Signs That I May Need To Wear My Glasses More Often

Stasia : (pointing)  What the heck kind of dog is that?

Hermanito : That´s a pig.

Here, There, and Everywhere 2

We had an official song for the second part of our trip.  It´s called "Day Bus" sung to the tune of "Day Man" from It´s Always Sunny.

Day bus!  aaaAAAaaa!

Followed by a night bus!  aaaAAAaaa!

Mancora was blessedly less eventful.  We had a 6 hour bus ride through the desert to the beach town and arrived at our beautiful Posh Corps beach house.  We went down to a ceviche restaurant by the beach and Matteo and I jumped in the ocean while we were waiting for our food.  It turns out that our waiter was high as the stars and it ended up being an almost 2 hour wait.  He would come to our table, then run/scurry over to the kitchen, only to stand listlessly as soon as the door shut, unaware that we were watching him through the window.  It was funny until we got really hungry.  

We spent the next day on the beach playing in the waves and buying incredible mozzarella, tomato, basil empanadas from a lady with a basket who walked by at perfect intervals.  It had felt like forever since I’d seen the sun and the ocean.  Something about the beach turns me back into an 8 year old.  I can spend hours just swimming around and jumping in the waves.  All day if I have a boogie board.

Sadly, despite repeated sunscreen reapplications, I paid for my full day of nearly equatorial sunshine with a crazy sunburn.  I spent the next day reading or watching It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia in the hammock and rubbing overpriced aloe over my sun-dried tomato skin.  The peeling didn’t start until a few days later.  It was unsightly, but good bus entertainment.  It’s been several weeks and it still looks like I’m wearing a white bathing suit when I’m naked.  

Anyway, the next day we were up early and on a bus to go back to Chiclayo to catch a night bus to Chachapoyas.  The Mancora-Chiclayo bus took several hours longer than it should have.  It was cramped and hot as hell and thankfully, even the Peruvians wanted to open the windows.  We were accompanied by a vocal rooster and vendors selling ceviche and jello.  We had a few hours to kill when we finally got to Chiclayo and all went out for Chinese food.  Then I went walking with Baber and Ivan.  We got ice cream, then found a street where there were a dozen people selling puppies who were willing to let me pick almost all of them up.  Awesome.  

The hour finally rolled around and we piled on our night bus to Chachapoyas in Amazonas.  We were stopped several times during the night for landslides and unexpected rivers in the road.  At around 5 in the morning I was woken up from Dramamine-tinted sleep to hear Baber, my seat mate, yelling for me from outside the bus and telling me to bring water.  I grabbed my 2L bottle and stumbled out half-awake with my hair all askew.  Babes was sitting by the side of the road with a good deal of blood dripping from his hand.  It turns out that, good guy that he is, he woke up and went out to help move rocks from a recent landslide that was blocking our bus.  Someone rolled a rock on top of one of his fingers, which was covered in blood and had a good deal of skin and nail separated from their proper places.  He was brave when I poured water on it to clean it out and half the skin on his finger went flapping around.  It turns out that in the dingy hospital in Chacha, they pulled the nail off with pliers and cut the liberated skin off.  He’s ok, though.  And he took a lot of pleasure in wagging the finger in our faces for the rest of the trip, especially during dinner. 

We eventually arrived in Chachapoyas and to my favorite leg of the trip.  Amazonas is a beautiful department.  It’s like Jurassic Park and Narnia combined with worse transportation.  We went hiking to pre-Incan ruins, cliffs, and waterfalls, many times in pouring rain and came back to the city and had wonderful dinners.  The only downside was the several hour combi rides on twisty, bumpy roads to get anyplace, but it was through incredible landscapes and my belly behaved most of the time.  I don’t think it would to be too interesting to describe all the places we went, so check out Facebook for lots of pictures.  I couldn’t convey how beautiful it was with words, and the pictures only do a little better.  

You know the beginning of the first Indiana Jones movie where he’s in the temple, touches the idol, and is chased by a giant boulder?  That’s a Chachapoyan ruin.  Pretty cool!  

We were in Chacha for 4 days and then it was time for yet another long bus ride back to Lima.  While carrying my big backpack on my back, my smaller one on my front, another bag and hurrying to the bus station, I managed to hit a curb wrong and sprained my ankle.  I went down like a ton of bricks and came up with a mouth full of swears.  Poor Grant had to run carrying my backpacking bag while I hobbled to a cab with bloody ripped pants.  We all made it with plenty of time to hurry up and wait since the bus was a half hour late.  The curves coming down from the Amazonan mountains made reading impossible for most of us.  The bus entertainment was dubbed Sandra Bullock movies and Peruvian music videos on tiny screens.  Grant was sitting next to me and we had some nice chats and a discussion of religion before he mercifully passed out from the Dramamine I gave him.  I spent the majority of the time listening to music or podcasts and looking out the window.  If nothing else, the Peace Corps makes you more tranquil and able to deal with waiting or doing nothing for long periods of time.  I didn’t get antsy until the end.  We had an uneventful night and a breakdown in the desert 150k from Lima in the morning.  The whole ride ended up being 26 hours instead of 22, but we made it and nobody lost their minds.  

We had a nice time in Lima with wandering around (limping for me) and cappuccinos.  Nicole and I took a bus up to Junin the next day.  We were ready and it felt like coming home.  It seemed right that there would be snow and wind lashing the sides of the bus as it climbed.  

I’m getting back into the rhythm of things.  All the schoolkids ask me where I’ve been.  I’m motivated to work and get new projects going.  We’re going to start a recycling contest in one of the colegios and I’m hoping the money raised from that will get the municipality to sit up and take notice.  It turns out that a paper for my master’s that I thought was due at the end of May is due at the end of April, so that has been taking up a lot of my time.  It’s refreshing to use that part of my mind again.  Research, analysis, and above middle school level English.  Though it took me a full 5 minutes the other day to come up with the word “juxtaposed.”  That’s a long time to sit and scour your brain for something you know is there, but can’t put your hands on.  

I hope to get some good work done before our next training, which is already coming up at the end of May.  We’ll see!

Here, There, and Everywhere 1

-Disclaimer-  There won´t be any photos to go with these vacation posts.  I´m sorry.  I know a Peace Corps blog without photos is a just a shade of it´s potentia.  But they´re all on Facebook!  With more to come this weekend!  It just take so g.d. long to post photos that I can´t bear to put the same ones in two different places.  I´d rather teach children and go medicinal plant collecting.  Sorry!  I promise that there are still good stories below.  

This long trip started with PDM (Project Development something) and EIST (Early In Service Training) in Olmos, Lambayeque.  But we had to get there first.  My sister/social Jenny and I left on a Saturday morning from Carhuamayo to catch a bus to Lima.  Despite repeated remindings and phone calls the morning of, she was late for the bus and made me hold it and argue with an angry cobrador.  I was feeling equally murderous with Jenny as we sat down, but she was unfazed by my scolding and harried look.  I calmed down and we had an uneventful trip to Lima.  We traveled through the town where I had training and it was funny to see everything again.  The plaza, the crappy pizza place, the favorite discoteca.  Everything was greener with the passing of the rainy season.  It seems like we were there forever ago, though it was only a few months.  What I thought about then, what I knew and felt, how unknown and foreign everything was, is so far away.  Things are still surprising and strange, but I know how to roll with them now.  

We caught a night bus and were in Chiclayo 12 bleary hours later.  Other volunteers trickled in throughout the day to lots of smiles and hugs.  We spent a good part of the day on the sunny roof of the hostel catching up, playing music, and sitting on each other’s laps.  I didn’t even realize how much I missed and liked everyone until I saw them again. 

We were supposed to start the 2 hour drive to Olmos from Chiclayo at 6pm.  The vans showed up at 6:30 and we started off into the dusky desert.  After a few miles, one of the vans mysteriously slowed to a crawl on the shoulder of the highway.  It continued, only to pull over for a moment every quarter mile or so.  We continued our halting journey for another hour with many unanswered questions and guesses from the volunteers.  Finally, we pulled over at a plaza and all the drivers got out of their vans to confer.  It turned out that the van’s battery was bad and we waited for the drivers to find a mechanic to replace it.  It was long dark by this time with a sorry lack of street food vendors in the plaza.  We eventually got on our way and arrived in Olmos late.

Now, we were grumpy.  Most of us had been traveling for at least 24 hours, spent the last night on a bus, and hadn’t had any dinner, a shower, or a good teeth brushing for a while.  We were all looking forward to a chance to get cleaned up and have a nice bed.  Sadly, this wasn’t available at Hostel Romanzo.  We disembarked from our vans to find that the older, open-shirted, slightly addled proprietor  had no idea we were arriving that night.  He hustled his sparse staff to get sheets on beds and rooms cleaned up.  The place was filthy, even by Peace Corps standards.  And the bugs.  Even the locals described it as a plague.  It turns out that jillions of black cockroach-sized beetles emerge during the rainy season and invade.  They were everywhere.  If you stood in the open, they crawled over your feet, especially liking the space between the arch of your foot and your sandal.  If you stood under a tree, they fell in your hair and occasionally down the back of your shirt.  They made a horrible buzzing sound when they flew and had no respect for privacy.  

I was eventually led to my room and there were dozens of them creeping in the entryway.  I shooed a couple off my bed and tried to sleep.  The beetles were everywhere as soon as the light shut off.  They flew around my head and crawled over me in bed.  I tried to deal by burrito-ing myself in my sheets, but the desert heat was too much even at night.  I was sweating and breathing shallowly.  If I’d open up a breathing hole, they’d crawl in an over my neck or face.  Intermittently, I’d wake up and clear off my bed, but it was hopeless.  It was the most miserable I’ve been in my Peace Corps experience so far.  In the wee hours of the morning, I gave up and went and knocked on my socia’s door.  I slept for a few hours on a quilt on her concrete floor.

We moved rooms the next day and it turns out that I had the buggiest spot in the whole hotel.  Though they didn’t go away.   One morning, I had 5 beetles in one shoe and a grasshopper in the other.  Once, I put on a shirt without careful inspection and found out that I was sharing it.  We got more accostumed to the fellow hotel guests.  At first, I was my normal gentle self, not wanting to kill things.  After a few days, I was the Jackie Chan of beetle murder.  Swift.  Using anything as a weapon: shoes, bars of soap, Kindles, condiment bottles.  I grew familiar with the satisfying crunch of exoskeleton that meant that it was dead.  Sounds brutal and unlike me, but you’d have to be there to understand.

As soon as we got used to the beetles, then came the flood.  It rained one night and it seemed like the walkways immediately became rivers.  People piled their things on their beds as water rose to ankle depth in some rooms.  Thankfully the desert soil sucked the rain up quickly and we only had one soggy night.  

For all the biblical level problems we had, our time in Olmos wasn’t all bad.  It was a novelty to me to be hot.  I’d walk to the market at 7am and arrive with sweat down to my belly.  The volunteers got to hang out at night.  I hadn’t been outside at night since I got to site.  We played music, ate ice cream, and wandered around.  We visited the zoo Tina works at.  It was pretty sad, but she’s working hard to make it better for the animals and I got to hold a monkey’s hand.  At the end of training, we had a fantastic talent show with belly dancing and recycling reggaeton.  The four of us in Los Maximos wrote an original song together and everyone loved it.  It was called Olmos Home, get it?  We were demanded an encore immediately and everyone got up to dance.  It was wonderful. 

I wasn’t sure if we’d make it, but then all of the sudden the week was done and it was vacation time!

High Flyin

This is nothing but rumor and chisme, but I might just be the highest Peace Corps Volunteer in the world!  Pretty cool, right?  The girl who is supposedly the highest and I compared town elevations and the info I had said that mine was higher.  But really, who the heck knows what data is right?  And I`ve heard rumors that Nepal is going to beat us in elevation once they get up and running.  

I´ll cautiously accept the title for now.  At least it`ll be something cool to tell the kids when I`m 45 and they assume I´ve always been lame.  

A dramatic rendition of my vacation is coming soon, promise.  Though I haven`t decided if I`ll put pictures here.  I have more to put on Facebook and getting them on here is a lot of computer time for me.  We`ll see! 

Spanglish

I was a voracious reader when I was a kid.  I was friends with Mrs. Neff, the elementary school librarian and was always pestering her for recommendations.  I devoured all of E. B. White, Roald Dahl, heavy Brian Jaques books, and just about anything with adventure or animals.  I think I almost always won the accelerated reader contests in school.  Not because I wanted to win, it was a by-product of loving to read.  


I´ve been reading less as I´ve gotten older and my life more cluttered.  Especially in grad school when I was doing hours of reading every day for class and research.  I´ve picked it up again in the Peace Corps and have gone through a handful of books already.  I´ve found myself drawn to more fantasy or escapist books.  I loved re-reading the Hobbit and am now finishing the Grapes of Wrath that I somehow missed during high school and like a lot despite its darkness.  


The point of all this is that I think I´ve always had a good vocabulary because I read so much when I was little.  When you read a lot, language worms its way into crevasses of your brain without you even noticing.  I was pretty eloquent for a kid and as an adult have pulled out words that have surprised people.  Not because I´m trying to be fancy, but it just seems like the best word for the moment.  It´s nice to have such a large toolbox to use to express myself.


But I feel like I´m losing some if it being here in Peru.  I speak English a few times a week and am finding myself searching for words.  I see it in my fellow volunteers as well.  Sometimes, all activity will stop as we collectively search for a word that we know we know somewhere in the dusty parts of our language centers, but can´t find.  It usually ends up being some high school level vocab word.  I try to write here or lyrics for songs or work on my grad school papers, and it´s difficult.  I feel like my writing is 80% of what it could be because my upper level English is fuzzing out.  


Of course my Spanish has improved in this time.  I speak smoothly and rapidly and can give a good speech or charla when I need to.  But it´s not sophisticated or beautiful.  It´s not everything that language can be.  It´s still utilitarian.  I think it´ll continue to improve with my time here, but I don´t believe it will ever be at the level that my English was.


My conclusion is that I´m a Spanglish speaker.  I have competence, but lack mastery in both.  I´m hoping that my English will come back when I get back to the states, and that my Spanish will improve in the year and a half I have left.  In the meantime, I´m going to keep reading and hopefully that will bolster my vocab.  We´ll see.  Until then, we´ll continue with elaborate descriptions of the words we´re trying to find.  




Stay tuned for the story of my trip!  There are some good parts.  I´ll be writing it up at home and bringing in installments when they´re ready.