Friday, September 3, 2010

some mountains some coast, some peru

To start off, this is my dog carrying firewood. My host dad thinks this is the most awesome thing in the world, so here it:

Well it’s September again, which means I have been here just about a year. But not quite—my next blog will be a special one year in Peru edition, for the 8 of you still reading this thing, don’t miss it. Anyway, things here are kind of, well, normal. I have been in Yanamito long enough that I really feel comfortable and not out of place, which is pretty big. The garbage truck is coming every week, which is a huge relief. And we are about 2/3 through the school year so even that feels pretty much routine. Basically this is my life now and a lot of the newness and weirdness has just become the everyday. Don’t get me wrong, weird stuff happens every day. Yesterday on my run, for example, and old lady told me her pig was up ahead walking in the wrong direction and could I get it to turn around and walk back to her. I obliged. Just one example.
This is not to say that life here is boring—it isn’t. And so I move onto what jumps out at me as extraordinary in the past 4 or 5 weeks. Work wise—ummm, not too much. Like I said, the garbage truck comes regularly now, and that had been taking up a lot of my time and energy, so I just have to ensure that that keeps happening. This week I started a trash management curriculum in the school, focusing on separating organics and inorganics and making organic fertilizer (compost, vermiculture etc) that I hope to spread to the community at large so that they use their animal waste and don’t burn stuff as much as they do now. But that’s idealistic future talk, which I’ll stay away from. The really cool thing I did at the beginning of August was a world map project. This is a Peace Corps world wide project, where volunteers, with helpers from their communities, draw mural sized world maps. I was really scared to start it, given my general atrocity in the fields of both art and geography, but Peace Corps gave us a really good manual and with the help of anywhere from 2-7 kids a day for the 2 weeks of their mid-school year vacation there is now an awesome, 2 meter by 4 meter map on the wall of my school. WE may have left off Suriname and a bunch of island nations, but overall, I still think it looks pretty darn good. Now I finally have a tool to help me explain that no, the US in not near Spain, and yes, you need to fly to get from Peru to New York, among other geography related FAQs.


Kind of work related was I had another environment training conference. This time the 17 of us who started last September got together in Huanchaco, a small beach and surfer town about 9 hours north of me. Cons: a lot of what we did was focused on the coast, which no matter how hard I try, I cannot apply to the mountains (marine ecology? Uhhhhh…). Pros: I got to spend a week in a beach town, which included really good fish, my first ever try at surfing (I did it I think kind of), some cool ruins (called Chan Chan, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan_Chan) it’s like the oldest sand castle in the world)

paddling a traditional reed fishing boat called a caballito del mar with my best buddies in Peace Corps and of course, running along the coast and swimming every day. Overall, it was pretty sweet. Also, and this might make us seem creepy, but it’s too good a story not to tell, we found a dead sea lion on the beach and 5 of us (and by 5 of us I really just mean my friend Mark who’s way tougher than me) cut out its teeth, which are like four inches long and are really cool. So yea, fun trip, with a good souvenir to take home as well.
I also have done some cool touring around Ancash. I climbed Huascaran up to the snow again, this time with my host brother and one of his friends and Pete and his host brother. We did it up and down in one day, leaving Yanamito at 5:30 am. I didn’t want to move for the next 3 or 4 days after, but it was a beautiful hike and it was nice to go on an outing with my host brother—I think my host mom was pretty happy about it.

We (and by this I mean my host brother, both to not incriminate myself and cuz he carried it the whole way) also brought back down a chunk of ice from the mountain because that’s what everyone does when they go up there. My host dad then used his wood shaver to make shaved ice, which my mom then served us as snow cones. I asked what flavor they were, to which she responded “sugar”. I can’t say I’m shocked that she’s missing her 2 front teeth.
I also checked out a place about 2 hours away called Hatumachay, which is a rock forest. According to our guide, there was a volcanic explosion millions of years ago which sent a lot of gasses up into the atmosphere and then when it cooled down these gigantic rocks just came crashing down on top of this mountain. I don’t know if the science is right, but it sounded super cool. So anyway, people have been living and hunting up there forever, so we saw some cool cave paintings and then a bunch of people went rock climbing and the lazier of us just walked around, mouths hung kind of dumbly open cuz it was just really really cool and beautiful.


On the sports front, my soccer game is improving (I think this and people have told me, so it must be at least a little bit true), which makes it a lot more fun to play and feel like one of the guys. My parents also brought me a bunch of American sports equipment when they visited—football, mitts and a ball, Frisbees—and I’m having a lot of fun taking those out and trying to teach people how to use them. I have never been an athletic star—my high points are camp softball in high school and maybe running in general—but throw a spiral twenty yards in front of a bunch of people who have never handled an American football before and jaws drop. It’s a lot of fun for me. I have also been going to a bunch of school anniversary celebrations with the teachers from my school and kicking butt in volleyball, but I always feel like I’m cheating. But it’s not my fault that I’m tall right?
And that’s life in the Andes of Peru. It’s hard to believe that in America it’s back to school and almost fall and 2011 and all that, but I think I’ll feel that more when the rainy season arrives and I realize that time is actually passing and not static. Hope you are all well and shannah tovah to everyone whom that applies to.