Carnival and a couple pics...

The big news recently was the celebration of carnival in the capital of the department, Cajamarca city. Until recently, to me, carnival was the fair they unfolded from a bunch of 18 wheelers on the highway near the neighborhood, which looked so enticing as a child but the parents wisely never let us kids go to. But around here it is the celebration before ash wednesday, it's a fat tuesday kinda thing, trying to get all your partying and sins out of the way in one big blow out before the observance of lent. In the states, fat tuesday is celebrated, especially among the college crowd by excessive drinking. Here in peru each neighborhood of the city gangs up and attacks the groups of other neighborhoods with paint, water balloons, and buckets of water. Somehow, all of the opposing forces know that paint is only permitted on saturday, the rest of the days are reserved for water only. The only people safe from this onslaught are those with small children, because of this I saw many parents carrying children that seemed to be a little too large to be carried, solely for protection against attacks of water. What amazed me is how rarely people would get irritated after being soaked with several buckets of water, or hit by a water balloon by an unseen assailant. With the right attitude, it's actually a lot of fun. We were able to get a good group of volunteers together, which is actually pretty fun, because we usually only see the volunteers that live very close to us. It was a chance to meet some new faces from some different places. As gringos, we present a very obvious target to water attacks, especially the girls. Usually the rule is that you attack those of the opposite sex, but for us they very often made an exception, in one instance, chasing us down the street yelling "get the imperialists!!"

While we were in the capital we had the chance to go to the mall. This mall feels very american, it has a food court, movie theater, and an escalator. An escalator doesn't seem to odd to us Americans, but to Peruvians from rural areas, a ride on an escalator is a very daunting task. There was actually a mall employee whose sole duty that day was to stand at the food of the escalator and assist those trying to ride it. Other than that...and that everyone was speaking spanish...it felt just like an american mall experience. We saw the new movie "Seven Pounds" with Will Smith, which I thought was a very good movie. I hadn't heard of it before, but it could have been released in the states several months ago without us knowing.

After a long weekend in the capital, on monday I decided that I start my 7 hour journey back to my site. It turns out I was trying to leave the same day of the biggest parade this city has all year, and my bus stop was on the other side of this parade. After being reassured by several people that the cars were still running, I devoted the 45 minutes necessary to cross the parade, all the while being a target for water balloons. When I arrive on the other side of the parade I am quickly informed that the cars aren't working today. Luckily I stumble across a couple peruvians that allow me to pass the time with them, sharing beers, watching the parade, and throwing water balloons at people. A few hours later the parade subsides and I can cross and find my friends to spend another night in the capital.

After returning to my site on tuesday it took a few days to adjust from relax and speak english mode, to work and speak spanish mode but I think I'm finally there. But....this wednesday I'll be traveling to the coast to attend a conference for health promoters put on by world bank, so I'll have this whole adjustment process to do once more in about a week. But I'm excited to get to see the peruvian coast, aside from Lima, I have not yet had that opportunity. I'm pretty sure I'll still prefer to live in the cooler climate of the andean mountains, but it might be nice to have a few days in the sun and out of the rain.

Alright, I'll stick a few photos on here to show how a smaller parade on sunday looked, as well as some older pics.  I hope that everyone is doing well back at home.  

Some of the costumes were quite unique...that´s a barbie doll being eaten by a dinosaur on top of that guys head.

Members of a band dressed up like cuyes (guinea pigs).

Me posing with one of me many dancers of the parade.

A mill powered by bulls walking in a circle is used to press sugar cane and extract the liquid that will be used to make miel de caña (somewhat like maple syrup, but tastes like it will immediaely cause diabetes), I think they also make a liquor from it as well.

A pretty Peruvian sunset, snapped this one because it reminded me of Texas.

Hiking at a friends site about 3 hours away.

An example of how muddy some of the paths are that I use to travel to the outlying communities, I may be walking on something like this for 30-45 minutes at a time