Sunday, January 17, 2010

Someone remind me... what's it like to not be sweating??

So, I have officially passed my first holiday season out of the US and away from my family, and not surprisingly, I didn’t love it. For those of you who have ever spent any part of December, or November for that matter, around me know that Christmas is kind of a big deal in my world. I start playing Christmas carols when I am alone the minute Halloween costumes come off (in the presence of others I generally respect that Thanksgiving cut off rule). In my family, I basically am Christmas (just ask my parents who put up decorations without me for the first time in about 15 years). Thus, spending Christmas in Peru was not an easy experience for me. Some volunteers got through the day with a little more than sad nod to home traditions while others barely held back tears during the festivities.

Christmas in Peru is entertaining at the very least. At least in the more developed city of Piura, American Christmas decoration have taken off, and those who buy lights and decorations seem to take my dear mother’s approach of the tackier the better. Another observation that I have had is that there seems to be a formula for how you celebrate around here. Think about this for a minute, what are your Christmas traditions (given that you celebrate Christmas and all)? Now ask the person nearest to you (that is not in your family). 20 bucks says they are not the same. Not so much the case here. Things vary pretty widely by region, but within a given area people pretty much do the same things:

1. Make giant nativities – everywhere, literally in every classroom and office building and public place. Make them all the same way with speckled green paper and random farm animals.

2. Eat paneton and hot chocolate (despite the fact you are currently sweating as it is summer near the equator)

3. Get your family together on Christmas eve, go to Christmas eve mass and then sit around until midnight (drinking can very easily be added to this portion of the day)

4. At midnight, toast with a very tiny plastic glass (like the kind you got swish in in elementary school) of sweet Peruvian wine

5. Eat turkey and rice (and you better like it because it is breakfast, lunch and dinner for at least 2 more days)

6. Drink beer and dance into the night (despite the fact that you just ate turkey and forced yourself to stay up till midnight)

7. Wake up on Christmas and basically go about a regular day

Feliz Navidad a Todos :)

Now you may be asking, but what about your fancy educated city family susan? Well, I have no idea what they do for Christmas; they went to Arequipa for about a month to celebrate the holidays. (They finally came back 4 days ago and told me they were leaving again the next night, haven’t seen them since) It took them until the day before they left to ask if I had Christmas plans. (disclaimer: they are AMAZING people, they just have a more independent idea of this host family situation)

Fortunately, I have some amazing friends here in Piura who offered up their family celebrations to me. I ended up going up to Paccha with my friend Heather and her father and stepmother from the states to celebrate campo Peruvian style. Things went pretty much as described above. It was hard to be around a host family that wasn’t mine and see heather with her family though, despite everyone’s best efforts to cheer me up. Her family even brought me a few Christmas presents. I am so appreciative of everything Heather did to try and make Christmas better for me, she is such an amazing friend to have here. However, somewhere between getting into a confrontation with our taxi driver on the way there, and sitting alone on a sweltering bus on my way home on Christmas day, some of the joy of the season was a little lost on me.

Heather giving out gifts to her family in Paccha

Things improved later that afternoon when my other PC friends Madeline and Kerry came over and we made an amazing dinner, watched Love Actually, and had a nice little sleepover to end Christmas on a more familiar note. On the 27th more of the Piura volunteers came into town and I cooked a big pot roast dinner and pumpkin pie for everyone while we sang Christmas carols and played trivia games. It was nice to put a good Christmas memory together, even if it was a few days late.

I realized that I forgot to mention my more enjoyable Peruvian parts of the holiday season, my parties with my kids and co-workers. I participated in a variable parade of Chocolatadas (hot chocolate parties – again let me reiterate: it’s summer, at the equator) over the course of the week before Christmas. I had just one minor complaint to raise with my special ed school concerning the 2 parties that were held there. I showed up one morning to find that we were hosting a party for the children of the local neighborhood (which is a pretty dangerous and poor part of town). The next day we had a big party for the students at the school. Anyone noticing the minor problem here? Maybe I should point out that not only were the parties separate, the students from the school were actually SENT HOME the day of the other party. As in, actively excluded from an activity at their own school. But we are all for inclusion, just ask my director, I swear…

The Christmas Celebration at CEBE for the kids in the local neighborhood

Passing around the Paneton and the Hot Chocolate

Pictured: Exclusion

All the kids were given a gift from one of the teachers, that part was actually really bittersweet since you know it may be their only gift this year

The Christmas Celebration the following day for the kids at CEBE

Love them, I now have a goal of having one silly picture of Cristobal on every blog entry

Some bank donated gifts for all the kids at the Special Ed School

The boys with their toys...

I was much happier at the Chocolatada for my kids in La Molina (despite waiting outside for an hour because this is Peru). Heather’s fam came out to see my site and meet my kiddies. Her dad is an amazing photographer and has one of those crazy fancy cameras (that made me ridiculously paranoid as we traveled out to the ghetto), and he took some beautiful pictures of my kids and my site. Having heather’s parents around made me realize how crazy our lives actually are here. We forget because we all came into this expecting the worst, so we aren’t really shocked by much, but seeing reactions from people with no intention of doing Peace Corps is very interesting. It made me look forward to visits from my friends and family (hint, hint).


Gotta love the enthusiasm for the Chocolatada

Heather's dad was quite the hit - it was decided that he looked like Santa Claus

If this kid mysteriously disappears around the same time I head back to the states, I know nothing about it...

The Cordova Camizan family (and Lucho's tire)

The kids checking out the gifts and playing some games

The Paneton and the Hot Chocolate...again


All the kids got the gifts from their parents at the event, even though most parents weren't there (some homemade from material the NGO donated and others store bought)



The pictures that Heather's Dad took of my site

New Years was another story altogether. The majority of my training group, as well as a few others, headed up to the beach in Mancora, about 3 hours from my site. There is not much culturally relevant information to share from this trip. General drunken debauchery, musical chairs with the available beds, lazy days at the beach and good food. However, we all made it out robbery and incident free :) It was really nice to see volunteers I have not seen in months (we never really get a chance to reunite with the business volunteers) and just have a few days to not count pennies or speak Spanish or worry about work. It was a much needed mental recuperation for everyone after Christmas in site. Our hostal was apparently the party zone, with every Peruvian between here and Lima partying the 30th, 31st, 1st well past sunrise. Those Peruvians know how to celebrate a holiday I am telling you.


Mancora Madness

Lazy beach days

Pictured: Crazy nights on the town

Heading out to ring in the New Year

Hugs at midnight
General New Years Festivities


7am aftermath (note: I was not present for the taking of these, sleep occurred around 6am, but I felt the fact that this many people were still partying, including our boys, should be duly noted)

Many brave souls set up tents for New Years rather than book a hostel - crazies

Yup, we were that spent...


But now the holiday season has come and gone, and summer vacation is in full swing here in Piura. What does that mean for a volunteer with half her site in a school that runs no summer programs? Well you create one of course. I am teaching a preschool class preparing the kids that are going to be included in the fall. The idea is to work with them 3 days a week for 2 hours teaching basic letters and numbers, colors and shapes, etc. This idea would be much more successful if the parents actually brought the kids… I have not had more than one kid each given day since I started 2 weeks ago. I was actually told by one of the mothers that they didn’t come because it was vacation and they didn’t want to bother… they live within walking distance for heavens sake! Anyone with fun preschool games, activities etc, please help me out though, my high school math teacher self is running out of fun things to do…

La Molina runs a full summer program funded by the local government, so I will be able to fill a lot of my time helping out with the classes there in addition to the ludoteca. We had a big inauguration ceremony this week, where I was placed on the important people panel with all the municipality representatives. I’m still waiting for that moment where I feel like I belong in the group of important people. I can’t help but always feel like I would be more comfortable serving the soda and snacks rather than receiving mine first, that’s just me though.


The Inauguration of Summer Classes at La Molina

I apparently belonged up there, despite my best efforts to play photographer instead

Marinera, always

What they did not factor in when they made me site up on the panel was that all my kids were going to want to come site with me :)

Heading home from the festivities

Everyone tells you in Peace Corps that your first 3 months in site are the hardest. Now, I will admit that the awkwardness of the past few months is not something I would willingly relive. However, I had my diagnostic to do, and could always excuse the fact that I felt relatively useless because I was still getting used to everything. However, as I start month 5 in site, I can’t help but feel like I should kind of have my shit together by now. And yet, I don’t. In college, I regularly took 20 credit hours, worked multiple jobs and always had a volunteer project. And yet here, I am pretty sure I am forgetting how to be productive… I am still a little lost as to what my role is at the school in particular. Every hug and smile from my kids makes me feel like there is a reason I’m here, I just wish I knew exactly what that reason was already.

In the interest of not ending on a slightly melodramatic note, I will take a moment to explain the Peruvian take on Carnaval: it’s the period of time right before Lent, it’s supposed to get really crazy the few days before Ash Wednesday, but the celebrations have already begun in Piura. Fortunately for me, Carnaval in Piura City means water balloons, water buckets, and general chucking of water at people. I say fortunately because the alternative would be the paint, oil and who knows what else that they throw at random people in Cajamarca. So on an average combi ride out to work I now have young kids and teenagers chucking water balloons in the windows, and walking home through the park is an adventure now. It is one of the most interesting and unexplained tradition I have seen yet here in Peru.