Dos Mil Nueve

Happy New Year from Ancash, Peru! I survived Christmas at my site and decided to celebrate my birthday and the new year in Huaraz. After 2 plus weeks at site, it was time for a little descanso. I’m heading back to Huarimayo tomorrow, but I want to put up a few photos and write a couple quick stories to keep my loyal readers updated on my life.

mi familia on Christmas morningChristmas stockings!

Christmas. At 6 on Christmas morning, Emerson, the six year old in my family, woke me up for some hot chocolate and paneton. There was way too much paneton (paneton=icky fruit cake). I bought one, and my family had gotten two others from the church and the municipality. For lunch, we had another Peruvian tasty tradition. My family killed two cuyes and we had a Christmas dinner of guinea pig, potatoes, and mote. I think cuy might be growing on me and I actually find myself craving potatoes. Very weird.

I tried to share a little bit of my traditions with my family, so I had them all hang up socks and I put some cookies, pens and pencils, gum, fruit, and toys inside. They really liked it which made me super happy. They invited me to go with them to Chavin to see the baile de los negritos, a traditional Peruvian dance, but I had made plans to go spend Christmas afternoon and night with the two other volunteers in Conchucos, Claudia and Tyler and the same dance was taking place in San Marcos. We got a hostel room together in San Marcos so we could give ourselves the gift of a hot shower and comfy bed. We watched movies and chatted on the phone most of the day and night and Tyler filmed some footage for one of his new videos. Tyler has a video blog that all of you should check out- he’s made some great videos of our Peace Corps life so far. His website is tylerspeaceofperu.wordpress.com.

My birthday and New Year’s Eve were wonderful. The two missionary girls in Chavin had told me about a spa-like place in Huaraz, so I started my day off with an hour long hot bubble bath, followed by an hour long massage (all for US$15, thanks Grandma!). For a minute I forgot I was in Peru. But then I looked at all my pulga (flea) bites and I remembered I live in the Andes. Nevertheless, my spa experience was AMAZING. Tyler and Callie went with me too, and we were all just glowing when we left. I had a lovely lunch at our favorite café that has wireless, did some shopping (for exciting things like nails and a table cloth), and then got all dazzled up for my birthday dinner (I put makeup on for the first time since swearing in!). We went to a place called Chilli Heaven that is run by a British guy and his Peruvian wife. After devouring our plates of thai curry, burritos, and fajitas and finishing off our imported British beers and ciders, we went out to our favorite gringo bar 13 Buhos. The owner of the bar even made me a chocolate cake! Even though we rang in the new year at midnight, we kept on dancing and celebrating well past that.

Now I’m heading back to site, so no internet/phone for the next two weeks. But I’m stocked up on chocolates (thank you everyone from home, you all know my chocoholic self too well) and movies and letters and crossword puzzles and magazines! Thank you SO much for the packages, it really felt like Christmas when I arrived and had letters and boxes to open! And muchas gracias for the phone calls! My bus leaves in less than an hour so here are a few anecdotes/updates from the last two weeks:

I finally made a trip up to Tyler’s site two weeks ago. The day I went to visit happened to be the graduation ceremony for the students at the elementary school. On the way up to his site, a woman in the combi asked if I’d be a madrina, which is a godmother. I said sure, why not, I’d never been a godmother before, thinking she was asking me to be the godmother of the ceremony. They also asked Tyler to be the padrino, so we were all excited to be the godparents. But then all the mothers started pulling us aside and asking us to be the godparents of their kids. Turns out, Tyler and I had each signed ourselves up to be the godparent of one of the children. To this day neither of us even knows the names of our godchildren. We had to take part in the ceremony, which lasted probably 3 or 4 hours. The night before I had had the worst diarrhea of my life, so it was a bit of a struggle to get through the ceremony, which consisted of awkward huaino dancing (look it up on Youtube. Try Sonia Morales, she’s famous), an enormous plate of cuy, and lots of photo taking with my digital camera (once they saw I had a camera, everyone wanted an individual picture or three). Tyler and I finally escaped the ceremony, telling them I was mal de estomago. We were supposed to get a ride down the mountain from Tyler’s host dad who drives a combi, but he wasn’t making any more trips down to San Marcos so we had to walk an hour and a half. It was an interesting day to say the least.

the happy godparents

picante de cuy

Sadly I don’t have time to write any more anecdotes but here’s a few quick updates and counts:

Letrine update: No news to report. Still using the squatting in the chacra technique.

Room update: Spent 5 hours painting my walls sky blue on Sunday. Still need to buy some roofing materials. Have yet to unpack my suitcases.

Work update: Finishing the previous volunteer’s cocinas mejoradas project and hanging out with lots of cool Quechua women.

Cuy count: Have eaten cuy 3 times in the last 2 weeks. So 4 times total in Peru.

Potatoes eaten: 19475894749827548752487875

Ok gotta run! Look for another blog update in the next two weeks. Muchos besos y abrazos!