So not only did I go to sleep fairly early the night before, but we got to sleep in until almost 8:30 on Friday morning….it was delightful to catch up on sleep. The morning got off to an interesting start when we woke up to find out that there was no water in our house, luckily none of us shower everyday anymore :-P We headed back over to the school to give our health charlas. Upon arrival we discovered that the school director decided Friday would be a field day instead and invited a whole other school over to join in on the activities. However; this sort of last minute changing of plans is fairly common, so it was another practical lesson for all of us. We eventually managed to convince some kids that they really did want to leave the voley game and come to a hygiene charla. Patti totally killed it….I could take classroom management lessons from her and she’s only 16. The kids even did really well, considering there were sports tournaments raging right outside the window. I’m pretty sure the back row of the room was a different set of kids every time we turned around though. Ha ha ha, I don’t blame them. They perked up for the tip-i-tap though; those things are always a hit. For lunch we went back to the same restaurant as before, it’s the only one in the town. The food was great though so we didn’t mind in the least. After lunch we walked around the town practicing some of our community diagnostic tools. Nick and I talked with the mayor and went to the police station to ask some questions…..they asked if we were spies :-P Its sort of a running joke that some people think we actually work for the CIA, so Nick and I just busted out laughing. After doing some interview’s we went to Kelsi’s house to meet her host family and eat some pineapple. Pineapple is the primary industry in Poroto, so they were very excited for us to try it. They won my vote. If anyone ever tries to sell you a pineapple from Poroto, buy it.
After the pineapple we clown cared….I mean combi-ed….our way back to Trujillo. We had the evening to ourselves so Amanda R, Jessica and I went to a little café to get some dinner. It was interesting to be back in a place where American tourists may happen by. I turns out that I’m confused by English now as well. I hear it’s a good sign though, when we start forgetting how to speak English so easily. Do keep this in mind when reading anything I write ha ha ha. At 9:30 Richard, Lindsay and I caught a cab over to the mall to see the 10:30 showing of the last Harry Potter. There was only one show a day in English and it was the latest. But whatever- I loved it!!! Learned a few fun things too: 1. You can, in fact, sneak Starbucks coffee into a movie theater in your purse if you want to….you have to walk a little funny so you don’t spill though and 2. Boom is “pom” in Spanish subtitles. Thank you, Professor McGonagall.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
July 21: “So there are 11 beds and 16 of us…..?” (FBT Day 5)
Thursday was a pretty early morning for all of us. We needed to be packed and heading to our next site in time to teach classes that morning. We got breakfast on the way and then stuffed ourselves into another bus. Pretty much every time we would flag down a combi someone would say “oh man, there’s no way we’ll all fit in,” and somehow we always did…..luggage and all. I posit that the concept of a clown car may have originated in some obscure Peruvian town :-P Anyway, we arrived in Poroto with time to spare. So Kelsi took us all to the campestre to drop off our luggage, where they seemed to have forgotten we were coming. After some discussion, the owners told us they would have the rooms ready by the time we got back that night. (see blog title). After that we all went over to the school in Poroto to …wait for it….do some more charlas! Sabrina and I worked together to teach about the importance of recycling and how you can actually reuse materials yourself to make things instead of just turning stuff over to recycling plants. We taught the kids how to make beads out of old magazines and then we strung them all together to make bracelets. The students really seemed to enjoy themselves, even the boys. We were a little concerned when we walked in the class with a jewelry activity planned and saw that 2/3 of the class was male, but they were great about it. Both Sabrina and I had had tough classes the day before, so it was great to have our activities go well. I also loved learning how to make the beads myself…..i might make a bracelet or two of my own when I have the time The classes ended but we still had time before our next activity so we hung out with the kids during their break hour. It was great to just talk with the kids, instead of being worried about teaching. We went to another school in a little caseria called Mochal. This was a primaria school and we played dinamicas with the kids for about an hour. After lunch we went over to Kelsi’s health post to meet with her group of student health promoters. We divided into groups and worked with one of the kids to prepare a health charla for the following day. Kelsey and I worked with a girl named Patti and she pretty much has my vote when she decides to run for president. She’s the equivalent of a senior in the segundaria school and just basically rocks. We decided to talk about dental hygiene and hand washing….there was even a large model of teeth involved. Kelsey and I were pretty sleep deprived by this point of FBT so our planning session rapidly deteriorated into a comedy act :-P Once we started using the large teeth to talk through, Patty basically thought we were nuts. But we are, so it’s appropriate.
After the health post some of us started walking back to the campestre. We decided to cook dinner for ourselves that night, so we headed back to get started. It turned out the kitchens on in our little campestre houses had no gas for the stove or even cooking utensils for that matter ……however there was a restaurant that the owners let us use. We made banana oatmeal pancakes and veggie egg scramble. Yummy! There was even some peanut butter to smear on the pancakes! Life is sweet It was great fun to crowd into the kitchen and cook dinner together. Since we had planned everything that afternoon we were actually done for the night so Lindsey, Richard, Amanda, Kelsey and I had a dance party. We even took things a step further by setting up our cameras to take self-timed photos of our ridiculous dancing….. wait, I mean our amazing dancing. That’s where my current facebook photo came from, in case you’re wondering. The night got even better when Sabrina and I managed to snag a double bed to share and went to bed by 11.
After the health post some of us started walking back to the campestre. We decided to cook dinner for ourselves that night, so we headed back to get started. It turned out the kitchens on in our little campestre houses had no gas for the stove or even cooking utensils for that matter ……however there was a restaurant that the owners let us use. We made banana oatmeal pancakes and veggie egg scramble. Yummy! There was even some peanut butter to smear on the pancakes! Life is sweet It was great fun to crowd into the kitchen and cook dinner together. Since we had planned everything that afternoon we were actually done for the night so Lindsey, Richard, Amanda, Kelsey and I had a dance party. We even took things a step further by setting up our cameras to take self-timed photos of our ridiculous dancing….. wait, I mean our amazing dancing. That’s where my current facebook photo came from, in case you’re wondering. The night got even better when Sabrina and I managed to snag a double bed to share and went to bed by 11.
July 20: there are children on desks and my food still has a head, but we have hot water! (FBT Day 4)
Wednesday morning we packed up and headed for Otuzco, a city in the Sierra. We’re actually the only FBT group that got to see sites in both the Sierra and the Costa so that was pretty exciting. Otuzco is an amazing town and I hope to have time to go back to visit, apparently there are some pretty crazy festivals in town. Anyway, the ride to Otuzco was a little less cool. It was a bus that curved and bumped its way up a mountain. This genius decided to tempt fate even more by trying to read over her lesson plan on the bus…..considering that I can’t even read on an interstate at home I’m not really sure what I was thinking. My entrance to the town was a little less than grand when I stumbled off the bus still clutching the plastic bad I had been trying not to puke in. I wasn’t the only one feeling a little green around the gills either, but we only had enough time to take our stuff to the hostel before heading straight to the school to teach.
So the solo classes were a little bit of an adventure for everyone. For my class the teachers combined two classes so I had about 45 9-10 year olds. They really were sweet kids, but I had a few boys that wanted nothing more than to strangle each other and then the rest of them want to talk constantly about everything other than hand washing. I did my best to control the class, but it just didn’t really work. I definitely have some work to do on my classroom management skills. The only time they were all quiet was when I pulled out my knife to cut the bottom of the bottle for my tip-i-tap. Though it was incredibly amusing, I don’t think waving a knife around is a classroom management technique I should use very often :-P I left my class feeling like I had dealt with some difficult children, but it turns out I got off easy. Brice, another trainee, had a class where the kids got up and starting jumping from desk to desk. Apparently there are some photos floating around, hopefully I can get my hands on one. Either way I learned a new word to describe those kids: chuqui. It’s pronounced like chew + key. I just assumed it was another new word for me until my Spanish teach started explaining about this little, scary doll that kills people in a bunch of horror movies……got it yet? That’s how Peruvians spell Chucky. Then, because there is never a dull moment in Peace Corps, one of the teachers asked if we could all just go give charlas to the other classes too….this time we divided into pairs and picked one of our two charlas to present. Kelsey and I decided to talk about the environment, which was great fun because one her activities was walking into the room with a huge bag of trash and tossing it around while having a random conversation with each other. We were illustrating the point that throwing trash in a classroom is strange but few people think twice about throwing trash in the street.
After all the teaching excitement we went to lunch in town. This was a different experience from the other two sites so far because there were actually multiple restaurants to choose from. Otuzco is a city of about 12,000 so there’s more there. It’s now time for another food update and this one might actually be the biggest one yet…..I tried cuy. Not only that, but I tried cuy that still had a head attached. Yes there is a photo, I promise. I won’t go so far as to say that I like the cuy, but i am willing to give it another shot in the future. Next time I would prefer that my cuy not be staring at my while I gnaw on it though. Anyway, after lunch some of us went on a hike into the mountains around Otuzco. So beautiful! While we were hiking I had another “I can’t believe I’m here” moment. Some days I just can’t believe that real life for me right now means I can go hiking in the Peruvian Sierra. I’m a lucky girl. After the hike I went back and took the most amazing hot shower I’ve had in almost two months. The water was hot, not lukewarm and there was legit water pressure. For dinner we decided to sample the street food. This is a huge no-no when first getting to Peru because it’s basically a sure fire way to get the trots until your stomach becomes more accustomed. We haven’t really been here that long ourselves, but there was no way any of us were saying no to papitas reyenas. Delicious! After dinner was another group meeting and more charla assignments.
So the solo classes were a little bit of an adventure for everyone. For my class the teachers combined two classes so I had about 45 9-10 year olds. They really were sweet kids, but I had a few boys that wanted nothing more than to strangle each other and then the rest of them want to talk constantly about everything other than hand washing. I did my best to control the class, but it just didn’t really work. I definitely have some work to do on my classroom management skills. The only time they were all quiet was when I pulled out my knife to cut the bottom of the bottle for my tip-i-tap. Though it was incredibly amusing, I don’t think waving a knife around is a classroom management technique I should use very often :-P I left my class feeling like I had dealt with some difficult children, but it turns out I got off easy. Brice, another trainee, had a class where the kids got up and starting jumping from desk to desk. Apparently there are some photos floating around, hopefully I can get my hands on one. Either way I learned a new word to describe those kids: chuqui. It’s pronounced like chew + key. I just assumed it was another new word for me until my Spanish teach started explaining about this little, scary doll that kills people in a bunch of horror movies……got it yet? That’s how Peruvians spell Chucky. Then, because there is never a dull moment in Peace Corps, one of the teachers asked if we could all just go give charlas to the other classes too….this time we divided into pairs and picked one of our two charlas to present. Kelsey and I decided to talk about the environment, which was great fun because one her activities was walking into the room with a huge bag of trash and tossing it around while having a random conversation with each other. We were illustrating the point that throwing trash in a classroom is strange but few people think twice about throwing trash in the street.
After all the teaching excitement we went to lunch in town. This was a different experience from the other two sites so far because there were actually multiple restaurants to choose from. Otuzco is a city of about 12,000 so there’s more there. It’s now time for another food update and this one might actually be the biggest one yet…..I tried cuy. Not only that, but I tried cuy that still had a head attached. Yes there is a photo, I promise. I won’t go so far as to say that I like the cuy, but i am willing to give it another shot in the future. Next time I would prefer that my cuy not be staring at my while I gnaw on it though. Anyway, after lunch some of us went on a hike into the mountains around Otuzco. So beautiful! While we were hiking I had another “I can’t believe I’m here” moment. Some days I just can’t believe that real life for me right now means I can go hiking in the Peruvian Sierra. I’m a lucky girl. After the hike I went back and took the most amazing hot shower I’ve had in almost two months. The water was hot, not lukewarm and there was legit water pressure. For dinner we decided to sample the street food. This is a huge no-no when first getting to Peru because it’s basically a sure fire way to get the trots until your stomach becomes more accustomed. We haven’t really been here that long ourselves, but there was no way any of us were saying no to papitas reyenas. Delicious! After dinner was another group meeting and more charla assignments.
July 19: “it’s like two Indian tribes meeting in the woods” (FBT Day 3)
On Tuesday morning we went out to Ian’s site in Bello Horizonte, it’s a really small. On our way to the town we stopped at the nearby school to spend the morning teaching and observing classes. To kick things off, Kidist and I taught an English class to 10 and 11 years olds. We worked on numbers and colors. The kids were really cool and seemed interested. The teacher also participated in our activities, which helps keep the kids in line. The teacher actually asked us if we would come back the next week to teach again….I would love to help out, but I think the 9 hour commute from Lima would be a little much :-P After our English classes we observed Kelsi and Ian give a charla to the kids about the importance of communicating with parents. After watching though we were split up amongst the other segundaria classrooms to give charlas on the same topic. Kidist and I went in with what we thought were pretty good ideas, but neither of us felt like the class went well. We had a lot of trouble getting the kids to participate. That’s something we have all been told to expect in our classrooms at first, so it was a good lesson. We also had some kids with attitude problems, which was irritating, but the tech trainers said we both did a pretty good job dealing with them. Over all that morning’s lesson was to have WAY more planned that you think you’ll need. Factoring discussion time into a session plan only really works if the kids actually talk :-P
After the school we went to the restaurant that’s nearby for lunch before heading all the way to Bello Horizonte. So like I said, it’s pretty small, but there happens to be another group of gringos working in the town as well. It’s a project with students from Yale and University of Ohio to build a health post over the next three years. It’s a really cool project and it was an absolute riot when we came walking up over the hill and encountered another group speaking English. Everyone just stopped talking and stared all confused- like for a few seconds. I was particularly excited to meet this group because it reminded me that we all may have to opportunity to work with other charities or NGO groups in our own sites. After a fond, English farewell to the health post kids and a walking tour of Bello Horizonte (roughly 15 minutes); we went to an aldea (orphanage) that Ian works with. There are about 55 kids at the aldea right now and unfortunately most of them are there because they had to be removed from their families. This aldea seems pretty amazing. The kids live in small groups with a tia to look after them. And we certainly can’t prove this, but the tias just might be angels. Most of them have families of their own but they live 6 days a week at the center looking after the kids. According to Ian they work for nothing some months if the money from the government doesn’t come on time. It turned out that some of the residents of the aldea were actually in our classes that we taught in the school, so we got to hang out with some of the kids more. We turned up to the aldea with grand plans of educational games and self-esteem activities, but the younger kids saw a big group of gringos and just wanted to play. So we busted out the volley ball, soccer ball, football and Frisbee…..all on the same concha mind you, so sometimes you had to catch the Frisbee and kick the soccer ball with in seconds of each other. It was great!
After the aldea we caught a combi back to Trujillo. We had our evening meeting and we all got assigned a solo charla for the next day. Yikes! I was assigned to teach 8 and 9 year olds about the importance of hand-washing and how to make a tip-i-tap. A tip-i-tap is a wonderful little device that allows you to run water to wash your hands with even if there is no running water in your house. In Peru it’s very common to only have running water for a few hours a day. A tip-i-tap is just a plastic water bottle hung upside down with the bottom of the bottle cut off so you can pour in water. Then you loosen the cap on the bottle just enough to allow a trickle of water out. You can even save the bottom of the bottle to use as a soap dish if you’re feeling fancy. The idea is to fill up the bottle when you have running water and then use it when the water is turned off. Pretty cool, huh? Yeah I think so too, but at the time I was more concerned with figuring out how to teach a class by myself for an hour. After the meeting I went out for pizza with Ian, Sabrina and Richard. This pizza was amazing; it had real tomato sauce on it! After dinner I went back to the hostel to prepare my lesson plan and convince myself to not be nervous….it didn’t work :-P
After the school we went to the restaurant that’s nearby for lunch before heading all the way to Bello Horizonte. So like I said, it’s pretty small, but there happens to be another group of gringos working in the town as well. It’s a project with students from Yale and University of Ohio to build a health post over the next three years. It’s a really cool project and it was an absolute riot when we came walking up over the hill and encountered another group speaking English. Everyone just stopped talking and stared all confused- like for a few seconds. I was particularly excited to meet this group because it reminded me that we all may have to opportunity to work with other charities or NGO groups in our own sites. After a fond, English farewell to the health post kids and a walking tour of Bello Horizonte (roughly 15 minutes); we went to an aldea (orphanage) that Ian works with. There are about 55 kids at the aldea right now and unfortunately most of them are there because they had to be removed from their families. This aldea seems pretty amazing. The kids live in small groups with a tia to look after them. And we certainly can’t prove this, but the tias just might be angels. Most of them have families of their own but they live 6 days a week at the center looking after the kids. According to Ian they work for nothing some months if the money from the government doesn’t come on time. It turned out that some of the residents of the aldea were actually in our classes that we taught in the school, so we got to hang out with some of the kids more. We turned up to the aldea with grand plans of educational games and self-esteem activities, but the younger kids saw a big group of gringos and just wanted to play. So we busted out the volley ball, soccer ball, football and Frisbee…..all on the same concha mind you, so sometimes you had to catch the Frisbee and kick the soccer ball with in seconds of each other. It was great!
After the aldea we caught a combi back to Trujillo. We had our evening meeting and we all got assigned a solo charla for the next day. Yikes! I was assigned to teach 8 and 9 year olds about the importance of hand-washing and how to make a tip-i-tap. A tip-i-tap is a wonderful little device that allows you to run water to wash your hands with even if there is no running water in your house. In Peru it’s very common to only have running water for a few hours a day. A tip-i-tap is just a plastic water bottle hung upside down with the bottom of the bottle cut off so you can pour in water. Then you loosen the cap on the bottle just enough to allow a trickle of water out. You can even save the bottom of the bottle to use as a soap dish if you’re feeling fancy. The idea is to fill up the bottle when you have running water and then use it when the water is turned off. Pretty cool, huh? Yeah I think so too, but at the time I was more concerned with figuring out how to teach a class by myself for an hour. After the meeting I went out for pizza with Ian, Sabrina and Richard. This pizza was amazing; it had real tomato sauce on it! After dinner I went back to the hostel to prepare my lesson plan and convince myself to not be nervous….it didn’t work :-P
July 18: surf school and fluoride treatments for 4-year-olds (FBT Day 2)
Monday we went to a town called Puerto Malabrigo. It’s the site of PCVs name Erin and Keith and it’s about 1 ½ hours out of Trujillo. This town is also a surfer town. Actually it’s in competition for the longest left handed wave(?) in the world. Now I couldn’t begin to tell you what that means, but all the surfers talked about it like it was something to be excited over :-P That morning we went to the health post to look around and meet up with the dentist. From there we all went to an inicial school (basically Peruvian kindergarten) to watch the dentist give a charla about dental hygiene. After the talk we took all the kids to brush their teeth and then used a Q-Tip to apply fluoride gel to their teeth. The kids were SO cute and it was going great until one of the little boys puked on Kerry. Apparently some of the kids didn’t think the fluoride tasted too great ha ha ha. After the dentist’s talk we went over to the special education school, they’re called CEBEs here. The director of the school gave us a presentation over the work done in special education schools and the problems faced by the special needs population. Very few schools in Peru practice inclusion of special needs students and many towns don’t have CEBEs, so there are a lot of special needs children who “fall through the cracks,” so to speak. It’s unfortunate, but improvements are being made. After the presentation we got to spend time with the students in the CEBE. We actually hung out with them while they brushed their teeth as well; Erin is a health volunteer, so this is a project of hers. The students were amazing! Sadly at lunch Erin told us her take on the CEBE director. Apparently she puts on a pretty good show during presentations, but she’s a bit of a problem herself. Erin tried to get a grant to do a project at the school, but the director wouldn’t give the appropriate information because Erin wouldn’t agree to use the money to buy a cell phone for her. Also at the beginning of the school year Erin went with the director out to neighboring pueblos to find students who might need to attend the CEBE. After telling the parents their students could attend and that the municipality might even be able to help with the cost of traveling to the school; the director turned the names of those students in to get the money from the government but the students never came to the school. Overall we were much less impressed with the director by the end of lunch.
After lunch we went to the beach to meet up with the surf school. The kids have to clean up parts of the beach before they are allowed to go out and surf, so we cleaned with them. A few people from out group actually put on wetsuits and got in the water with the kids, the rest of us hung out on the beach in the sun. Back in Trujillo that night we got pollo a la brasa for dinner. It’s one of the most common dishes I’ve seen and its super tasty. After dinner, Lindsay and I decided we needed another cup of coffee so we stopped by our little coffee shop again. I had already forgotten how nice it was to sit and chat in coffee shops, that’s not really part of small town life in Peru. Hmmm…..maybe I’ll change that. I could have coffee hour with the older kids at my site. I need to keep that in mind. After coffee I went back to the hostel to work on my lesson plans for the next day.
After lunch we went to the beach to meet up with the surf school. The kids have to clean up parts of the beach before they are allowed to go out and surf, so we cleaned with them. A few people from out group actually put on wetsuits and got in the water with the kids, the rest of us hung out on the beach in the sun. Back in Trujillo that night we got pollo a la brasa for dinner. It’s one of the most common dishes I’ve seen and its super tasty. After dinner, Lindsay and I decided we needed another cup of coffee so we stopped by our little coffee shop again. I had already forgotten how nice it was to sit and chat in coffee shops, that’s not really part of small town life in Peru. Hmmm…..maybe I’ll change that. I could have coffee hour with the older kids at my site. I need to keep that in mind. After coffee I went back to the hostel to work on my lesson plans for the next day.
July 17: Welcome to Tujillo, let the eating begin…..(FBT Day 1)
So we arrived in Trujillo around 7 ish in the morning. Ian and Kelsi, the PCVs that led our FBT, met us at the station which was nice because we didn’t have to think very hard about how to find the hostel. The hostel is right near the plaza in Trujillo and it’s in this really neat old colonial building. We had time to settle into our rooms and take showers before everything started. That morning a bunch of the PCVs from La Libertad came to Trujillo to meet us and answer some questions. After the PCV panel we had a scavenger hunt around Trujillo. We had to find various types of stores and food. We didn’t find all of the answers; but Kelsey, Sabrina and I did get invited to a party which was cool even if we couldn’t go. After the scavenger hunt we took a combi out to a town called Huanchaco. It’s a TOTAL surfer town and apparently a pretty cool place to vacation. Since we were on the coast we decided it was only appropriate to have ceviche. Yum! After lunch we walked along the road that lines the beach looking at all the clothes and crafts for sale. We also went on the hunt for dessert. You’ll see this is a theme throughout the week. A good overall explanation is that we ate everything that wasn’t nailed down…..and some of us might have even tried to eat some things that were :-P Anyway, on the hunt for the panqueques house we split an order of picarones. These are the Peruvian addition to the grand culinary tradition of frying bread and covering it in something sweet. Picture a doughnut shaped funnel cake drizzled in honey. A little farther down the beach we found the panqueques in this amazing little restaurant run by a Dutch ex-pat. So we all ordered what amounted to crepes. I got one with chocolate and my friend Nick got one with ice-cream so we could cut them in half and trade. There is a photo of Nick and I each trying to eat a crepe that we rolled up around a scoop of ice cream before it melted all over our hands :-P
Back in Trujillo that night we discovered a great little coffee shop right next door to our hostel, so we piled into the couches and let Richard do tarot readings for us. Later that night Lindsay, Richard, Kerry, Kidist, Jenny and I set off for the mall to see the last Harry Potter movie, but sadly the tickets were more than we thought and not everyone wanted to pay. So instead we got the bright idea to go in search of this pizza place Lindsay knew about. The story was is the guy goes to the states twice a year to buy mozzarella and real pepperoni (which is hard to find around here for some reason). It turns out our directions were not exactly accurate…..an hour and half of running around Trujillo later though we did get some pretty excellent pizza. Nothing like a good food adventure in a new city :-P
Back in Trujillo that night we discovered a great little coffee shop right next door to our hostel, so we piled into the couches and let Richard do tarot readings for us. Later that night Lindsay, Richard, Kerry, Kidist, Jenny and I set off for the mall to see the last Harry Potter movie, but sadly the tickets were more than we thought and not everyone wanted to pay. So instead we got the bright idea to go in search of this pizza place Lindsay knew about. The story was is the guy goes to the states twice a year to buy mozzarella and real pepperoni (which is hard to find around here for some reason). It turns out our directions were not exactly accurate…..an hour and half of running around Trujillo later though we did get some pretty excellent pizza. Nothing like a good food adventure in a new city :-P
July 16: FBT prep and my first pollada
I basically spent Saturday getting ready to leave town later that night. I packed up my stuff for FBT, which was sort of like putting together a puzzle. Lindsay told us to bring the smallest bags that we could, so I decided to fit everything into my book bad and a shoulder bag. In ended up being fine, but I wasn’t sure how it would work out at first :-P After packing I went to the locoturio for a little while, just to say hey to folks before I left town for a while. When I got on facebook book I realized that Tucker week at the beach was starting back in the states. I’m glad I was going to La Libertad for the week or I might have gotten a little sad over missing it. I love you guys and I hope it’s a blast!
Saturday afternoon I went up to Santa Eulalia with Jeff and Richard to go to a pollada for Kidist’s mom. A pollada is a really common type of fundraiser around here. The food was great and we were all happy to help out Kidist’s host mom. After lunch a few of us sat around Kidist’s living room and took turns using her internet. That was the first time I had been on skype since I got down here.
After the pollada I went back to my house and hung around until it was time to go. Sabrina, Kelsey, Amanda and I all rode to Lima together and our taxi driver ended up being some host cousin of mine. Apparently Ramiro was going to drive us, but then Peru won the soccer game so and the other guys in the family made this younger cousin take us so they could stay and party. Guess everyone has to take a turn being the low man on the totem pole :-P We didn’t get caught in much traffic so we got to the bus station early and played cards while we waited. Lindsay showed up with Duncan Doughnuts for us and then once we got on the bus we found out the seats lay almost entirely flat….and they have pull out foot rests. Over all FBT was getting off to a fantastic start!
Saturday afternoon I went up to Santa Eulalia with Jeff and Richard to go to a pollada for Kidist’s mom. A pollada is a really common type of fundraiser around here. The food was great and we were all happy to help out Kidist’s host mom. After lunch a few of us sat around Kidist’s living room and took turns using her internet. That was the first time I had been on skype since I got down here.
After the pollada I went back to my house and hung around until it was time to go. Sabrina, Kelsey, Amanda and I all rode to Lima together and our taxi driver ended up being some host cousin of mine. Apparently Ramiro was going to drive us, but then Peru won the soccer game so and the other guys in the family made this younger cousin take us so they could stay and party. Guess everyone has to take a turn being the low man on the totem pole :-P We didn’t get caught in much traffic so we got to the bus station early and played cards while we waited. Lindsay showed up with Duncan Doughnuts for us and then once we got on the bus we found out the seats lay almost entirely flat….and they have pull out foot rests. Over all FBT was getting off to a fantastic start!
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