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.