Cumpleanos and other adventures

So this weekend turned out to be quite fun, saturday evening I went back to Chacrasana, and they were three different parties going on that night, first I went with my host mom to one around the corner at the house of a volunteer and we had a great time for what turned out to be 5 hours. There was lots of dancing and tiny little shot sized glasses of pisco and coke being passed around every 10 minutes or so. Then came community glasses of cerveza, but I just took my cue from the women I was sitting with as far as how much I drank (significantly less then the men of course..) I chatted in the corner with my host mom and 3 other women for most of the night but managed to escape when they started plotting to find me a man from the sierra (highlands...) They had a pinata and it was lots of fun. After that I went around the block with some other volunteers to another birthday party and stayed for quite some time as it was just down the hill from my house, it was a good time dancing to reggaetone and getting laughed at for being gringos, but the fact is that dancing is part of everything here...i love it! Last night, one of the language instructors started a little class for those of us interested in learning some peruvian moves, so we stayed for an hour after training (about 20 or so of us) it was way fun, and it almost made up for Zumba classes (though I miss you Ashley). Sunday was a sort of lazier day in my community, I did lots of spanish homework (yes its like im back at school)and then later in the day my host mom and brother took me to mass in Chosica,it felt like the longest homily of my life but I think thats because I was going in and out of understanding..Chosica was pretty busy even later in the evening and they have lots of stalls of games and its almost as if its a mini carnival or something. However, after walking around my host mom returned with a hamburger for the three of us which was bright pink, I managed to evade eating this rather successfully by eating the bun and simultaneously smushing the burger back in the bag (gross I know, but necessary) and was quite happy with myself since noone knew the difference :) I would have felt wasteful if it had been something nutritious but there was no way I was eating it! You would feel the same if you had seen it I promise.

This week our language classes have been in a neighboring community called tres de octubre...nobody seems to be able to give a good answer for why the town is named after that date, and none of the combi drivers knew where it was so it was quite a battle getting them to stop and let me off..but I have the hang of it now that its day 3 in that town. Unfortunately of my class of 4 two have been really sick the last few days, and so its a bit daunting seeing what I´m going to have to deal with eventually...not fun..we all got vaccinated (rabies and typhoid for me as i already had the others) on monday, but I think these sicknesses they have are more just the food and everything else making them sick. My language teacher was not to happy, but when your sick your sick I guess theres not much you can do.

The other day I had my first experience with ´security´in Peru, I was walking a few houses up to give a waterbottle back to one of the volunteers and these two men were walking to their car, they kept bothering me verbally but I kept walking as is of course recommended, and when i got back home i asked my host mom who the guy with the funny eye is (he had a weird eye) and she said hes a policeman...hahaha, yeah, if you need something in Peru and you are female, or a foreigner in general, they arent the best source of help :) They actually have special tourist police here to help because the regular police are fairly useless.

We went to the market in Chosica today and I had to collect the ingredients for ahi de gallina which we are cooking tomorrow...sounds simple only I had no idea what half the ingredients were as they are all native to Peru and the market was packed.I managed to get everything I needed though thankfully and even had time to buy a little gift for a baby shower Im going to sunday night. They dont know the sex of the baby yet so I just brought a really cute bib, and it was also a fabulous opportunity to practice my haggling/bartering skills on getting lower prices. Tomorrow we are going to be doing like a mock community diagnostic, asking the community (in my case Chacrasana) to map what they view as important places locally, and essentially getting an idea of how they view their area and whats important. Apparently this will be one of the techiques in addition to our community surveys that we will utilize when at site to get an idea of how different groups (ie women kids men) view their local areas...should be interesting tomorrow, as with most things I find myself wanting to know more about what we should be doing but we are left in the dark to figure it out for ourselves most of the time, we have a safety net being that we are in training but their is very vague guidance, so we will just see how it goes :) I think more than anything its just to put us in situations where we really have to interact about a variety of things with all sorts of people in the community.

The other day I was having a coffee in this little bakery with some people and across the table I heard Irish accents, when they were leaving I said hi and found that they are working at a youth shelter nearby, pretty cool! They invited us over to check it out anytime so I might do that next week...it just made it feel like a small world for a second :) Also, the other night my host bro called the volunteer who stayed with them before me and I got to talk to him for 20 mins or so about his projects in youth development in the department of Ancash...Ancash is probably number one in my choices of where I´d like to go right now, but beyond that Im open to anywhere really.

Below are some pics of Chacrasana, my host mom and jeremy one of my host brothers in Chosica the other night, and pictures with the flowers in tres de octubre, and the dance class at the training center! At the very bottom I put Al Fondo Hay Sitio, I watch this with my host family most nights as its like the local soap opera or something, its absolutely ridiculous and a hundred times worse than eastenders or whatever (not so classy) telenovela Ive ever seen...

This weekend I think I´ll be in Lima a lot which Im looking forward to, I haven´t had a chance to see Lima yet this time, so Im hoping I see some new places I didnt go last time as well...plus Ill have my first community gardening class..

xoox
K