Well....I guess my new years resolution will be to be more religious about my blog updates. It's been a busy holiday season which is nice because it keeps my mind of the holiday happenings back home. There are also much fewer clues that the holiday season was happening. In the states you've got holiday tunes everywhere, radio, tv, elevator music, as well as the decorations everywhere. Around here we've got none of that, maybe a few nativity scenes in peoples houses, and the weather is actually quite warm.
Christmas eve around here is more of a big deal than actual christmas day. We went to mass around 9:00....and it actually started around 10:30. There was a short service and then everyone lined up to pay a few centivos and kiss the plastic baby jesus before returning to their houses for a champagne toast at midnight and the opening of gifts. I had gotten a toy wooden car for my 1.5 year-old host brother and some cd's of popular spanish music for my 6 year-old host sister. I was very happy when the host brother at times chose to play with my gift over the fancy electronic plastic one his parents gave him, and I woke up christmas morning to hear my host sister playing the music I gave her. We had christmas dinner at about 1:30 in the morning christmas day and I had to get to bed soon after because I was falling asleep at the table. Christmas day was a time for family, as my host dad said, and then he spent most of the day drinking with the other men of the neighborhood in the street. As I walked to the internet cafe at around 10 in the morning to call the family I was pulled into a drinking circle, and you think toothpaste and orange juice is bad...
New years was spent in the capital city with our peruvian friend jose, and a few germans that we met while walking around the city. The tradition here for the new years is to wear yellow (preferably your underwear), and eat 12 grapes at midnight for good luck. Since we were in the capital and felt like tourists, we fully embraced those traditions. Other traditions involve burning a doll dressed up like a person as a way of saying goodbye to the old year, another is running around the block with your luggage as a way gaining good luck for your travels in the coming year. It was a bit weird that there wasn't a countdown at the discoteca where we passed the new year, our group of 7 people rang in the new year with a countdown on my timex, a lil' different from back home.
While I was in the capital I treated myself to a christmas gift of a new guitar. Now I had a guitar with me all 4 years of college, but somehow never got around to learning how to play it. I'm hoping with my bountiful free time here I should be able to put some of it to use. I think between the guitar, training for a marathon I'm running in early July and reading through the stack of books I brought from the states, I should have enough activities to occupy my free time.
As far as actual peace corps work goes, it's starting to get going, which I am actually very excited about. I'm working with the health center doctors and nurses to decide in which of the 66 or so communities around Tacabamba I will be working. We are trying to target the high-risk communities, areas where latrines don't exist and there is little or no education about nutrition, hygiene, and proper garbage disposal. The problem is that the communities closer to population centers such as tacabamba are naturally going to be better educated because of their proximity to the larger town. Because of this I will most likely have to work in some communities that are quite far away. I've heard of some being 8 hours away by foot, I think I'll try to shy away from those, but I may have to walk 2 or more hours one way to get there. So....I might be looking into getting a horse to use to get out to the further communities....but maybe that's just the dream of a silly Texan. I've also volunteered to teach an english class to some secondaria (equivalent of high school) kids during their summer vacations. English teaching is a pretty daunting task that some volunteers shy away from, first because it is very very difficult to arrange a group of kids and get a space to teach in and the resources to teach, and secondly, teaching english is hard. In my situation I only have to deal with the second obstacle because a group was already arranged and they are just inserting me as the "professor of english". Beyond that I'm thinking about hosting swim lessons and doing some kind of video exchange project with the spanish club at my brothers high school, but those are further on the horizon.
So pretty much things are going pretty well here, don't have too many complaints at all.....here are a few pictures for your viewing enjoyment....take care everyone!!!
nice scenery picture, we had to hike up from the bottom of this where the waterfall was at....keep scrolling for waterfall pics...
Paco and Paul, our peruvian tour guides to the water fall...
Bunch of gringos in front of el condac, a waterfall that is famous around the area...
Slightly out of order, but this is me and the host siblings on christmas morning....and I´ve got my christmas morning bed head going....
The host brother a few minutes after midnight christmas morning, choosing to play with my gift over the fancy plastic one....haha...point for Ryan
Host brother in front of the nativity scene in the house
The creative wrapping paper I used for the host siblings gifts, thank you to the grandparents for the newspapers...and yes...I enjoyed reading them first
Lil girl with pretty eyes and I at about 6 o´clock in the morning after an all night quincienera party...
The quicienera birthday girl...
