Cultural Exchanges

(written sunday, June 16)
One of the major themes we get to experience as peace corps volunteers, is the constant cultural exchanges. Normally, these exchanges are ordinary day to day encounters like “in California, all the young people where flip flops” or “oh! You actually eat guinea pigs here?”. But every once in a while, you get to have some pretty classic cultural exchanges. Saturday was laundry day. As part of their contract with peace corps, the are required to wash our clothes, but we are responsible for washing our own underwear and socks, since 95% of us don’t have washing machines. So my host mom came in my room and told me to give me all my dirty clothes and my bag cause it was dirty. She stood there as I took all my stuff out of my bag and when I took out the tampons I’ve been toting around, she grabbed it out of my hands and asked “what’s this?”. I told her they were "tampax", cause that’s what they were called in Spain. But I saw that it didn’t register and it occurred to me that this 50 year old woman had never seen a tampon in her life. So an awkward 30 second pause ensued while I tried to think of the best way to fraise it. Finally I came up with "it´s for that time of the month". I saw a light bulb go off above her head but she still seemed both confused and horrified. All of us girls were warned to bring as many tampons as we could cram in our suitcases because tampons are almost impossible to find except in really metropolitan areas, and even there they are very expensive. So many girls such as myself came with big zip lock bags full of all different sizes and kinds. Adrian’s sister found one of these bags, and cause her tampons came in wrappers that had different colors for different sizes, she thought they were candy. Adriane couldn’t come up with quite as graceful an explanation as myself, so she said it was for menstrual bleeding. But her host sister was still confused and asked “but what do you do with it” and Adriane had to explain how it is placed inside not outside. She said it was so embarasing
So, back to my laundry day. I have no problem washing my own panties. I was actually looking forward to it, you know, washing things by hand is SO peace corps and all. Not to mention it’s embarrassing to have some one else wash your private stuff. Well, my host mother thinks I am 100% incompetent in everything in the world from showing to packing my own book bag for school. So she rewashed all the underwear I had already washed two more times. I don’t think my underwear have ever been cleaner. Well, I have a lot of different types of underwear. They’re all different. A lot of them are bright colors, half of them have words or phrases written across the butt , and a handful of them are thongs. Cotton thongs, sheer thongs, red thongs with black lace on them, you get the idea. That was another fun exchange, having to explain to my host mom why I wear thongs. The truth is, I don’t know. I wear thongs just cause I consider them like any other panty. And, as dorky as it sounds, all the cool kids wear thongs. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been made fun of for having granny panties. At our freshman initiation, we had to put our underwear on the outside of our clothes and then we were divided into two groups, thongs and non-thongs. I couldn’t really see myself explaining this to my host mom, so just told her they’re for when I wear something tight and I don’t want a panty line. She laughed and proceeded to show me her panty line. That was a little too much of a cultural exchange for me. She also wanted to know what all the stuff on the back of my underwear said. Next week, I hope she lets me wash my underwear alone.
I went to another neighborhood last night called chacrasana where about 10 other peace corps people live. They were having a festival call el Corazon de Jesus. So me, Heather, heathers 5 year old host brother and both our moms went. Non of us are allowed to do anything along. But it’s okay, Jamar is moving into our neighborhood tomorrow and then we’ll have a big guy that can go our with us so we don’t need to be babysat by our moms. The festival was okay. We shared some beers with our moms and danced to the band. I had my first experience where kids were just coming up to me in droves. They all wanted to know what my name was and what I was doing here. I can see how this job is going to be so exhausting. There was also fireworks and this 3 story tall thing that was constructed out of bamboo and covered in fireworks. They lit it on fire but we missed it. We were the last Americans to leave and we left at 1 cause Heather and her brother fell asleep on their mom. It would have been cool to see that thing go up in flames.
Today was fathers day, which is a really big deal around here. But cause both my parents aren’t from around here, they don’t have any family close so we didn’t do family stuff like lots of other people. I went to the market with my mom. I tried really hard not to be too grossed out by the meet. The meet is covered in flies and all the chickens still have their talons and beaks and all. I watched the butcher lady cut an entire chicken down to just it’s breasts. I wouldn’t say I was grossed out exactly, I just had never seen that first hand. I made myself feel better by thinking that these birds are probably so much better tasting and better for me than the genetically altered, beakless foster farms chickens I eat back home. And I don’t envy the vegetarians here. Adriane pretty much eats potatoes, rice and bread and that’s all. I have a pretty diverse diet. I get a lot of lean meet and vegetables, all cooked of course. My mom asked me if there was anything I wanted to get and I jumped at the opportunity to get cereal, say milk and plain, sugar free yogurt. The cereal I got was the same cereal that I ate in Spain. I love this cereal and I will be so happy to eat that every morning with bananas in it, and a glass of plain yogurt and a cup of café con leche. Wow, I can’t wait to go to sleep tonight so I can wake up and eat breakfast. It will be much better than the tuna and onion sandwich I had this morning.
For lunch we had a delicious mix of beets, green beans and carrots with rice and beef. Cause it was fathers day my dad busted out this big bottle of wine and I had to glasses of it. It was a Peruvian red wine but it was so sweet I would classify it as a desert wine, man was it good. Then they gave me a beer, which I didn’t refuse either. After we had a couple drinks in us, we took Adrian and her little host brother along with my 21 year old host brother to the zoo. That’s right, we celebrated fathers day by going to the zoo. Call it dumb, but it was so sweet. I monkeys and jaguars and cheetahs and kangaroos and freaking awesome birds. I got an ice cream cone and rode a paddle boat that was in the form of a pink swan, and my host mom bought me and Adrian on of those souvenir pictures of us on the swan. The whole day was silly, but freakin’ sweet. I’m super tired though, and have a long week of training ahead of me. I’m looking forward to taking it easy tonight and getting a good night sleep.