Just had my first cup of coffee in three weeks...

and it was very, very good.
Well the month of January has come and gone, which is kind of hard to believe, especially because without any seasonal weather changes, and without weekends really being any different from weekdays here in Yanamito, the passage of time feels all screwy. Anyway, the past couple of weeks have been a bit up and down, but overall good I would say. I made it through three weeks of summer school, teaching English and some environmental themes. I’m not going to lie, so far the majority of my environment classes have entailed either old discovery channel DVDs or environmentally themed coloring pages with brief discussions about why the kids should care about the environment. During that time they mostly just fight about who gets to use what markers, over my repeated insistence that they need to be shared. English class is a bit more involved—there’s a whole bunch of kids running around town singing “heads, shoulders, knees and toes” and shouting out “good morning” or “good afternoon” or “hello teacher” when they see me. Overall it has been a slightly taxing but good experience so far. Every day there are anywhere from 8-15 kids who show up, we have class from 8 (usually 8:30—timeliness does not really exist…) until 10 and the kids seem to enjoy it, and the parents, and townspeople in general, seem to be happy that I am teaching. The classroom experience is a lot different from anything I have ever seen in the US. The kids are well enough behaved, although the concept of hand raising is foreign to them, but it doesn’t seem like they have really been taught or encouraged to think. They like being told what to do, they like copying off the board and they like repeating, but trying to get a discussion going is like pulling teeth. I am interested in sitting in on some classes during the school year to see what it’s like when the real professors are at work.
The other big thing that happened this month was that my host mom took the kids and left the house. I’m not going to go into any detail, given how it’s a personal matter for them, but I will say that that has been tough. The house has been really quiet, and my host dad and grandma have been pretty bummed. I also was perpetually confused because anytime anyone discussed anything relating to it, they spoke in Quechua, so I had no clue what was going on. Anyway, after talking to a bunch of higher ups and friends, I decided that the best thing for me would be to change houses. I feel bad about leaving, because Rolando and his mom have both treated me really well and I feel a little bit like I am deserting them, but given the fact that this is going to be where I’m at for two years, I need to do what I feel is best for me. So I am moving into his brother’s house, about a 3 minute walk away. They have a real toilet (!!), a fifteen year old son and two daughters who live outside the community (this is what Peru has done to me—real plumbing takes precedence over children), so all of those birthday wishes I made when I was little asking for a little brother are kind of coming true. I know the family pretty well, they are really nice and they said they’d welcome me like a son and I am kind of excited to be living in a family structure where the parents are actually closer to the age of my real parents. So I moved all my stuff yesterday and hopefully that will be for the best.
Other thing of note: I started playing football (that’s soccer to us). I am still pretty bad, but I vowed to get better. It’s giving me a good in with the younger guys around here too, which I think will be good. And despite my lack of skill, they still invite me to come play, which feels welcoming (they also bet a sol on every game, so maybe they’re just taking me for my money…who knows?). Football is actually another cool way in which the community comes together—whoever wants to play can, so you get a good mix of teenagers, guys in their 20s and a few middle aged men thrown in as well, and they all have a really good time with it. Anyways I hope I get better quick, but if not, there is are a few kids who are begging me to buy a basketball, and although I’ve never been Michael Jordan, if nothing else my height will allow me to make them all think I’m really good.
Also, Quechua classes start tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes. It’s a really hard seeming language, and I’m not much of a language person to start with but I will try my best.
And that’s about it here. As my mom pointed out a week ago, this is the longest I have ever gone without seeing my family (5 months), which was to be expected, but still feels kind of strange (I also ran out of my regular Colgate toothpaste, which didn’t happen in India or Israel…). When I here news from home (job updates, engagements, weddings, random encounters etc) I realize that a lot is going on while I’m off trying to be a do-gooder in Peru. But I am glad I am doing what I am doing, I think I’m really lucky to be where I am and every day I get more comfortable with the people around me. So yea life is good and I hope you all feel the same…

2010!

Happy 2010! So it’s been a pretty interesting week or two here in Ancash, starting with new years. I’ve never been such a big new years partier, so I figured I would just hang out with my host family and do what they do. What they do is stay up until midnight, drink hot chocolate and eat paneton, wish each other “feliz año nuevo” and go to bed. Things were going fine until 10, when I got sleepy and my host dad put on a terrible, dubbed martial arts movie. But I powered through that and at 1130 the snacks were served and we put on Rambo, which was a good change of pace. So I made it until twelve, which I think is the latest I have been up since training ended 6 weeks ago. We went outside and it was a beautiful night with a full moon that illuminated the snow covered mountain peaks—really gorgeous. There were some fireworks and my host mom burned a doll made of old clothes—it’s supposed to bring luck for the New Year, and everyone likes burning things. Then I walked over to the town plaza (up the street) where there were some beers being passed around a circle and really loud whyno music (you should check it out—it’s not good http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04JpzkDbIq8). All in all it was a nice tranquil way to pass the New Year. And New Year’s Day my Peace Corps friends Pete and Kaitlin, who live within walking distance, and I went on a long hike to celebrate amongst ourselves. It was absolutely beautiful, and it proved our theory that where we live, if we start walking in any direction, we’re bound to wind up encountering a stunning landscape. So that was a good start to 2010.
Then this week has been a week of what else but potatoes. My host family harvested their biggest field of potatoes all week long. At this point we’re about ½ to 2/3 done and by my calculations it’s already been over 3000 pounds sent to market. I was invited to come help and for the first time I was actually allowed to do a little work (usually when I go out to the fields I am told “this work is hard, you should sit here in the shade). The whole extended family came out (about 12 people per day) and the jobs are either digging up the potatoes with a pick or sorting them by size. At first I just sorted them, but eventually against everyone’s advice, I grabbed an unoccupied pick. No one believes that I’ve done physical labor before, and unfortunately it has been awhile—my calluses are gone and I have what my old manager at the farm would refer to as “wuss hands”, so within an hour I had a few blisters and I was encouraged to go sit in the shade. But I pushed on for long enough to salvage some dignity and I think that at the end of the day I was more of a help than a hindrance (I hope).
So we harvested a lot of potatoes and then my dad asked if I wanted to accompany him to the market to sell them on Saturday night. I have always been fascinated by markets so I jumped at the chance. So at 11 pm on Saturday night we crowded into the back of a truck with a few tons of fresh produce (potatoes, beans, hot peppers, herbs, corn etc) and about 10 other people and drove two hours down the hill to a city called Carhuaz, where they have this huge market Saturdays and Wednesdays (I also went Tuesday night for the Wednesday market at 1 am in a small station wagon of a cab with 13 people in it. At least I think it was 13—I couldn’t fully turn my head to count…). The market is awesome, a combination of wholesalers and retailers, selling everything from fresh produce grown locally, to tropical fruit brought in from the coast, to fresh meat, to dry goods and clothes. We arrived at about 2:30, set out our 15 sacks of potatoes and slept on the sidewalk until a buyer walked up at 3:30 and asked my host dad how much. We had sold everything by 4, at which point we sat/slept with some other vendors from Yanamito until 6, when we did our grocery shopping for the week. I was amazed by the huge variety of goods, as well as the hustle and bustle of the market, accompanied by throngs of people, many of them women in brightly colored traditional clothes. I’m excited to go back on a full nights sleep and wander around for a few hours.
So yea those were all cool things. The other two notable things were I was coerced into tasting tokush, which is some kind of fermented porridge which tastes OK because it’s loaded with sugar, but was honestly the foulest smelling thing I have ever eaten. That was not so fun—the smell is kind of still haunting me. I also saw a feature on Peruvian TV about a Peruvian midget who dances to Michael Jackson songs in the Times Square subway station and is known as “the mini Michael Jackson”. So if anyone passes him by, give him a dollar for me…
And that’s life. My summer school teaching starts on Monday and the kids seem excited, which is great. And in two weeks we have intensive Quechua language training, which will be cool if I can learn enough to communicate with the older folks who don’t speak much Spanish or follow a conversation. Wish me luck and I hope everyone had a great new year’s.