This one time at theater camp....

So I arrived back in my site yesterday morning after more than 17 straight hours, with very little sleep to be had, from what I thought was going to be a course for health promoters put on by world bank. This course was put on by world back but instead it was training by a group called teatrovivo (living theater), who were training professional acting troupes and groups of student actors in ways to present the importance of hand washing in a new and different way. This came as quite a shock to the peace corps volunteers who expected to be sitting in 4 days of lectures.

But first, a trip to the beach and an unfortunate discovery. Alright, the bad news first, I lost my first cell phone of my life. I've been carrying these things around for 7.5 years now and have always kept pretty good track of 'em but after getting of a 12-hour bus ride at 5:30 in the morning my wits weren't about me and I left it in a bus station, only discovered this about 4 hours later....back to the good stuff....Due to a miscommunication between us volunteers and the higher ups in Peace Corps, we arrived a day and a half early to the conference. I had traveled to Piura with a volunteer named Julie, whose site is about 2.5 hours from mine, and we were able to meet up with our buddy from training Eric whose site is only about an hour from Piura city. We had heard so much about piura being close to the beach and decided to head out to check it out. By chance, on the street we ran into the one peruvian we knew that lived in piura, she was the girlfriend of a volunteer and we met the couple a week or two back at the carnival celebration in cajamarca. She directed us to a beach called San Pedro, we took a bus for about 45 minutes and got dropped off in what seemed to be in middle of no where. After some haggling with a moto-taxi driver we were able to get him to take us to the beach and wait for us to take us back. It turned out we hit the beach at a good time and had it completely to ourselves, well, us and the groups of dolphins about 20 yards out from the beach. We started to swim in that direction, but gave it a second thought as eric advised us that dolphins sometimes cluster together to protect themselves from sharks and other predators. But plenty of fun was to be had soaking up the sun and playing frisbee on the beach. The volunteers of Peru 12 have something of a youtube video competition going on, so we shot a couple scenes that we will hopefully use in an upcoming video. After awhile we called it quits, took our moto-taxi back to the middle of no where, and hitched a ride on a truck hauling bags of salt back towards civilization.

The next day we had free, Eric headed back to his site and Julie and I were free to wander the city. Julie was hunting for a hat and I was sent on a mission by my host parents to find some pink shoes called "Bubblegummers" for my host sister. The pronunciation of english words down here can be twisted at times, and it was weird when I had to repeat the shoe brand a couple times in different ways before the salesperson recognized what I was saying....even though I knew the right way to say it....but we both struck gold and found what we were looking for. And i had another unfortunate discovery, it looked like I was developing pink eye in my left eye after swimming in the ocean. Luckily I still had some antibiotic eye drops in my bag from my last 'bout with pink eye, when I took a dip in the gulf of mexico at 5 in the morning after a friends wedding in Galveston, Texas. So I set to diagnosing myself and medicating myself as soon as we got back to the hotel.

Saturday morning we were joined by another volunteer from our group, Jessica, and set off to see what this course was about. The only things that we knew was that it was four days long, funded by world bank, about hand washing, and a small note on the bottom of an email told us to bring zancos and baldes. We recognized baldes as buckets (we were introduced to those during the carnival celebration), but we had to look up to word zancos....it meant stilts.

Within 30 minutes of arriving to the course we found ourselves seated cross-legged in circle with about 45 other youth our age, there was a single candle in the middle of the circle and we were passing a xylophone around, each person had the strike a note, tell a bit about themselves, strike a note once more and pass the xylophone along. Here we discovered that most of the people in the circle had a bit, or a few years of theater experience, and when it came my turn, I just made a bad joke about how hot it was, struck my note and passed it along.

The days were pretty long, starting around 8 and usually getting back to the hotel around 10. The activities of the first day included some ice breakers with some of the actors from universities in Piura and Cajamarca, it was actually really nice to be around educated people of our own age. I have interviewed illiterate 22 year-old mothers in the campo who are on their 3rd or 4th child and it's not quite the same. We learned how accenting different parts of your body while you walked could help you better act the part of a different character, and a lot of other things that quite honestly I hadn't ever taken the time to really think or care about, during the first day it was hard to figure out what we were doing there. It got easier in the coming days as we knew what to expect. The final part of the first day involved separating ourselves into three different groups, and each had to use their bodies and creativity to form a monster that can walk, eat, love, and sleep.....but it didn't have to wash it's hands. In the coming days, the coordinators worked in the theme of washing hands and the acting troupes put together some pretty good skits about hand washing. The second day was interpretive dancing and what not, and the third day involved a little bit more dancing as well as some circus tricks. They actually provided stilts for us and some people picked it up pretty quick. I was a little worried about it because the stilts were made for peruvians, half of my big american foot hung off of the part where you secure your foot. I decided to pass and instead trade some juggle tricks with a friend. After three long days of acting classes and on our last night together, we decided to hit the discoteca. We had a pretty large group and pretty much took over the whole disco, there might have been 15 people there that weren't in our group. After three days of interpretive dance and making human dragons, I needed a beer. I ordered one and was walking back to my seat and was passing by the dance floor when I hear people clapping and saying my name to urge me to dance. Now I'm not going to say that I'm a good dancer, it's actually quite the opposite, it's just that Peruvians like to see gringos do stuff that make them look silly, and this was right up my alley. So I reach out for a hand and start twirling someone around the crowded dance floor. Now, due to my bout with pinkeye, I was still wearing my glasses. Anyone that wears glasses and contacts knows that no matter what, vision with contacts is far superior, so there I am with glasses, in a dark discoteca. That's when I discover the hand that I grabbed and started spinning was attached to a much older and very drunk peruvian woman who is immediately enamored with me, the gringo that picked her out of a group of college aged girls, you could say I wasn't quite feeling the same about her. Instead of just walking away, I decided to bust out the worst dance moves I could think of to make sure she knew very well that I couldnt' dance and it would be no fun asking me to dance again, I was trying every stupid disco move I could think of but it just didn't work. Eventually the song ended and for the most part I was able to avoid her the rest of the nigh. We soon had to leave because our large group that was not buying any drinks was upsetting the management, it was a short but very enjoyable night out with our new friends.

Julie and I took of early the next day to make the long trip back home, and because of this we missed the culmination of the course, a trip to a local school to show off what we had learned. Luckily the acting group will be coming to my site in April to give a few presentations to the community, I still have not decided if I will be dancing and acting in the presentation.

Like I mentioned previously, I arrived back in site yesterday morning, and spent most of the day sleeping. I spent most of today running around town and apologizing to people for returning late, missing meetings, and not calling to advise them (lost my phone and all my phone numbers). And tomorrow I will be leaving for our Reconnect conference, it takes place after a new group has been in site for 3 months and is a time to....reconnect....and share stories about successes and....things that haven't gone so well...(don't believe i should use the word failures). It's on the beach, and I'm sure once more I will get sunburned and have a good time, but hopefully this time less acting lessons will be involved.

Unfortunately I don't have pictures from the conference, I was letting Julie play photographer for the weekend, but as soon as I can get those from her, and possibly some videos as well, I'll put them up on here. I hope everyone is doing great back in the states!!!!