November 15: Vamos a tirar la tortuga

The activities I do in my English classes with the primaria students are obviously pretty basic and primarily designed to get all the kids practicing their English a little instead of just copying notes. One simple tool I often use is a ball of red yarn. The kids throw it around the room to pick the next student who has to talk. We keep throwing the ball until all the kids have practiced whatever we happen to be learning. This first time I used this game the kids just passed the ball from person to person, even though I said “tirar” (Spanish for “throw”). I guess they don’t do much of that in class normally….. without getting in trouble of course. So the next time I went into the class I took out the red ball of yarn and lobbed it straight across the room. Any of you who know my aiming ability understand what a risk this was :-P It worked though; they started cracking up and next thing I knew that ball was sailing around the room.

This Tuesday, however; the ball of yarn was not to be found. I needed to get to school though so I picked up the first replacement I could find….a pirate turtle named Smee. Smee and his swashbuckling cohort, Captain Jack, came to Natalie and me from the Mandalay Bay Hotel Aquarium in Las Vegas, Nevada.  In recent history Captain Jack and Smee spent most of their time discussing pirate-y things while riding the ceiling fan in Natalie and Mark’s room. Currently Smee lives on my bedside table in Peru; which is how he found himself in the role of “la Tortuga volante” this Tuesday morning. Smee got such a warm reception after I explained the missing ball of yarn that I left him to ride around on my shoulder during class. Smee offered a basic commentary of “grrrs” and “yars” depending on what the kids were up to. To fully paint the picture I offer this fairly accurate reenactment; translated (mostly) for you convenience:

Various children: look, look…it’s a pirate! The turtle is a pirate!

Me: now we’re going to throw the turtle to each other, ok?

Various children: aaa-eee…..a turtle that flies! A pirate that flies!                          Smeeeeeeeee!

Me: que dice la pirata, chicos?  YARRRRR!

Entire class: YARRRRRRRR!!!!!

November 12-13:”don’t worry, Kelly; nothing changes again until next August”

            Saturday morning I went into Huaraz for another ALMA meeting and to hang out with the new Ancash volunteers. I’m not the new kid anymore! The 18-ers were coming back through the city after their site visits so we all wanted to be around to hang out. Ali, Keren and I took Celeste, Matt and David out for lunch. Then after an afternoon of wandering around to see the city I treated them to some ice cream in the plaza. Welcome to the family new guys!

Just to keep things interesting, that weekend was also the going away party for Peter (a Peru 14-er). Bit of a revolving door effect, no? Sunday night was slightly subdued as we were all absorbing the fact that Pete’s two years were ending, the 18-ers were just starting and the rest of us are just turning circles in the middle. The 18-ers seem amazing and I’m sure Pete is going on to great things, but it’s still strange to take it all in. But it’s like Vero reminded us, we don’t get any more new volunteers until next August.  That’s almost a whole year until more pebbles get dropped in the puddle……or more to the heart of the matter, almost a whole year until more pebbles get taken out of the puddle (does this metaphor work in reverse…….)

November 11: how many casarios must we check to find the new kid?

          Friday morning Vero, Kait and I hiked up to Pete’s old site to see meet the new volunteer that’s moving in; it’s only about a two hour hike from Vero’s. When we got to Huashcao we went to Pete’s house because we didn’t actually know where the new kid was living. From there it turned into a bit of a scavenger hunt. After going to Ivan’s house we went to about 4 other houses of family members and eventually found him off in the field cutting grass with his host dad. There he was harvesting and a line of 4 gringos came walking over the hill out of nowhere….the host dad was a little surprised ha ha. We sat down in the chakra and ate the cookies and oranges we had brought to share. Ivan is part of our little volunteer cluster now, so we wanted him to feel welcomed. 

November 10: site visit…..hey there, boss lady. Oh and this is my friend Milton, he speaks quechua

               Thursday was my site visit from Lucia, the Youth Development APCD, and Evan the YD volunteer leader. I was nervous going into it, because I had organized a bunch of meeting with the leaders of my town and I just wanted it to all go well. Turns out there was no reason to be nervous. It was great to have them in site and pretty much everyone turned up to the meetings. My directora said all sorts of wonderful things to them and the kids in my class behaved really, really well. Evan, Lucia and I spent the morning walking around Mancos. I got to show off my site and they asked me all sorts of questions about what I’ve been doing. They also told me that my Spanish had gotten a lot better :-P hurray!

                That afternoon I had my English club like normal. Once again the school door was locked so we had class in my living room. Our lesson for Thursday was the body parts in English, so I got one of the students to draw a cartoon body on my little white board then they all took turns trying to name this different parts. In honor of the only boy in the class, we named him Milton :-P After English words the girls in the class started teaching me quechua words; some body parts and the numbers. Basically this consisted of them writing words down, me reading them and everyone giggling endlessly. Apparently it’s super funny to watch the gringa try to speak quechua. Fortunately I love my role as a continual source of amusement and , who knows, I might actually learn something. 

November 2: luckily my host family rocks

                So Wednesday was my attempt at World Map class numero dos. 7 kids came this time, they weren’t any of the same ones from the week before so we did the first lesson over again……but hey, 7 kids came :-P The door to the school was once again locked, but Fabiola and Aldo just cleared out of the living room and let us sit at the dining table. They even offered to let me have class at the house from now on. I’m pretty sure my host family isn’t entirely clear on what I’m doing (or saying :-P), but it’s so cool that they support me anyway. 

Oct. 30 – Nov. 1: Hocus Pocus, Candy Corn and Costumes!

                Since Halloween was on a Monday this year, we started our Huaraz weekend on Sunday. That night we had a family potluck and watched Hocus Pocus. Ali, Keren and I braved the rain and went to the market to buy ingredients.  I tried to make puppy chow, but couldn’t find ziplock bags. So I poured everything into a plastic grocery bag with promptly ripped. Luckily chocolate, peanut butter and cereal tastes good no matter how much of a mess it is :-P

                Monday everyone ran around town putting together their Halloween costumes. Turns out things are a little trickier when there is no Wal-Mart, Target or Halloween Express. There was a lot of last minute cutting and paper mache-ing Monday afternoon, but everyone sorted it out and we had some excellent costumes. There is a bar in Huaraz that has a costume contest every Halloween, so we all went. The winner for the girls was actually one of our very own PCVs! At some point in the future I will finally remember to post more photos and you guys can see the costumes. I decided to make an 80s costume and I ended up looking almost exactly like the little girl from 13 Going on 30…..any excuse to wear a side ponytail :-P

                November 1 is Dia de los Santos in Peru and classes were canceled, so we all woke up late and slowly trickled back to site. Gotta love random mid-week holidays that line up with American holidays :-) 

October 26-28: Peru 18 Health FBT……since when am I the one giving answers?

           Wednesday, Thursday and Friday the Peru 18 Health trainees had their FBT in Kaitlyn’s site, which is just up the mountain from mine. There is nowhere to stay in Mushu though, so they actually stayed in Mancos. I got to help out with their classes for the whole three days. Vero and I led a session on working with youth. We taught them some dinamicas and some craft activities and just generally talked about working with kids. Since they are health volunteers they also had the chance to build latrines and a “concina mejorada” (it’s a fairly simple way to build a wood burning  stove that ventilates better and is, therefore, better for your health). Since the idea was to have a current volunteer with the different groups at all times, I actually ended up “leading” some of these building projects. Since I know nothing about turning a pile of mud and bricks into a kitchen, this translated to me being a somewhat bilingual cheerleader. Kait would turn up with instructions and I would cheer them on. Nico and Yoss, two other health volunteers came to our sites to help out too, so there was enough health program expertise to make up for my youth development handicap. In the end the projects turned out great and I learned a thing or two along the way.

                The volunteers stayed at the hostel in Mancos called La Casa de Mi Abuela. It’s about a 20 minute walk from my house, so each night after they built stuff all day Kait, Vero, Yoss and I would go up to the hostel to teach some more crafts and eat dinner with them. On the first day we actually had a volunteer panel for the trainees. This is when a group of PCVs sit around and answer whatever questions the audience has, this was almost a weekly event throughout my training. The only difference was that this time I was on the panel.  It felt strange to be the one with some answers now. I was also a point of interest for a lot of the 18ers because I had so recently come to site. The first three months are a huge, looming question mark during training and they all wanted to talk about it. Fortunately I’ve got the gift of gab, as my mom says, so I did my best to talk with everyone throughout the three days.

                Helping with FBT was a great opportunity for me and it was SO much fun to hang out with other volunteers. I was absolutely exhausted by the end of it though…..I don’t work 15 hour days anymore :-P

Good luck to all the 18ers and I can’t wait to see which if y’all are coming to Ancash!

October 25: vamos a empezar una otra vez

                Tuesday started out like normal…..I taught four English classes at the primaria school. I love those kids. They haven’t gotten to an age where they think it’s not cool to be interested.  And they’re huge on hugs :-)

                Tuesday afternoon I took another crack at my world map project. As some of you may remember the door was locked the first time I tried to do this. Everything worked out this time and we were able to get into the room. Only three students turned up, but we had a great time with the class and they really seem interested. I’ve decided to continue even if it is just with the three of them. Better to work with those who want to …….

October 23: I guess I should set the record straight

          So last month I was so excited for my one month mark that I actually wrote about it a day early. Oops :-P So the truth is that I got to my site on August 23, and that means that today is two months. I’m not sure if I am more shocked that I’ve already been here for two months or that I only have one month left to write my community diagnostic….yikes!

I think month three is going to be exciting!

October 18: the devil is in the details

           So Tuesday was an exciting day. Vero came back from Lima and she stopped in Mancos to give me a doughnut she had brought me…..a Dunkin Doughnut! Then Kait turned up to exchange materials for the FBT classes we’re preparing. I kept running out the front of my school in between classes to find them :-P That afternoon I was all set up to start my World Map class, but when I got to the school the front door was locked, bummer.  I sat on a bench outside of the school to talk to the students as they turned up and explain why we weren’t having class. I ended up wandering around town for a little while with two of the girls, so all was not lost. Later that night I watched telenovelas with my host fam while I counted school surveys…..exciting stuff!