Christmastime!

Christmastime!
It's hard to believe I've almost been a month at site, technically..we swore in as volunteers on the 21st of November so by Christmas next week I'll have been calling Paccha my new home for a month now. It has been a rather weird time, but I think this last stretch that I spent at site without leaving really helped. I have to plan ahead to leave site, since I'm two hours away from Bambamarca which is the closest thing I have to a connector type town from which I can go up to Chota or down to Cajamarca and I also have to make sure I leave early enough in the morning that I can catch one of the trucks thats leaving...this usually means I'm a bit of a vagabond for a day or so in Bambamarca until I meet up with Annie or take the bus to wherever I'm headed. I found a little restaurant where they let me read and drink cafe con leche for hours so I usually do that when I arrive, then leave to get some internet time, then come back there for dinner...kind of slow paced to say the least, but I end up reading a lot and I enjoy that.
So when I got back from Cajamarca on the 6th I just made the goal that I was going to do my absolute best to get out of my room everyday and let the random conversations I have lead me to different activities. I was sitting outside with my cousins (they are my age and since the national universities are on strike they are back in Paccha waiting to head back to the coast for school)and we having a good time listening to music and I was engaged in a futile attempt to translate red, red wine by ub40 (Peruvians love this song...)when the health post staff came walking by. They said that there was a birthday party the following night for Cecy, who is the representative for the government run aid program 'Juntos' and that I should come, they also told me about a session demonstrativa that was going on in the Municipality that wednesday that they would like me to come to, and about another meeting with a local NGO saturday afternoon, and a Christmas party at the health post Sunday night. I was pretty happy to have some sort of structure to work around and went to all of these events. In the meantime I prepared my first lesson for the first English class I taught, which was on monday in the Casirillo of Quiden about an hour away. I decided to take the 'shortcut' up to Quiden that I had heard about instead of taking the roundabout dirt road which winds around the mountain in switchbacks, and the shortcut was a virtually vertical half an hour, but the views were incredible and I ran into a women who chatted with me for a few minutes about her chakra and her estranged husband. Then I got close to the top and saw some kids watching and waving and knew I had arrived...when I got to the school the kids where watching "Jesus of Nazareth" in Spanish in a dusty little room...the director brought me some plain boiled water to drink and then we got started on the class. Since I didn't know the level I was dealing with but assumed it was basic as they are onl 7-10 I started with the numbers and basic greetings. We played a hot potato game with questions that are answered with numbers (for example, how many brothers do you have, how many schools are in Quiden, how many fingers do you have?) The teachers were taking notes and the kids where really into it so I think I can deem the first class up there a success. I'm not going back until after the new year because (as with most things right now) this isn't really the time for projects to be started, but I also talked with the director of the primary school in Paccha about starting classes there on the 11th of January until mid february two mornings a week. The schools have 2 months of vacations and they call these 'vacaciones utiles' so I'm going to use that time to maybe paint a map of Peru with some of the students and teach these classes and also spend the rest of my time doing my diagnostic on Simon Mayo or in the health post shadowing appointments.
The other night in Bambamarca there was the Christmas party for the RED which is the organizational structure for the health centers and health posts on a district level so I went to that with Annie...I wasn't sure if the Paccha staff was going as they were really vague about it as I think there was some drama with the RED earlier this year and our health center, but I wasn't about to miss a night of networking and bad beer so I tagged along with Annie and happily, our Paccha staff did show up. There was a lovely dinner of either Turkey or Chicken (this was hotly debated, I think it was turkey) and rice, followed by the delicious Paneton bread which is everywhere here around Christmas (all I can say on this is think Irish Spotted Dick type bread-that ones for you Laura :)-it has raisens and little sweets through it and is served with hot chocolate..yum. Afterwards the crates of Pilsen started along with the dancing. It was a fun time, we stayed until about 3 and crashed in the apartment of one of Annies community partners...2 hours later we were awake again for a breakfast of saltines, black coffee, and an egg...but I was just grateful to have had a bed for the evening, and sometimes I can't get over how generous people are here. I've really been learning to rely on their willingness to help....because in some instances I don't have a choice..for example when I arrived in Bambamarca and had exhausted all my time at the internet cafe and sipped through 3 cafes and 200 pages at the restaurant ( a good 9 hours combined since I had arrived at 9 am!!)and felt sort of sick but had my big backpack I went to Annies socios house the only house I know in Bambamarca, her name is Dolly and she said I was always welcome if I needed a place...knocked on the door hoping I could just leave my bag inside and find a place to lie still until I felt better and the welcomed me in but explained that their abuelito had died (grandfather) I tried to make an excuse to leave so as not to bother them when they probably had a lot to deal with but they straight away told me to rest upstairs and leave my things if I needed to...I chatted to my three year old buddy Roy who is their son, and went up to the room...its sort of like the western style with the swinging type doors and uneven crooked wood floors. It was a weird feeling to be lying on an almost strangers straw mattress in the middle of a town I still don't really know, but I've learned to sleep through almost any noise these last few months and on any type of mattress and so I was knocked out. I also knew that Dolly was someone Annie trusted and stayed with often, but I guess my point is that I'm thankful for how kind and welcoming people are here...they don't just give you a room, they make sure you have breakfast before you leave or at least something to set you off on the right foot. I know my family would do the same in the States for people, but here it just seems I'd be so much more vulnerable without these random people offering a bit of help here and there in the form of a bed or rickety room to leave my things in so I'm not trapsing around with a gringo bullseye on my back :)
This weekend I'm in Chota to collect my Christmas mail and see Barbara and Annie before Christmas...apparently Dr. Stalin is in Chota this weekend too an wants to take us dancing tonight so we will see how that goes down, we are also hoping to have a night of bad wine, the film Love Actually, and maybe open our Christmas mail together tomorrow night so hopefully that goes down. We've been debating just how depressing it might be opening our Christmas mail alone at site or if its better to do it together...I'll probably wait though, it would be much more depressing to not have any mail in general and it will give me something to look forward to on the actual day of Christmas as the big deal here seems to be "Noche Buena" or Christmas Eve. Plus, I'm starting to get excited at the prospect of getting to see how Christmas in celebrated in a place as remote as Paccha-its a once, or in my case maybe twice, in a lifetime experience I plan to disfrutar (enjoy) to the best of my ability. So far I've heard we go to mass Christmas Eve, have a big dinner at midnight and drink hot cocoa and eat paneton, then the day of we rest and spend time together....so thats my Christmas in theory but I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes down!

In other news from Paccha, we killed another pig this week but I didn't get to practice sutures again..sad.

Dr. Stalin is officially leaving, he wants to pursue a residency in Gastro medicine and will probably do that in Lima but might return to Bolivia for a little while before he starts...I'm sad but we will keep in touch I think, or at least, hope..and as my Dad said...maybe Dr. Goebbels will be his replacement...terrible!!!

I'm going to have lots of time to learn how to sew and plan on buying my little sticks this week so I can sit outside with the other girls and their kids in the evenings and not just watch...

The girl from Juntos, Cecy, said we will start going on house visits to the different villages in the district of Paccha (there are 21) in January which I'm very excited about...

It is impossible to find diet coke north of Cajamarca...

Annie, Barbara, and I are thinking we will try to visit each others sites in January too, and mine is first on the list as my cousins want to take us dancing in Bambamarca after the new year...we'll see how that goes down.

Anyway, this might be my last blog post before Christmas and maybe even New Year as I plan to stay in site for both of them. Send me some emails ( I can check at the cafe at site) or news of what you all have going on as I'd love to hear...Happy Christmas and lots of love.

Will put up pics as soon as I get a good enough connection and will also put up a more concise blog on my workplan come January :)

Con Carino,
K