catholic Church is such a huge part of everything from public school to meetings in government institutions at all levels, to town festivals that it is necessary for me to accept but I am having a lot of trouble letting go of my perception that separation of church and state is hugely important to maintaining a functional government. All that being said, this is my overactive American need to criticize and analyze speaking. The Catholic Church is a strong force in my community and Peru as a whole which serves to unite the community and, although it restricts the individualism, the value, structure, and faith it facilitates make my community a positive and loving place to spend a couple of years.

The Peruvian custom is to say yes and I am much more direct than that. My mom bought me a "Getting in Touch With Your Inner Bitch" daily calendar and the inner bitch mantra is, "if something isn't right just say, "I don't think so."' The success of my work depends primarily on the voluntary participation of community members. I have been fortunate to live in a community where the majority want to support me and agree to go along with whatever crazy ideas that I may have (Typical exchange: "why would I want to save the leaves I sweep up off my patio?" "Well, it makes an excellent and free fertilizer"). Notice that I said agree to go along with and not actually go along with necessarily. Most of the time this works to my advantage because I can get the blessing of school directors, mayors, and other community leaders to start projects.

Recently, this usually delightful Peruvian desire to please completely backfired and led to my biggest Peace Corps melt down yet. I have spent the past few months securing materials, funding, and workers to paint a couple of environmentally themed murals in the elementary school and they turned out beautifully. First, I got the local archaeologist to lend me two workers for a couple of days to put the plaster up on the walls and then I got the guardian/groundskeeper of the school who is known as the artist of the town to create two incredible works of art that call attention to the importance of conserving our environment. I have not had such successful and visible projects in a while (our goals focus more on behavior change and education) so I am incredibly proud to have gathered such a wide array of support that culminated in two excellent murals with plans to paint more. What no one thought to tell me throughout this entire process is that the entire school including my two precious murals will be torn down in February. Not only that but up until I confronted the director and directly asked him if the rumors about the school being torn down were true, he kept asking for more murals. When I asked and he nonchalantly confirmed that all my time, money, and favors called in with local institutions were in vain, I launched into an overly emotional and angry diatribe about the lack of respect he had shown me and the others who had put work in. His response was "Well you would have been mad at me if I'd told you that I wasn't going to let you paint the murals." This directly points to the cultural habit of not saying no. I told him that I would have been perfectly fine with putting off the murals if he had told me they would be torn anyway. This director has been an excellent advocate of my work since I have been here and I hope we will be able to repair the damage that was done by this faulty communication leading to my outburst. It is one thing when people say that they will be coming to your meeting and don't show because of the culture of yes but it is a whole different level when someone wastes all the time and limited funding you have with no intention of warning you that it will be wasted. I learned a few things here, 1. Check the temper at the door before confronting someone about something that will inevitably be infuriating, and 2. Do some thorough research before embarking on big projects. I will see how fast this little episode gets around town but the upside is that school starts in mid-March so I have a whole 2 months for things to cool down before trying to mend fences.

Religion and Murals

With the Christmas season being officially over, I got invited to a party to take down the nativity scene at one of my best friend's house. The priest in my town recently declared it mandatory that people take down their nativity scenes by January 7th because after that baby Jesus is no longer an infant in the manger, he has grown up. I only wish the priest would mandate that people stop playing Christmas music after Christmas because that is just annoying. It is Peruvian tradition to elect a godmother for every event. I got to be the godmother of setting up the nativity and now there was a new godmother for taking down the nativity scene. It was a very pretty ceremony involving candles and singing and a few prayers. It was an honor to be part of such a special ceremony but it brought back some of the my discomfort with religion here in Peru. When I am asked whether I am Catholic, I respond that I am Christian and celebrate Christian holidays but I am not Catholic. Part of my reasoning for doing this is to suggest that there are people who are not Catholic or super religious out there and part of it comes from my need to be at least partially honest about who I am. Individuality is not a commonly accepted feature in my town and I don't want to overdo it. Anyway, despite the fact that I took some offense hearing my best friends say that people without Jesus in their hearts are lost and in the dark and do not have the capacity to love, I enjoyed being included in the ceremony as a cultural event and I really enjoyed the chicken and garbanzo bean meal that got served afterwards. Religion has always been a point of stress for me in the process of community integration and in my acceptance of the Peruvian culture in general. The Catholic Church is such a huge part of everything from public school to meetings in government institutions at all levels, to town festivals that it is necessary for me to accept but I am having a lot of trouble letting go of my perception that separation of church and state is hugely important to maintaining a functional government. All that being said, this is my overactive American need to criticize and analyze speaking. The Catholic Church is a strong force in my community and Peru as a whole which serves to unite the community and, although it restricts the individualism, the value, structure, and faith it facilitates make my community a positive and loving place to spend a couple of years.

The Peruvian custom is to say yes and I am much more direct than that. My mom bought me a "Getting in Touch With Your Inner Bitch" daily calendar and the inner bitch mantra is, "if something isn't right just say, "I don't think so."' The success of my work depends primarily on the voluntary participation of community members. I have been fortunate to live in a community where the majority want to support me and agree to go along with whatever crazy ideas that I may have (Typical exchange: "why would I want to save the leaves I sweep up off my patio?" "Well, it makes an excellent and free fertilizer"). Notice that I said agree to go along with and not actually go along with necessarily. Most of the time this works to my advantage because I can get the blessing of school directors, mayors, and other community leaders to start projects.

Recently, this usually delightful Peruvian desire to please completely backfired and led to my biggest Peace Corps melt down yet. I have spent the past few months securing materials, funding, and workers to paint a couple of environmentally themed murals in the elementary school and they turned out beautifully. First, I got the local archaeologist to lend me two workers for a couple of days to put the plaster up on the walls and then I got the guardian/groundskeeper of the school who is known as the artist of the town to create two incredible works of art that call attention to the importance of conserving our environment. I have not had such successful and visible projects in a while (our goals focus more on behavior change and education) so I am incredibly proud to have gathered such a wide array of support that culminated in two excellent murals with plans to paint more. What no one thought to tell me throughout this entire process is that the entire school including my two precious murals will be torn down in February. Not only that but up until I confronted the director and directly asked him if the rumors about the school being torn down were true, he kept asking for more murals. When I asked and he nonchalantly confirmed that all my time, money, and favors called in with local institutions were in vain, I launched into an overly emotional and angry diatribe about the lack of respect he had shown me and the others who had put work in. His response was "Well you would have been mad at me if I'd told you that I wasn't going to let you paint the murals." This directly points to the cultural habit of not saying no. I told him that I would have been perfectly fine with putting off the murals if he had told me they would be torn anyway. This director has been an excellent advocate of my work since I have been here and I hope we will be able to repair the damage that was done by this faulty communication leading to my outburst. It is one thing when people say that they will be coming to your meeting and don't show because of the culture of yes but it is a whole different level when someone wastes all the time and limited funding you have with no intention of warning you that it will be wasted. I learned a few things here, 1. Check the temper at the door before confronting someone about something that will inevitably be infuriating, and 2. Do some thorough research before embarking on big projects. I will see how fast this little episode gets around town but the upside is that school starts in mid-March so I have a whole 2 months for things to cool down before trying to mend fences.

Now I Really Feel Like a Spinster

This week Doña Blanca arrived in Pacora after leaving for a few months to undergo cataract surgery in Lima. Those of you who read about her in earlier blogs may remember her as my eccentric host grandmother who tells wild stories about her youth in Pacora. Doña Blanca sits all morning and a lot of the afternoon at the kitchen table so anyone in the kitchen becomes a subject under her reign. She is always sure to make it known when she is hungry or wants her coffee. If Mariela delays in preparing breakfast, Doña Blanca does not hold back in her complaints. She is truly a community elder who has earned her sense of entitlement and makes sure to take full advantage of her status to get what she wants. She can't hear or see very well but she has an unbelievable memory and has read about a huge range of topics. She is generally more up to date on current events in the U.S. that I am because, due to her inability to get around very well, she sits and listens to news on the radio (at full volume) for hours a day. Her virtual deafness and blindness makes it so she doesn't always notice when there is already a conversation going on and will launch into epic tales of taking produce to market 50 miles by burro or Romeo and Juliet style romances that occurred among her classmates. I love listening to her stories and I am thankful that she carries on one-sided conversations because it requires screaming in her face to talk to her and I generally don't have the energy for that. Between cultural and language barriers I already have plenty of trouble communicating with people that aren't deaf. One of the funniest Doña Blanca story telling techniques is the list. Sometimes she will start telling about the fruit trees they used to grow on her land before it became the street behind my houseand then she will start listing them similar to how Bubba lists the ways of preparing shrimp in one of my favorite scenes in Forest Gump. Her lists are always very extensive and the volume fades in and out as she thinks of more items to list. While she covers the entire inventory of whatever she happens to be talking about Mariela and I can carry on an entire conversation and then tune back in as she finishes without her noticing. In the most recent and funniest of her listing stories she listed all of her grandchildren and their skin color ranging from white to black. Doña Blanca (a nickname that refers to her white skin color relative to other Peruvians. Her real name is Evangelina) provides me with endless knowledge about topics ranging from food to world history and I am glad to have her back. I know she will be a commonly occurring character in blog entries to come.

Mariela, Doña Blanca, and I all have birthdays in the upcoming week so we decided to throw a party for some friends and family. We pushed the party up a few days so that Mariela's family who is in town to celebrate the holidays could attend. A typical Peruvian party is made up of a few key ingredients, a goat, a few crates of beer, and multiple giants speakers of the sort found at concerts. Our party had all these things so it was sure to be a success. I put in the food and Mariela suggested that she contract the speakers. Although I would have preferred to have a more American style party with the music set at volumes that facilitate conversation, I was glad to see Mariela's enthusiasm and figured that I was in the minority so I thanked Mariela for her contribution and prepared for a memorable event. True to form, the majority of guests showed up a couple of hours late and the festivities began. I am pretty sure that I consumed more calories that afternoon than I had in the week preceding it. After a few rounds of passing the communal beer glass we cranked up the volume and started to dance. My favorite part of the party was when everyone danced around me in a circle and took turns dancing with me in the center. I got quite the quad workout because lots of the people I danced with insisted on getting low. I guess that counts as the cross training that my marathon training program required for that day. The new mayor was in attendance and served me a glass or two of beer when it came his turn to choose who drank next. My site mate who had come to help me celebrate (and to provide moral support in the daunting task of participating in a Peruvian party) commented that this was a good strategy for getting work done in Peace Corps Peru and I commented that it was a good sign for the upcoming year. After dancing until I had to take off my shoes in order to attempt the fancy footwork of the local traditional dance of marinera, everyone left in good spirits. I am definitely glad to have celebrated with my friends and I even got to make some new ones. One woman in attendance is from Pacora but currently lived in Queens and she offered to show me the Peruvian cultural hot spots when I am in the U.S. and missing Peruvian culture. I only wish that I could have all my friends at my birthday party next year in the U.S. I might make those of you that celebrate with me do a little dancing for the sake of remembering the Peruvian culture that I have come to embrace.

This party was not my only birthday party this week. The women that I work with planting trees in the natural protected area near my site had been talking for a long time about doing something for my birthday so when the time came, I planned to do a lunch the day of my birthday with them. Hanging out with these women is always fun because they are a rowdy bunch who like to tell dirty jokes and dance. We started out by cooking the duck that I had brought in the traditional Peruvian way with peas, carrots, and rice, all in beer in coca cola. While we were cooking, the chickens and dogs were running around at our feet and I couldn't help but laugh at the irony of the chicken that will probably serve as lunch in the near future who was pecking away at the cauldron where the duck was being cooked. The live animal and the meal it provides are not seen as two separate entities but as stages within the same process. These two elements are much closer than the cow we see in the country field and the neatly packaged t-bone steak we buy at the grocery store in the United States. The duck that I bought was plucked but was pretty much still in the shape of a duck complete with the majority of its guts. While one of the women got to hacking it apart with a VERY dull knife, I was charged with peeling the peas, which I did frustratingly slowly for the women watching me. While I stood their peeling the peas and laughing as baby chickens scurried over my feet and the kitchen filled with smoke, a maggot suddenly dropped from a hanging basket into the bowl of peas that I had peeled. Looking back on it, I took this incredibly calmly, much more calmly than I would have a year ago. Maggots, bloody duck hearts, dull knives, and eating until you think you might puke and then drinking moonshine are all things that one comes to think of as normal in my region of Peru. I will be coming back to the United States much tougher than I was and also much less likely to freak out if something isn't perfect. Along the lines of the dull knives and the maggots, we volunteers often laugh at the notion of sending a plate of food back purely because it has a hair in it. I often wonder how long it will take for me to get back into my American mindset of demanding perfect hygiene and constant refrigeration but I hope that I retain some of the toughness that I have gained here.

After putting away enough rice, duck, and msg to make me feel sick (and I have a pretty large appetite), we started the toasting. The women said some wonderful things about me and I realized that this was where I wanted to be for my 24th birthday. I miss my family and I wish they could be here but I have shared and will share many more birthdays with them. This was one of those special moments when I realize that I made the right decision in coming to Peru for two years. I go through phases where these moments are few and far between but lately, I have found myself in many situations where I say to myself, "it is pretty awesome that I am here right now." That sounds super cheesy but it's difficult not to get sentimental when people of a different culture and from such a different background than myself make an effort to make me feel like part of the crew. I have to remember these moments at times like right now when I pour my coffee into a cracked mug or last night when the heat prevents me from sleeping. I still live by the mantra that in the Peace Corps you can have the best day and the worst day of your life on the same day. After I responded by giving my own sentimental toast thanking the women for the lessons that they have taught me over the last year, the day only got better as I got to dance with all of the women and we laughed and joked around. One of the most interesting moments was when I bonded with one of the women over both being 24, granted this was as she nursed her fourth child. We are looking forward to celebrating her 25th together in June. I don't have much opportunity to hang out socially with these women. Usually we are just carrying water and planting trees and I have come to realize that I need to create more social opportunities because they have been some of the most welcoming and consistently supportive people that I have met. It is easy to fall into staying in my room and watching Lost on my laptop during my free time (What is going to happen?!), it is important to get out and spend time with the people who make my life here worthwhile.

Now I Really Feel Like a Spinster

This week Doña Blanca arrived in Pacora after leaving for a few months to undergo cataract surgery in Lima. Those of you who read about her in earlier blogs may remember her as my eccentric host grandmother who tells wild stories about her youth in Pacora. Doña Blanca sits all morning and a lot of the afternoon at the kitchen table so anyone in the kitchen becomes a subject under her reign. She is always sure to make it known when she is hungry or wants her coffee. If Mariela delays in preparing breakfast, Doña Blanca does not hold back in her complaints. She is truly a community elder who has earned her sense of entitlement and makes sure to take full advantage of her status to get what she wants. She can't hear or see very well but she has an unbelievable memory and has read about a huge range of topics. She is generally more up to date on current events in the U.S. that I am because, due to her inability to get around very well, she sits and listens to news on the radio (at full volume) for hours a day. Her virtual deafness and blindness makes it so she doesn't always notice when there is already a conversation going on and will launch into epic tales of taking produce to market 50 miles by burro or Romeo and Juliet style romances that occurred among her classmates. I love listening to her stories and I am thankful that she carries on one-sided conversations because it requires screaming in her face to talk to her and I generally don't have the energy for that. Between cultural and language barriers I already have plenty of trouble communicating with people that aren't deaf. One of the funniest Doña Blanca story telling techniques is the list. Sometimes she will start telling about the fruit trees they used to grow on her land before it became the street behind my houseand then she will start listing them similar to how Bubba lists the ways of preparing shrimp in one of my favorite scenes in Forest Gump. Her lists are always very extensive and the volume fades in and out as she thinks of more items to list. While she covers the entire inventory of whatever she happens to be talking about Mariela and I can carry on an entire conversation and then tune back in as she finishes without her noticing. In the most recent and funniest of her listing stories she listed all of her grandchildren and their skin color ranging from white to black. Doña Blanca (a nickname that refers to her white skin color relative to other Peruvians. Her real name is Evangelina) provides me with endless knowledge about topics ranging from food to world history and I am glad to have her back. I know she will be a commonly occurring character in blog entries to come.

Mariela, Doña Blanca, and I all have birthdays in the upcoming week so we decided to throw a party for some friends and family. We pushed the party up a few days so that Mariela's family who is in town to celebrate the holidays could attend. A typical Peruvian party is made up of a few key ingredients, a goat, a few crates of beer, and multiple giants speakers of the sort found at concerts. Our party had all these things so it was sure to be a success. I put in the food and Mariela suggested that she contract the speakers. Although I would have preferred to have a more American style party with the music set at volumes that facilitate conversation, I was glad to see Mariela's enthusiasm and figured that I was in the minority so I thanked Mariela for her contribution and prepared for a memorable event. True to form, the majority of guests showed up a couple of hours late and the festivities began. I am pretty sure that I consumed more calories that afternoon than I had in the week preceding it. After a few rounds of passing the communal beer glass we cranked up the volume and started to dance. My favorite part of the party was when everyone danced around me in a circle and took turns dancing with me in the center. I got quite the quad workout because lots of the people I danced with insisted on getting low. I guess that counts as the cross training that my marathon training program required for that day. The new mayor was in attendance and served me a glass or two of beer when it came his turn to choose who drank next. My site mate who had come to help me celebrate (and to provide moral support in the daunting task of participating in a Peruvian party) commented that this was a good strategy for getting work done in Peace Corps Peru and I commented that it was a good sign for the upcoming year. After dancing until I had to take off my shoes in order to attempt the fancy footwork of the local traditional dance of marinera, everyone left in good spirits. I am definitely glad to have celebrated with my friends and I even got to make some new ones. One woman in attendance is from Pacora but currently lived in Queens and she offered to show me the Peruvian cultural hot spots when I am in the U.S. and missing Peruvian culture. I only wish that I could have all my friends at my birthday party next year in the U.S. I might make those of you that celebrate with me do a little dancing for the sake of remembering the Peruvian culture that I have come to embrace.

This party was not my only birthday party this week. The women that I work with planting trees in the natural protected area near my site had been talking for a long time about doing something for my birthday so when the time came, I planned to do a lunch the day of my birthday with them. Hanging out with these women is always fun because they are a rowdy bunch who like to tell dirty jokes and dance. We started out by cooking the duck that I had brought in the traditional Peruvian way with peas, carrots, and rice, all in beer in coca cola. While we were cooking, the chickens and dogs were running around at our feet and I couldn't help but laugh at the irony of the chicken that will probably serve as lunch in the near future who was pecking away at the cauldron where the duck was being cooked. The live animal and the meal it provides are not seen as two separate entities but as stages within the same process. These two elements are much closer than the cow we see in the country field and the neatly packaged t-bone steak we buy at the grocery store in the United States. The duck that I bought was plucked but was pretty much still in the shape of a duck complete with the majority of its guts. While one of the women got to hacking it apart with a VERY dull knife, I was charged with peeling the peas, which I did frustratingly slowly for the women watching me. While I stood their peeling the peas and laughing as baby chickens scurried over my feet and the kitchen filled with smoke, a maggot suddenly dropped from a hanging basket into the bowl of peas that I had peeled. Looking back on it, I took this incredibly calmly, much more calmly than I would have a year ago. Maggots, bloody duck hearts, dull knives, and eating until you think you might puke and then drinking moonshine are all things that one comes to think of as normal in my region of Peru. I will be coming back to the United States much tougher than I was and also much less likely to freak out if something isn't perfect. Along the lines of the dull knives and the maggots, we volunteers often laugh at the notion of sending a plate of food back purely because it has a hair in it. I often wonder how long it will take for me to get back into my American mindset of demanding perfect hygiene and constant refrigeration but I hope that I retain some of the toughness that I have gained here.

After putting away enough rice, duck, and msg to make me feel sick (and I have a pretty large appetite), we started the toasting. The women said some wonderful things about me and I realized that this was where I wanted to be for my 24th birthday. I miss my family and I wish they could be here but I have shared and will share many more birthdays with them. This was one of those special moments when I realize that I made the right decision in coming to Peru for two years. I go through phases where these moments are few and far between but lately, I have found myself in many situations where I say to myself, "it is pretty awesome that I am here right now." That sounds super cheesy but it's difficult not to get sentimental when people of a different culture and from such a different background than myself make an effort to make me feel like part of the crew. I have to remember these moments at times like right now when I pour my coffee into a cracked mug or last night when the heat prevents me from sleeping. I still live by the mantra that in the Peace Corps you can have the best day and the worst day of your life on the same day. After I responded by giving my own sentimental toast thanking the women for the lessons that they have taught me over the last year, the day only got better as I got to dance with all of the women and we laughed and joked around. One of the most interesting moments was when I bonded with one of the women over both being 24, granted this was as she nursed her fourth child. We are looking forward to celebrating her 25th together in June. I don't have much opportunity to hang out socially with these women. Usually we are just carrying water and planting trees and I have come to realize that I need to create more social opportunities because they have been some of the most welcoming and consistently supportive people that I have met. It is easy to fall into staying in my room and watching Lost on my laptop during my free time (What is going to happen?!), it is important to get out and spend time with the people who make my life here worthwhile.

The Circus Comes to Town

Before starting this blog I want to give the disclaimer that some things are represented a little negatively (namely the crazy circus that has been set up behind my house for a few weeks now) however, I am still enjoying my time in Peru and I love the town I live in, Pacora Lambayeque. I am in the process of getting used to being back in Peru and it has been surprisingly difficult to reacclimatize to my life here after only a week at home. I think that this trip served to juxtapose what my life would be in the U.S. with the life that I live now. The contrast is more extreme than I realized when the U.S. was a distant memory that I had let go of over a year ago. My last blog discussed the shock I felt at going home at phenomena such as Costco and varied food but the reverse has been true upon my return to Peru. When I went to the States I realized that I had forgotten about sharp knives, plumbing that can handle toilet paper, dishwashers, and not living in a fishbowl. In many ways it was refreshing to have the ease of life that these things bring but it was also a bit uncomfortable to feel so spoiled. Overall, my trip home to the U.S. made me contemplate what my life would be like if I hadn't joined the Peace Corps, but I am glad to be back so that I can have a successful and productive second year. I just need a few days to get used to the small things that I had pretty much forgotten about.

I recognize that much suffering occurs in the United States but it is not part of my daily life so I can go about my living without spending much energy worrying about it. Unfortunately, where I live in Peru there is no ignoring the machismo and other ugly realities that impact my experience. The circus that had set up behind my house while I was gone has served as a harsh reminder of the suffering that I come into contact with in Peru. It is a common theme in literature and movies that outsiders bring in trouble and turmoil. Two examples of this are the portrayal of gypsies in movies and books and the circus in the book Water for Elephants. The circus consists of a giant tent, a caged lion, a few caged goats, and a few trailer houses where the owners live. Since they come to collect water from the spigot at my house I have gotten a first hand view of the turmoil that wracks the circus and has begun to emerge as a negative influence on the town. There is adultery, domestic violence, neglected children running around my yard, and neglected animals. Every time I go outside I can hear the lioness crying from her tiny cage presumably asking to be fed. The harsh realities of life in a developing country are represented at an extreme level by this traveling show where perhaps the most entertainment has come from the gossip that the people behind the clown makeup have generated. The circus is finally packing up to leave taking with them two community members, a young girl running off with a clown and a boy who was unable to find work here in Pacora. The police and the mother got involved this morning trying to prevent the teenage girl from running off but to no avail. My dislike of clowns used to be based on their annoying humor and creepy makeup but now I associate them with wife-beating and running away with underage girls so my dislike has become a bit stronger.


Summer vacation in Pacora means trees drooping under the weight of mangoes and avocadoes everywhere you look, unlimited time spent playing in irrigation canals, and lots of visitors. Much of my host mom's family has come to town and one in particular has been very interesting to talk to. He lives in the principality of Lichtenstein and practices shamanism. He has told me the entire history of the ghost that lives in my house because he was buried where the house now stands in the 1800s. He and various other family members claim to have seen and even interacted with this ghost and his ghost friends on occasion. I find all of this very fascinating even though I do not really ascribe to this form of spirituality. After taking me on a tour of the spots in the house that the ghost likes to hang out, I requested that he read my aura, which is a trade he has been studying in Lichtenstein. He didn't give me that much information but he did ask me if I have come into contact with twins recently and suggested that some twins might visit me. I have no idea how to process or analyze this prediction but we will see what happens. My host mom's reading was much more informative most likely because he knows her and could make predictions pertaining to specific members of her family. The fact that he had to know so much in advance leaves me with doubt about his ability to predict but at the very least this served as a bonding experience for Mariela and myself. One of my favorite things about living in Peru is the license and opportunity it gives me to try things that I never thought I would from eating animal organs to spiritual readings.

Aside from the traveling band of crazies that set up camp in my backyard, life at my house has been excellent. My host mom (who is actually more of a friend who just happens to be in a more maternal life stage than myself) will be turning 34 next week only 5 days after I turn 24. We are going to throw a party where I will buy the goat, which I will then have the neighbor slaughter. We will prepare it with loche (a squash typical of Northern Peru), vinegar, vegetables, beans, rice, and plenty of MSG, salt, and garlic. We are going to invite some friends and dance the night away to celebrate another year. I'm sure this event will generate some stories so I will definitely fill you in in my next entry. My life tends to generate interesting anecdotes and I foresee my 24th birthday party generating a couple although hopefully they do not involve anyone running off with the circus.

Surprise! I'm Home!

I hadn't planned on going home during my two years in Peru because we have limited funds and limited vacation time as volunteers but as Christmas rolled around and one after the other of my friends started telling me of their plans to go back to that dreamland we in the Peace Corps refer to simply as AMERICA, I couldn't help but feel tempted to make the journey. I didn't think about it seriously until right around Thanksgiving when I mentioned casually to my dad that most of my friends were going home. I honestly wasn't fishing for an invitation, I was just stating that it surprised me how many were going back. We were chatting online, me in my office (Starbucks) and my dad in his chair and as soon as he offered to bring me home for Christmas tears started rolling down my face. Even now as I think back on it (again in Starbucks), my eyes get a little misty. I haven't been a big crier lately so I took this reaction to mean that I would really like to go home! My dad said "let me think about this overnight" and the next morning when I checked my email the subject heading of the email from my dad was "Lets do it!" we decided to keep it between us and thus set in motion the most exciting trick I have ever pulled off. The first step in our grand scheme to surprise the family was to enlist the help of a trusted person with a credit card my mom wouldn't be tracking. Grandma Betty was the perfect candidate and she kept our secret very well.

I arrived in Portland fresh from one-year medical checks so I knew that I wasn't bringing any mysterious parasites into the USA. I have somewhat of an iron gut so I haven't had any stomach problems yet which meant I was not as well versed in stool sample collection as some of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers. Now I can say that I have my own strategy for collection and I can check one more thing off my bucket list (this whole reflection on pooping in a cup is probably an overshare but the Peace Corps has clouded my judgment on the line for bodily function talk). Anyway, without worms or cavities, I was ready to surprise the family. My dad dropped my mom at the Subaru dealership to wait for the car to get repaired and then said he had to pick up her gift. He came out to the airport, picked me up, and then we headed back to get my mom. When I walked in she was so engrossed in the quote that the mechanic had given her for the repairs that she didn't even look up before starting to read off to my dad how much it was going to cost. When she finished her list of prices she finally looked up to see me standing over her. She stared at me for a while and I awkwardly smiled waiting for her to smile/cry/hug me/get mad/respond in some way! Finally she jumped up and hugged me and we both let out a few tears of happiness. That was quite possibly my most exciting Christmas moment ever. That night I got to repeat the emotional embrace when we picked my sister up at the airport. My parents hid behind a post while I waited for my sister to walk up the ramp out of the secure area. I hadn't seen her in the full 15 months since I left and during that time she has turned 21, gotten engaged, turned 22, finished college, and is in the process of moving to Manhattan so I was pretty excited to catch up with her.

Over the next few days I got to surprise my entire family. Some reactions were very emotional while others were completely anticlimactic. A couple of my uncles assumed that they had been told that I would be there but just weren't paying attention at the time so they didn't seem surprised at all. All the reactions made me emotional and I just couldn't snap out of my state of extreme happiness at being home.

Aside from seeing family, my top priority while in the US was eating all the things that are either non-existent or unaffordable in Peru. This list included pub food, Mexican food, sushi, and Indian food. I ate everything except the Indian food and I was able to add a few more exciting things like Peruvian food. It was all delicious and the fact that there are now two Peruvian restaurants in Portland makes me be proud to be an honorary Peruvian. I can't wait to tell my Peruvian friends that their cuisine is now a trendy favorite in the U.S.

The most overwhelming food experience that I had while in the States was at Costco. I insisted on going with my mom and the experience turned out to be a shocking welcome home to AMERICA. At my house in Peru there is hardly ever extra food and we would never buy in bulk because we don't have a refrigerator and the mice and flies get into anything hanging around. The strangest thing about Costco was that I wanted everything but I couldn't quite comprehend buying that quantity. The first thing that I was drawn to was a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting topped with nuts. I have searched for an appetizing version of this particular desert since I have been here only to meet with dry cake, bizarre frosting, and other disappointments. The giant cake was only $12.99 so my first thought was "how can I not buy this?" My mom caught up to me and I was holding the cake, ready to put it in the cart but then I got overwhelmed at the thought of SO MUCH carrot cake and I said, "mom, do they have a smaller one?" She looked at me like I was ridiculous and reminded me, "Dani, we are at Costco." I returned the cake to repeat the exact same interaction with the muffins, bacon, cheeses, bagels, trail mix, and pretty much all the other treats in the store all the while trying every sample that I could get my hands on. When it was time to leave, I was nowhere to be found so my sister set out on a search only to find me staring at the 3 lb. pumpkin pies. I had been craving pumpkin pie since Thanksgiving and this giant pie was only $5.99 but there was no way my family could eat it all in a reasonable time period. The dilemma was debilitating and I just stood there weighing the pros and cons until my sister came to drag me out of the store. We ended up leaving with lots of cheese and not much else. I definitely enjoyed my time at Costco but I think the normal grocery store will do for now.

This trip reminded me how much I appreciate the United States with all its respect for racial women and diversity and the general ease of life. The transition back to my Peace Corps life will undoubtedly be a bit rough but I look forward to returning to my work and being a motivated and productive volunteer this year. 2010 was the fastest year of my life so far and everyone says that the second year of Peace Corps goes way faster. I will be back before Thanksgiving next year so this was my final holiday season in the Peace Corps.