¿Estás molesta?

9-4-13

I just noticed today that you never see migrating birds here.  That is I think you do, but I suck at ornithology so I wouldn’t recognize them individually.  What I mean is that you don’t see the flying “V” made famous by the Mighty Ducks.  Not sure why I thought of that.

This past weekend I got to watch Michigan play in the Final Four, which was amazing!  But then I didn’t get to see the championship game, and I didn’t even find out that they lost until today.  It was disappointing.

In other news I’m teaching a lot of English classes right now – Ty and I are teaching one in the elementary school in Sicchez, another for the general public in the Health Center, and I’m helping with two more (which are fortunately identical) in the secondary school in Oxahuay.  If you ever tried to teach English just because you speak it, you would find it is very difficult.  Especially when you teach students who are trained to copy and not think too much.  The difference between the coastally-educated and the mountain-educated is striking recently.  The health professionals we teach were educated on the coast and get what we teach pretty quickly, but teaching in schools probably needs to be slower than it has been because learning another language is not as formulaic as you might think.  Beyond repeating or reading pre-prepared text, students have a really hard time understanding even the grammatical rules of Spanish so that they can understand how what they want to say in Spanish relates to what they’re saying in English.  Hopefully with some more writing and speaking assignments that will improve.

 

The Monster Game!  Teaching body parts, clothing and colors at the Health Center

Parade for International Women's Day

Other than that, it’s been more of the same.  More rain, more preparations for projects, more getting girls ready to go to Camp ALMA,  etc.  And I hope this makes sense – I’m also catching up on my Star Trek movies.  That’s right.  Preparing for Qapla’.

11-4-13

I got the best text tonight from a fellow volunteer friend:” I just listened to [Thrift Shop].  And it’s even more funny now because I’m a little drunk…Oh funerals!” I love Peru.

28-4-13

Summary of my day:  Breakfast, walk 2 hours, do 3.5 house visits, walk 2 hours, shower, eat soup.  At least there was still water at 6:30 tonight!  I am so exhausted I just confused who I was trying to call and asked my friend Leidy if she was one of my health promoters.  All I’ve been thinking about all day was a giant plate of nachos and a Coke, which of course was never going to happen, but I was at least hoping for chicken in my soup after having 2 oranges, a sweet lemon, and an icee pop for lunch.

3-5-13

Wow I never wrote anything about going on vacation at the end of March!  I went to the beaches of Tumbes and Piura with my friend Christina and we met up with Sonnet and Jennifer in Tumbes to have stir fry and watch Ice Loves Coco before they headed out for a longer trip to Ecuador.  While in Tumbes we visited the mangrove forest at Puerto Pizzaro as well, and had some delicious fish on a little spot of ocean-front sand.  We also spent some time in Mancora getting pancakes, rotisserie chicken, shopping, and relaxing on the beach.  We were disappointed to find that they no longer sell Snickers in Mancora because they melt!  At least we found some other American candy and pop where we were staying in Los Organos. 

 

The beach at Los Organos

Birds in the mangrove forest in Tumbes

I just realized I also never wrote anything about Camp ALMA.  It was a great success!  We had about 50 girls attend the camp and they learned about studying at a university, career options, money management, healthy relationships, and sexual health.  More importantly, our girls came away feeling more confident in their own ability to achieve whatever goals they set for themselves.  My girls are getting ready to present a plan to the school administration so they can share what they’ve learned with the other students in the school.  Hopefully we’ll be able to coordinate some of the replicas with what our sex ed peer educators will be teaching once we get that project underway again in June.

My girls and I with their "letters to yourself" at the end of Camp ALMA

Speaking of the sex ed project, I’ve been much better about including the project committee in the planning process this time around.  We’ve had two committee meetings during which we’ve analyzed the current situation based on the results of the last project, and come up with goals, objectives, and activities for the next project.  Now I’m just typing up all the things we planned out on the whiteboard so we can have one more meeting to finalize the plan, put dates in our timeline, and assign responsibilities.  If only I had such dedicated (and permanent) people to work on early childhood health!

 

Project planning

In other news, all of the SERUMs (the recent graduates doing their year of rural service to be able to work for the Ministry of Health) left last week.  It was a sad couple of days – over the last year we have become good friends and it’s been refreshing to have young professionals who are dedicated to their work and who are going through the same adjustments you are.  The next bunch will come along around the 15^th of this month.  I hope their as awesome as the last ones!

 

SERUMs, Me, and Ty

So here I am in Piura again, and not a moment too soon.  People were starting to get on my nerves for doing things that they always do and I’ve come to expect, if not always accept or understand.  I snapped at an older man because he got impatient that I wouldn’t drop everything and go up to the highest caserio with him just for the hell of it.  He was doing that thing where someone doesn’t ask where you’re going they just try to guess and don’t give you a chance to respond until they’ve guessed right.  Usually I just shut up until they frustrate themselves, but I was irritated because earlier in the day I got behind schedule for things beyond my control and the mom I was trying to find had already left her house because I was so late, so I told the man, in a less than patient tone, that I was working, I had two other people to look for, and I couldn’t just drop everything to go on a two hour walk with him.  I don’t even know him!  Not to mention I was exhausted from all of the hiking I’ve done this week trying to finish the evaluations that I need to do with all of the moms and health promoters that I’ve worked with so far (47 total visits of 45 minutes-1 hour each, plus walking and hunting people down).  This was also in part brought on by the fact that earlier in the day a drunken man snuck up on me and walked at turtle speed ahead of me down a narrow path, even though I told him I was in a hurry, telling me that “amor de prisa no dura” (hurried love doesn’t last) or something like that.  I tried to tell him I was in a hurry to go to work which has nothing to with love, but that just seemed to piss him off.  So then I passed him on the path and he started running to keep up with me and almost fell down into me, especially when I stopped suddenly because there was a medium-sized snake in the path.  Luckily he turned off on another path to go home and I managed not let him give me a sloppy drunken goodbye kiss because I could say I had to go!

Speaking of snakes I saw a gigantic (like 6 feet long) dead snake a few weeks ago that they killed near the Health Post in Oxahuay.  I didn’t know snakes that big existed!  I’ve only seen little green snakes before.

Another thing about that day that was frustrating me was that one of the people I went to visit seems to have gotten really depressed since I started working with her last year.  In the beginning she was somewhat enthusiastic to work with me, even though she didn’t feel confident as a health promoter because she was new at it and there were so many experienced health promoters around her.  I tried to assure her that it really didn’t matter because a lot of the things I was teaching were new even to the health promoters that had 10 years of experience.  And she did a great job of studying and learning and making improvements to her house and generally being just a great example for her community, even though admittedly her confidence in house visits never really improved and she’d usually wait for me to accompany her before she did any on her own.  But then about half-way through the project she had some family troubles.  Her father-in-law got sick and soon passed away.  Caring for him, and then having to prepare a funeral, and subsequently having to take care of his widow as well took its toll.  On top of all that, she found out she was pregnant again (she already has 4 children), which maybe wasn’t welcome news.  So now she is moving back and forth between her house and her mother-in-law’s house up the hill, getting ready to have a baby, and still caring for her other children, cows, and chickens.  So with all of this going on, she has lost interest in her work as a health promoter, and was less than excited to participate in the evaluation interview, just immediately saying “I don’t know” or “I forgot” even to the questions that were about her opinion and have no single right answer.  It is so frustrating to see these things come down on someone who had such potential in the beginning, and be powerless to do anything about it.  I think a lot of what is depressing her is that she never quite got her self-confidence up, and she’s had to give up two leadership positions as a result of all that’s happened, so she probably feels like she’s failing in many ways, even though I think she’s doing the best she can, given the situation.  It’s especially hard for me because I can’t empathize and I don’t know how to help her see that she’s going through some tough times, but they will end, and although a lot of it is out of her control, she has the right to take control of some things, like insisting that her mother-in-law move into her house or that her family move permanently to her mother-in-law’s house because moving back and forth is just way too stressful and it is far too difficult for a pregnant woman to maintain two houses.  Not to mention her mother-in-law lives in much less hygienic conditions than she has created in her house.  Unfortunately, it’s extremely taboo to ask someone who is allowing you to live in their home to change anything about it, even if it will improve the house, because it is ultimately their house, not yours.

Well that’s all for now.  Time to rest up for another market place adventure tomorrow – my bubble oven burned out and so did my host mom’s cell phone charger, so I’m off to seek out some sort of electrician to fix them for me!  …And maybe look for a cheaper hotel – the prices got raised at our old hotel so much that we can’t afford to stay there anymore, but the place I’m staying now isn’t much better.  Maybe something will open up at the one by the mall…one can only hope.

Loca por mis carnavales

25-1-13

Nothing like putting out so much heat that you fog up your glasses and sweat in your eyeballs all morning, only to walk back in the rain and take an ice-cold shower while surrounded by a forming rain cloud.  Rainy season has arrived!

5-3-13

Thinking, because this Word document existed on my desktop, that I had already written a substantial amount for my “Next Blog”, I’ve been putting off writing more.  Until I went to post to my blog last time I was in Piura and realized I had only written two sentences. Wah-wah.

So what has been happening since the end of January?  Well perhaps most excitingly, I finished the nutrition project that I have been working on minimally since May or June of last year and in earnest since September.  Congratulations team!  Through the project we recuperated 5 malnourished children to a normal nutritional status and at least 7 others are only at risk rather than malnourished.  Additionally we did some deworming which didn’t stick so well, distributed some iron supplements which may not have been taken properly, and started some family gardens which were poorly monitored so I really can’t say much about them.  But looking at the overall picture, I think we did more good than bad, although there was certainly room for improvement.  Recommendations to myself:  never take on that much by yourself again, and don’t even try to just mentor the Municipality – you will unquestionably get suckered in to the unrewarding and draining position of being “Responsable del Proyecto”.

What’s next, you ask?  Follow up, follow up, and more follow up probably under the guise of teaching early childhood stimulation.  Also I will be using my eco-(and budget-) conscious elf skills to do some toy making out of materials people have around their house so we can simulate the set of unused stimulation toys that are sitting in various unused rooms throughout the district.  Maybe someday, somehow these moms will get excited about playing with their kids enough to take them to those mysterious rooms and use the real stuff.  Maybe.

In other happenings in February, I went to Carnaval in Cajamarca, the Peruvian capital of Mardi Gras celebrations.  Ironically I did not stay for Fat Tuesday.  The most important day of the festival (for a young Peace Corps Volunteer, at least) is in fact Saturday, known as Paint Day.  On Paint Day, groups of people from different neighborhoods (or visiting tourists like us) put on some old clothes, fill buckets and squirt guns with (mostly) water-soluble paint, and bring out the band to go prowl the streets in search of a good boys-vs.-girls paint fight.  We ended up joining several large groups where there was less paint fighting within the group and more water/paint coming from the balconies above.  Nothing like getting doused with a bucket of ice-cold water on what feels like a crisp fall day!  Why don’t we do that in Piura, the land of eternal heat?!  Despite being a little chilly and having to clean up in a cold shower after, Paint Day was totally worth it and very fun.  Every night in the main square, there was a party which I participated in a couple of times where groups and their bands dance and sing the Carnaval songs (which I barely understood since most everyone at Carnaval is perpetually wasted, but am pretty sure some were really dirty).  On Sunday there was a big parade that lasted pretty much all day although I only watched about a half hour of it.  On Monday there was apparently an even bigger parade, but we decided not to go to that because 1, we wanted to see some of the other sites Cajamarca has to offer, and 2, we were sick of getting pelted with water balloons. I’m still  not super sure it’s true, but it really seems like we were getting targeted because we’re gringos, particularly those of us who are tall (luckily I was always walking with a taller person so I personally didn’t get soaked too much).  So instead we took a morning tour of Cumbe Mayo, a rock forest and pre-Incan canal site that was beautiful, fun, and impressive.  In the afternoon some people went to the Baños del Inca, the natural hot springs just outside of town where you can soak in the springs and/or get a massage.  But seeing as I’m not fond of getting wet, or being touched by strangers, I decided to opt out.

We also had a Carnaval celebration in Sicchez well after Fat Tuesday (no one seems to pay too much attention to the actual date or the fact that they’re celebrating in the middle of Lent).  In Sicchez, though, we throw talc or flour instead of water, but we dance and get drunk all the same.  There is also, of course, food served and a queen is crowned (just one  - Cajamarca has a few).  There is also a tree, whose name escapes me at the moment, which is adorned with free stuff for those in attendance who are eager enough to grab something.  The tree was propped up in the plaza (now I know why there is that annoying hole in the middle of our volleyball “court”) and chopped down around the time it got dark and everyone made a mad rush for the stuff in the tree.  Some people came away loaded down with new plastics and little bags of snacks.  Unfortunately I have almost zero pictures of Paint Day or Powder Day because I was afraid of wrecking my camera. L

In yet other happenings, we held a Peruanas Poderosas conference in Sicchez because one of my health promoters was recognized in the annual Peruanas Poderosas (Powerful Peruvian Women) calendar put out by the Gender Equity and Women’s Empowerment committee of PC Peru.  The calendar features (fully clothed - I know someone would wonder) Peruvian women who are leaders in their communities and who are nominated by Peace Corps volunteers for their achievements both professional and personal.  At the conference we recognized Lola the health promoter, mother, and grandmother, and invited a speaker from the Women’s Emergency Center in our provincial capital to give a presentation on women’s rights and help come up with some action items that we can implement to protect women’s rights in Sicchez.  As a result, some attendees were assigned to form a district-wide women’s committee and elect a representative to attend a training in Ayabaca on women’s rights and handling cases of domestic violence.  All in all it was a really successful event and the turnout was great especially considering that I didn’t mention that everyone in attendance would receive a calendar and lunch in the invitation.  The ladies responsible for forming the committee are even more on top of it than I am – they reminded me about it!

Although it sounds like I’ve been busy, I’ve actually had a lot of down time this month.  After tying up some loose ends and presenting the results of the nutrition project, I really didn’t have that much to do to plan the Peruanas conference.  So in the mean time I’ve started learning how to knit, read all the magazines in my room, and read several books thanks to forgetting my laptop charger at the hotel in Piura on the way back from Cajamarca.  Good job me!  While I couldn’t write in my blog or read much about early stim before my battery died, at least it kept me from succumbing to the rainy season urge to watch every episode of every TV show ever made.  It was pretty sunny those two weeks, though, so the urge could return – the tap water is just now turning opaque brown, so we could just be getting started with the rain.  At least school is back in session and Ty and I are adding to the March madness with our own English class.  Our students can already introduce themselves after class number two! 

28-3-2013

Another month has gone by, and although I still haven’t actually started any new projects, I do have my plans pretty much together for one and I’m working on them for another.  In other news we’re getting ready to gather some awesome girls for Camp ALMA (like Camp GLOW in some other PC programs) the girls leadership camp that some of you may have helped fund.  We also had a deworming campaign this month and I got a visit from our volunteer coordinator going over the nutrition project that I worked on.  So, while not the most productive month with long-term projects, still a busy one.

Right now I’m relaxing at the beach with a friend in Los Organos, a (very) quiet little town on the Pacific Coast in Piura a short distance from the big beach town of Mancora.  It’s certainly not the tourist haven that Mancora is, but perhaps more interesting because of it.  I know what some of you (Mom) are thinking – you’re on vacation again?!  This time I wouldn’t be doing anything in site anyway because it’s Holy Week so no one is really down to work right now.  And we have free vacation days, so why not?  After this I probably won’t go anywhere until July when my parents come to visit (!!!) because there won’t be any time.

So that’s all for now – pictures of the beach will have to come later because I don’t have my camera adapter with me.  Hope you all have a great Easter and eat lots of Cadbury eggs for me!

Feliz Navidad, Feliz Año, Feliz Cumple

1-9-13

I can’t remember the last time I posted to my blog so it must be time for an update.  As many of you probably know, I was back in the US for Christmas.  It was an interesting experience but not as weird as I thought it would be.   I got a lot of general questions about how I like Peru or what it’s like that were hard to answer in a few words – I hadn’t really thought about how to respond to those yet and it’s hard to give a straight answer about how I feel about the past year.  I mean, like any other year of my life I’ve had my ups and downs, although they’ve been more extreme here.  I’ve even gone from waking up and hating the fact that I’m still here to having such a great moment with friends and counterparts I wonder why I would ever want to do anything else, all in the same day.  It’s really hard to put that into words, much less generalize whether I’ve felt “good” or “bad” or any other succinctly packaged emotion about the whole thing.

Another question I got a lot was what we eat here.   I didn’t realize I’ve never really written much about the food!  And this week’s adventures in the kitchen are a perfect opportunity to tell you about it.  I called my host mom when I got back to Piura and found out that she and my abuela aren’t going to come back for at least a week, maybe until the end of the month, from their trip to visit family in Lima and Arequipa.  So thinking I would cook a few meals for myself I bought salad vegetables and granola while I was still in the city.  Then I got home and told this to my abuelo and invited him to share my dinner salad, and he said “why don’t you just cook for now?”.  Meaning for both of us.  Knowing it would be impossible to cook what I wanted if I was cooking for him too, I tried to think of an excuse to cook just for me, but I couldn’t.  Instead I tried to scare him off with my weird American food the next day with granola and fruit for breakfast (which he wouldn’t put milk on even though there was plenty of milk that I ended up giving to the pig), but he was not deterred.  Instead he started sort of forcefully suggesting I make more Peruvian fare.  The next morning he picked up a can of anchovy meal stuff (which looks like dog food and is one of my least favorites) and asked if I could make that with rice and vegetables.  I didn’t really object because I also didn’t have enough granola to feed both of us again or any idea of what else to make. 

It turned out pretty well – I was pretty proud of my Peruvian-style rice, except for the lack of salt and garlic flavor since I’ve never cooked with fresh garlic and didn’t realize I had to crush it.  Last night I made some mean chifles (fried bananas) with the leftover anchovy stuff, and today I made just normal rice with salad of some leaf that they call cabbage but isn’t and my abuelo made guineos (boiled bananas).  He also instructed me in how to marinate some chicken for tomorrow – another adventure using half a chicken with skin and bones and organs and all.  Last time I touched a whole chicken I went vegetarian within a week, but I’ve gotten over eating animals during my travels.

So all in all cooking hasn’t been too terrible – the biggest problem is getting the darn fire started every time.  Since we’re eating lunch elsewhere the stove gets too cold between breakfast and dinner to be easily started.  I’ve started it once from hot coals before, but this week I’ve only managed to light one little branch and then accidentally blow it out trying to fan the flame.  So I guess if I’m going to cook anything at all I’m going to have to share it with my abuelo because he has to be there to start the fire.  We do have a gas stove, rice cooker, electric oven, and blender, which would greatly expand my abilities and options, but unfortunately my host mom locked them all up in her room before she left and forgot to leave a spare key, so it’s wood stove or nothing.  I’ve never regretted my decision not to buy a water boiler more than this week!

Well aside from that there’s not much to tell.  Getting back in the swing of things is proving difficult since I got back from not just a vacation, but a vacation to the States, and I also got hooked on a Kindle book which I have to read on my laptop – it is just way too tempting not to open it up!  So that’s all for now.  Nos estamos viendo.

11-1-13

Success!  I got a “todo era muy rico” for dinner tonight!  I made noodles, fried chicken, and salad.  I must say it was pretty good.  In other news, the mayor has taken a sudden and belated interest in my nutrition project and wants to attend the charla I’m going to give tomorrow, which has given me the motivation I need to actually do the charla well.  Finally it seems like someone cares about what I’m doing!

15-1-13

Well the alcalde did not come to my charla, nor has he even been back from Piura since then.  However, I’ve gotten good feedback from the health professionals, so my motivation is still up.  Also, the nutrition project as recovered 6 kids to normal growth status!  It doesn’t sound like much, but many of these kids were so far behind it’s just helpful that they grew at all.  One little girl who is malnourished has a brother 8 months younger than her who has normal growth status and they weigh the same and have only a 2 cm difference in height!

In other oddities, the Municipality has arranged a Maternal and Child Health Center in Sicchez, which is really cool, but poorly placed.  In fact directly in the documentation for the center it says it shouldn’t  be placed near a similar institution, like the Ludoteca we already have that does essentially the same thing, and should be somewhere with abundant children under 3 and pregnant women, like Oxahuay and not Sicchez.  Silly people.  Furthermore they selected a different health promoter to work in the new center than the 2 they just trained through my project for silly political reasons.  There is a lot of politics going around lately – it seems to me that this municipality is relatively strict about knowing where their money goes even if it’s not to the thing it was budgeted for, but apparently cronyism is ok.  And as with all things Peruvian government, who cares as long as the pictures look nice?

One last anecdote: the kitchen is being invaded by ants (again) which seem to have set up their “cave”, as my abuelo calls it, in a pot of spoiling sugar that was on the table.  The funny and not so gross thing about this is that when he catches the ants he throws them in the fire and says “bundle up in there, you!”

23-1-13

Big change of scenery!  I’m in Trujillo for the 53^rd National Marinera Festival with some other friends from Peace Corps.  I can’t upload my photos right now because I don’t have the card adapter, but let me assure you it’s really cool.  Marinera is a traditional dance in northern Peru, which I think I’ve mentioned before because the doctor and one of the teachers in Oxahuay dance Marinera at our anniversaries.  We went yesterday to the festival and saw some of the little kids and some adults dance, but missed the really little kids.  It’s a little overwhelming because they dance 4 couples at a time for the competition, at least now in the early days, but the dresses are so beautiful and the dancers are so good!  I’ll post videos/pictures next time.  This morning we took a Marinera lesson at a dance studio down the street from our hotel – it really makes you appreciate how difficult it is to get all the frills together!  I’ve even decided to take the overnight bus back to Piura so I can stay with Jennifer and go see some more dancing tonight.  The masters are supposed to start competing tonight, so it should be really good.

In other news, I had a great birthday on Saturday with cake and volley and everything thanks to some good friends here.  Being on the other side of 25 makes me start feeling more like an adult, although I still feel just as naïve as I did last week. J

Tu tomaste tu decision mientras yo tome la mia

(The title has nothing to do with the content of this entry, it's just the theme song of Decisiones Extremas, a TV show I like to watch on Saturdays.)

13-11-12

Today was one of the roughest days ever.  I started out getting ready on time for once, but then my water bucket’s spigot broke and made me late trying to fill my water bottle by pouring water out of a 16L bucket.  Then my bike seat broke for the umpteenth time on the way to Oxahuay and, having not slept well last night because we had coffee and crackers for dinner, broke down a bit on the side of the road.  I saw someone coming so I pulled myself back together and this someone turned out to be a dirty old (like senior citizen old) man who proposed that since I don’t have a boyfriend I should go to the woods with him and he would give me money for implied sexual acts.  Ew.  Then he followed me all the way back to Sicchez where I had to go buy a wrench at my least favorite store, which is my least favorite because every time I go there I either get a remark about how fat I am (surprisingly not today) or a smirk and an air of superiority because I’m a woman buying tools.  Then as I was fixing the bike outside the store, some drunk man insisted on helping me but he couldn’t even understand how the parts fit together and him and the store owner kept taking over even though I knew perfectly well how to fix the seat – the parts were just so crappy that I ended up buying new ones from the bike mechanic in Oxahuay after the seat broke again when I got there. 

So anyway I missed teaching computers in Oxahuay although no one seems to have remembered it was computers day.  While I was in Sicchez and not going to teach, I went to talk to the mayor to see if I could get another project coordinator since the other one got married and left.  Turns out he actually had no idea she left and her husband also left without telling anyone, leaving the municipality without a treasurer or a procurement person or an office of disabilities person and leaving me f’ed, as they say.  Whatever, at least I’m supposed to get another project coordinator. 

After that the bike seat fell off again, I arrived at the Health Post and couldn’t print anything because the electricity went out as soon as I opened my documents.  Then I was late to the secondary school because I was contemplating how in the world almost none of the kids in my nutrition project grew last month.  The last meeting with my peer educators turned out to be a complete disaster since my focus group idea crashed and burned because they were all so concerned about going home that no one wanted to talk about any of my questions, and the schedule for doing replicas has completely not been discussed among the professors even though I’ve requested it 3 times in the past week.  At least we came up with some topics and have a plan to practice on Friday.

After that I was in a rush to get lunch since the lunch people were leaving for Sicchez on the first combi so I had to walk all the way back down to the bike mechanic after lunch and then missed the second combi and had to bike home with a ton more weight than I came with.  I was supposed to go to Guir Guir, but it wasn’t critical and my knees hurt from the previous day’s hike and I had all that weight and a headache and a short temper so I decided it would be better not to go.  Instead I stopped at a friend’s to chat a minute and then made my way home. 

Home at least was good.  We had a delicious soup with celery and carrots and ginger (I think), with plenty of potatoes and noodles of course, served with bread and my favorite tea – hierba luisa.  I also had put the 4^th Harry Potter movie on the TV while I was making flip chart notes before dinner and my abuela was absolutely fascinated by it.  I’m pretty sure she did not understand a bit of what was happening but she kept asking a bunch of questions and saying to my abuelo, asleep in his chair, “Miguel!  Miguel! Look!”  Totally made up for the rest of my crappy day.

16-11-12

Today I made baby food out of blood.  And lentils, tomato, and onion.  Yum!  Actually I made it yesterday too.  It’s not something I’d like to eat every day, but it wasn’t bad.  I also got the blood for free, so making the whole thing twice cost less than S/. 2!  I’m hoping the moms in my project liked the idea.  The cooking for the charla did not go all that smoothly, mostly because I was giving the charla and doing the cooking mostly on my own – the moms had to bring their kids under 3 to the charla to take a blood sample so I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get any volunteers with all those little monsters running around.  But the charla part I think went well.  The moms should be able to explain complementary feeding and balanced nutrition, if not practice what I taught them today.  I am also lucky enough to have gotten help from Felicita, the Vaso de Leche coordinator and my health promoters in doing the charla and giving out the canastas.  That would have been a nightmare on my own.  I still ended up cancelling on my PEPs though, which I feel really crappy about.  We were supposed to finish the charla in 2 hours – one hour for the charla, one hour to give out the stuff.  It turned out to be more like 2.5 hours and since it took an hour this morning to figure out which of the pickup trucks parked outside the Municipality with their drivers would be taking us to Oxahuay, we arrived almost an hour and a half later than scheduled and started half an hour late.  There is nothing more difficult than getting transportation from the Municipality, no matter how many times you confirm it ahead of time!

I’m so excited to be going on vacation next week!  Five days for Thanksgiving.  There are plans to get Starbucks and make turkey, green beans, sweet potato something, stuffing, pie…yum!  Shortly after that I’ll be in Lima for the one-year training and medical exam.  I can’t believe it’s been a year!  Sadly, though, it looks like I’ll be missing prime chocolatada time in Sicchez (chocolatadas are when some group gives out free panetón and hot chocolate).  Oh well.  Because shortly after that I’m heading back to the States for 10 days and some of you faithful followers will be experiencing your own chocolatada!  That’s right. Get excited. J