Really?

Are you catcalling me right now?  Are you sure? 

I can’t say I blame you.  Is it the way my outfit hugs my curves?  Is it my come-hither expression?  The fact that I’ve showered in the past week? 

As much as it drives me crazy not to be able to walk around town in peace, I have a little grudging admiration for the chutzpah it takes to hassle a woman who towers over you and has murder in her eyes. 

Because I don’t like posts to be wholly negative or snarky, here are some photos of Tumbo the lamb.

Lunchtime!

The ducks came over to see what was up.  

Wow-Wows and You: A Beginners Guide to Doggie Defense in Peru

There are lots of scary dogs in the Peruvian countryside. 

Many are threatening.

And sometimes they attack. 

In truth, some of the dogs around are real assholes.  I just don’t have pictures of them because I’m usually busy trying not to get eaten when I meet them.   Thankfully, there are steps you can take to avoid being a victim.

The first and most important thing is to put on your BAMF face. 

You need to believe that you are the baddest thing on the pampa.  The more confident you are, the less of a target you become.  Would you try to harass this lady? 

Didn’t think so. 

Second, if your badassery doesn’t do the trick and you are charged by a threatening dog, it’s good to have some artillery backup.

3 stones are ideal.  The first stone is small and serves as a warning.  If the dog continues to approach, throw the medium stone to show that you mean business.  The third stone should be as large as you can comfortably carry in your pocket and is to be used only in worse-case scenarios; when it’s hurt-or-be-hurt.

If for some reason you didn’t follow the steps in this guide and find yourself being menaced and without rocks or a tough-guy face, you can do the emergency fake-out.  The general rule is that there are rocks everyplace.  In your path, your garden, your quinoa, everywhere.  Except, of course, when you need one.  If you are being attacked and rockless, you can stoop down and pretend to pick one up.  Most aggressive dogs have rocks thrown at them frequently, and this maneuver will often make them stop short.  The risk is that you bend down and put your face more into biting range if the gambit doesn’t pay off.

This concludes the beginner’s guide to not getting chomped.  Walk tall, fill your pockets, and you’ll be alright.  

Snarkiness Made Real

Holy crap hold onto your hats friends.  See the little boy in the middle?  He is the living, Peruvian incarnation of the kid on the cooler sans ice cream cone (see post below).  Just look at the size of his hat and how unhappy he is! 

And I thought I was just taking a photo of cute kids in traditional outfits.  The world works in mysterious ways.

It's A Bad Sign

Signage in Peru is a travesty.  Misrepresentations making little grammatical or logical sense, signs mystify rather than describe the service or product offered.  Graphic designers could make a killing down here.  This has been the case all along, but I’ve just recently started to document the best of the worst.  Hopefully there will be further installments before I leave.  Let’s get started. 

Look at this child.  

This sign is from a bus company and talks about kids taking their identification card with them when they travel to combat kidnapping.  Who in their right mind would kidnap this kid?  He looks like he’s going to kill me in my sleep.  And even look at his ID photo.  If that soulless stare doesn’t make your amygdala squirm, nothing will.  It’s like Hitler’s baby photo.

This lady doesn’t work here.  Also, it’s 40 degrees out.  Sorry you got your hopes up. 

A Peruvian favorite is to put useless quotation marks around things, especially names.  A favorite of mine in Carhuamayo is Botica “Jhire.”  In Spanish, j’s make an h sound, and h’s are silent.  I know, hold onto your hat.  I think they put the quotation marks around it so you have to take a pause to appreciate the pronunciation.  This one has me stumped, though.

The marks aren’t around a proper noun.  Is it not really a bathroom?  Is this some sort of South American hipster irony?  Good god, I just want to know if I can pee in there or not! 

Then, there’s this little man on the side of an ice cream cooler.  

Why is he so inexplicably upset about his awesome cowboy outfit, physics defying hat, and giant chocolate ice cream cone?  Furthermore, why on earth would you put such an unhappy child on your cooler?  My hypothesis is that the hat and ice cream were photoshopped in.  It’s actually just a small boy in part of a cowboy outfit, maybe being told his cat died. 

Lastly, some totally bewildering graffiti.  

Rather than just lacking mastery of the English language, I like to think that this graffiti artist has a tyrannosaurus friend named Chomp, of whom he has a high opinion.  

This Week Was A Good Week

Let it be known that the week of April 8^th-14^th 2013, was a good one. 

Monday:  I finally bought the vermiculture worms I’ve been hunting for.  Weeks of phone calls, visits to municipalities, hassling, and light begging finally came to fruition.  I happily walked to my house with a plastic bag full of worms. 

Tuesday:  Every Tuesday, I have geography class with the 6^th graders of Micaela Bastidas elementary.  The endgame is to finish the World Map, but it’s been raining for every class and we weren’t able to get outside.  Finally, this beautiful Tuesday, it didn’t rain and we drew South America and most of Oceania and eastern Asia. 

If that wasn’t enough, I got to talk to an American friend I had been playing weeks of phone tag with just before he left the country.

Then, there was this sunset. 

Wednesday:  I cruised around Carhuamayo, buying and delivering materials to make the worm beds.  I got to chat up the brick lady and ride around in the back of a motocart.  Everything was in position.

Then, this puppy wanted to be my friend and let me rub her belly.

Thursday: We installed worm beds in two elementary schools.  The kids did most of the work.

They had a better time than it looked like.  Props to Jhan on the end.

Girls like worms!

The kids at Primaria Caceres were much better smilers.  Here, you say "whiskey" instead of "cheese."  I'd take either at this point.  

 

Handfull of worms, surrounded by kiddos, not bad.  

A little child labor never hurt anybody, right?

The finished product!

Friday-Sunday: Regional meeting in the jungle with all my friends!  Cremoladas, blue morpho butterflies, and we used the regional grill for the first time.  

Here's the view from our hotel room.

We went to a wildlife preserve and saw these disco-ball chrysalises.  

And even had some hammock time!

Presenting, the grill.

We might not have chairs, but we do have steak, chicken, veggies, cocktails full of jungle herbs, and plantain and pineapple kebabs.  We love you, grill.  

Nom Nom Nom

There's a stats portion of blogs that shows what people have searched for in order to find yours.  My favorite recent one is, "how to shut up a guinea pig."  How indeed.  My recommendation would be to eat it. 

I'll just have to remember that I can't take this approach with annoying animals once I get back to the states.

Don't Judge My Lady-Primping

I have the best mom ever.  She calls me, watches out for me, patiently listens to my dog anxieties, and sends me awesome packages for my birthday.  In this most recent one, along with movies and treats, were the educational and trashy magazines I requested.  I’ve been down with a cold, so I saved National Geographic for more coherent times and went right for this bad boy.

Glamour is engaging, vapid, and completely baffling to me in my Peace Corps induced state of lack and grottiness.  Nevertheless, I made an attempt to relate some of it to my life.  Here we go. 

This happens to me sometimes.

Mostly because doing laundry is a several hour process with potentially many days of drying time more than any conscious fashion decision.  I usually look about as happy as that model about it, too.  It’s stressful to be down to your last pair or two of underpants.

That sex thing?  Is it sex?  Whatever it is, I can guarantee you that every girl isn’t being asked.  Please see this entry from my favorite PC blog for some illumination: 

http://whatshouldpcvscallme.tumblr.com/post/45267387400/when-people-ask-about-my-love-life

What if it looks like you borrowed the bottom half of a Chewbacca costume?  But it doesn’t matter, because 0% of men are seeing or touching my legs (see sex paragraph above).  Also, how can "all about you" and "what men think" ever be logically backslashed together? 

This is a thing I’m seriously thinking of trying. 

I can’t possibly be stared at more, so might as well be a sparkly gringa. 

Apparently these are things that people spend 1/2 of my paycheck on. 

I could probably pull one off here if I wore it over my longjohns and under my regular pants. 

Wait…wait…floppy hats? (I don't know how to make this not sideways, sorry.)

I win! 

Apparently living one country over from the equator and close enough to the sun to hit it with a rake makes you chic.  Victory!