Defining Christmas

I think this Christmas will go down in the books as the only Christmas I ever lost weight.

This is the first Christmas where I was basically on my own. I didn't have any family get togethers, cookie exchanges, Christmas cocktails or white elephant parties. Once all the pomp and circumstance is taken out of the picture, once you're in a place that is far removed from Santa Claus, you are forced to get down to the root of it. What does December 25th mean? I found myself asking my friends "What should we be doing to celebrate?" and "How can we bring some of our traditions to Peru?". After lot's of head scratching we realized, in order to answer any of these questions, we must first figure out what Christmas means to us personally. The easy answer is family and being together, and then a long list of christmas traditions like stockings on christmas morning, eggnog, dinner on Christmas Eve. So when being with family is not an option we concluded we should try to recreate some of the things from our long list of traditions.

Being sick definitely spoiled a lot of plans I had made. I wanted to spend Christmas Eve with some of the families from training and the volunteers that came back to visit. But because the Peruvian tradition is to wait until midnight to eat and then start celebrating, I would have been in pain and miserable trying to stay up late and party. I made it into Lima, where I ended up going to a friends house. We listened to Christmas music (streaming online from a Sacramento radio station) while we cooked a christmas eve dinner and baked cookies. I even made eggnog from scratch, everybody loved it. I called up Sick Boy, cause he is still stuck in Lima and invited him over. He had no plans, and I didn't want him spending Christmas Eve alone. We had a simple dinner but it was very sweet. We decided we didn't want to miss out completely on the Peruvian Christmas tradition. At midnight, Peruvians put the baby Jesus in the manger, then they go outside in the streets and light off fireworks. Since my friend lives right on the cliffs, we decided to take a long walk along the cliffs and watch the fireworks being shot over the ocean.

It was far from the crazy party I had imagined it would be. We saw next to nobody on our walk. But there were a lot of fireworks at midnight. The night was beautiful, I've never seen Lima so tranquil. Everything was so lovely and the company was so wonderful that we ended up walking for hours and didn't get home until 3. In the end, it was very difference than I imagined the night would be, but I will always remember it warmly.

Christmas day very simple as well. I ended up excepting an invitation to the house of my asistant country director of Peace Corps for a christmas meal. I am so happy I went. Marco is such a wonderful man and his family is so beautiful. Being there satisfied the longing I had for a traditional family get together. But what was ironic to me about this holiday meal is that it felt more like the forth of July than christmas. One of Marco's high school friends (they're from Mountain View, CA by the way) was visiting with his family. So all the kids were playing on the big trampoline, the slip n' slide and the pool. We ate out on the patio and it was a nice summer day. The kicker was that we were eating turky, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and green bean casarole. So it was a traditional american holiday meal set to the backround of a summer BBQ. But being at Marco's really made my Christmas. It gave me what I was missing and afterwards I felt like I had successfully completed my definition of Christmas.....almost

I was feeling really stressed out at the end of the night. More than stressed, I was feeling o lot of anxiety. I was thinking too much about the next year and all the challenges that lay ahead of me. So my friend and I went out to a very posh bar built into a cliff and had a christmas cocktail. It was the first alcohol I had consumed since before falling sick. So, two American girls sat in Peru on christmas night, drinking Pisco Sours, reflecting on 2007 and talking about our hopes and fears of 2008.

I hope that next Christmas I will be healthy and also more at east with myself and how I feel about where I am. But I also hope I will be fortunate enought to have as peaceful and blessed Christmas as I did this year.

Pre-Holiday Hang-ups

I've been really uncertain as to where I will be spending my first Christmas in Peru. I haven't put too much stress on finalizing plans, cause one of the best Christmas' I ever had was my very unplanned Christmas I spent in Germany. Also, some of the most well thought out plans, turn out to be the most disapointing. I figured I would just sit back, relax and see where this holiday in a foreign land takes me.

One of the big problems I have run into, is that I haven't found a place that feels like home. The only thing that really feels like home to me are my Peace Corps Volunteers (specifically Peru 9). But as we are encouraged to spend Christmas with our host families, assembling the whole gang like we did for Thanksgiving, is out of the question. Never the less, I was still hopeful of a new experience and a merry Christmas.

But two days ago I got really sick. I think it's just a virus (I hope it's not bacteria) and has rendered me completely useless and a pathetic mess of sweat and a bunch of other not so pleasant bolidy fluids. Even then, the pain and exhaustion didn't damper my holiday spirit. It wasn't until I talked to my mom tonight on the phone, that the bulk of everything really hit me. I'm sick, I'm in a foreign country, and I miss my family. I feel like I down play how much I miss home and miss all my friends and family. In truth, I love being in Peru and I love the expereince, but there are times when being so far away from my family really sucks. Tonight is one of those nights

Being so close to Lima, I get to visit other volunteers when they come through. There have been a hand full of Peru 9ers coming and going as significant others and family members come to visit them. One PCV got engaged today! Also, a bunch of my Lima based friends flew home for the Holidays. Everytime I say goodbye to one of them, I think about how I might feel and how nice it would to go home for Christmas. It would be nice, but I try to not think about that. For now I'm trying to focus on resting and getting better so when Christmas finally rolls around, I will be ready for it. Although, the big day in Peru isn't Christmas, it's Christmas Eve. And here they stay up till midnight when they put the baby Jesus in the manger and then eat a huge meal and party all night. Christmas Eve is tomorrow. It may take a Christmas mircale to have me partying hard in 24 hours.

Show Me the Money

I have been told by more than one person that I left the country at a good time. Being relatively fresh out of college with next to no experince and the economy in a recession, I would agree with the aformentioned statement. Lucky for me, despite the subprime morgage collapse and oil at a 100 dollars a barrel, the US government continues to pay me my monthly stipen. However, because the dollar has depreciated, the governemnt is actually giving me more money. Instead of making a whopping $300 a month, I`m now wraking in close to $340. Now try not to be too jealous of my fat pay check, because the amount of Soles I recive is exactly the same. And now the money I was able to put away before I left the states, will be worth less because of the soaring inflation. Hopefully, by the time I return home in two years, the economy will be on the rebound and maybe someday I may actually be able to buy a house in California.

Yesterday I went to hear the nobel prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz speak at a fancy country club in Lima. He was a very charasmatic speaker and it was a real pleasure to hear what he had to say. His talk focused mainly on the economic situation in America, how we got into this mess and his views on how we could get it out. I could talk for hours about what he said, but I`ll skip the summary completely. I`ll just say it was very refreshing to listen to a US economic strategy that had no political or personal motive behind it, and I completely agreed with everything that he said. Something really interesting about his speech was that it was given to an audience that was overwhelmingly Peruvian, yet he only brushed over Peru`s economic situation. I went with a friend from Mexico who had Stiglitz as a professor in Colombia. Her take on his speech is that it was a kind of cookie cutter speech that he could give in any number of developing countries. Another thing that stuck out to me about the event was that half of the audience were wearing headphones and recieving a simulatneous translation. I`ve never seen this live but it blew my mind to think about how hard it would be to be the translator. Put that at the top of the list of jobs I would never be able to do!

Then today I was reading one of my Newsweeks and there was an article on hip hop culture and the Euro. One of raps most recognized characteristics is it`s flaunting of money and "bling". Now, because of the weak US dollar, raps most notable artists are showing off and singing about Euros instead of dollars. When Nobel Prize winning economists and Jay-Z are on the same page, it`s a good sign the rest of America needs to get on board.

On a completely unrealated note, one of my hosts moms daughter had a baby yesterday. So today the newborn was over and everyone was so busy with the baby that nobody was paying attention to the two 1 1/2 years olds running around and destroying the house. I had been undecided until that moment as to what I would be doing for Christmas. I felt a responsibility to spend it with my host family. But after realizing that that would mean spending a day 20 family members who don`t care about me and think of me more as a burden than anything else, I`ve decided I will be spending the holiday with people I actually care about. I still don`t have a definite plan, but I feel really content knowing I won`t be miserable and feel alone in a sea of chaos.

Sticken' it to the Man

In this entry I am going to talk about the frustrations I have encountered while working with nuns. Contrary to what one might automatically think, the "man" I refer to in the title is not God. In fact, I have been very surprised at how my lack of religion and the nuns devotion to religion, hasn't really got in the way.

Catholicism seems to follow me around wherever I go. Some of my best high school friends are Catholic, 80% of my boyfriends have been catholic, my long-time college roommate was so catholic she even got me involved with projects in her church. I studied a year abroad in Spain, where the catholic church is the historical basis of their society, what with the whole Spanish Inquisition, explosion and killing of all the Jews and Moores. I don't know, maybe you've heard about it. And now I find myself in Peru. It doesn't have the same Historical fanaticism like Spain did. But Peruvians in general seem to be much more religious than the people in Spain.

I've gotten to the point where I cross myself before and after every meal. It's just easier to do so than to explain everyday why I do not. Plus, even though crossing myself doesn't hold a religious meaning to me, I think it is important that everyone who is as fortunate in life as I, should take a moment to reflect on that and feel grateful.

So the religious aspect aside, the nuns and I are finding where are differences lie. The other day, I sat down with the head nun to plan out my projects for next year (the school year ends this coming week and summer vacation starts). She basically told me the projects I was doing at the moment weren't beneficial and she didn't want me to continue with them. The head nun wanted me to help with homework and teach workshops on self esteem, and not fool around with my silly projects that are a wast of time.

It's not just the catholic organizations, but the society of Peru that believes one in only capable of learning in a classroom. A strict schedule and memorization are the two main ingredients the nuns use on to instill all of life's lessons in the children. As Peace Corps volunteers, we are told that this traditional style of teaching is the only thing most Peruvians know, so it is part of our job to introduce non-formal education to not just the kids, but the teachers as well.

The head nun explained how she wanted me to be teaching life skills. To her, naturally, one could only learn life skills in a class room, memorizing the definition of what a life skill was out of book. During my site visit, I sat in on a catechism class that Bianca taught at the orphanage. The class consisted of her standing in front of the class and reading line by line off a sheet of paper. The students wrote down all the lines, and when they had copied the whole page, class was over. That was it! But that is traditional education, copying and memorization. So I explained to the nun, all of the life lessons my painting project had taught so far. I told her how we all went to the paint store and each kid had to pay their own way and tell the cobrador the stop. At the paint store, they were in charge of telling the worker how much paint, what colors we wanted and had to pay attention as he described all the different kinds of paints. We held a contest and then a formal election to pick which drawing we would paint first. I explained that there was much more to the project besides painting. It takes a lot of preparation to paint a mural on a wall. There needs to be a big plan that maps out all of the steps and what order we will paint them in and who has what job. Then everyday, there is the preparation, the actual work and then the clean up. All of these things not only teach but are practical life lessons.

The head nun was really impressed that all these life skills were being taught by something as silly as painting. It was mildly frustrating to me, that as an adult, she couldn't have figured this out for herself. But then, if you have only ever known traditional learning methods, I guess non-formal education would never occur to you.

This is only one of many difficulties I have faced with the nuns. Their strict order and formality definitely clashes with my open-ended, fun loving style. The painting project is the only place I have had success is maintaining my non-formal style. For most other aspects of my work in the orphanage I have had to conform to their "my way of the high way" method. I am really looking forward to summer vacation as the kids will be spending time with family member's for 2 months and there will be no work for me in the Hogar. Stickin' to the man is a tough job cause most of the time, the man wins and you feel like you can do nothing right. I'm supposed to be creating positive change by introducing non-formal education to the traditional Peruvian system. But how does one change 2,000 years of tradition that is the Catholic church?

Kids Say the Darndest Things

I was walking to the internet cafe this evening, writing my latest blog entry in my head, when I stopped dead in my tracks. I saw something so crazy, I couldn´t believe my eyes. I stared in disbelief and finally when I came out of shock, I went to examine it to see if it was real. In a clothing store, right next to the internet cafe I always go to, was a UC Davis Aggie Jam tee shirt in the display window! A bright golden yellow, UC Davis tee shirt, in my little town, in Peru! And they were selling it! It was circa 2003. I remember everyone that went to the Aggie Jam got one for free, they were all over campus. I don´t have any money on me right now, but I am totally buying that shirt.

Okay, now back to what I was going to write about before my whole world was turnd upside down by a tee shirt.

I was never formally trained to work with kids. While I do feel I have some what or a nack for managing rugrats, there are still times I feel I have no freaking idea what I´m doing. I know kids ask a lot of questions, and I know sometimes they are questions that they wouldn´t understand the answers to even if I told them. But the cultural differences and the fact that they are under the law of nuns, there are some questions I don´t know how to tackle. And then there are questions so out of left field, I´m amazed they even have heard of these things, and these are the questions that always embarras me. Case and point, one of the little girls in the orphanage asked me today if I had pubic hair. That might not have been such a big deal, but then she asked me if I had a lot or a little. It´s not every day a 7 year old makes you blush.

That wasn´t the only "fun" question" I was asked today. I was talking to kids at my table during lunch about my job at the other home I work at. One of the little boys asked me if the girls who had babies were married. I said no and he asked me if they were going to hell for that. I was at a loss. How do you explain to a little boy, sexual abuse and the horrible repercussions it has on young women. I finally said to him, it wasn´t their fault they had babies, God knows that and he´s not mad at them.

It´s pretty unusal to get so many loaded questions in one day, but that´s why I´m writing about it. It was a special day. I´ve been taking the kids to the dentist in Lima in the evenings. Tonight I took two little boys. Of course, everwhere I go I get cat called. Even when I am holding hands with little kids. Today one of the little boys asked me "how come all the men make kissing noises at you when you walk by them?" That might now seem like it´s that tricky a question to tackle, but out of the three, it was the hardest one in the end to deal with. I ended up saying nothing more than the men where uneducated and it offended me.

Today I got mad. It´s a rare thing for me to get mad. Usually I never get more than frustrated or irritated. It usually takes something significant to make me fume with intensity. I have to start this story with an expanation of the public transportation in Peru. It´s not public, they are privatized busses. For this, there is no regulation or fixed price. The cobrador is the doorman who opens the door and comes around the bus to collect the money. Depending on where you are going and what day of the week it is, the fare can change. Because there is no set price that foreigners know how to pay, the cobradores always try to over charge them. Seeing as I am white and taller than every cobrador I have ever met, they always try to rip me off too. And I ride the micro busses everyday, so getting ripped of is a daily battle for me.

It is an issue of extreme irritation to me. Since I know what the fare is everywhere I go, I am able to fight for the appropraite amount of change I should get back. This gets very tiring and always puts me in a bad mood. It´s silly cause in reality, I am only fighting for about 15 american cents, and it´s not that big a deal. But it is the principle of the thing. Usually once I demonstrate I know what the fare is and demand my change, I get little resistece and they hand the change right over. Sometimes I even get a look of respect from the cobradors. But sometimes I have to put up a real fight. In the end, I always get the appropriate change. Today on the micro bus, I was paying for myself and the two little boys I was with, and the cobrador tried to rip me off big time. And when I told him to give me my change back he refused. He claimed the fare was always that much and we started to argue back and forth. I could see the crowd on the bus was agreeing with me and that I was kind of scaring the kids. He would not give me my money back and there was really nothing I could do about it. But he wasn´t ripping me off, it wasn´t my money. The orphanage pays when I take the kids somwhere. I think this is what made me so irate. I wanted to scream at him "you are stealing from an orphanage, what kind of man are you?". But I didn´t cause that would have made the kids feel horrible. Instead I sat an brewed in my anger. As I was getting of the bus I said it to him when the kids couldn´t here. He looked shocked, and I felt good. After only a few minuets I didn´t feel so upset.

And now that I saw the UC Davis tee shirt, I am feeling great. I am interperating this sign of good things to come. Things have been great for me lately, but I´m hoping with omen, things are only going to go up.

Molestations

My biggest fear before leaving Peru was getting sick with some unknown, prolonged illness. By some amazing act of God, I have been one of the healthiest PCV`s in Peru 9. Unfortunantly, not everybody has been able to dodge the foreign bacteria and bizzare ailments. The Peru 9er placed in the most aisolated and underdeveloped site in our group has been pulled from his pueblo and placed in Lima until they doctors can figure out what the heck is wrong with him and how they can fix it. The extreem conditions he was living under at site gave him mad street cred in our group, only in his site are no streets, so it`s just cred. But it seems these very basic standard of living may be the cause of his sickness, and they are now talking site change. We have very affectionately named him Sick Boy. And while it seem this name could be disheartening, he has embraced it.

There really is nothing worse than feeling icky. I wish more than anything I could give him some of my health. But because I can`t I can do the next best thing which is be there for him if he needs me. There has already been talk about him coming to my orphanage to help out so he can have something to do and not feel so worthless. I`m really excited about the possibility of him coming out to my site. The little boys will love him! Not only because he`s the only person in my group who can beat me in a hand stand compitition, but because he would be such a breath of fresh air to the boys cause they only have interactions with me and the nuns.

In comparasion to sick boy, I feel like I have no room to complain. And I honestly don`t feel I have much to complain about at this point. I am feeling really good and enjoying life to it`s fullest. But I do have some anecdotes to share.

My room is made of concrete and has a bamboo roof. Lima is a pretty humid place and apparently the material that my room is constructed out of is a breeding ground for mold. To try and combat the problem I leave my window open 24 hours a day. Window screens don`t exist in Peru, not even in the Ritzy parts of Lima. So this has brought about a new annoying problems. Some how there giant flying beetles, which I have never seen anywhere else except my bedroom, have been making there way through my mini blinds some how by the droves. They only come at night and make this horrible buzzing noise so I can hear them as soon as they start battleign their way through the one opening they can fit through. Because they are attracted to the light, when ever I am in bed with my laptop, they fly right at me. Last night I got dive bombed in the face 3 times, and one of them got all tangled in my hard. It was super gross.

But last night I expereinced somthing even grosser than giant beattles. As I was making my way back to my house around 9 PM last night. I was walking down the lonely dirt road that goes to my town and as I took a turn I found myself right in front of a guy peeing. He was smack in the middle of the road and made no attempt to hide anything. This is actually something pretty common in Peru and is also something that I don`t think I will every stop bothering me. I had no choice but to keep on walking right towards him. In a way it was like the car crash affect. The part of me that is still shocked and appoled wants to stare in disbelief. Plus I feel like staring might cause him to have some kind of shame and out of embarrasment would find a corner or a tree next time. But I know that wouldn`t have the desired effect but probably say top the guy I was interested in him. As I passed by him, still urinating, he said to me "Preciosa, como estas?". It was trully disturbing. That has topped every other time I have been hit one.

Hanging out

The lack of fellow PCV`s in Lima has forced me to go out and make new friends. But one of the perks of not hanging out with PCV`s, is that normal people don`t live with host families and don`t abide by 10,000 rules in daily life. So I can stay with them in their houses and behave as I used to when I had an indepent lifestyle. It`s really weird hanging out with people who aren`t experiencing the same things as I am. But in turn they are learning A LOT about Peace Corps cause it´s all I really talk about. It`s funny to me to realize that there are Americans living in Peru that don`t have to go through many of the things I have had to get used to. But now when I need a break from life at site, I am not doomed to roam the streets of Lima alone! These are a few pictures of a day this past weekend I spent destressing with friends. As you can see, I get to be a goof ball with them which is nice cause at site I feel like a much more serious person than I am. Often times,

I feel like I can`t do anything right. So having made these friends has really made a big difference in my sanity. I feel I have adjusted pretty well to my new living and work situation, but it will continue to be a constant struggle and will never be easy. This month will be especially great becuase it`s december and there will be a ton of PCV`s coming through Lima for vacations and for the holidays so I should have a pretty full social calender. It`s not such a bad life.

Yay For Coffee and Exercise

Yet another fabulous picture from my reconnect trip. As Peace Corps volunteers we have a lot of time on our hands, so we have to find new and creative ways to entertain ourselves. Here we are playing the game 3 flies up with an inflatable doll. Her name was Judy.

Meanwhile back at site, life has resumed to it's slow pace where daily events that are normally insignificant are the high lights of weeks sometimes even months. I had two of these seemingly mundane occurrences this week. The first is that I bought a french press. No more instant coffee for me! This morning was the first morning I brewed up a cup, and it was amazing. I bought the coffee from a volunteer in the north part of the country. His tiny village is in a coffee growing region and even though he is a youth development volunteers he's trying to help out the coffee growers as well and sold a few kilos of coffee to us at reconnect. So not only does drinking the coffee rouse my senses, awaken my taste buds and put a smile on my face, but it also makes me feel like I'm doing a good thing by supporting the local farmers in a fellow volunteers site. The reason it took me 3 months to buy a french press in the first place is because the only ones I'd seen were at Starbucks and were being sold for 90 soles. I found at my last trip to the super market, one for 15 soles. It was in a box and the picture on it looked like it could be pretty crappy but I was fed up with instant coffee and decided to take the chance. It's actually a pretty nice french press, no worse the ones they were charging an arm and a leg for at Starbucks. So HA! who needs you, expensive corporate conglomerate? I am a peace corps volunteer and am getting more frugal and more creative by the day.

My second exciting thing from this week is that my gym got two new bikes. At almost any other gym this may not be that big a deal. But at my gym there had previously only been 4 cardio machines, 3 of which were broken and the other was so old and beat up it was hardly worth the effort. These two new bikes are actually decent machines and I can finally supplement the exercise classes with my own cardio. So I tried out the bike for the first time last night and now I can add it to places in Peru I've been hit on. I don't really consider the gym too strange a place to get hit on, but I hate having to take the headphones out of my ears to listen to some idiot hit on me. But I'll take getting hit on every now and then if it means getting a workout like I did last night. Between the coffee and the exercise I will hopefully be more awake, more fit and happier.

Back to Reality...Or Something Like It

I knew I was officially home from my reconnect vacation when I walked in my front door sunday night to all 10 of my host family members crammed in our little living room all watching my host dad and the screaming baby. The baby was sick, again. So the family has gathered round to watch it be "cleansed". Even though my host family is poor and not well educated, I like to think that they are a bit more intellegant than the average peruvian living under similar conditions. I was amazed that my host mom new that the Alps were the mountain range that ran Germany because most Peruvians can`t find their own country on a map. True story.

But my pride for my host families mental superiority was hurt after witnessing this ritual they did with the baby. When I walked in the door, my host dad was rubbing newspaper, rather aggresively, all over the baby`s body. Naturally the baby was screaming from it`s displeasure, but my host dad continued to do this for a good 5 minuets, going over the same area multiple times and paying special attention to her head and face. After he was done, he pulled out a liter and, set the newpaper on fire and dropped it on the ground for it to burn. As ash rained down on my newly washed white sweater, the family just watched the newspaper burn while nodding in agreeance that "there was a lot of air". I could pretty much guess the belief my family had about why they had done this to the sick baby, but I still had to ask. Apparently, by rubbing the newspaper all over the body, it takes away all the "sick air" and you could tell the baby was really sick by how quickly the newspaper burned.

I could have just left it at that, but I had to pry more. I asked them if the simple task of rubbing the newspaper over the body takes away all the air, why then, was it necessary to burn the newspaper? There response: burning the newspaper is the only way to kill the bad air. Okay, why then was it necessary to burn it in the house and get everything all ashy? So the burning newspaper doesn´t blow away, apparently that`s really bad. I decided to leave it at that. There are a lot of crazy beliefs in Peru, especially about sickness. There is one famous "cure all" many peruvians believe in where you pass a guine pig over a sick person, then kill the ginue pig and cut it open and POOF. What ever ailment the person had been suffering from transfers to the ginue pig and the person is cured. Burning newspaper I can handle, but if I walk into the house and they are sacrificing animals in the living room, I`m outta there.

Sun, Friends and Turkey!

Reconnect. I don't even know where to begin. It would have been a fabulous vacation even if I hadn't been a Peace Corps volunteer who'd spent the last 6 months living out of her comfort zone in a crazy new country. But the second I stepped onto the overnight bus bound for trujio, I felt back in my element. Probably because I was with Danielle and I always feel more at home when I´m with a good friend

She had an artisan fair that she came in for last saturday, so my vacation started the moment I saw her. Our reconnect was held in the beach town Huanchaco, which is right outside one of the main cities, Trujio. Danielle and I arrived at our Hotel at 7 in the morning. When we walked into the gate and we were greated with cheers from 10 other volunteers who had arrived even earlier than we had. They were eating breakfast by the pool. I was elated from that moment, and the feeling never left. We had all of sunday free to explore the town, see the sights and prepare for our presentations. But instead we spent the day at the beach and by the pool, drinking boxed wine. It was a productive day because we were "reconnecting".

I had a big first in Huanchaco, my first ceviche. For those of you who have no idea what ceviche is, it is the most famous dish from Peru. Usually within the first conversation I have with a Peruvian, after they ask me if I'm religous and how much I weigh, they ask me if I've tried ceviche yet. It is a dish of mixed raw fish with onions and lemons juice. I was pretty scared to try it cause I've heard many horror stories about ceviches gone bad and days spooing the toilet. But I felt the time had come try this infamous delicacy. It was delicous and I didn't get sick. Success! I even ate it again afterwards. Apart from the ceviche, I really treated myself food wise. Because Huanchaco is full of restaurants run by expats, there is no shortage of American comfort food. I had the best french toast of my life and cannot wait to return to this charming beach town if only for the cuisine.

The actual event of reconnect was nice. We were able to share our experiences of our first three months at site and find new motivation to go back. The group dinamic of Peru 9 was really tested this past week. Since our swearing in, we have had three peru 9ers go back to the states. We spent an entire afternoon digesting one of the more serious cases, and for me, it was desperately needed group therapy. I had been trying to deal with the stuff that has happened alone in my room and it wasn´t doing me any good. After a lot of tears and talking through our thoughts and fears, I think all of us are processing what has happened better. We also had a group member open up to us and share something very important and I feel this revelation brought us even closer together as a group. All and all it was a very significant reunion for all of us.

But we didn´t let all this seriousness take over the vacation. We´ve all had too much serious time at site that when we weren´t in tech sessions, we were being as silly as we possibly could be. Our guys are some of the funniest people I have ever met and when they are together they are an unstopable force of nature. There was an entire night where they dicided to be pirates and not one of them broke character for a full 3 hours. We had the privaleg of hearing one of the greatest pirate, improve, monologes preformed by Vishal to a table of American ladies sitting next to us at dinner one night. I did my part of crazy debatchery by, of course, skinny dipping with the girls in the ocean late one night.

This Thanksgiving will probably remain one of the more memorable one´s of my life. It was significant mainly because I was able to spend it with the people I love the most in this country. We spent the day on the beach, drank beer and ate ceviche. We arranged for an Ex-pat with a restaurant to make our thanksgiving dinner. It had all the classic trimmings and after our meal we sat around a bon fire eating our pumpkim and peacan pies.

It was pretty sad to go home after such an amazing week. But I will be seeing everyone again soon. At least half of my group will be in Lima at one point or another in the month of December. And then a big group will be spending New Years together at a beach resort on the north coast. When I went home on saturday, I arrived so late in Lima I didn´t feel it was safe to head back to site, so I called a friend to see if I could crash at her place. Turns out, she was celebrating Thanksgiving dinner that night with a bunch of Americans and Peruvians, so I got two Turkey dinners. And we ended up going out till 4 in the morning. I felt that my vacation was complete cause Huanchaco was more of a tranquil vacation and I didn´t party very hard. I returned to site today feeling very fulfulled and conent. I´m ready to go back to work and I look forward to the upcoming holiday season here in Peru.

Every Accomplishment Counts

I'm sitting in the Peace Corps office counting down the hours till I leave for reconnect. The 4 volunteers that serve in the Arequipa, flew into Lima this morning so I've already had a chance to talk to some people from my group who I haven't seen in 3 months. I went to a conference this morning for international volunteers in the area. I had high hopes for the opportunities to meet other volunteers in Lima and learn what type of work they do. It ended up totally sucking. We did things like draw pictures about how we felt the first 24 hours we arrived in Peru. The activities were not things I wanted to be doing after having been here for 6 months already. And it wasn't very helpful to me anyways, because these were all people who lived and worked in the city of Lima and couldn't relate to my experiences at all. So I cut out early to spend the afternoon with volunteers I could really relate to, my fellow PCV's. The one good thing about the workshop was eating lunch with the group and chatting it up with volunteers from Australia, Switzerland and Italy. I didn't find the workshop helpful in anyway, but I'm happy I went cause it allowed me to see a new part of Lima and meet different people.

I have had a few mild success this past week. The first being that I was moved up from the intermediate step class at my gym to the advanced class. Now one would think, that it is the gym member who elects what level class she would like to attend. But one day I showed up for my intermediate class and they told me I wasn't allowed to be in it anymore cause I had gotten too good. This is an accomplishment that I am not terribly proud of, but it just reminded me of my personal strengths in life. While I struggled for months and months to move up from my "intermediate-high" language level in Spanish to "advanced-low", it only took a matter of weeks for me to be promoted in step class, a thing I had no experience upon arrival in Peru. Now if only sports could get me into grad school....

My second big accomplishment for the week was completing my Community Analysis report. I haven't sat in front of a computer for hours on end trying to make a deadline since college. I spent two full days at the Peace Corps office writing my report and making my power point presentation. Each afternoon I would take a break and go to Starbucks and walk around the mall. At the end of the day I felt a way I hadn't felt in long time, normal. Putting in a long day of work around familiar American commodities, English speakers and taking coffee breaks at Starbucks made me feel the way I used to back in the states. Only feeling "normal" felt weird and unnatural. Then the realization hit me that my definition of normal had changed and for the first time I recognized that I have changed. And it's not just my habits and day to day life that I have gotten used to. I do feel like a different person in many ways than I was when I left the states 6 months ago. I think and feel differently. But don't worry, even with all my newly gained maturity, I am still the same fun lovin Ali of sunny Cali.

I was nervous about turning in my report. Since I was in the office and my boss new I was going to be finished with it before the end of the day, she asked if she could send it out to all the other volunteers as an example for the people who were struggling. I didn't like this idea at all, but reluctantly agreed wanting to make my boss happy. After turning it is she called me up to her office to tell me she wasn't going to be sending it out to the group. Great, I thought. It was so bad not only is she embarrassed to send it out to the group, but I'll probably have to rewrite it. Turns out, she was really impressed with my report and didn't want to send it out because she thought it was so good it would freakout all the other volunteers and think they would have to live up to this high a standard. Obviously, this made me feel great and this is an accomplishment I am terribly proud about. The kind of accomplishment that might actually help me get into grad school. As for my Spanish level, I'm just gonna keep on trucking and eventually it will be one of my finest accomplishments.

Goodies From Home

Today is the best I have felt in a while. This whole week in general has been good. Tomorrow is the last day I will spend at site for at least 8 days, so knowing a well needed vacation is close, helps a lot. I've been pretty busy, which is a nice change. I've started a mural painting project at the orphanage and we're trying to get the first one done before I leave. I put up a picture of the orphanage, just cause I've been bad at uploading pictures. I'm gonna make an effort to post more. I also have a huge community analysis I am writing for my reconnect next week. So I am in the office in Lima today to use the computers and will spend all day Friday here getting it ready too, hopefully that will be enough time. It should be , as long as I spend my time working on the project and not blogging and writing emails to everyone.

I hadn't been in the office to check my mail in a month. I got a few letters and a package and I can't put into words the way I felt upon seeing the names of people who had sent me things: Amanda, Amber and Spencer. All people I went to high school with, well, I've really known all of them much longer than that. The package was from Amanda. I have no idea how she found the time in Med school to put together such a personal package. I opened it up and the first thing I saw was bright autumn leaves. This is something uniquely Amanda. One of her moms favorite things was the color of the trees during the fall. So this gesture is as close as sending an actual hug as Amanda could have done. As you can see by the picture, I got a bunch of other goodies too. Thank you to all my wonderful friends. I wish the post wasn't so expensive here or I would spend hours making beautiful cards to show my gratitude. I'm coming back next summer and am bringing Peruvian treasures for everyone!

Life in the Slow Lane

It seems to me, my life has gone from new and crazy to slow and boring. I don´t feel I have all that much to write about. Actually, I have a bunch of entries written but I haven´t posted them because I feel they wouldn´t be interesting to any one. Things that once would have shocked me and made me write a detailed email about the strange things I encounter, now seem redundant. It could be that I have fallen into a bit of a slump and lost my vigor to capture all the things that are happening around me. But honestly, I don´t feel that anything worthy to write home about has happened recently.

I feel I am in desperate need of a vacation from my everyday life. Luckily, in just a few days I will be leaving the dusty roads of Buena Vista for the sunny beaches in the north on my first vacation in 6 months. That is, if you don´t count Peru itself as a type of vacation, which I do in many aspects. I really can´t wait to escape the day in and day out hassles I put up with on a regular basis. I look forward to not having to feel nervous about standing in front of troubled teens trying to generate discussions in a language that is not my native tongue. I can´t wait to be among friends with whom I feel like myself and talking to them is relaxing and fun instead of hard and embarrassing.

On Friday morning I will go into the PC office and Lima and work on my community base line presentation for my 3 month reconnect. I will spend the night in Lima on Friday cause I have to be at a workshop for international volunteers in the area, early in the morning. That evening I will get on an overnight bus and wake up Sunday morning in Trujillo. From there I will travel to a hotel on the beach where my reconnect is being held. Monday-Wednesday is the reunion and then we are all staying an extra day so we can spend thanksgiving together. After that I don't know what I will do. I don´t have to be back at site till Monday. I´m either going to spend the weekend on the beach or go up into the mountains for the first time. No matter what I do, I´m going to be spending time with friends. Contrary to what I thought orginally, spending so much time on my own has gotten harder and more lonely. I thought I would get used it by 3 months, but it has only made me feel more alone. I´m anxiously counting down the days till I leave. Only 4 nights to go. And I´ll be pretty busy trying to get everything ready and cram in extra time at the Hogars to make up for the week I am going to miss. At least I know my new life in the slow lane will move pretty quickly while I am hustling to get everything done on time.

A Plague on Both Your Houses

A pox has broken out...the chicken pox that is. Here at the orphanage there are two buildings. In the upstairs of these buildings are the dormitories. The girls sleep in one and the boys sleep in the other. Last week the youngest boy came home from school with an itchy red spot. That´s him on the left. His name is Christian, he´s 5 and is normally the sweetest little boy in the Hogar. The sisters concluded it was chicken pox. Fearing a Hogar-wide break out, they immediately pulled him our of the boys dormitory and quarantined him....in the girls dormitory.

I didn´t quite see the logic behind this, but I don´t feel I´m in a position to be telling these nuns who have worked in these types of establishments for decades how I think things should be done. What really surprised me is that the next two kids to get the pox, were boys. I figured this was a simple matter of probability. There are 16 boys and only 5 girls, and half of the girls claim they have had chicken pox already. But today, one of the girls started scratching. It now appears we have 4 kids sick and quarantined.

I feel really bad for the kids. Not only does having the chicken pox suck, but they don´t get the benefits American kids get when they are sick. For me, being sick meant skipping school, watching TV, playing video games, eating ice cream and lot´s of special attention. For the kids in the orphanage, missing school is more like a punishment than a treat. It´s the only time they get to leave the Hogar and is the only time they get to spend with kids other than the ones they live with. The kids with the chicken pox have to stay in private bedrooms away from all the other kids and there is no TV or games or ice cream. They´re locked in a room all day and are itching to jump out of their skin figuratively and literally. I try to spend time with the quarantined kids every day and they are grateful for the company. Good thing I had chicken pox and shingles when I was little, so I feel doubly protected. I am worried though, that just because I can´t get it, doesn´t mean I can´t carry it. I´m not sure if it´s possible for me to carry the germs. If so, I have the potential to infect the other Hogar where I work with this annoying illness. It breaks makes me so sad cause all the kids are so miserable. I can´t wait till they all get better and Christian is as bright and smiley as ever

The Toughest Job You`ll Ever Love

The two Hogars where I spend most of my time are very different from one another. Making one more challenge I face daily, on a seemingly never ending list. The Orphanage is mostly boys all under the age of 11. There is non-stop screaming, hitting and the kids in general run wild. The home for sexually abused girls has girls of all ages from infants to young mothers. They are all quite and I feel like I`m pulling teeth to get them to participate in discussions. The orphanage has been easier from the start. All you have to do is show up, and the kids love you. When I walk in the door they all come running at me and overwhelm me hugs and kisses. When it comes time to eat lunch, all the kids beg me to sit at their table. And I`m getting to the point where the love is mutual. I adore and care so much for all the kids that when I go back to the states in two years, it will be hard not to take one with me. The problems I face mostly at the orphanage is trying to keep their attention long enough to do any kind of activity. I`ve come to except that order and discipline will never be as I was used to in the US. There have been times at the orphanage where I have wanted nothing more than to put the kids in cages.

At the home for sexually abused girls I am facing a completely different set of problems. When I am teaching a work shop, there is no screaming, hitting or chaos. They mostly sit in silence and when I ask them to do simple tasks like write down things they like to do in their free time, they say they can`t think of anything. The don`t love me just for being there like the little boys in the orphanage. I can`t win them over with my ability to walk on my hands or raise one eye brow. They have been mistreated, abandoned and don`t trust anyone. It is very frustrating to try and work with these girls, especially since I don`t have perfect language skills. But I also understand where they are coming from and know how hard life is for them. After each workshop I meet with the home`s psychologist and we talk about the girls. It breaks my heart. Today we talked about a 15 year old girl with a 18 month old daughter and how she wants me to pay her special attention cause she`s suffering from depression. Her mother has mental problems and was unable to stop her at-the-time-boyfriend from sexually abusing her daughter. Now this poor 15 year old has a baby born out of abuse, a mother who can`t take care of her and is living in a home full of girls in similar situations.

I remember this girl as being the first girl to talk to me and open up to me the first day I arrived at the Hogar. I was feeling pretty scared and lonely myself so we were able to talk about how hard it is to be separated from your family and live in a strange place. She is a very sweet girl and very smart. Right now, even though I am running workshops on self esteem, the most important thing I am doing is not the teaching lessons but gaining the trust and confidence of these girls so they will let me in their lives and allow me to help them. I`m realistic and know there isn`t a whole lot I am capable of doing for them. But I can be there for them, and at the very least, give them hope that there is a better life out there. I feel really down and out sometimes, in the whole cultural adjustment process, but then I come to this Hogar and it puts my problems in perspective and reminds me why I suffer through the tough times at site. After all, Peace Corps is the toughest job you`ll ever love, so they say.

I´m Fat?

A person´s weight, especially a woman´s weight, is discussed here in Peru just like people talk about the weather. When you see some one you haven´t seen in a while, it´s always "Hi, how are you? You look fat". To Americans this is down right rude. But I´m getting used to it. Mostly because when people talk about my weight, they talk about how skinny I am. I don´t feel all that thin. My stature is so much bigger than most men in this country, so a lot of the time I feel large and mannish. The reason all the woman at my gym praise my figure is cause I flat tummy. For whatever reason, most Peruvian woman have pudgy tummies, even if the rest of them is thin. They have all kinds of crazy techniques for slimming down their midriffs. The main one is rubbing Icy Hot on their stomachs, wrapping in it in Saran Wrap and working out like that. Every day I get asked how I get my stomach flat and I tell them it´s genetics. I´d really like to give these women a class on how wrapping your stomach in plastic is not going to make you loose weight, but I don´t think any one would believe me.

I think some one was talking about my stomach in the locker room after class last night, cause when I walked out of the shower, my aerobics teacher said "yeah but she has cellulite on her thighs". I said "What?" very surprised because I´m not used to people talking about me like that and because I never thought I had cellulite on my thighs. Then she proceeded to lift up my towel, grab my thigh and show the women in the locker room what she meant. I knew what she was talking about. I have a layer of fat that I´ve had on my thighs since high school. Its not cellulite, and you can only see it if you squeeze my thigh and look hard. I´m not really sure why my aerobics teacher decided to expose me like this. To them, I guess this knd of behavior is normal. To me it was a bit rude and invasive and to other American women it might have been mortifying. Good thing I have a pretty good self image of myself or I might need therapy.

I did get up this morning and examine my thighs in my reflection of the window ( I don´t have a mirror). Reassuring myself that my thighs are just fine, I took a deep breath and thought, just another cultural experience in Peru.

It´s Raining Men

God bless Mother Nature, she´s a single woman too. Just as soon as I have proclaimed my nun status, I am taking it back. I had such an amazing night last night, it reminded me that even though boys don’t play a big part in my life right now, I haven’t completely written them off forever. Like almost all of the best nights, last night was a last minute, crazy idea. It all started so innocently.


I had spent two weeks at site and had planned to spend this weekend just as I spend every night at site. Sitting in my room, alone. But on Thursday, another member of my Peru 9 family made the announcement that he was heading back to the states. He was in Lima so I called him up and made plans to come in and have dinner with him on Friday night. I hadn’t showered that day and considered an attempt to make myself appear put together, but I decided against it. It was just going in for a few hours to have dinner with a PCV who didn´t care what I looked like, so why bother? Dinner was nice. We ate at Chili’s and it was the first time I ate at an American establishment since I arrived in Peru. I had a buffalo chicken salad with blue cheese and a beer. It was good, real good. I figured this meal would be the highlight of my week, and I was ready to call it a night and head back to site before it got too late . Then right before I was getting ready to leave Lillian called me. We had been playing phone tag all day and considering her invitation, I wished we had talked earlier so I could have prepared a bit more for what was about to happen.


She said there was a Halloween party at the US Marines house and asked if I wanted to go. This was 9 o’clock at night, I had no costume and I looked like hell. But it was a Halloween party. I was feeling a little bumbed out that I was gonna miss one of my party times of the year. Me and Stephanie liked dressing up so much when we were in college, we would go out wearing lederhosen and 80’s prom dresses to parties that weren’t even costume parties. Considering my love for dressing up, not having a costume was hardly a reason not to go. With little hesitation, I accepted the last minute invitation.

So we went to the store and bought sheets of colored plastic. Lillian went as an egg, sunny side up and I made a sexy but not distasteful devil costume. We arrived at the party around 11. It was like a genuine college frat party, only I had to show my passport at the door. It was an amazing house in one of the richest areas of Lima, but still had the good ´ol boy feel to it. The downstairs area, where the party was held, had pool, ping pong and foosball tables, leather couches, a bar, a DJ and a pool outside. And because it was a Marine house, it was full of American guys. The moment I walked in, I stopped dead in my tracks and took in the view. All my nun-like virtues went out the door. These weren’t just any guys, this was a party full of perfect genetic male specimens. Normally when I think of Marines, not the most attractive image comes to my mind. But this was different.This was an embassy party. Most of the guys weren’t actually marines. They worked for the embassy in the security and protection department and their jobs are a bit more glamorous than the average Marine.

These men were tall, built and gorgeous and that doesn’t begin to do them justice. Of course this is coming from a girl who has been deprived of attractive men for 5 months, so my sense of their magnificence is probably a bit askew. But even taking into account the fact that I´m grading on a curve, these guys were nothing less than beautiful. I compare being at this party to having eaten nothing but rice and potatoes for a month, and then going to an all you can eat meat buffet. Every once in a while, a girl just has to treat herself.

The party itself was really fun. We got drinks, danced and played pool and ping pong. I was feeling totally in my element, like I was back home at a party where cultural norms and risks about women drinking didn’t apply. Half way through the night I decided it was time to branch out and meet people other than the girls I came with. I saw the ambassador talking to a few very good looking guys so I dropped in on the conversation. The ambassador introduced me to two of the gentlemen who had recently traveled with him on his trip to the cocoa fields in the Jungle. After 5 minuets, the ambassadors wife was brining the tallest and most attractive of the men she knew to meet me. What made it even better is that these guys were dressed like gladiators, chip and dale dancers and other festive attire. I did do anything besides talk to and shake the hands these fine young gentlemen, but it was just enough to purk me up from my manless funk.

I wish I had taken my camera with me. But seeing as I had no idea I was going to Halloween party with the Ambassador and a ton of good looking American men, I’m just thankful I have the mental pictures. Hopefully these immages will be enough to keep me smiling through another 5 months of manless drought.

Nun Sense

As I´ve said before, I work with nuns. It´s a pretty interesting experience. One which, I know later life I will make many a reference to the time I spent with the nuns. I can now say a nun has made me cry, which is a pretty big feet considering I am not catholic and never went to private school. She didn´t exactly make me cry, she was just pushing a subject I´d rather not have talked about and in doing so touched a nerve and I cried. I never ever thought I would be in a position in life where I would be working so closely with nuns. We are so different in so many ways, but we seem to get along. They have been very kind and understanding when I´ve had hard days, and I do my best not to do anything offensive. They are perfectionists and worry about things and put in painstaking hours on things I personally deem irrelevant. And I´m not even talking about religion. For example, they meticulously cover every one of the notebooks in plastic. This activity might take me an hour and the plastic won´t be cut completely strait cause to me it doesn´t matter, and the kids are going to destroy the notebook in 2 days time anyways. But the nuns will spend an entire day covering 10 notebooks in plastic. If one tiny detail is wrong they will start over.

Even though we are very different, I am starting to feel a bit like a nun myself. But again, not in the religious sense. One of the vows a nun takes, probably one of the better known ones, is a vow of celibacy. Since arriving in Peru, the idea of boys hasn´t merely been on the back burner, it´s been taken off the stove completely. And its not a conscious decision. I was feeling a little crazy, like there was something wrong with me. It seemed like all anybody wanted to talk about in training was boys and who was gonna hook up with a fellow PCV and who was gonna end up dating a Peruvian. How is it I haven´t even noticed the opposite sex for 5 whole months? But then talking to a friend the other night, she expressed the same experience. She even related it to being like a nun. I figure I have been so busy to think about it thats all. Busy in the sense that I keep myself busy, but more in the sense that all my thought and emotions have been so busy trying to take in this whole Peace Corps experience and trying to stay happy and sane.

I really cant see myself dating a Peruvian. For one, I dont want to. I have no interest in dating while Im here. I also dont find Peruvian men attractive. Besides the fact that they are all shorter and smaller in stature than me, nothing physically is attractive to me. And as far as personality, Im sure some of them have just fine personalities. But they´ve been breed in a machismo society and I dont think I would be able to tolerate all of his mannerisms and all the other BS that comes along with being a man in this culture. Im not trying to dis Peruvian men in General. Many PCVs have wonderful Peruvian boyfriends and I wont say its something I would never happen. I just dont think its for me. So the next two years will be very interesting indeed, however nun-like they turn out to be.

Money and Religion

Sunday night I was reading an article in an old Newsweek called “The Pastor vs. The Atheist: Is God Real?”. Naturally it got me thinking about my own thoughts on the existence of god and half way through the article I decided I wanted the textbook definition of the word secular. So I opened up my laptop to use the dictionary and on the screen looking back at me was the statistics of my all free cell games staring back at me. Games play: 666 Games won:666 ( I cheat, Windows Vista makes that possible) Not only is it a bad sign that the devil number popped up at me in the middle of reading about the existence of God, but if he does is exist, he knows I cheat at free cell. That’s all I’m gonna say about that subject matter, anyone who knows me knows my religious beliefs are very personal and I don’t like to discuss them. Which, unfortunately in Peru is not at all respected. The big 3 taboos in the US: politics, religion and money, are usually the first things brought up when you meet somebody for the first time.

Just this morning, I spent an hour talking to my host sister and her husband about how much money I made back in the states and how much everything costs. It was a really interesting conversation actually, because I learned how much they make and it really floored me. The conversation started out innocently enough. They wanted to know how the work week in the US compared to the work week in Peru. I thought it was a compelling question cause I had just read something about Frances 35 hour work week and the French president argument to change it. I knew, but not everything had really clicked, as to what kind of conversation this was going to lead to. So, I told them the work week depended on the kind of job a person has and returned the same question to them. The standard work week in Peru, is 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. I knew this, but somehow managed to forget, or at least forget how it made me feel. I told them then that the average American only worked 40 hours a week. I don’t really like talking about how rich America is and all the benefits we reap from it, but I decided that this might be a good opportunity for them to see what other parts of the world or like and the possibilities of Peru’s growth.


I explained that with most jobs, people are paid extra for every hour they work over 40 hours. I told them how in the US, it is thought that working excessively decreases productivity and happiness, while increasing the risk of injury. I also explained how this is only true for legal citizens and how there is a population of millions of illegal workers who work under considerably less desirable conditions. And we talked about family member they had (all legal) working in the United States (apparently there is a big Peruvian population living in New Jersey) and what they heard working there was like for them. They both thought American jobs sounded a lot more appealing than Peruvian jobs in general.


Somehow the conversation progressed and they told me that they each made 2 soles an hour. 75 American cents, that’s it! After working a 12 hour day they only bring home 24 soles, or 8 dollars. I knew the family I lived with didn’t have a lot of money , but now I get it. All the chicken feet and never having toilet paper make sense now. I felt guilty when I told my host sister and her husband that one hour of minimum wage in California was how much they earned in a 12 hour day. But I also explained how the cost of living in California is incredibly high. I told them honestly how much stuff costs in the united states and while it makes us seem like millionaires, we worry about money just the same as they do. I showed them pictures on my house and the pool in the back yard. I told them that I have had my own car since I was 16 (I left out that I actually had two cars) and that every member of my family has their own car. I don’t think anyone in my whole community in Peru owns a car. These things that are so common place to us in the US are so unattainable to the people I live amongst.


It makes me feel bad that I cringe at the idea of taking a cold shower or eating cow stomach. My real family is not rich by standards in the US but we are so rich in comparison to the population of the world. My dad likes to play gold and my mom likes to go to plays. We take really nice family vacations to Hawaii, Newport Beach and Spain. To us, it seems like life wouldn’t be worth living with out these things. Even when I am at site, trying to integrate and live at the same level as my community, I can’t wait till I can go into Lima and have a Starbucks. Even though I am a “volunteer” and I don’t make much money, I’ve never felt richer in my life. I recently received a few packages in the mail from family friends. I got all sorts of things like work out clothes, USB memory stick, dental floss, expensive chocolate and rainbow chip cup cake mix(cup cake tins included). I thought about the cost of the content and the price it cost to ship them. I concluded that the total amount it cost to buy and ship three presents full of goodies was more than my host sister would make in an entire year. Going back to the beginning of this entry, if God does exist, he works in pretty strange ways.

Mom vs.Mom

At this moment in my life I have mothers. My real mother, of course back in the states, and my mother who´s house I live in in Peru. I never compared the two before, it just never occurred to me before. But then the other day I found out how old my host mother is. I was shocked to realize she is the exact same age as my real mom, and this got me thinking. Why was it I never thought about the two of them in the same category before? Besides the mountain of differences between the two, I think the big reason is that I always viewed my host mom in more of the grandmother category than a mother category. Most likely because she is a grandmother. She has 6 grandchildren right now and one more on the way. But that doesn´t exempt her from the child-rearing category though, because she has two teenage daughters. Get this, she a daughter and granddaughter that are the same age.

My host mom also acts a lot older than she is. She walks and talks like some one who is in her late 70´s. In comparison to my real mom who goes to the gym everyday, takes luxurious vacations with her girl friends, and in general has the vigour of a 25 year old still. Comparing these two women has become a really interesting cross-cultural examination in my head (sorry mom if you´ve been reduced to little more than research). My host mom doesn´t work. Everyday she makes a huge pot of food that feeds 10 people twice. She does this every single day. There are no days that she feels tired and orders chinese take out, or leaves the fam to fend for themselves. On top of cooking, cleaning and raising a gigantic family, she is the most actively involved woman in the community. I really look up to this woman for the years of thankless work she has done. My mom on the other hand, balanced working part time, raising 3 kids and managing the house hold. My mom put in a good 25 years doing this, but now that her youngest is off to college, she enjoying much more time for herself. I don't think my host mom will ever have time for herself until it is she that needs taking care of. I plan to develop this cross cultural examination further. Perhaps in a year or so I shall write a really interesting entry about what it means to be a mom in Peru vs US. Stay tuned.

Peru, Day 119

Monday morning I woke up with something so foul in my system, my body decided it needed to be ousted immediately. Operation purification was underway, blitzkrieg style. The only time I left my bed was when I needed to go to the bathroom, which was way more often than I would have liked. I even experienced a rite of passage all PCV’s must endure at least once during their service. I soiled myself. Now who wants to compare that with their bad case of the Mondays? Whatever it was that was disagreeing with my body so much has seemed to lost its battle to extrapolating all foreign substance from my system and 22 hours of sleep.

The bad thing is I think I did this to myself. I finally decided I was gonna take charge of my eating situation. I couldn’t take any more rice, potatoes and really weird animal parts. I went to the market and bought a good 20 soles worth of food. I came home and made a weeks supply of chicken breast, spinach and egg quiche and sweet potatoes. It must have been one of these three things that unleashed the demon in my system. Sadly, I don’t know which one and have to throw out all my food. Making it not only a waste of time, money and effort, but it also discourages me from cooking for myself. But the icing on the cake is that this morning I woke up feeling a bit better and decided I would try eating a piece of fruit I bought. Except when I went down stairs, all my fruit was gone. Not only do I not get to enjoy the food I have to throw away, but my family ate the 7 pieces of fruit I had bought for the week on the day I was sick.

Patience and flexibility are two of the most important qualities one can have at site, but the whole ordeal of being sick and having my family eat all my friut in one day was a bit much, I wanted to cry. I don’t think my body was hydrated enough to cry, luckily. Aside from all the bad news, there have been plenty of happy times as well. After my stay at the ambassadors house I resumed my workshops at the Hogars. I tough my first real self-esteem wor shop at the home for sexually abused girls and it went okay, I guess. I honestly don’t feel I’m ready have stepped right into this role. I wish was allowed more time to assimilate and even work on my language skills. I could have I’m sure, but the expectations are high and I didn’t want to let any one down. So I’m trying to step out of my prescribed roles and into areas where I feel more comfortable. I have officially joined a bogie boarding club and am going to start working with the NGO WAVES for development which gives surf boards to under privileged kids in Peru. I don’t want to get too ahead of myself here, but I think I may have found my niche.

I had a really nice weekend. All the business volunteers were in town for a fair at the embassy. I didn’t go to the fair cause I had spent the whole previous week in Lima and attended another fair with various business volunteers, but I did meet up with a handful of friends during the evening. I had planned to go back to the training center with the majority of the group for a party at one of our former hosts families. But instead I ended up spending the evening with Rachelle and Danielle at a friends apartment in Lima. Danielle’s friend’s parents were staying at her apartment as well, which was really cool. Even though we all live with families, there’s something about being with a mom and dad from your own country that really makes it feel familiar. We all watched a movie together at night and all had breakfast together in the morning. Then in the afternoon me and the girls took a long walk along the cliffs of lima. All the modern high rise buildings on one side, the beach and the pacific on the other. I felt so removed from my site, when really it’s only 25 miles away.

We had lunch with our old language professor and her sister. One of the big things that’s surprised me so far about my Peace Corps experience, is all the people I’ve met. I knew I would meet interesting people, but I assumed they would be Peruvians. While I’ve met a ballparks worth a Peruvians, the people who have impacted me the most have been people from the international community. And I love it.

This weekend was more like therapy than anything else. We talked a lot about our most recent friend to go home. It was a pretty serious situation, and it’s better that we were able to talk about it amongst our fellow PCV’s because the Peruvians that we’ve talked to about it didn’t seem to find the gravity of the situation, which only made us feel worse. We did some intense griping about what bothers us in our communities and in the Peruvian culture. It wasn’t so much complaining about petty things, but discussing really pressing matters like machismo and sexual harassment. Every female volunteer already has at least one story of how their security and their integrity have been jeopardized by the cultural norms of machismo.

At the end of the weekend, we weren´t looking forward to going back to site. After spending time in the world of modernity, of hot showers, of paved streets and of people with whom you feel at home, it’s hard to go back. We’re at that point in our service were it’s really tough. We’ve made it through 50 days at site. And while things have become more familiar they haven’t gotten any easier. Having two of my closest friends return back to the US doesn’t help either. But even on my worst days, I don’t think about going home. I think about home a lot, all my friends and my favorite places, but I don’t really have a desire to go home. I really like it hear. Yes, site is a struggle, but that’s what makes it worth it. I’ve been hear 119 days and everyday has been an adventure. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Reach out and Touch somebody

I know some of my friends have asked for my address. I´m having all my mail sent to the Peaced Corps headquarters cause I live so close and I feel it has a better chance of making it if it´s being sent to an American government organization. Here it is, feel free to send me anything you fancy. Spencer sent me the weekly mormon newsletter, so really, there is nothing I won´t gladly recieve.

Ali Fisher
Cuerpo de Paz
132Calle Via los Grandados
Santiage de Surco
Lima 33, Peru

My Suedo Vacation

Remember the pictures I posted of my site and my house? Keep those in mind as you are looking at these. Talk about going from one extreme to the other. This is the house I stayed at this past week. It was unlike anything I have ever experienced. Now I am back at site and I am not missing the things I thought I would. I thought I would miss the hot baths and showers, the amazing meals, which I do miss. But the thing that I never thought about when I was staying with the ambassador, was how easy life was. Back at site, every day is a battle. Nothing is easy, nothing works. You dont think about these kinds of things, unless things don't work. It was so nice to pick up the phone and have it work. It was nice to not have to rearrange my day to take care of something that didn't work out like it was supposed to the day before. I think a big lesson that became clear to me because of this stay, is that when you have money, everyday life is easier. Its not necessarily happier and that doesn't mean you don't have to work really really hard to maintain this style of life. It means that little things, the things you never stop to think about are taken care of.





So this is the back of the house. While I was staying here, I woke up for the first time to sun. Most of the days were gray though. It would have been nice if it were warm. I would have laid by the pool. My and my friend spent a lot of time in the house. We didn't go out too much. We sat in our room mostly, or in the TV room. We read, took baths and talked a lot. I also didn't realize how much I would miss the companionship when I got back to site. Because we spent so much time at the house, we really got to enjoy the simple luxuries. Relaxing in big chairs, reading in the library, watching TV in english and sleeping in beds that weren't so caved in in the middle you can feel the pieces of wood holding up the mattress.





The house was so elegant. But it was unlike the houses you see on Cribs. There were no plasma flat screen TVs or any sort of over the top luxury items. The house is not just a house. The whole downstairs is mainly for entertaining. The ambassador said he mainly lives upstairs and only goes downstairs to eat.





The whole house was filled with fresh flowers. The ambassadors wife insisted that they put tuberoses in every arrangement so the whole house was filled with its sweet sent. For those of you who have no idea what a tuberose is, or what it smells like, think about Hawaii. The air in Hawaii is so sweet because of the fragrant tropical flowers that grow all over the island. The tuberose is one of the flowers Im sure you've seen if you've ever travel there. It was cool to be in the middle of Lima, a big, cold and dirty city, but have it smell like Hawaii. I especially like the portrait of George Washington.

A Step Up

This week has been a bit abnormal, to say the least. For the past 4 nights I have been staying with the American ambassador in his house in Lima. This place is a far cry from my site in Lurin. It is a large, luxurious, house that feels more like one of the palaces I've toured in Europe than anything else. I am staying there because I have a friend who was invited to stay with him and his family and she didn't want to be alone so she called me up and here I am.

We both feel a bit out of place in this mansion. We don't really know what we're doing and giggle a lot about stupid things we have done. Next to the grand dining room, there is a smaller, more intimate dining area that looks out to the patio and the pool. The first morning we got up, went down stairs for breakfast and found the table cleared except for two place settings. It was 8:30 in the morning and the rest of the family was already off at work or school. We sat down and looked at each other not knowing what to do. "Should we go into the kitchen and tell the wait staff we're here?" my friend asked. Next to my plate, there was a small remote control with a single button on it. The button had a musical note and we looked at the wall to the speakers. "this must be the remote to turn on the music" I said, "maybe if we turn on the music they'll know we're here." My friend agreed it was a good idea, so I pushed the button. We heard a bell off in another room. Turns out, this was the bell we rang when we wanted service. With in a few seconds a butler hurried in and found us bright red and holding back embarrassed smiles. He asked us what we would like to drink and how we would like our eggs prepared and swept out of the room. When he left, we didn't know what else to do but laugh. We're Peace Corps volunteers, who just summoned a butler by remote control bell. It just didn't seem right, we felt so bad. The next three mornings we have gone into the kitchen to let them know we were there and we never intend to use the bell again.

The ambassador and his family are really great, apart from letting two very silly girls stay in their hose and disrupt their lives. I've greatly enjoyed listening to the ambassador talk about his views on Peru and his past work in Africa and Europe. I've been living in my little bubble at site, trying to make my tiny difference with a few kids and it has been really good for me to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. The reason I am here, the reason Peace Corps is here, is to help Peru become a developed country. Even though the ambassador has a much more celebrated and glamorous job than I, he too is trying to make a difference in this crazy world.

So me and my friend have really been trying to take it all in and enjoy this amazing experience. We even got to meet the ex-president Alejandro Toledo. But you know you're a peace corps volunteer when taking a hot bath actually trumps meeting an ex-president as the most exciting thing you did all week. I'll be staying with the ambassador for at least a few more nights and am trying not to do anything else embarrassing and enjoy this incredible opportunity.